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The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality
Bestselling author Chris Mooney uses cutting-edge research to explain the psychology behind why today's Republicans reject reality—it's just part of who they are. From climate change to evolution, the rejection of mainstream science among Republicans is growing, as is the denial of expert consensus on the economy, American history, foreign policy and much more. Why won't Republicans accept things that most experts agree on? Why are they constantly fighting against the facts?
Science writer Chris Mooney explores brain scans, polls, and psychology experiments to explain why conservatives today believe more wrong things; appear more likely than Democrats to oppose new ideas and less likely to change their beliefs in the face of new facts; and sometimes respond to compelling evidence by doubling down on their current beliefs.
Goes beyond the standard claims about ignorance or corporate malfeasance to discover the real, scientific reasons why Republicans reject the widely accepted findings of mainstream science, economics, and history—as well as many undeniable policy facts (e.g., there were no “death panels� in the health care bill).
Explains that the political parties reflect personality traits and psychological needs—with Republicans more wedded to certainty, Democrats to novelty—and this is the root of our divide over reality.
Written by the author of The Republican War on Science, which was the first and still the most influential book to look at conservative rejection of scientific evidence. But the rejection of science is just the beginning�
Certain to spark discussion and debate, The Republican Brain also promises to add to the lengthy list of persuasive scientific findings that Republicans reject and deny.
Science writer Chris Mooney explores brain scans, polls, and psychology experiments to explain why conservatives today believe more wrong things; appear more likely than Democrats to oppose new ideas and less likely to change their beliefs in the face of new facts; and sometimes respond to compelling evidence by doubling down on their current beliefs.
Goes beyond the standard claims about ignorance or corporate malfeasance to discover the real, scientific reasons why Republicans reject the widely accepted findings of mainstream science, economics, and history—as well as many undeniable policy facts (e.g., there were no “death panels� in the health care bill).
Explains that the political parties reflect personality traits and psychological needs—with Republicans more wedded to certainty, Democrats to novelty—and this is the root of our divide over reality.
Written by the author of The Republican War on Science, which was the first and still the most influential book to look at conservative rejection of scientific evidence. But the rejection of science is just the beginning�
Certain to spark discussion and debate, The Republican Brain also promises to add to the lengthy list of persuasive scientific findings that Republicans reject and deny.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
123 people are currently reading
2645 people want to read
About the author
Chris C. Mooney
8books104followersChris Mooney is an energy and environment reporter for the Washington Post.
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October 26, 2012
“Oh…�.Sweet Jesus�- Joe Scarborough
So last night was the last presidential debate and all of us are a bit tired of politics at the moment, even political geeks like me. Also, considering the fact I live in Ohio, Ohio, Ohio, (if you live anywhere else, multiply your ads by ten) the most salivated over state in the nation…�..well, I’m wanting this over! But, never the less, I had to read this book.
Why? Because, like you may have experienced yourself, I have been through some mind boggling conversations with those on the tea party extremes of today’s Republican Party. The absolute denial of facts as they are pointed out to them confounds me. When I read the title of this book I thought, “yes! Finally an explanation.�
An example of a conversation with an extreme teaparty type Republican, let’s call him Skeeter.
“Hey there Skeeter, what’cha watching?�
“I’m watching a story on Obama. It’s really scary! Did you know that he’s a secret Muslim, Kenyon, Socialist, Communist, Nazi with a crazy Christian pastor? And that he has a plan to destroy America from within and a plan on world domination? He’s going to take away our guns AND force women to have abortions when they don’t even need them AND he’s going to force a government takeover of health care with DEATH PANELS!� pant, pant, pant. “He shouldn’t even be president……he’s foreign!! Plus I heard he’s GAY!�
“Wow Skeeter, that is scary�.I guess, but the good news is that all of that is false.�
“Huh? No, it has to be true; they said it on the TV machine.�
“Well, for starters you can’t be Muslim and have a crazy Christian pastor. His religion should not be a factor anyway. He’s not from Kenya, he was born in Hawaii. You can’t be a Socialist, a Communist, and a Nazi because they are a completely different ideology from each other. He’s not trying to destroy America, just the opposite, I’m not so sure about the current Republican party though. He doesn’t want to rule the world, this country is fucked up enough he doesn’t have the time to rule the rest of the planet. He hasn’t tried to take your guns in the last four years. How do you force non-pregnant women to abort a non-existent pregnancy? Health care needs reforming and there are no death panels. Have you seen Michelle? He’s not gay……not that that would matter.�
“But how do you know for sure Stephanie? Like, how do you know he wasn’t born in Kenya?�
“He has a birth certificate that he has released from the state of Hawaii, here it is online. If that’s not enough proof for you, here’s a copy of the birth announcement dated in 1961 printed in a Hawaiian newspaper.�
“That don’t prove nuthin� Stephanie.�
“Uh�..yes it does.�
“Nope. He probably has a time machine and he took it back to 1961 to plant the birth certificate and the article so he could become president to destroy America!�
“Skeeter, that’s insane.�
This conversation could go on forever. Chris Mooney calls this motivated reasoning. When you believe something as strongly as Skeeter does it becomes almost physical in the brain and nothing short of surgery can remove this belief. Think about the cults who predict the end of the world, it never happens, yet these people are so invested in this belief that they always come up with a new date, rather than admit to themselves they made a mistake. Skeeter is extreme, a closed minded authoritarian according to the author. Not all Republicans are this extreme, but they are most certainly closed minded by definition. That’s how they can stick by a candidate no matter how bad they turn out to be. They are a loyal crowd, for better or for worse.
Now for the opposite person, the extreme liberal, let’s call him Kyle.
“Hi Kyle. What’cha reading?�
“Oh hi, a blog about how Obama hasn’t done EVERYTHING I wanted him to do in the last four years, so I’m going to vote for the Green candidate in protest.�
“But that’s just throwing your vote away Kyle! You know that the president is your best bet to get what you want; Romney will do nothing for you. Protest? I don’t think the president will be thinking about how he failed you…�.”What? We lost Kyle? What could we have done? Maybe if we would have got him a unicorn that farts glitter…�.�
“A glitter-farting unicorn would buy my vote, I admit…�.but come on Stephanie, he didn’t magically fix everything in four years like he promised he would. I’m very disappointed. Plus his performance in the first debate was horrible.�
“He didn’t promise that, he said the road would be long and he would need our help, that he couldn’t do it alone. Besides, I didn’t think the debate was all that bad. You fought for him in 2008, made phone calls and went knocking on doors. You loved him, now you turn on him? �
Ԩ!�
The problem with the extreme liberal is that, like all liberals, they are open minded. Except more so. They will change their mind on a dime. New information will send them off flailing their arms in a new direction. Think Chris Mathews after the first debate. It didn’t go as well as Chris had hoped so he went mental. Pretty much declaring it a tragedy in all out panic, I yelled “you’re not helping Chris!� at the tv that night.
To sum it up, if you put facts in front of a liberal with a strong belief, that disproves his belief, he will change his mind most of the time. Try the same thing with a teaparty type, and you will find him to stick to his guns come hell or high-water……or facts.
Do I understand Republicans any better now that I read this book? Um�.not really, I’m not sure that’s possible. But, by all means read the book. It’s very interesting.
So last night was the last presidential debate and all of us are a bit tired of politics at the moment, even political geeks like me. Also, considering the fact I live in Ohio, Ohio, Ohio, (if you live anywhere else, multiply your ads by ten) the most salivated over state in the nation…�..well, I’m wanting this over! But, never the less, I had to read this book.
Why? Because, like you may have experienced yourself, I have been through some mind boggling conversations with those on the tea party extremes of today’s Republican Party. The absolute denial of facts as they are pointed out to them confounds me. When I read the title of this book I thought, “yes! Finally an explanation.�
An example of a conversation with an extreme teaparty type Republican, let’s call him Skeeter.
“Hey there Skeeter, what’cha watching?�
“I’m watching a story on Obama. It’s really scary! Did you know that he’s a secret Muslim, Kenyon, Socialist, Communist, Nazi with a crazy Christian pastor? And that he has a plan to destroy America from within and a plan on world domination? He’s going to take away our guns AND force women to have abortions when they don’t even need them AND he’s going to force a government takeover of health care with DEATH PANELS!� pant, pant, pant. “He shouldn’t even be president……he’s foreign!! Plus I heard he’s GAY!�
“Wow Skeeter, that is scary�.I guess, but the good news is that all of that is false.�
“Huh? No, it has to be true; they said it on the TV machine.�
“Well, for starters you can’t be Muslim and have a crazy Christian pastor. His religion should not be a factor anyway. He’s not from Kenya, he was born in Hawaii. You can’t be a Socialist, a Communist, and a Nazi because they are a completely different ideology from each other. He’s not trying to destroy America, just the opposite, I’m not so sure about the current Republican party though. He doesn’t want to rule the world, this country is fucked up enough he doesn’t have the time to rule the rest of the planet. He hasn’t tried to take your guns in the last four years. How do you force non-pregnant women to abort a non-existent pregnancy? Health care needs reforming and there are no death panels. Have you seen Michelle? He’s not gay……not that that would matter.�
“But how do you know for sure Stephanie? Like, how do you know he wasn’t born in Kenya?�
“He has a birth certificate that he has released from the state of Hawaii, here it is online. If that’s not enough proof for you, here’s a copy of the birth announcement dated in 1961 printed in a Hawaiian newspaper.�
“That don’t prove nuthin� Stephanie.�
“Uh�..yes it does.�
“Nope. He probably has a time machine and he took it back to 1961 to plant the birth certificate and the article so he could become president to destroy America!�
“Skeeter, that’s insane.�
This conversation could go on forever. Chris Mooney calls this motivated reasoning. When you believe something as strongly as Skeeter does it becomes almost physical in the brain and nothing short of surgery can remove this belief. Think about the cults who predict the end of the world, it never happens, yet these people are so invested in this belief that they always come up with a new date, rather than admit to themselves they made a mistake. Skeeter is extreme, a closed minded authoritarian according to the author. Not all Republicans are this extreme, but they are most certainly closed minded by definition. That’s how they can stick by a candidate no matter how bad they turn out to be. They are a loyal crowd, for better or for worse.
Now for the opposite person, the extreme liberal, let’s call him Kyle.
“Hi Kyle. What’cha reading?�
“Oh hi, a blog about how Obama hasn’t done EVERYTHING I wanted him to do in the last four years, so I’m going to vote for the Green candidate in protest.�
“But that’s just throwing your vote away Kyle! You know that the president is your best bet to get what you want; Romney will do nothing for you. Protest? I don’t think the president will be thinking about how he failed you…�.”What? We lost Kyle? What could we have done? Maybe if we would have got him a unicorn that farts glitter…�.�
“A glitter-farting unicorn would buy my vote, I admit…�.but come on Stephanie, he didn’t magically fix everything in four years like he promised he would. I’m very disappointed. Plus his performance in the first debate was horrible.�
“He didn’t promise that, he said the road would be long and he would need our help, that he couldn’t do it alone. Besides, I didn’t think the debate was all that bad. You fought for him in 2008, made phone calls and went knocking on doors. You loved him, now you turn on him? �
Ԩ!�
The problem with the extreme liberal is that, like all liberals, they are open minded. Except more so. They will change their mind on a dime. New information will send them off flailing their arms in a new direction. Think Chris Mathews after the first debate. It didn’t go as well as Chris had hoped so he went mental. Pretty much declaring it a tragedy in all out panic, I yelled “you’re not helping Chris!� at the tv that night.
To sum it up, if you put facts in front of a liberal with a strong belief, that disproves his belief, he will change his mind most of the time. Try the same thing with a teaparty type, and you will find him to stick to his guns come hell or high-water……or facts.
Do I understand Republicans any better now that I read this book? Um�.not really, I’m not sure that’s possible. But, by all means read the book. It’s very interesting.
January 3, 2022
Before reading this book I could not comprehend how some people, usually conservative Republicans, could deny things like global warming.....
�..and evolution - which (in my view) have been unquestionably proven by science.
I also found it bewildering that - in the face of proof to the contrary - some folks insist that President Obama was born in Kenya, that he's a Muslim, and so on.
I thought these folks were willfully deluding themselves, pretending not to believe (just to be contrary....ha ha ha), or perhaps they weren't too bright.
In this book, Chris Mooney makes it pretty clear that none of the above is true. Rather, the brains of conservative people are wired in a way that makes it impossible for them to accept ideas that they find 'threatening.' Thus, if conservatives are presented with information contrary to their core beliefs, they either 'don't hear it', 'deny it', or 'change the goalposts'....that is, shift their perspective to make the new information tolerable.
In a nutshell, that's the basic premise of Mooney's book.
To be fair, Mooney notes that liberals have biases as well. He asserts, however, that liberals seem more able to change their minds when evidence is presented that's contrary to their ingrained notions. (I can attest to this from personal experience - with regard to the safety of nuclear power plants.)
