New research provides evidence that political orientation is a predictor of belief in scientific and unscientific statements. The study, published in Psychological Reports, found that more liberal college students tend to be more accepting of both types of statements compared to their conservative counterparts.
...In the study, 270 college students were asked to rate their agreement with a series of scientific facts and nonfactual statements. Scientific facts included statements such as “A typical cumulus cloud weighs about 1.1 million pounds,” while nonfactual statements included common false beliefs such as “Humans only use about 10% of their brain.”
The researchers found that participants who were more politically liberal tended to agree more with the scientific statements, compared to participants who were more conservative. However, liberalism was also associated with a greater belief in nonfactual statements.
“It is possible that whereas more conservative persons may be unduly skeptical, more liberal persons may be too open and therefore vulnerable to inaccurate information presented in a manner that appears scientific,” the researchers wrote in their study....
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Originally Posted by Chris
