The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality
by Chris C. Mooney
View on GoodreadsScience journalist Chris Mooney's 2012 argument that the cognitive-and-personality literature shows measurable differences between liberal and conservative thinking styles — and that these differences explain the asymmetric American pattern of science denial on issues like climate, evolution, and public health.
Core ideas
- The personality-difference literature (Open vs. Conscientious as personality-trait clustering, RWA/SDO as authoritarian-orientation measures) shows replicable partisan differences — the question is what they mean and how to interpret them.
- Mooney's argument is that conservative cognitive styles (more decisive, more rule-following, more in-group preferring) are adaptive in some contexts and maladaptive in evidence-evaluation contexts where the answer requires accepting unwelcome information.
- The book has been criticized for overclaiming — the personality-cognition-politics chain is more contested in the academic literature than Mooney suggests, and the empirical case for asymmetric science denial is stronger than the personality-causal explanation for it.
Published2007
Pages336
ISBN9781118094518
ReadMay 2022