One example of 'changing the goalposts' - not directly related to politics - is particularly striking. A doomsday cult called the Seekers, led by Dorothy Martin, believed they communicated with aliens via Dorothy's automatic writing.
Dorothy Martin led a doomsday cult
The aliens said that the Earth would be destroyed on December 21, 1954, so the cult members divested themselves of their possessions and waited to be rescued by flying saucers.
Doomsday Cult
Of course the world didn't end and the cult members didn't go anywhere.
One might think the Seekers would HAVE to admit they'd been deluded or defrauded, Right? Nope! Dorothy Martin got another message via automatic writing declaring that the Seekers' beliefs had saved the world. Contrary to what would seem like common sense, the Seekers doubled down on their doctrine and became even more fanatic (though a good deal poorer....LOL).
Mooney includes information about the structure and evolution of the brain - as well as sociological, psychological, and scientific studies and surveys - to bolster his arguments.
On the down side, Mooney tends to repeat the same conclusions again and again, and the book could probably have been condensed into a comprehensive magazine article.
In any case, this is an interesting book that's worth reading. I feel it's given me a better understanding of why a group of people cling to controversial (and wrong in my opinion) convictions.
You can follow my reviews at
July 26, 2012
I really wanted to love this book. I am a leftie and a researcher, however, so I read this with a very critical eye. Mooney basically says at the end that liberals all need to stand together and stop criticising each other, but I can't give him carte blanche just because America is extremely divided at the moment.
Ultimately, I felt that this should have been a journal article that could stimulate discussion and debate. It didn't have enough substance for a book, or at least the way he wrote it made it seem very light. He could have tightened this up and made a much stronger argument in a journal article, without all of the fluff. Anyway, on to the review.
First, the good:
- The book discusses a lot of really interesting research. I love reading about psychology in general, but the psychology of ideology is particularly interesting.
- Mooney does temper what he says quite often and makes an honest attempt to approach the issues without bias.
- The book is short and easy to understand. I think it's very accessible for most people, even those who have no interest in politics.
- It's a really entertaining read. It's a tragic comedy in some places, but it is quite engaging.
- He is honest about his own liberal characteristics, yet he does not put the left above criticism. He makes a deliberate effort to point out where they are wrong on a number of issues.
The bad:
- He didn't address a very important assumption, i.e. that Democrats are liberal. I personally don't identify with the Democratic party because they are not far enough to the left for me. I am not an extreme left-winger by any stretch of the imagination, either. America is just really far to the right in general. Mooney makes an argument that the Republican party is dominated by particular types of conservatives, but he didn't do the same with the Democratic party. To use liberals and Democrats interchangeably is to not recognise the lopsided nature of American politics, even on the "left".
- It's poorly written. I admit it. I don't really like non-fiction books that are written so informally. If you've heard Mooney on the podcast, Point of Inquiry, expect the exact same tone he uses in his intros through the entire book. He also makes excessive use of parenthetical phrases and words like "context" and "unpack" that grated on me. This reminds me of essays written by high schoolers, where you start with a big bang, carry on to fill up space in the middle, and then end with big, sweeping, "deep" statements about the world. I realise that I come from a different disciplinary perspective than Mooney, but it's just not a writing style that does much for me at all. It makes me cringe.
- Time and time again, Mooney repeats that he has "demonstrated" asymmetry between liberals and conservatives, but his evidence was really not compelling enough to say that. As I previously discussed, there is a lot of filler. I would love to believe that because it would put me on the more factually correct side of politics, but I think he overstretched the data and in many cases misinterpreted studies. It's ironic, of course, how often he engages in motivated reasoning whilst discussing motivated reasoning. One of the things that bothered me from the outset is that there is no proof that we have tested the extent of motivated reasoning on the right and left using issues that both sides care equally about. For instance, perhaps we have not found a left-wing equal to climate change. Just because the political landscape is dominated by these ridiculous left-right debates does not mean there is an inherent asymmetry that merits many of his sweeping statements.
- Although he addresses left-wing errors, he gives them much more leeway. For example, he is rather dismissive of the impact of the anti-vaccination trend amongst left-wingers, devoting only a few paragraphs to it. He ends by basically saying that it's no big deal because they are a fringe movement, and it's left-wingers that are correcting them. I agree with the latter, but not with the former. The movement isn't completely mainstream, but it is pervasive and can hardly be categorised as fringe, particularly since it is affecting herd immunity all over the world.
Ultimately, I felt that this should have been a journal article that could stimulate discussion and debate. It didn't have enough substance for a book, or at least the way he wrote it made it seem very light. He could have tightened this up and made a much stronger argument in a journal article, without all of the fluff. Anyway, on to the review.
First, the good:
- The book discusses a lot of really interesting research. I love reading about psychology in general, but the psychology of ideology is particularly interesting.
- Mooney does temper what he says quite often and makes an honest attempt to approach the issues without bias.
- The book is short and easy to understand. I think it's very accessible for most people, even those who have no interest in politics.
- It's a really entertaining read. It's a tragic comedy in some places, but it is quite engaging.
- He is honest about his own liberal characteristics, yet he does not put the left above criticism. He makes a deliberate effort to point out where they are wrong on a number of issues.
The bad:
- He didn't address a very important assumption, i.e. that Democrats are liberal. I personally don't identify with the Democratic party because they are not far enough to the left for me. I am not an extreme left-winger by any stretch of the imagination, either. America is just really far to the right in general. Mooney makes an argument that the Republican party is dominated by particular types of conservatives, but he didn't do the same with the Democratic party. To use liberals and Democrats interchangeably is to not recognise the lopsided nature of American politics, even on the "left".
- It's poorly written. I admit it. I don't really like non-fiction books that are written so informally. If you've heard Mooney on the podcast, Point of Inquiry, expect the exact same tone he uses in his intros through the entire book. He also makes excessive use of parenthetical phrases and words like "context" and "unpack" that grated on me. This reminds me of essays written by high schoolers, where you start with a big bang, carry on to fill up space in the middle, and then end with big, sweeping, "deep" statements about the world. I realise that I come from a different disciplinary perspective than Mooney, but it's just not a writing style that does much for me at all. It makes me cringe.
- Time and time again, Mooney repeats that he has "demonstrated" asymmetry between liberals and conservatives, but his evidence was really not compelling enough to say that. As I previously discussed, there is a lot of filler. I would love to believe that because it would put me on the more factually correct side of politics, but I think he overstretched the data and in many cases misinterpreted studies. It's ironic, of course, how often he engages in motivated reasoning whilst discussing motivated reasoning. One of the things that bothered me from the outset is that there is no proof that we have tested the extent of motivated reasoning on the right and left using issues that both sides care equally about. For instance, perhaps we have not found a left-wing equal to climate change. Just because the political landscape is dominated by these ridiculous left-right debates does not mean there is an inherent asymmetry that merits many of his sweeping statements.
- Although he addresses left-wing errors, he gives them much more leeway. For example, he is rather dismissive of the impact of the anti-vaccination trend amongst left-wingers, devoting only a few paragraphs to it. He ends by basically saying that it's no big deal because they are a fringe movement, and it's left-wingers that are correcting them. I agree with the latter, but not with the former. The movement isn't completely mainstream, but it is pervasive and can hardly be categorised as fringe, particularly since it is affecting herd immunity all over the world.
June 12, 2024
Ok, I'm just gonna be real here and hopefully nobody will read my review and get mad.
First off, let me preface this by saying that I am a reformed republican. I grew up in a very privileged household, with an amazing fox-news dad who spoiled me rotten. I was disgustingly and wonderfully sheltered, embarrassingly clueless about the world. All I knew was that my dad was honest & hardworking & generous to a fault, & I respected him very much, so if he said Republican was the right way then I believed him and wanted to make him proud. I also knew that the government commandeered nearly half of all his paychecks, which felt utterly ridiculous to me, considering I still feel outraged by the taxes I have to pay.I remember so clearly how I felt when I got my first paycheck and saw how much I'd paid in taxes. I'm sure it was like $40 or something, so wrapping my brain around the fact that the government took hundreds of thousands of my dad's hard earned money every year was nearly impossible. In my mind republican = my dad keeping more of his $$ and that was enough for me to buy into republican idealogy, I let my dad do most of the politicking for me and I just followed his lead.
So. I know a lot of people find their own voice in college when they're introduced to other perspectives and cultures and ideas, but alas that was not my story. I just so happened to start dating Mr. All-American-blue-eyed-football-star-valedictorian-first-chair-in-the-band-pre-law-at-USC-mom-cooked-3-meals-a-day-every-single-day-of-his-life-and-took-their-family-to-church-every-sunday who *shocker* was also a republican. I was more concerned with other things. So I continued to align myself with conservatism, letting other people do the thinking for me, and trusting that they knew better than I.
Now, in my thirties, is when I've finally started to pay attention and use my own brain to come to conclusions about things. (And if I'm being honest, ignorance really is bliss.) But while I wouldn't consider myself a democrat, I definitely don't consider myself a republican anymore either, and one of the things that really gets me when I listen quietly to my parents (mainly my dad) ranting and raving, is how someone that I respect and consider to be highly intelligent, can willfully choose to ignore and/or deny certain seemingly undeniable truths. Or how can it be that someone that I know to be one of the kindest & most generous of souls, can also completely and wholly buy into the hateful rhetoric of certain conservative figures? I am desperate to find a way to reconcile the big hearted, magnanimous, reasonable & wildly successful father that I have with the man who seems to wholeheartedly believe in the infallibility of the republican party. Let me be clear, this is not a blanket statement about the entire Republican party and it's ideology. It's just certain issues, certain events, certain people. It's the blind loyalty, the all or nothing mentality, the unwavering support of a party in all aspects. We should be able to vote Republican, or Democrat, and yet still be capable of acknowledging wrongdoing or voicing our dissent within our chosen party. And that's what troubles me, the refusal, the insistence that they have it 100% right, and the other side has it 100% WRONG.
I will admit, that I am still defensive of Republicans. It is still my family after all. I actually find myself defending basically everyone. When I'm with my family, I'm playing devil's advocate for the opposition, and the same goes for anytime I'm with outspoken liberals. I can't seem to commit to either side, I can (most of the time) at least understand where people are coming from. I get why people with different upbringings and values and experiences can believe such different things. But when it came to my personal journey with politics, I arrived at a place where I just could no longer deny that there are things about conservative ideology that I myself consider to be fundamentally wrong, and immoral. So when I came across this book I picked it up, hoping to find some answers. And while there was naturally stuff in here that made sense, most of that stuff wasn't really news to me or likely anyone else. The concept of confirmation bias. The fact that the people we find the most credible, tend to be the people that are confirming the things that we already believe to be true. Duhhh. To me this felt like the focal element of all that was being pushed here, the common thread within all the other points being mentioned, the notion that people will believe what they want to believe. Not exactly groundbreaking stuff.
BUT. What I didn't like. And what I guess I should have expected based on the title, was that this ultimately felt completely biased. It was basically a list of all the ways that republicans are just plain dumb! (& incorrect�& mean�& ridiculous, etc etc) and then also all the corresponding ways that Democrats are superior. They're kinder, more rational, more logical, they’re easier to reason with, they’re much more inclined to believe the truth when it’s presented to them alongside untruths, whereas of course Republicans are much more inclined to believe in the made up sh*t, or to actually DO the making up of stuff, regardless of being slapped in the face with the obviousness of the truth. Liberals prefer to rely on facts, and science, and education�.whereas naturally conservatives make up shit, and are a bunch of uneducated yokels. And so on and so on. Mooney would like eveeeeeery once in a while try to throw in a little unbiased factoid. Like hey, liberals might be more empathetic, and kind and compassionate, BUT republicans tend to be neater, and more...conscientious. Like okay cool. I get it. You're a liberal, you think Republicans are stupid. Some of them definitely are. But I personally didn't pick this up to read 336 pages of dumping on republicans and praising of liberals. I dunno what I was looking for exactly, but I didn't get it. I think I was maybe searching for somebody a little more like-minded, with a similar confusion and a desire to understand and make sense of things! But that just wasn't this. At least it wasn't for me.
If you're looking for a book to confirm all the terrible thoughts you have about republicans this is definitely your book, but for me it didn't work or provide anytthing particularly useful or compelling or groundbreaking. For others it might. Maybe it's my defensiveness talking, it very well could be, I love my family and they're the people I think of when I hear people criticizing republicans, but this felt like a dump-on-republicans book and that's just not the way I approach things, I always want to try to understand, rather than just dismiss as inferior and carry on.
First off, let me preface this by saying that I am a reformed republican. I grew up in a very privileged household, with an amazing fox-news dad who spoiled me rotten. I was disgustingly and wonderfully sheltered, embarrassingly clueless about the world. All I knew was that my dad was honest & hardworking & generous to a fault, & I respected him very much, so if he said Republican was the right way then I believed him and wanted to make him proud. I also knew that the government commandeered nearly half of all his paychecks, which felt utterly ridiculous to me, considering I still feel outraged by the taxes I have to pay.I remember so clearly how I felt when I got my first paycheck and saw how much I'd paid in taxes. I'm sure it was like $40 or something, so wrapping my brain around the fact that the government took hundreds of thousands of my dad's hard earned money every year was nearly impossible. In my mind republican = my dad keeping more of his $$ and that was enough for me to buy into republican idealogy, I let my dad do most of the politicking for me and I just followed his lead.
