The Republican Brain Quotes

“Precisely because of their training and ability - their power at selectively constructing arguments - the politically or intellectually sophisticated are better able to justify themselves, and also to convince themselves that they're right.
Thus, we would expect to see liberal and conservative experts constantly arguing with each other, each sounding reasonable and articulate - and each becoming more convinced they're right the more they argue and the more they research the issues.
[P]artisans on either side wind up with lots of handy arguments to carry into their own belief-affirming and confidence-bolstering intellectual battles.
The result is polarization over the nature of reality itself.”
― Chris C. Mooney, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality

“[T]he change that conservatives seek is not progressive; rather it is in the direction of restoring something they perceive as prior and better [...]. Often, it is an imaginary past that has been romanticized, and the desire is to restore what never even was. So you can certainly have conservative revolutionaries; they're just favoring an earlier status quo, and not necessarily even one that ever existed. It need only be the case that they think it did, and they long for it, and this drives their policy prescriptions and agendas.”
― Chris C. Mooney, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality

“[M]ost people are afraid to think about the possibility that their most cherished beliefs might have a psychological basis, rather than simply a basis in fact.”
― Chris C. Mooney, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality

“[W]hen we think we're reasoning we may instead be rationalizing. [...] We may think we're being scientists, but we're actually being lawyers. Our "reasoning" is a means to a predetermined end - winning our case[.]”
― Chris C. Mooney, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality

“[W]hile liberals aren't always right, conservatives are vastly more wrong today about science and the facts in general.”
― Chris C. Mooney, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality

“[H]uman reason, standing on its own, isn't really a very good tool for getting at truth, and may not have even been designed (by evolution) for this purpose.”
― Chris C. Mooney, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality

“Just because psychology seems relevant to explaining why the left and the right have diverged over reality doesn't mean that nothing else is, or that I am reducing conservatives to just their psychology (or reducing psychology to cognitive neuroscience, or cognitive neuroscience to genes, and so on). [...]
Complex phenomena like human political behavior always have many causes, not one. This book fully recognizes that and does not embrace a position that could fairly be called determinism. Human brains are flexible and change daily; people have choices, and those choices alter who they are.”
― Chris C. Mooney, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality

“[N]o matter how much the fact-checkers strive to remain "bipartisan," it is pretty hard to argue that the distribution of falsehoods today is politically equal or symmetrical.”
― Chris C. Mooney, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality

“In Skitka’s study, liberals and conservatives were asked about a scenario in which four different groups of people had contracted AIDS in a variety ways. Three of the groups were blameless: they had gotten the disease from a blood transfusion, or a long-term partner who had cheated on them, gotten AIDS, and then passed it on, et cetera. One group, though, had contracted AIDS through practicing unsafe sex while fully aware of the risks. In other words, the members of this group seemed fully responsible for their own fates. The liberals and conservatives then had to decide who should receive government subsidized drug treatment. The conservatives thought that people who were culpable in contracting AIDS shouldn’t get the same care as those who were blameless. So did the liberals—on first impulse, anyway. But they tended to change their minds once they were allowed to think about it. Their sense of fairness, equality, and of caring for others shone through—and then, unlike conservatives, they appeared to reason that everybody should be treated the same way in government policy, regardless of their personal responsibility for their plight.”
― Chris C. Mooney, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science--and Reality

“the politician”
― Chris C. Mooney, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science--and Reality