So. I know a lot of people find their own voice in college when they're introduced to other perspectives and cultures and ideas, but alas that was not my story. I just so happened to start dating Mr. All-American-blue-eyed-football-star-valedictorian-first-chair-in-the-band-pre-law-at-USC-mom-cooked-3-meals-a-day-every-single-day-of-his-life-and-took-their-family-to-church-every-sunday who *shocker* was also a republican. I was more concerned with other things. So I continued to align myself with conservatism, letting other people do the thinking for me, and trusting that they knew better than I.
Now, in my thirties, is when I've finally started to pay attention and use my own brain to come to conclusions about things. (And if I'm being honest, ignorance really is bliss.) But while I wouldn't consider myself a democrat, I definitely don't consider myself a republican anymore either, and one of the things that really gets me when I listen quietly to my parents (mainly my dad) ranting and raving, is how someone that I respect and consider to be highly intelligent, can willfully choose to ignore and/or deny certain seemingly undeniable truths. Or how can it be that someone that I know to be one of the kindest & most generous of souls, can also completely and wholly buy into the hateful rhetoric of certain conservative figures? I am desperate to find a way to reconcile the big hearted, magnanimous, reasonable & wildly successful father that I have with the man who seems to wholeheartedly believe in the infallibility of the republican party. Let me be clear, this is not a blanket statement about the entire Republican party and it's ideology. It's just certain issues, certain events, certain people. It's the blind loyalty, the all or nothing mentality, the unwavering support of a party in all aspects. We should be able to vote Republican, or Democrat, and yet still be capable of acknowledging wrongdoing or voicing our dissent within our chosen party. And that's what troubles me, the refusal, the insistence that they have it 100% right, and the other side has it 100% WRONG.
I will admit, that I am still defensive of Republicans. It is still my family after all. I actually find myself defending basically everyone. When I'm with my family, I'm playing devil's advocate for the opposition, and the same goes for anytime I'm with outspoken liberals. I can't seem to commit to either side, I can (most of the time) at least understand where people are coming from. I get why people with different upbringings and values and experiences can believe such different things. But when it came to my personal journey with politics, I arrived at a place where I just could no longer deny that there are things about conservative ideology that I myself consider to be fundamentally wrong, and immoral. So when I came across this book I picked it up, hoping to find some answers. And while there was naturally stuff in here that made sense, most of that stuff wasn't really news to me or likely anyone else. The concept of confirmation bias. The fact that the people we find the most credible, tend to be the people that are confirming the things that we already believe to be true. Duhhh. To me this felt like the focal element of all that was being pushed here, the common thread within all the other points being mentioned, the notion that people will believe what they want to believe. Not exactly groundbreaking stuff.
BUT. What I didn't like. And what I guess I should have expected based on the title, was that this ultimately felt completely biased. It was basically a list of all the ways that republicans are just plain dumb! (& incorrect�& mean�& ridiculous, etc etc) and then also all the corresponding ways that Democrats are superior. They're kinder, more rational, more logical, they’re easier to reason with, they’re much more inclined to believe the truth when it’s presented to them alongside untruths, whereas of course Republicans are much more inclined to believe in the made up sh*t, or to actually DO the making up of stuff, regardless of being slapped in the face with the obviousness of the truth. Liberals prefer to rely on facts, and science, and education�.whereas naturally conservatives make up shit, and are a bunch of uneducated yokels. And so on and so on. Mooney would like eveeeeeery once in a while try to throw in a little unbiased factoid. Like hey, liberals might be more empathetic, and kind and compassionate, BUT republicans tend to be neater, and more...conscientious. Like okay cool. I get it. You're a liberal, you think Republicans are stupid. Some of them definitely are. But I personally didn't pick this up to read 336 pages of dumping on republicans and praising of liberals. I dunno what I was looking for exactly, but I didn't get it. I think I was maybe searching for somebody a little more like-minded, with a similar confusion and a desire to understand and make sense of things! But that just wasn't this. At least it wasn't for me.
If you're looking for a book to confirm all the terrible thoughts you have about republicans this is definitely your book, but for me it didn't work or provide anytthing particularly useful or compelling or groundbreaking. For others it might. Maybe it's my defensiveness talking, it very well could be, I love my family and they're the people I think of when I hear people criticizing republicans, but this felt like a dump-on-republicans book and that's just not the way I approach things, I always want to try to understand, rather than just dismiss as inferior and carry on.
November 10, 2012
Reality has a well-known liberal bias.
-Stephen Colbert
That's the opening quote to this book, and probably the best once-sentence summary of its contents.
I was originally thinking of giving it four stars, based on its somewhat limited scope--it mentions conservatives and authoritarians in other cultures occasionally, but not in any real depth--but the title is, after all, the Republican Brain. That wasn't the real reason that tipped me over, however.
The real reason was the behavior of the conservative establishment over the election and its aftermath. Many conservatives were absolutely convinced that Mitt Romney would win the election, and a significant faction believed he would win in a landslide. Even though Romney never led in the aggregated polls in enough states to win, they clung to their belief, fed by the news media and especially by places like Fox News, that the race was "too close to call" and that after Obama's lackluster (to say the least) perform at the first debate, Romney had "momentum." Polls that said otherwise were "skewed," leading to the now-infamous which at one point claimed that Romney would receive more than 340 electoral votes, though in his defense he did lower it to a much narrower margin before election day.
Well, we know where that led. Karl Rove on Fox News when they called Ohio for Obama, leading to them sending another newscaster down to their statisticians to explain why they had made the call. Romney himself that he did not even have a concession speech ready and had to scramble to write one. It's one of the few times we've been able to observe the Ship of Conservatism crash into the Rocks of Reality (if you will), and the results are both hilarious (to me as a liberal) and kind of sad. If you read various far-right conservative sites, you get the impression that this is the death of the republic, that an economic collapse is imminent, that the "job creators" are all going to and let everyone else collapse into barbarism, that socialism and the moochers have conquered the country, that whites are now a political minority and doomed to inevitable oppression, and plenty of other conspiracy theories and prophecies of doom I haven't gotten to. If you really want a microcosm of everything this book discusses, the election demonstrated it.
What does it discuss? Well, it's mostly about how Democrats and Republicans (the book uses "liberal" and "conservative", but it takes place almost entirely in an American political context, so I'll use the party names throughout) process information about the world differently and have different psychological strategies for processing the world. More educated Republicans were more like to ignorant about the true causes of anthropogenic climate change, for example, while education made Democrats less likely to believe misinformation, and the same on other topics. Both engaged in motivated reasoning (seeking out information that confirms your point of view and arguing not to seek the truth but to reaffirm your pre-existing beliefs), but the Republicans did it more often than the Democrats did. Republicans are more likely to be xenophobic, dogmatic, intolerant of ambiguity, and authoritarian and less likely to seek out contradictory information than Democrats are.
Perhaps most damaging to Democrats' cherished beliefs, research indicates that people--everyone to some extent, but especially Republicans--are actually more likely to believe misinformation after being confronted with proof that they are wrong, precisely because of motivated reasoning. The grand traditions of the Enlightenment, of pure reason, scientific debate, and the search for truth, are not universal and do not work nearly as well as we'd like them to.
Some of this is rooted in the brain. Research indicates that Republicans have larger right (heh) amygdalas, the part of the brain that deals with flight-or-flight response and phobias, and indeed, fear tends to make people act in a more conservative fashion. Democrats, in their turn, have a larger anterior cingulated cortex, which deals with detecting errors we make and fixing them--sometimes called "conflict monitoring." The brain is too plastic to say that this is an inborn hereditary difference, but it certainly exists.
Now, reading this, you might get the impression that we should ban Republicans from government and strip them of the franchise, but the author takes pains to point out that their particular psychological profile has value. Democrats are better at dealing with nuance, more accepting of differences, and better able to think complex problems through. Republicans, however, are better at loyalty, at taking decisive action when called for, and at persevering in the face of adversity--clearly useful qualities to have in a leader. Anyone who deals with groups of Democrats has probably run into the herding cats problem, and indeed, the author points out the Occupy movement as something that would probably have been far more successful with a centralized leadership structure to keep it on message, even though that would have been antithetical to the philosophy on which it was founded. To be extremely reductionist, then, the ideal society is one where Democrats debate and formulate plans and then Republicans implement them and make sure they work out properly.
Despite what it seems, it's not a polemic and it doesn't bash Republicans except for being egregiously, demonstrably wrong on several scientific issues, which they unambiguously are. Unfortunately, the title and the very personality traits this book documents means that the people who would get the most out of reading this never well. As a die-hard liberal, this was good for my own motivated reasoning, but didn't really tell me anything I didn't know or that wasn't demonstrated so schadenfreudeliciously this week. Nonetheless, for people bashing their head against the wall at family gatherings or over Facebook, or for anyone wondering why the same ludicrous arguments get repeatedly trotted out against evolution or climate change or sex education, etc., this book tells you why.
September 6, 2022
The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science is a book that practically begs to be judged by its cover, with Democrats predisposed to judge it as reasonable and Republicans poised to dismiss it as a biased, political hack job. We don't have to speculate on that last point: conservative commentators have attacked it as pseudoscience: even a modern conveyance of phrenology or eugenics! One might say they've done this without engaging its arguments, conveniently playing into the book's thesis: that there are personality traits correlated with conservatism tied to reduction of nuance, easy feelings of certainty, rigid ways of thinking, fear of the new, unwillingness to admit fault, and a defensive posture in the face of criticism. Chris Mooney (also the author of The Republican War on Science, which I'll admit has sat unread on my shelf) is a careful writer, and title aside, he has bent over backwards to be fair and data-driven in his analysis. Some of those same conservative traits that buck against discovery (loyalty, reliability, preservation of institutions, etc.) play beneficial roles in society. He'll also be the first to admit that there are plenty of examples of liberals who eschew science and reality (especially on certain issues), but that the playing field is not even close to level when it comes to denial of evidence, from climate change to evolution... to basic facts of science, law and history. There are the expected explanations of psychological traits, relevant studies, the results of brain scans, and examples from the last few decades of politics. One can't help but think of intensifying exhibits from the Trump era (this was written in 2012). There are also lessons to be gleaned about effective messaging, especially across the aisles. I can't imagine many conservatives willing to engage with the book, unless they're someone like me who was raised conservative but found my way out. Liberals will find lots of interesting observations and talking points, and much to reflect on.
August 23, 2020
I believe it is a book everyone should read. It was published in 2012, but the situation has only gotten worse. He also wrote The Republican War on Science.
I am immensely frustrated. I am talking to people telling me they are so-called "conservative" but they don't essentially believe in science. NOTHING is more conservative than true science. Scientists peer review each other to an extreme degree.
So I know so-called "conservatives" who don't "believe" in evolution or climate change, don't want to vaccinate their children, think dinosaurs were on the ark and dinosaurs lived alongside humans, and believe the earth is 6,000 years old. What is most scary is that they are otherwise intelligent, nice people. What do I say to them?
I want to take back the word "conservative" for people like myself who want slow but steady progress. At least, I used to want that all my life. Now with climate catastrophe looming in our near future, we need more drastic action.
I am immensely frustrated. I am talking to people telling me they are so-called "conservative" but they don't essentially believe in science. NOTHING is more conservative than true science. Scientists peer review each other to an extreme degree.
So I know so-called "conservatives" who don't "believe" in evolution or climate change, don't want to vaccinate their children, think dinosaurs were on the ark and dinosaurs lived alongside humans, and believe the earth is 6,000 years old. What is most scary is that they are otherwise intelligent, nice people. What do I say to them?
I want to take back the word "conservative" for people like myself who want slow but steady progress. At least, I used to want that all my life. Now with climate catastrophe looming in our near future, we need more drastic action.
March 30, 2012
The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science--and Reality by Chris Mooney
"The Republican Brain" is the latest contribution from bestselling author Chris Mooney. This interesting book tackles the psychology behind the anti-science stance that is currently typical of the political right. "We seek to understand how the political right could be so wrong". Mooney does a wonderful job of establishing his thesis and uses the best current science to demonstrate the thinking behind the Republican brain. He presents a number of fascinating studies that enlighten our understanding of what differentiates a conservative from a liberal. By applying this understanding to political themes such as global warming, nuclear energy, history, social issues and others the reader will obtain newfound knowledge of what separates us and why. The book is very interesting and worth reading but it feels rushed and seems incomplete. This 336-page book is composed of the following thirteen chapters: 1. Denying Minds, 2. Smart Idiots, 3. Political Personalities, 4. For God and Tribe, 5. Don't Get Defensive, 6. Are Conservatives from the Amygdala, 7. A Tale of Two Republicans, 8. The Science of Fox News, 9. The Reality Gap, 10. The Republican War on Economics, 11. The Republican War on History, 12. What the Frack Is True? And 13. A Liberal Confronts New Data.
Positives:
1. Well written, well researched book.
2. Interesting topics. The science behind the Republican brain.
3. One of the strengths of the author is to recognize his liberal bias but to remain grounded on the facts no matter where they lead him. He wisely allows the best current knowledge of science determine what is truthful. Kudos.
4. I like this author's writing style. It's personable, accessible and grounded on sound science. Mooney writes with conviction and anticipates some of the objections to his findings.
5. Surprisingly even handed. The author despite his well known biases makes every effort to be fair and he succeeds in my view.
6. Covers a lot of interesting political hot buttons: abortion, homosexuality, global warming, evolution...
7. Tackles the level of psychology where political conservatives and liberals differentiate.
8. Discusses in great deal his finding and the studies and arguments that support his position.
9. Some thought-provoking questions, "Why do poor conservatives vote against their economic interests?"
10. Fascinating studies and interesting tidbits abound. Take the case study of Festinger and the seekers.
11. Good use of neuroscience.
12. The theory of motivated reasoning and how it applies.
13. Some findings go against common knowledge. Interesting.
14. "Smart idiot" effect.
15. The Big Five Traits of personality and how it applies.
16. The admirable traits of both political minds.
17. The moral intuitions of conservatives and liberals.
18. Openness and the liberal mind.
19. Independents and their views.
20. The funniest study of them all, alcohol and the brain.
21. The amygdala and conservatism.
22. A look at epigenetics.
23. Is there a conservative gene? A liberal gene?
24. Overall, Mooney does a good job of telling us what we do know and what do not know.
25. Nature versus nurture.
26. The left-right expertise imbalance.
27. The most misinformed viewers?? Easy one...interesting discussion.
28. When do fetuses experience pain? Find out.
29. The impact of ideologically reinforcing information.
30. Informative chapters on the Republican war on economics and history.
31. Liberal bias and how it is exemplified. Good stuff.
32. The final chapter discusses a new study that includes conclusive and inconclusive data.
33. Plenty of notes.
Negatives:
1. I felt the book was released before the author was able to digest all of the studies. It seems rushed.
2. Conservatives will miss out on an interesting book. If some of these studies of this book are any indication, few conservatives will read this book. Too bad.
3. This book is good but it is not as good as Mooney's best book, "The Republican War on Science".
4. Very few charts or illustrations that would have added value.
5. Overall, the thesis needs more work. Republicans you can say were just as pro science as liberals up until Nixon's "Southern Strategy" and Reagan's catering to the religious right and in doing so the party took a turn that it hasn't recovered since then. That being said, the main points of the thesis remain compelling and in general I'm in agreement.
6. No direct Kindle links.
In summary, the parts are better than the whole. The book is very interesting; it covers a lot of hot-button topics and uses the best current science available. Despite his clear liberal bias the author does a wonderful job of being fair as he is led by scientific facts. The author provides a number of fascinating studies that backs his main premise of his thesis but overall I felt the book was rushed and the author couldn't incorporate all his findings. That being said, Chris Mooney writes with passion and conviction and is tackling a very interesting topic that is clearly limited by the infancy of neuroscience. I enjoyed the book it's a recommended read.
Further suggestions: The superior, "The Republican War on Science" by the same author, "Science Under Siege: Defending Science, Exposing Pseudoscience" by Kendrick Frazier, "Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America" by Shawn Lawrence, "Lies, Damned Lies, and Science: How to Sort Through the Noise Around Global Warming, the Latest Health Claims, and Other Scientific Controversies (FT Press Science)" by Sherry Seethaler, "American Fascists" by Chris Hedges, "The Conservative Assault on the Constitution" Erwin Chemerinsky, "Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free" by Charles P. Pierce, "Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History Vol. 1" Chris Rodda, "American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin, and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right" by Markos Moulitsas, "Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party" by Max Blumenthal, "Why the Religious Right Is Wrong About Separation of Church and State" by Rob Boston, and "Attack of the Theocrats! How the Religious Right Harms Us All- --and What We Can Do About It" by Sean Faircloth.
"The Republican Brain" is the latest contribution from bestselling author Chris Mooney. This interesting book tackles the psychology behind the anti-science stance that is currently typical of the political right. "We seek to understand how the political right could be so wrong". Mooney does a wonderful job of establishing his thesis and uses the best current science to demonstrate the thinking behind the Republican brain. He presents a number of fascinating studies that enlighten our understanding of what differentiates a conservative from a liberal. By applying this understanding to political themes such as global warming, nuclear energy, history, social issues and others the reader will obtain newfound knowledge of what separates us and why. The book is very interesting and worth reading but it feels rushed and seems incomplete. This 336-page book is composed of the following thirteen chapters: 1. Denying Minds, 2. Smart Idiots, 3. Political Personalities, 4. For God and Tribe, 5. Don't Get Defensive, 6. Are Conservatives from the Amygdala, 7. A Tale of Two Republicans, 8. The Science of Fox News, 9. The Reality Gap, 10. The Republican War on Economics, 11. The Republican War on History, 12. What the Frack Is True? And 13. A Liberal Confronts New Data.
Positives:
1. Well written, well researched book.
2. Interesting topics. The science behind the Republican brain.
3. One of the strengths of the author is to recognize his liberal bias but to remain grounded on the facts no matter where they lead him. He wisely allows the best current knowledge of science determine what is truthful. Kudos.
4. I like this author's writing style. It's personable, accessible and grounded on sound science. Mooney writes with conviction and anticipates some of the objections to his findings.
5. Surprisingly even handed. The author despite his well known biases makes every effort to be fair and he succeeds in my view.
6. Covers a lot of interesting political hot buttons: abortion, homosexuality, global warming, evolution...
7. Tackles the level of psychology where political conservatives and liberals differentiate.
8. Discusses in great deal his finding and the studies and arguments that support his position.
9. Some thought-provoking questions, "Why do poor conservatives vote against their economic interests?"
10. Fascinating studies and interesting tidbits abound. Take the case study of Festinger and the seekers.
11. Good use of neuroscience.
12. The theory of motivated reasoning and how it applies.
13. Some findings go against common knowledge. Interesting.
14. "Smart idiot" effect.
15. The Big Five Traits of personality and how it applies.
16. The admirable traits of both political minds.
17. The moral intuitions of conservatives and liberals.
18. Openness and the liberal mind.
19. Independents and their views.
20. The funniest study of them all, alcohol and the brain.
21. The amygdala and conservatism.
22. A look at epigenetics.
23. Is there a conservative gene? A liberal gene?
24. Overall, Mooney does a good job of telling us what we do know and what do not know.
25. Nature versus nurture.
26. The left-right expertise imbalance.
27. The most misinformed viewers?? Easy one...interesting discussion.
28. When do fetuses experience pain? Find out.
29. The impact of ideologically reinforcing information.
30. Informative chapters on the Republican war on economics and history.
31. Liberal bias and how it is exemplified. Good stuff.
32. The final chapter discusses a new study that includes conclusive and inconclusive data.
33. Plenty of notes.
Negatives:
1. I felt the book was released before the author was able to digest all of the studies. It seems rushed.
2. Conservatives will miss out on an interesting book. If some of these studies of this book are any indication, few conservatives will read this book. Too bad.
3. This book is good but it is not as good as Mooney's best book, "The Republican War on Science".
4. Very few charts or illustrations that would have added value.
5. Overall, the thesis needs more work. Republicans you can say were just as pro science as liberals up until Nixon's "Southern Strategy" and Reagan's catering to the religious right and in doing so the party took a turn that it hasn't recovered since then. That being said, the main points of the thesis remain compelling and in general I'm in agreement.
6. No direct Kindle links.
In summary, the parts are better than the whole. The book is very interesting; it covers a lot of hot-button topics and uses the best current science available. Despite his clear liberal bias the author does a wonderful job of being fair as he is led by scientific facts. The author provides a number of fascinating studies that backs his main premise of his thesis but overall I felt the book was rushed and the author couldn't incorporate all his findings. That being said, Chris Mooney writes with passion and conviction and is tackling a very interesting topic that is clearly limited by the infancy of neuroscience. I enjoyed the book it's a recommended read.
Further suggestions: The superior, "The Republican War on Science" by the same author, "Science Under Siege: Defending Science, Exposing Pseudoscience" by Kendrick Frazier, "Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America" by Shawn Lawrence, "Lies, Damned Lies, and Science: How to Sort Through the Noise Around Global Warming, the Latest Health Claims, and Other Scientific Controversies (FT Press Science)" by Sherry Seethaler, "American Fascists" by Chris Hedges, "The Conservative Assault on the Constitution" Erwin Chemerinsky, "Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free" by Charles P. Pierce, "Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History Vol. 1" Chris Rodda, "American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin, and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right" by Markos Moulitsas, "Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party" by Max Blumenthal, "Why the Religious Right Is Wrong About Separation of Church and State" by Rob Boston, and "Attack of the Theocrats! How the Religious Right Harms Us All- --and What We Can Do About It" by Sean Faircloth.
January 10, 2013
I had some misgivings about reading this book as I don't like self-congratulatory, biased reporting of any stripe. With a name like "The Republican Brain" I though it would be silly and endless GOP bashing with little substance. That's not the case. Mooney presents a well balanced and informative narrative on past and current research on the subject of political thought and decision making. He provides plenty of support for his theories with appropriate references, in case you'd like to read the papers he discusses; I read two, Jost and Kipken. His argument is well thought out and organized. The phrasing is not quite to my taste, at times he seems a bit "man on the street" and at others to be reaching. He tries to balance the tone of the book and not seem to pick on those with authoritarian/conservative personalities and demonstrate the assets and liabilities of both camps. Given the title and the research he uses, the book is primarily about authoritarian/conservative thinking, it's possible causes, characteristics and consequences. Read it if you'd like to understand why folks might still question Obama's birthplace, deny well supported and accepted scientific theories and use documents written by Bronze Age nomads to write 21st century laws.
October 19, 2024
I borrowed this from audible plus who knows how long ago. It's going off audible plus on the 30th, so I finally read it. Initially I looked at the title and went, oh no, this isn't going to be nuanced at all. I am a democrat, but i'm well aware both sides have our issues. Well my impression from the title, was wrong, and I was very impressed!
Yes, both sides have our flaws, and our strengths. It's so much more nuanced, and truly, we need each other, as it says in the conclusion. Seriously, I want everyone to read this. I got called out by it to by the way. I love books like this. That are nuanced, and make me think, and even realize how I was wrong on some things as this book did.
I also saw ŷ said published in 2007 and when it mentioned something that happened in 2008 I looked and saw it was updated in 2012. So while a lot has happened since 2012, it's more relevant and will only continue getting more so if we keep getting more and more divided, more and more hateful of each other.
This book is very balanced. The author even fully admits when he was wrong.
Yes, both sides have our flaws, and our strengths. It's so much more nuanced, and truly, we need each other, as it says in the conclusion. Seriously, I want everyone to read this. I got called out by it to by the way. I love books like this. That are nuanced, and make me think, and even realize how I was wrong on some things as this book did.
I also saw ŷ said published in 2007 and when it mentioned something that happened in 2008 I looked and saw it was updated in 2012. So while a lot has happened since 2012, it's more relevant and will only continue getting more so if we keep getting more and more divided, more and more hateful of each other.
This book is very balanced. The author even fully admits when he was wrong.
May 2, 2012
Chris Mooney wrote The Republican Brain from a liberal perspective, geared toward other liberal readers. The majority of the book confirms opinions that many scientifically-minded liberals hold about conservative bias and adds the latest in psychological research to explain why the dissemination of facts has become highly polarized in this country. To summarize:
1. Republicans distort facts for their benefit far more often than Democrats--global warming and history are cited most in this book, although Mooney uses a wide variety of examples.
2. There are known psychological reasons for these differences including development and use of different parts of the brain. These differences go on to influence personality, friends, career path, and even which states people move to. The most interesting study is the "smart idiot" effect, which means that politically knowledgeable conservatives are often more biased and less persuadable than ignorant conservatives or liberals (i.e., conservatives engage in motivated reasoning).
3. The liberal/conservative divide has widened over the past few decades not only because of the conservative revolution of the 1970s-80s, but also because of the growth of cable news and the Internet. The new sources allow conservatives to have easy access to like-minded thinkers and a wide array of "experts" to back up their erroneous claims and create a new reality that conforms to their worldview.
Overall, Mooney does an good job addressing the above points, and the book is well worth the read for anyone interested in the partisan divide. However, the book still left me disappointed and I found myself rushing through the detailed study with Dr. Everett Young, which should have contained less statistics and more analysis. As Mooney explains in the prelude, his previous book, The Republican War on Science, was highly popular among liberals but did nothing to change conservative opinions. The reason of course is the inherent propensity in conservatives to predispose of any information that contradicts their deeply held beliefs. But any liberal who has attempted to debate a conservative already knows this: facts, logic, and scientific reasoning always fail in such discussions. Mooney's writing style is geared toward liberals and he admits that conservatives will not buy his arguments--although at least now he knows why!
I was hoping for more advice on how liberals should address and debate conservatives considering the advances in psychology. Mooney offers a few tidbits, mostly in the conclusion. To address the problems with rewriting history, liberals need to leave the debunking to the experts and instead tell their own stories about historical figures that are accurate, interesting, and emphasize liberal values. He also elaborates on a political point that has been discussed among liberals in recent years--it is pointless to try and compromise with conservatives (especially Obama vs Congress). Liberals need to "be more conservative" not in their political views, but by acquiring some of the positive traits of conservatives such as unity, loyalty, and shared purpose. This theme is similar to the "pep talk" that Mooney has given to scientists in the past and it applies to any advocacy group looking for influence.
Based on the recent advances in liberal vs. conservative psychology, there is a book to be written about how liberals should address and debate conservatives. From the Republican Brain, we now know why conservatives refuse to accept certain facts, but what is now needed it a detailed guide for how liberals should go about changing conservative falsehoods and winning arguments.
I hesitate to give this book only 3/5 stars, but this book has some repetition, loses focus at times in the second half, and has some undeveloped ideas. Other authors such as Malcolm Gladwell and recently Charles Duhigg are better at grasping the applications of psychological studies. But considering that Mooney only worked on this book for a year, he is well on his way to becoming an expert on the liberal vs. conservative divide.
1. Republicans distort facts for their benefit far more often than Democrats--global warming and history are cited most in this book, although Mooney uses a wide variety of examples.
2. There are known psychological reasons for these differences including development and use of different parts of the brain. These differences go on to influence personality, friends, career path, and even which states people move to. The most interesting study is the "smart idiot" effect, which means that politically knowledgeable conservatives are often more biased and less persuadable than ignorant conservatives or liberals (i.e., conservatives engage in motivated reasoning).
3. The liberal/conservative divide has widened over the past few decades not only because of the conservative revolution of the 1970s-80s, but also because of the growth of cable news and the Internet. The new sources allow conservatives to have easy access to like-minded thinkers and a wide array of "experts" to back up their erroneous claims and create a new reality that conforms to their worldview.
Overall, Mooney does an good job addressing the above points, and the book is well worth the read for anyone interested in the partisan divide. However, the book still left me disappointed and I found myself rushing through the detailed study with Dr. Everett Young, which should have contained less statistics and more analysis. As Mooney explains in the prelude, his previous book, The Republican War on Science, was highly popular among liberals but did nothing to change conservative opinions. The reason of course is the inherent propensity in conservatives to predispose of any information that contradicts their deeply held beliefs. But any liberal who has attempted to debate a conservative already knows this: facts, logic, and scientific reasoning always fail in such discussions. Mooney's writing style is geared toward liberals and he admits that conservatives will not buy his arguments--although at least now he knows why!
I was hoping for more advice on how liberals should address and debate conservatives considering the advances in psychology. Mooney offers a few tidbits, mostly in the conclusion. To address the problems with rewriting history, liberals need to leave the debunking to the experts and instead tell their own stories about historical figures that are accurate, interesting, and emphasize liberal values. He also elaborates on a political point that has been discussed among liberals in recent years--it is pointless to try and compromise with conservatives (especially Obama vs Congress). Liberals need to "be more conservative" not in their political views, but by acquiring some of the positive traits of conservatives such as unity, loyalty, and shared purpose. This theme is similar to the "pep talk" that Mooney has given to scientists in the past and it applies to any advocacy group looking for influence.
Based on the recent advances in liberal vs. conservative psychology, there is a book to be written about how liberals should address and debate conservatives. From the Republican Brain, we now know why conservatives refuse to accept certain facts, but what is now needed it a detailed guide for how liberals should go about changing conservative falsehoods and winning arguments.
I hesitate to give this book only 3/5 stars, but this book has some repetition, loses focus at times in the second half, and has some undeveloped ideas. Other authors such as Malcolm Gladwell and recently Charles Duhigg are better at grasping the applications of psychological studies. But considering that Mooney only worked on this book for a year, he is well on his way to becoming an expert on the liberal vs. conservative divide.
November 24, 2017
Imagine looney Mooney’s premise in a slightly different way: replace � Republicans� with ‘Hollywood actors�.... or with ‘Professional Athletes�..... or how about replace � Republicans� with ‘Women� or ‘Black people� or ‘Gays� or “Transgenders�....... how many 5 stars would those gems earn?
Most importantly - there’s no science involved. 2 studies that don’t host enough subjects to be statistically significant are not science. Flawed testing abound. To make conclusions that the brain formation, thus genetics, of one set of people is inferior to another set of people is wrong at best, and potentially evil. Josef Mengele would be so proud!
Looney Mooney should just go one step further - let’s round up those inferior brains and make sure they don’t procreate, make sure their genetic code doesn’t infect even more human beings. Sound familiar? There have been racists (the real definition of racism is the belief that the genetic code of one group is superior to another) like Mooney since the beginning of time. Sad how many buy into this sad evil premise.
Most importantly - there’s no science involved. 2 studies that don’t host enough subjects to be statistically significant are not science. Flawed testing abound. To make conclusions that the brain formation, thus genetics, of one set of people is inferior to another set of people is wrong at best, and potentially evil. Josef Mengele would be so proud!
Looney Mooney should just go one step further - let’s round up those inferior brains and make sure they don’t procreate, make sure their genetic code doesn’t infect even more human beings. Sound familiar? There have been racists (the real definition of racism is the belief that the genetic code of one group is superior to another) like Mooney since the beginning of time. Sad how many buy into this sad evil premise.
February 20, 2018
What can I say about this book? Regardless of your political leaning this is a must read for all.
September 14, 2012
It's impossible to avoid US politics lately. It is, after all, am election year. However, if it seems to you that the two American parties are moving further and further apart, you are not alone. According to author Chris Mooney, the differences between the two parties may be grounded, not only in philosophy, but in the very workings of the brain. When brain scans have been conducted on self-described conservatives, they show a larger amygdala, that lizard part of the brain which triggers the fight or flight reflex. Self-described liberals, on the other hand, have a larger anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain associated with reasoning.
Put simply, conservatives are better at detecting threats and liberals are more adept at handling conflicting information and uncertainty. Conservatives tend to have a more Manichean outlook where things are perceived as black and white, good versus evil. They do not deal well with shades of grey. Liberals tend to be more curious, more willing to accept change, more able to tolerate and deal with contradictions.
According to Mooney, these differences may explain why Conservatives tend to be more anti-science, more likely to reject evolution and climate change. In fact, he found that the more highly educated a Conservative is, the more likely he is to reject science and to develop theories to 'disprove' it. That is not to say that liberals don't also have their own anti-science biases - just bring up vaccines in a group of liberals and watch the feathers fly - it is just that liberals are more willing to listen to the evidence on both sides of an argument and more willing to change their minds.
Mooney is careful to point out that both political types have their good and bad points. Conservatives may be more close minded but they are also more persistent, more ambitious, more decisive, more loyal and tidier. They are also more willing to put aside their differences within the group to work for a specific goal. Liberals may be more open minded, more curious and more rational but they are also more argumentative and less willing to compromise within the group.
Although the book is about American political parties, I suspect that these descriptions can be applied to any group of people. It is a fascinating read and will definitely make you think (at least if you a liberal. Conservatives have already lashed out at it). However, where I felt the book fell down was in the last chapter. Mooney makes it clear that it is unlikely the two parties will ever reach common ground. He, then, makes a plea for liberals to at least try to work together in the upcoming election to elect more Democrats. Although I agree (as a Canadian, one could argue that I have no dog in this race but what happens in the US has a profound effect on my country), it felt like, after spending 200+ pages, explaining the differences between the two groups including the unwillingness of liberals to come together for a single cause, he suddenly expected or, at least, hoped liberals would see that compromise is sometimes necessary within the group.
Still, I found this book a great read and, if you are as curious as I was to know what is driving the two parties so far apart, you will find this book completely engrossing and perhaps just a little bit sad and scarey.
Put simply, conservatives are better at detecting threats and liberals are more adept at handling conflicting information and uncertainty. Conservatives tend to have a more Manichean outlook where things are perceived as black and white, good versus evil. They do not deal well with shades of grey. Liberals tend to be more curious, more willing to accept change, more able to tolerate and deal with contradictions.
According to Mooney, these differences may explain why Conservatives tend to be more anti-science, more likely to reject evolution and climate change. In fact, he found that the more highly educated a Conservative is, the more likely he is to reject science and to develop theories to 'disprove' it. That is not to say that liberals don't also have their own anti-science biases - just bring up vaccines in a group of liberals and watch the feathers fly - it is just that liberals are more willing to listen to the evidence on both sides of an argument and more willing to change their minds.
Mooney is careful to point out that both political types have their good and bad points. Conservatives may be more close minded but they are also more persistent, more ambitious, more decisive, more loyal and tidier. They are also more willing to put aside their differences within the group to work for a specific goal. Liberals may be more open minded, more curious and more rational but they are also more argumentative and less willing to compromise within the group.
Although the book is about American political parties, I suspect that these descriptions can be applied to any group of people. It is a fascinating read and will definitely make you think (at least if you a liberal. Conservatives have already lashed out at it). However, where I felt the book fell down was in the last chapter. Mooney makes it clear that it is unlikely the two parties will ever reach common ground. He, then, makes a plea for liberals to at least try to work together in the upcoming election to elect more Democrats. Although I agree (as a Canadian, one could argue that I have no dog in this race but what happens in the US has a profound effect on my country), it felt like, after spending 200+ pages, explaining the differences between the two groups including the unwillingness of liberals to come together for a single cause, he suddenly expected or, at least, hoped liberals would see that compromise is sometimes necessary within the group.
Still, I found this book a great read and, if you are as curious as I was to know what is driving the two parties so far apart, you will find this book completely engrossing and perhaps just a little bit sad and scarey.
June 1, 2012
Right wingers increasingly appear to be operating in an alternate reality where facts don't matter and truth is dictated by those with the most money and the biggest mouths. Thus we have birthers, death panels, global warming denial, anti-evolutionism, the belief that abstinence only education works, that the president is a Muslim, and Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein (who also supposedly had weapons of mass destruction) were in league together to cause 911, and a host of other ideas that would otherwise qualify one to admittance to a mental asylum if they weren't so widely believed. In The Republican Brain Chris Mooney sets out to explain why the right is detached from reality and why patently proven facts have no sway on their outlook. He also examines why this psychological phenomenon almost exclusively occurs in those who brand themselves as conservative.
Multiple scientific studies are converging on a consensus of the psychological traits of conservatives, the main characteristics of which include a lack of openness to new experience, less tolerance of uncertainty and ambiguity, need for closure and a lack of integrative complexity. With the formation of closed-minded opinions, conservatives are less likely to investigate alternative viewpoints and accommodate additional evidence, while at the same time the individual is unable to see nuance, complexity or appreciate differing viewpoints. In addition, conservatives are more rigidly hierarchical which leads to group-think and intolerance of dissent. This vast and growing body of scientific evidence explaining conservative behavior fits remarkably consistently with events that play out in American culture and I’m sure conservatives would agree 100% � except for the fact that the research presented by Mooney shows that they won’t and also explains exactly why.
While people of all political stripes engage in motivated reasoning (the act of starting with a conclusion that one hoped to reach and then selectively evaluating evidence in order to reach that conclusion), studies show that conservatives (especially authoritarians) are far more likely than liberals to cling tenaciously to wrong ideas and argue fiercely on their behalf. These tendencies are reinforced by individuals who select news and information that confirms (rather than dis-confirms) their mistaken ideas resulting in Republicans consistently being more misinformed than Democrats about key political issues and that (even more poorly informed than those who watch no news at all).
Mooney did a great job with this book, and I consider it to be a tremendous improvement over his earlier works. Though I’ve found each of his books to be well researched and that he does a good job explaining the science, in the past I felt that he didn’t do a very good job maintaining his readers interest (or at least my own). The Republican Brain remains fascinating throughout.
Multiple scientific studies are converging on a consensus of the psychological traits of conservatives, the main characteristics of which include a lack of openness to new experience, less tolerance of uncertainty and ambiguity, need for closure and a lack of integrative complexity. With the formation of closed-minded opinions, conservatives are less likely to investigate alternative viewpoints and accommodate additional evidence, while at the same time the individual is unable to see nuance, complexity or appreciate differing viewpoints. In addition, conservatives are more rigidly hierarchical which leads to group-think and intolerance of dissent. This vast and growing body of scientific evidence explaining conservative behavior fits remarkably consistently with events that play out in American culture and I’m sure conservatives would agree 100% � except for the fact that the research presented by Mooney shows that they won’t and also explains exactly why.
While people of all political stripes engage in motivated reasoning (the act of starting with a conclusion that one hoped to reach and then selectively evaluating evidence in order to reach that conclusion), studies show that conservatives (especially authoritarians) are far more likely than liberals to cling tenaciously to wrong ideas and argue fiercely on their behalf. These tendencies are reinforced by individuals who select news and information that confirms (rather than dis-confirms) their mistaken ideas resulting in Republicans consistently being more misinformed than Democrats about key political issues and that (even more poorly informed than those who watch no news at all).
Mooney did a great job with this book, and I consider it to be a tremendous improvement over his earlier works. Though I’ve found each of his books to be well researched and that he does a good job explaining the science, in the past I felt that he didn’t do a very good job maintaining his readers interest (or at least my own). The Republican Brain remains fascinating throughout.
June 17, 2015
±’r all susceptible to misinformation (especially when it fits with our own worldview), blind spots, logical fallacies, and motivated reasoning. Some of us more than others elevate wishful thinking to a belief system. But believing something doesn’t make it so. There’s still objective reality � facts. And a lot of people, both on the right and left, seem to be living in an alternate reality that doesn’t comport with the facts � whether we’re talking about science, history, or economics. Why is it that some people reject science and factual information in favor of fantasy (or simplistic fairytales), even when the facts are incontrovertible? This book gives us a lot of insight into the psychological mechanisms that underlie such behaviors.
We all need to be able to appreciate black and white when things are black and white. And we all need to be able to appreciate and accommodate shades of gray when they’re not. Mooney makes clear (and this book is all based on piles of research) that conservatives lean toward the black and white perspective, even when it would be more appropriate to take nuance and subtleties into account, while liberals tend toward a shades-of-gray perspective even when it would be in their better interest to hack through the underbrush and get to the point, take a stand, and act.
I’m not sure of his reasons for the title of this book. It seems misleading to me and needlessly off-putting. The book is really about conservative vs. liberal psychologies, politics, and worldviews. And Mooney doesn’t let liberals off the hook here. Not at all. A less incendiary title might have attracted more readers, especially the right-leaning kind.
I'm pretty impressed with this book, though � impressed with Mooney's writing (meticulous, lively, interesting), the case he makes, the evidence he brings to bear on this difficult, and certainly nuanced, subject.
We all need to be able to appreciate black and white when things are black and white. And we all need to be able to appreciate and accommodate shades of gray when they’re not. Mooney makes clear (and this book is all based on piles of research) that conservatives lean toward the black and white perspective, even when it would be more appropriate to take nuance and subtleties into account, while liberals tend toward a shades-of-gray perspective even when it would be in their better interest to hack through the underbrush and get to the point, take a stand, and act.
I’m not sure of his reasons for the title of this book. It seems misleading to me and needlessly off-putting. The book is really about conservative vs. liberal psychologies, politics, and worldviews. And Mooney doesn’t let liberals off the hook here. Not at all. A less incendiary title might have attracted more readers, especially the right-leaning kind.
I'm pretty impressed with this book, though � impressed with Mooney's writing (meticulous, lively, interesting), the case he makes, the evidence he brings to bear on this difficult, and certainly nuanced, subject.
July 7, 2014
This book surprised me. I had expected glorification of the liberal frontal lobe, accompanied by severe mocking of conservatives, who are supposedly shown to be phobic automated response machines by modern cognitive psychology.
But the book wasn't like that. Instead, Mooney gives a neat summary of advances in political psychology and tentatively links it to partisan behavior. He is not particularly critical of the research he describes, but also certainly doesn't overplay the value of any study or body of work.
In fact, The Republican Brain is a rare popular science book that may speculate too little instead of too much. Some thoughts on why the different psychological profiles seem to balance out or how this research can be translated to contemporary politics outside of the US would have made the book a bit more inspiring. And although Mooney gives some attention to party-switchers, it could have been expanded on a bit more.
Still, it's too easy to judge a book by what it's not. In the end, Mooney just wants to show that conservatives and liberals differ markedly in their respective psychologies. He makes good use of the evidence that's there - without too much exaggeration and, to my knowledge, without leaving out important studies -- to drive this point home. Nothing exciting for those who are familiar with the field, but definitely a worthwhile read for anybody looking for an overview of political psychology.
But the book wasn't like that. Instead, Mooney gives a neat summary of advances in political psychology and tentatively links it to partisan behavior. He is not particularly critical of the research he describes, but also certainly doesn't overplay the value of any study or body of work.
In fact, The Republican Brain is a rare popular science book that may speculate too little instead of too much. Some thoughts on why the different psychological profiles seem to balance out or how this research can be translated to contemporary politics outside of the US would have made the book a bit more inspiring. And although Mooney gives some attention to party-switchers, it could have been expanded on a bit more.
Still, it's too easy to judge a book by what it's not. In the end, Mooney just wants to show that conservatives and liberals differ markedly in their respective psychologies. He makes good use of the evidence that's there - without too much exaggeration and, to my knowledge, without leaving out important studies -- to drive this point home. Nothing exciting for those who are familiar with the field, but definitely a worthwhile read for anybody looking for an overview of political psychology.
January 12, 2014
The author surveys a considerable amount of literature and this work, and that is to the good. It provides the reader with an entree to a body of research work. The central thesis of the book is stated thus (page 10): "Political conservatives seem to be very different from political liberals at the level of psychology and personality." The author, Chris Mooney, draws upon research from a variety of areas--political science, social psychology, evolutionary psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and genetics.
That said, the work would be unobjectionable. However, Mooney uses the literature surveyed to derogate conservatives as antiscientific and so on. Obviously, that is one obvious interpretation of the research summarized. However, it renders the entire tone of the book as highly critical and skeptical of conservatives. While he does note that liberals have their own issues with science, it is clear that he is much more supportive of the liberal perspective on science.
This is unfortunate, in one sense, because conservatives will turn off to the thesis of the book and results of research and not attend to a fascinating body of work. There is a recent work that uses a similar approach but does not adopt a hypercritical tone and even tries to explain the differences between conservatives and liberals--Hibbing and colleagues' book, Predisposed. The tone of that work is much more objective and, I think, persuasive.
That said, the work would be unobjectionable. However, Mooney uses the literature surveyed to derogate conservatives as antiscientific and so on. Obviously, that is one obvious interpretation of the research summarized. However, it renders the entire tone of the book as highly critical and skeptical of conservatives. While he does note that liberals have their own issues with science, it is clear that he is much more supportive of the liberal perspective on science.
This is unfortunate, in one sense, because conservatives will turn off to the thesis of the book and results of research and not attend to a fascinating body of work. There is a recent work that uses a similar approach but does not adopt a hypercritical tone and even tries to explain the differences between conservatives and liberals--Hibbing and colleagues' book, Predisposed. The tone of that work is much more objective and, I think, persuasive.
December 10, 2013
I went from thinking that conservatism is a straight up neuropathology to just an unfortunate set of circumstances and belief systems. But one thing is for sure, that unfortunate set of circumstances and belief systems leads them to be wrong about almost everything almost all the time. And not like the kind of wrong where you just disagree, the kind of wrong that is demonstrable and time tested. I'll just pick two things, interracial marriage and trickle down economics are both things they have been adamant about in the past and present and in both, they clearly picked the wrong side. There are conservatives who are not like this but given the state of right and left in this country what was a moderate conservative 30 years ago is a raging communist now.
March 4, 2013
This is more of an article than a book. Or, perhaps better said, a very interesting article stretched and filled to become a book, and in doing so made less compelling. This book contained a lot of repetition of main points, which was important for clarity in a few cases. But the majority of cases of repetition in this book, the author's thesis and points in support of it were clear and simple enough to not require the level of exposition and repetition he used.
I am glad to have read it, given its current status as a touchstone in liberal discussions, but I did not feel the book's quality in terms of writing matched its influence, or the significance and strength of its core thesis.
I am glad to have read it, given its current status as a touchstone in liberal discussions, but I did not feel the book's quality in terms of writing matched its influence, or the significance and strength of its core thesis.
November 23, 2020
Reading this in 2020, I found Mooney’s assessment a remarkably prescient roadmap for the present “alternative facts� nightmare. If you, like me, wonder how so many in the GOP can persist in a constructed world of alternative facts, COVID denialism, and election fraud conspiracies, this book (from 2012!) will go a long way showing the foundation that’s been building for decades.
Does Mooney overstate the case? Yeah, a bit. Does the data bear the weight of the overarching narrative? Not entirely. Are the anti-reality psychological phenomena present in the GOP? Yah you betcha. Does the Left wing of America get off easy? Maybe a bit, although Mooney does skewer the Left wing anti-vaxxers, anti-frackers, anti-nuclears, and 9/11 truthers. I’ll add the hardcore Russiagaters to the list post de facto as examples of non-evidential conspiratorial thinking on the left.
Ultimately, I think this book will be more a Rorshach test than anything else. If you’re Left leaning, you’ll eat it up. If you’re Right leaning, you’ll dispute it. If you (like me) are an increasingly disillusioned conservative wondering what worms have been eating the brains of your otherwise intellectually respectable friends, this book will help give you labels to the phenomena.
Overall, 2.8/5. Give a copy to your Republican friends to trigger them.
Does Mooney overstate the case? Yeah, a bit. Does the data bear the weight of the overarching narrative? Not entirely. Are the anti-reality psychological phenomena present in the GOP? Yah you betcha. Does the Left wing of America get off easy? Maybe a bit, although Mooney does skewer the Left wing anti-vaxxers, anti-frackers, anti-nuclears, and 9/11 truthers. I’ll add the hardcore Russiagaters to the list post de facto as examples of non-evidential conspiratorial thinking on the left.
Ultimately, I think this book will be more a Rorshach test than anything else. If you’re Left leaning, you’ll eat it up. If you’re Right leaning, you’ll dispute it. If you (like me) are an increasingly disillusioned conservative wondering what worms have been eating the brains of your otherwise intellectually respectable friends, this book will help give you labels to the phenomena.
Overall, 2.8/5. Give a copy to your Republican friends to trigger them.
October 5, 2012
First, this is under my "politics/public policy" shelf, because it's just not quite ... science.
That said, here's a LONG review that I'm also posting on my blog.
What’s wrong with Chris Mooney’s #TheRepublicanBrain?
In a word, “scientism.� He’s not as bad or as blatant about it as a Sam Harris, but, yes, the book does veer off into scientism.
And, Chris is not a scientist, but he is a science journalist of several years standing, and the author of previous books. He should know better.
And I suspect he DOES know better. But, not applying his own writing about “motivated reasoning,� or, as I have called it before on this blog, “pulling a Chris Mooney,� he’s engaged in politically driven motivated reasoning himself. As a left-liberal, albeit a skeptical one, I can say that without being a conservative ax-grinder of the likes of whom he obsessively-compulsively writes about to the degree of posting info about “bad� Amazon reviews of his book to Facebook.
Anyway, let’s look more at this scientism and motivated reasoning.
The scientism starts in the title.
The mind isn’t the brain, and no, I’m not saying that as an epistemological or ontological dualist. The mind arises from the brain, but it arises in interactions with other minds in social settings, perceptions of the world, etc. The mind isn’t a reductionistic artifact in a vacuum.
More below on other problems with the title, too.
Problem No. 2? Mooney fails to grapple with issues of evolutionary psychology, as properly done. (I’m not talking about Pop Evolutionary Psychology.)
Yes, the personality issues on the five-type scale (more on that in a minute, in several ways) that can well be used to separate liberals and conservatives, did evolve hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years ago.
Others, though? If they didn’t evolve more recently, at the least, the modern degree of emphasis on them didn’t socially evolve until relatively modern times.
I think in specific about “authoritarianism.� Until the start of civilizations with the invention of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, there was much less call for authoritarian psychological issues than before, with small bands of hunter-gatherers.
But, major psychological changes don’t evolve that quickly, and Mooney knows that, too. Rather, among many people in early civilizations, the emphasis on authoritarianism socially evolved, and hence, authoritarian leaders gained in popularity, plural wives, etc. Whether even that contributed toward evolutionary growth in authoritarianism in a marginal way may be open to dispute, or at least, strong discussion.
Problem No. 3 is related to that, and back to the title.
“Republicans� didn’t exist 10,000 years ago, let alone 100,000 years ago. And, today’s GOP is not the party of Lincoln, or arguably even of Richard Nixon, recently named second-best environmental president ever by a group of environmental organizations.
Problem No. 4 is related to that.
The GOP is not the British Conservative Party, or Canada’s Conservatives, or the Rally for the Republic party in France, or the Christian Democrats in Germany. To think there’s a “Republican brain� that has specially come to exist in the U.S. is scientism squared.
These parties have a number of differences, between one another and even more, all of them in general vs. the US Republican Party.
Details in those differences include that most Conservatives (with the possibility of a fair minority of Canadian Conservatives) accept the facts of global warming. Ditto on evolutionary theory. And, other conservative parties accept the idea of national (and usually, single-payer) health care. And, I don’t know, because I’ve not read Chris� book and won’t bother, if he allows for religiosity differences as a factor between the US and elsewhere.
Related to this, Chris executes a mainstream media error. Because he talks about Republicans vs. Democrats, from the title on, rather than liberals vs. conservatives, he plays the two-party game.
Left-liberals, whether buttering their bread more with Green types or with Socialists, are somewhat different from today’s Democrats. Libertarians, especially true libertarians like Gary Johnson, unencumbered with Ron Paul religiosity (or racism vestiges) are even more different from today’s Republicans. But, there’s no room for them in Mooney’s dyadic world.
And, here’s more thought on the five-type scale, and on using personality assessments, whatever they are, to make political assessments.
The five-type personality assessment scale , while an improvement over the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (which isn’t all bad, either, and may in some ways still be better than the five-type scale), let alone Jungian type theory before that, isn’t perfect. Mooney is putting his eggs in a pretty new, possibly somewhat weak, basket. (Sidebar: Enneagram devotees have already tried to co-opt the five-type system.)
Beyond that, not all conservatives fit neatly in one half of each of the five personality traits, nor do all liberals.
For example, many liberals, whether through heredity, child or adult trauma, or other reasons, rank as high as the average U.S. conservative on neuroticism. I know I do.
Summary?
This is a decent three-star book, doing good work on collecting a lot of anecdotal evidence for different thought patterns between typical US conservatives and liberals. But, between scientism and all the omissions listed above, as well as thin explanatory information, it’s no more than three stars.
That said, here's a LONG review that I'm also posting on my blog.
What’s wrong with Chris Mooney’s #TheRepublicanBrain?
In a word, “scientism.� He’s not as bad or as blatant about it as a Sam Harris, but, yes, the book does veer off into scientism.
And, Chris is not a scientist, but he is a science journalist of several years standing, and the author of previous books. He should know better.
And I suspect he DOES know better. But, not applying his own writing about “motivated reasoning,� or, as I have called it before on this blog, “pulling a Chris Mooney,� he’s engaged in politically driven motivated reasoning himself. As a left-liberal, albeit a skeptical one, I can say that without being a conservative ax-grinder of the likes of whom he obsessively-compulsively writes about to the degree of posting info about “bad� Amazon reviews of his book to Facebook.
Anyway, let’s look more at this scientism and motivated reasoning.
The scientism starts in the title.
The mind isn’t the brain, and no, I’m not saying that as an epistemological or ontological dualist. The mind arises from the brain, but it arises in interactions with other minds in social settings, perceptions of the world, etc. The mind isn’t a reductionistic artifact in a vacuum.
More below on other problems with the title, too.
Problem No. 2? Mooney fails to grapple with issues of evolutionary psychology, as properly done. (I’m not talking about Pop Evolutionary Psychology.)
Yes, the personality issues on the five-type scale (more on that in a minute, in several ways) that can well be used to separate liberals and conservatives, did evolve hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years ago.
Others, though? If they didn’t evolve more recently, at the least, the modern degree of emphasis on them didn’t socially evolve until relatively modern times.
I think in specific about “authoritarianism.� Until the start of civilizations with the invention of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, there was much less call for authoritarian psychological issues than before, with small bands of hunter-gatherers.
But, major psychological changes don’t evolve that quickly, and Mooney knows that, too. Rather, among many people in early civilizations, the emphasis on authoritarianism socially evolved, and hence, authoritarian leaders gained in popularity, plural wives, etc. Whether even that contributed toward evolutionary growth in authoritarianism in a marginal way may be open to dispute, or at least, strong discussion.
Problem No. 3 is related to that, and back to the title.
“Republicans� didn’t exist 10,000 years ago, let alone 100,000 years ago. And, today’s GOP is not the party of Lincoln, or arguably even of Richard Nixon, recently named second-best environmental president ever by a group of environmental organizations.
Problem No. 4 is related to that.
The GOP is not the British Conservative Party, or Canada’s Conservatives, or the Rally for the Republic party in France, or the Christian Democrats in Germany. To think there’s a “Republican brain� that has specially come to exist in the U.S. is scientism squared.
These parties have a number of differences, between one another and even more, all of them in general vs. the US Republican Party.
Details in those differences include that most Conservatives (with the possibility of a fair minority of Canadian Conservatives) accept the facts of global warming. Ditto on evolutionary theory. And, other conservative parties accept the idea of national (and usually, single-payer) health care. And, I don’t know, because I’ve not read Chris� book and won’t bother, if he allows for religiosity differences as a factor between the US and elsewhere.
Related to this, Chris executes a mainstream media error. Because he talks about Republicans vs. Democrats, from the title on, rather than liberals vs. conservatives, he plays the two-party game.
Left-liberals, whether buttering their bread more with Green types or with Socialists, are somewhat different from today’s Democrats. Libertarians, especially true libertarians like Gary Johnson, unencumbered with Ron Paul religiosity (or racism vestiges) are even more different from today’s Republicans. But, there’s no room for them in Mooney’s dyadic world.
And, here’s more thought on the five-type scale, and on using personality assessments, whatever they are, to make political assessments.
The five-type personality assessment scale , while an improvement over the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (which isn’t all bad, either, and may in some ways still be better than the five-type scale), let alone Jungian type theory before that, isn’t perfect. Mooney is putting his eggs in a pretty new, possibly somewhat weak, basket. (Sidebar: Enneagram devotees have already tried to co-opt the five-type system.)
Beyond that, not all conservatives fit neatly in one half of each of the five personality traits, nor do all liberals.
For example, many liberals, whether through heredity, child or adult trauma, or other reasons, rank as high as the average U.S. conservative on neuroticism. I know I do.
Summary?
This is a decent three-star book, doing good work on collecting a lot of anecdotal evidence for different thought patterns between typical US conservatives and liberals. But, between scientism and all the omissions listed above, as well as thin explanatory information, it’s no more than three stars.
October 3, 2021
I really disliked this book.
It does two things that annoy me when it comes to non-fiction writing: overstate the evidence for the conclusion being argued, and do so with unbearable smugness. The second was definitely partly the fault of the narrator, but it was the writing that irritated me far more than the delivery.
Let me preface this before I get into it. I am already ideologically in agreement with Mooney - I think that conservatives in general are wrong on many of the key issues that define global politics (I know this is written from a very US-centric point of view, but I don't think this problem is only applicable to US conservatives). As Mooney even acknowledges, this is a potential issue because it means that I go in predisposed to weight his evidence more strongly than I might counter evidence produced showing that conservatives actually get it right. But despite offering this warning, Mooney immediately falls victim to it by reporting evidence that can, at best, point to only tentative conclusions and extrapolating to generalised rules about conservative thinking. More bafflingly, he even at points says that this is what he is doing. For example, he writes:
"In a popular book like this one, it would be off-putting to get too deep into the statistical nature of the relationships that we found. And yet at the same time we know that many readers will want some details, so let us briefly try to make everybody happy with one sweeping explanation of what these results mean."
Before immediately going on to admit that the study he was referring to (his own) was merely correlational but still concluding that the exists a causal relationship between identifying as a conservative and his study outcome of interest. I am very much reminded of the criticisms that Ben Goldacre makes of science journalism in Bad Science because Mooney is guilt of many of them. Going in, I was hoping to come away with a good explanation for the cognitive processes that underpin how conservatives seek evidence, interpret it, draw conclusions, and then engage in 'belief updating' as they receive new evidence - and why that leads to fundamentally different conclusions about the world. What I got instead was a disjointed picture that suggests that motivated reasoning plays some role (though its not clear to me how this differs from biases like confirmation bias or the affect heuristic, nor why conservatives are more prone to it), and maybe that the areas that our brains use in that cognitive process might be different (but not why that is).
And that, I think, it what is particularly disappointing for me having finished this book. It does pose some interesting questions and describe some interesting research. I do think it is worth asking which direction the causality goes when it comes to motivated reasoning and ideology; or what role different areas of the brain might play in forming our ideology. I do not, however, think that a single 26 person MRI study can tell us anything meaningful about the cognitive differences between liberals and conservatives (though I can agree that it is an interesting result that warrants further study). I've seen some reviewers claim that this was not a book, but a journal article. I think that's inaccurate. At best this was a blog post about an article. There isn't nearly enough substance here to justify its length. Returning to the above quote, I also don't think the excuse that "this is a popular book" absolves Mooney from the responsibility to be more careful with laying out his evidence and drawing less sweeping conclusions. Good science writing can be both accurate about the subject matter it is discussing and clear and accessible at the same time.
I think the same problem that undermines his science writing bleeds over into his general writing style. He claims to be "balanced" towards conservatives and liberals in the same way he claims to be "tentative" in his conclusions. I'd have actually been far more receptive to his writing if he'd just been honest and said "conservatives are wrong and stupid for being wrong" than to claim he will be fair to both sides and then proceed to make snide comments about being conservatives being smart idiots, or reduced merely to being cheerleaders for the liberal decision makers. It oozes self-righteousness in such an off-putting way.
Bad science, bad writing, I would not recommend.
It does two things that annoy me when it comes to non-fiction writing: overstate the evidence for the conclusion being argued, and do so with unbearable smugness. The second was definitely partly the fault of the narrator, but it was the writing that irritated me far more than the delivery.
Let me preface this before I get into it. I am already ideologically in agreement with Mooney - I think that conservatives in general are wrong on many of the key issues that define global politics (I know this is written from a very US-centric point of view, but I don't think this problem is only applicable to US conservatives). As Mooney even acknowledges, this is a potential issue because it means that I go in predisposed to weight his evidence more strongly than I might counter evidence produced showing that conservatives actually get it right. But despite offering this warning, Mooney immediately falls victim to it by reporting evidence that can, at best, point to only tentative conclusions and extrapolating to generalised rules about conservative thinking. More bafflingly, he even at points says that this is what he is doing. For example, he writes:
"In a popular book like this one, it would be off-putting to get too deep into the statistical nature of the relationships that we found. And yet at the same time we know that many readers will want some details, so let us briefly try to make everybody happy with one sweeping explanation of what these results mean."
Before immediately going on to admit that the study he was referring to (his own) was merely correlational but still concluding that the exists a causal relationship between identifying as a conservative and his study outcome of interest. I am very much reminded of the criticisms that Ben Goldacre makes of science journalism in Bad Science because Mooney is guilt of many of them. Going in, I was hoping to come away with a good explanation for the cognitive processes that underpin how conservatives seek evidence, interpret it, draw conclusions, and then engage in 'belief updating' as they receive new evidence - and why that leads to fundamentally different conclusions about the world. What I got instead was a disjointed picture that suggests that motivated reasoning plays some role (though its not clear to me how this differs from biases like confirmation bias or the affect heuristic, nor why conservatives are more prone to it), and maybe that the areas that our brains use in that cognitive process might be different (but not why that is).
And that, I think, it what is particularly disappointing for me having finished this book. It does pose some interesting questions and describe some interesting research. I do think it is worth asking which direction the causality goes when it comes to motivated reasoning and ideology; or what role different areas of the brain might play in forming our ideology. I do not, however, think that a single 26 person MRI study can tell us anything meaningful about the cognitive differences between liberals and conservatives (though I can agree that it is an interesting result that warrants further study). I've seen some reviewers claim that this was not a book, but a journal article. I think that's inaccurate. At best this was a blog post about an article. There isn't nearly enough substance here to justify its length. Returning to the above quote, I also don't think the excuse that "this is a popular book" absolves Mooney from the responsibility to be more careful with laying out his evidence and drawing less sweeping conclusions. Good science writing can be both accurate about the subject matter it is discussing and clear and accessible at the same time.
I think the same problem that undermines his science writing bleeds over into his general writing style. He claims to be "balanced" towards conservatives and liberals in the same way he claims to be "tentative" in his conclusions. I'd have actually been far more receptive to his writing if he'd just been honest and said "conservatives are wrong and stupid for being wrong" than to claim he will be fair to both sides and then proceed to make snide comments about being conservatives being smart idiots, or reduced merely to being cheerleaders for the liberal decision makers. It oozes self-righteousness in such an off-putting way.
Bad science, bad writing, I would not recommend.
March 28, 2015
This is a very interesting book that casts the eternal difference between liberal and conservative, progressive and regressive, and in the US, Democrats and Republicans, in the light of science and psychology, with some fascinating results.
It helped shed light, at least for me, on an everyday Internet phenomenon: why you can get into a "discussion" (read: argument) with some idjit who refuses to accept evolution, or denies climate change, or subscribes to the vaccines-cause-autism nonsense, or insists that Sandy Hook was a "false flag" operation that didn't really happen because Obummer is coming to take our GUNNNNZZZZ!!! (yes, I argued with some asshole for quite a while over this), and no matter how much logic and reason you bombard them with, or how many links you throw their way (and every single link you come up with is the product of a "biased liberal website"), they will...not...change their minds.
I couldn't understand it. I'm used to changing my viewpoint if a sufficient amount of evidence pointing in another direction comes in. When you work in a medical field, you pretty much have to. I mean, people thought Vioxx was a great drug too...until studies appeared indicating that it killed people, and it was yanked off the market. (The FDA didn't come off too well in that flustercluck either, but .) I get my news from various sources, including (gasp!) the old-fashioned, pre-Cambrian newsprint page. (As in, my state's largest paper, definitely not a "liberal site," whatever the hell that means. Most of the time, I think it means anything that doesn't agree with a conservative's already-fixed opinions.) I couldn't comprehend why anyone would blindly charge ahead, in the face of accepted scientific evidence, and deny reality--and in fact, be proud of it.
This book helped with that a great deal.
It has to do with the basic psychology of liberals and conservatives--Openness to Experience versus Resistance to Change, hierarchs versus egalitarians, individualists versus communitarians. There are a lot of fairly involved terms thrown around in this book: cognitive dissonance, motivated reasoning, smart idiots, confirmation bias, and on and on. The author explains these well, and goes into great detail regarding the studies he offers up as proof of his thesis, including a study he helped design. His overall tone, it seems to me, is very even-handed and matter-of-fact, even as he's showing that conservatives are simply wrong about any number of things, and they will not accept it.
This would be fine (as my mother always said about a particularly jackassy relative: "Leave him alone in his glory") if they weren't threatening to drag this country and the entire damn world down with them, in the case of climate change. It would also be fine if they weren't attempting to roll back every good thing this country has ever done, namely the New Deal, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act (and getting the Supreme Court's help, in the case of the latter). As the old saying goes, elections have consequences, and at this point in time, letting Republicans run things invites some very bad consequences indeed.
At any rate, this book does a good job of exposing and illustrating this. I also own the author's previous book, The Republican War on Science, but have not yet read it. I must rectify that soon; I think it would be a very good companion to this one.
It helped shed light, at least for me, on an everyday Internet phenomenon: why you can get into a "discussion" (read: argument) with some idjit who refuses to accept evolution, or denies climate change, or subscribes to the vaccines-cause-autism nonsense, or insists that Sandy Hook was a "false flag" operation that didn't really happen because Obummer is coming to take our GUNNNNZZZZ!!! (yes, I argued with some asshole for quite a while over this), and no matter how much logic and reason you bombard them with, or how many links you throw their way (and every single link you come up with is the product of a "biased liberal website"), they will...not...change their minds.
I couldn't understand it. I'm used to changing my viewpoint if a sufficient amount of evidence pointing in another direction comes in. When you work in a medical field, you pretty much have to. I mean, people thought Vioxx was a great drug too...until studies appeared indicating that it killed people, and it was yanked off the market. (The FDA didn't come off too well in that flustercluck either, but .) I get my news from various sources, including (gasp!) the old-fashioned, pre-Cambrian newsprint page. (As in, my state's largest paper, definitely not a "liberal site," whatever the hell that means. Most of the time, I think it means anything that doesn't agree with a conservative's already-fixed opinions.) I couldn't comprehend why anyone would blindly charge ahead, in the face of accepted scientific evidence, and deny reality--and in fact, be proud of it.
This book helped with that a great deal.
It has to do with the basic psychology of liberals and conservatives--Openness to Experience versus Resistance to Change, hierarchs versus egalitarians, individualists versus communitarians. There are a lot of fairly involved terms thrown around in this book: cognitive dissonance, motivated reasoning, smart idiots, confirmation bias, and on and on. The author explains these well, and goes into great detail regarding the studies he offers up as proof of his thesis, including a study he helped design. His overall tone, it seems to me, is very even-handed and matter-of-fact, even as he's showing that conservatives are simply wrong about any number of things, and they will not accept it.
This would be fine (as my mother always said about a particularly jackassy relative: "Leave him alone in his glory") if they weren't threatening to drag this country and the entire damn world down with them, in the case of climate change. It would also be fine if they weren't attempting to roll back every good thing this country has ever done, namely the New Deal, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act (and getting the Supreme Court's help, in the case of the latter). As the old saying goes, elections have consequences, and at this point in time, letting Republicans run things invites some very bad consequences indeed.
At any rate, this book does a good job of exposing and illustrating this. I also own the author's previous book, The Republican War on Science, but have not yet read it. I must rectify that soon; I think it would be a very good companion to this one.
December 18, 2020
Republicanism is a growing, global problem, fascist white supremacist Christian terrorism is a world-wide global problem and it is getting worse.
October 24, 2012
This book turned out to be surprisingly remarkable. I was expecting yet another liberal rant making fun of conservatives' silly anti-science. Though it's written by a liberal, with a liberal bias, this book turned out much more balanced and humble than the subtitle would have you believe. It also really helped me to understand my own political beliefs and the ways I've developed those beliefs.
It discusses the brain research done on liberals and conservatives which has uncovered underlying differences between the two, both genetic and cultural. Both perspectives have strengths and weaknesses. For example, liberals tend to be more open to new information, and better able to appreciate uncertainty and nuance. But conservatives tend to be more organized, steadfast, and loyal, which are necessary qualities for a strong nation.
Of course, the conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot with their science denial, but he gives some examples of ways liberals have also shot themselves in the foot. He also includes ways liberals also deny science, so he's not arguing that these personality traits are true across the board, just general tendencies. More of that liberal nuance for ya!
I've always found that liberals and conservatives are more interested in hating each other than understanding each other. That makes it really hard to work together, which they're forced to do in politics. This book is designed mainly to help fellow liberals better understand and appreciate their conservative brethren. The biggest mistake liberals make is what this book outlines in a story about Marquis de Condorcet, that all you have to do is show conservatives the facts, and they will see your side of things, and then you can work together to find compromises. That's just not how conservatives think.
I appreciate how hard he strives to be balanced in his treatment of this subject, and I admire that he's trying to use this research to decrease the political polarization we've been seeing. But the basic premise is still inherently hostile to conservatives: they tend to be dead wrong. So, although actually reading this book will help you better understand and appreciate conservatives, the truth is that most people--especially conservatives--won't read it, and for them, just the very existence of this book will serve to further polarize them.
It discusses the brain research done on liberals and conservatives which has uncovered underlying differences between the two, both genetic and cultural. Both perspectives have strengths and weaknesses. For example, liberals tend to be more open to new information, and better able to appreciate uncertainty and nuance. But conservatives tend to be more organized, steadfast, and loyal, which are necessary qualities for a strong nation.
Of course, the conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot with their science denial, but he gives some examples of ways liberals have also shot themselves in the foot. He also includes ways liberals also deny science, so he's not arguing that these personality traits are true across the board, just general tendencies. More of that liberal nuance for ya!
I've always found that liberals and conservatives are more interested in hating each other than understanding each other. That makes it really hard to work together, which they're forced to do in politics. This book is designed mainly to help fellow liberals better understand and appreciate their conservative brethren. The biggest mistake liberals make is what this book outlines in a story about Marquis de Condorcet, that all you have to do is show conservatives the facts, and they will see your side of things, and then you can work together to find compromises. That's just not how conservatives think.
I appreciate how hard he strives to be balanced in his treatment of this subject, and I admire that he's trying to use this research to decrease the political polarization we've been seeing. But the basic premise is still inherently hostile to conservatives: they tend to be dead wrong. So, although actually reading this book will help you better understand and appreciate conservatives, the truth is that most people--especially conservatives--won't read it, and for them, just the very existence of this book will serve to further polarize them.
January 28, 2013
After watching a particularly intense election season, I was often left wondering what in the world was going through the Republicans' brains. They deny climate science, evolution, and have anachronistic and incorrect understandings of history. They cling to backwards ideology about trickle down economics and think crazy things about President Obama (secret Muslim born in Kenya?).
Is it that they're stupid? Well, it doesn't seem like it...they sound intelligent and have gone to impressive Ivy league institutions. Are they evil? Probably not...they seem to love America and want what's best for the country. What could account for these two different realities we seem to be living in? The only thing I could come up with was that they were less capable of empathy and perspective-taking, but that didn't account for all of the facts they simply got WRONG.
Well, this book came at the perfect time and answered a lot of my questions! Chris Mooney is a fantastic science writer who unearthed a lot of research that shows that liberals and conservatives are psychologically very different creatures. Liberals are more open to change, have more need for cognition & integrative complexity (considering all sides), and more tolerance for ambiguity. Conservatives on the other hand, are more fearful, have more need for closure, and more inclined to group-think. I leave it to you to actually read the book and all the studies that show just how differently our psychological make-ups are, but it's pretty striking. I recommend taking notes as you go because there's so much interesting information!
I was sometimes a little frustrated with Mooney's evenhanded approach because I am so frustrated by conservatives! But by the time I reached the conclusion, I understood what he was doing. There actually ARE things we can learn from conservatives - leadership, loyalty, persistence, etc. He gives some tips for talking with/ arguing with the other side. Hint: the answer is NOT to throw facts at them. They're not interested in facts. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in politics, psychology, and science.
Is it that they're stupid? Well, it doesn't seem like it...they sound intelligent and have gone to impressive Ivy league institutions. Are they evil? Probably not...they seem to love America and want what's best for the country. What could account for these two different realities we seem to be living in? The only thing I could come up with was that they were less capable of empathy and perspective-taking, but that didn't account for all of the facts they simply got WRONG.
Well, this book came at the perfect time and answered a lot of my questions! Chris Mooney is a fantastic science writer who unearthed a lot of research that shows that liberals and conservatives are psychologically very different creatures. Liberals are more open to change, have more need for cognition & integrative complexity (considering all sides), and more tolerance for ambiguity. Conservatives on the other hand, are more fearful, have more need for closure, and more inclined to group-think. I leave it to you to actually read the book and all the studies that show just how differently our psychological make-ups are, but it's pretty striking. I recommend taking notes as you go because there's so much interesting information!
I was sometimes a little frustrated with Mooney's evenhanded approach because I am so frustrated by conservatives! But by the time I reached the conclusion, I understood what he was doing. There actually ARE things we can learn from conservatives - leadership, loyalty, persistence, etc. He gives some tips for talking with/ arguing with the other side. Hint: the answer is NOT to throw facts at them. They're not interested in facts. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in politics, psychology, and science.
July 25, 2018
I challenged some of the claims in another book that an author made about the actual differences in brains of people with conservative and liberal ideologies, and in the references, this book was heavily cited. I wanted to dig deeper and learn more about the actual studies. Mooney cited all of the studies, which appear in peer-reviewed journals, and I even checked to verify a few to make sure that they were legitimate. I didn't really expect to read this whole book, but it was amazing. I learned a LOT about conservative and liberal minds, values, and why people deny science, and why I feel like liberals are the only ones who care about facts, evidence, and truth. The good news is that I learned about the strengths and weaknesses in personality of both groups and am full of hope that we can eventually, some day, hopefully after WWIII or something, work with those strengths to make the ultimate team. I no longer dream of an America where everyone thinks a certain way (shares my values!), but rather one in which liberals are tempered by conservatives and vice versa. Mooney could have easily titled this book "The Brain Science Behind Political Ideology" as I feel both liberals and conservatives were adequately explored, but it wouldn't have sold as many copies, I imagine. My absolute favorite takeaway is more understanding of what I previously considered insanity and stupidity, and some tips on how to have an actual conversation and work together with someone whom I would previously have dismissed as uninformed. (I learned that evidence and information will never change a person's mind if they hold a belief firmly and it's what their "team" believes). The key is to first establish common ground--what do we have in common--and then frame information in a way that fits with their personality and values. I have hope.
I wish that everyone would read this, and I wish that a truce could be made based on the science. It killed me that this was a library copy and I couldn't underline and post-it...ordered my own copy to keep for future reference. I loved this. Please read it.
I wish that everyone would read this, and I wish that a truce could be made based on the science. It killed me that this was a library copy and I couldn't underline and post-it...ordered my own copy to keep for future reference. I loved this. Please read it.
August 20, 2012
Depressing; doesn't give me a lot of hope for enlightenment values ever really taking root in human societies for long. Its not so much about Republicans as it is about the darker, tribal and fearful sides of human nature and how its difficult or impossible for many people to override them, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they are factually wrong. Most likely because of how important evolutionarily it was for us to quickly determine in-group and out-group status as well as position within a hierarchical social structure. The operative word being "quickly". Accurate, unbiased decisions could wait.
August 28, 2015
An excellent book that deserves more comments (to come later). I took off a half star for the maddening end notes - you discover them after you've read the chapter... I don't know what style that is, but if there are notes, I like to know about them when I am reading...not after I move on...Page number, sentence fragment to indicate the reference tie...I guess you have to flp back after the fact. Irritating.
Still, I gave back that half star because the book was so well sourced.
Another book that wont be read by those who need to (and Mooney explains why.)
Still, I gave back that half star because the book was so well sourced.
Another book that wont be read by those who need to (and Mooney explains why.)
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