The DOI matches its Crossref record; 11 of the 11 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The Dynamics and Political Implications of Anti-Intellectualism in the United States
Abstract
Recently, Americans have become increasingly likely to hold anti-intellectual attitudes (i.e., negative affect toward scientists and other experts). However, few have investigated the political implications of anti-intellectualism, and much empirical uncertainty surrounds whether or not these attitudes can be mitigated. Drawing on cross-sectional General Social Survey (GSS) data and a national election panel in 2016, I find that anti-intellectualism is associated with not only the rejection of policy-relevant matters of scientific consensus but support for political movements (e.g., “Brexit”) and politicians (e.g., George Wallace, Donald Trump) who are skeptical of experts. Critically, though, I show that these effects can be mitigated. Verbal intelligence plays a strong role in mitigating anti-intellectual sympathies, compared with previously studied potential mitigators. I conclude by discussing how scholars might build on this research to study the political consequences of anti-intellectualism in the future.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
The case for motivated reasoning.
Kunda, Z. (1990) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.108.3.480 · Cited by 9,022
The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory: Differentiating hostile and benevolent sexism.
Glick, P., & Fiske, S. T. (1996) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037//0022-3514.70.3.491 · Cited by 5,202
Political conservatism as motivated social cognition.
Jost, J. T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A. W., & Sulloway, F. J. (2003) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.129.3.339 · Cited by 4,904
Ideology, motivated reasoning, and cognitive reflection
Kahan, D. M. (2013) · Judgment and Decision Making · doi:10.1017/s1930297500005271 · Cited by 1,302
Lodge, M., & Taber, C. S. (2013) · doi:10.1017/cbo9781139032490 · Cited by 1,281
Early Childhood Education: Young Adult Outcomes From the Abecedarian Project
Campbell, F. A., Ramey, C. T., Pungello, E., Sparling, J., & Miller-Johnson, S. (2002) · Applied Developmental Science · doi:10.1207/s1532480xads0601_05 · Cited by 1,144
Gauchat, G. (2012) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.1177/0003122412438225 · Cited by 1,091 · cited 9×
“For example, the “deficit model” of trust in science (Gauchat, 2008, 2012; Sturgis & Allum, 2004) argues that conservatives are simply less educated and knowledgeable about basic scientific facts than liberals, which holds them back from exhibiting higher levels of support for scientists and…”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialMotivated numeracy and enlightened self-government
KAHAN, D. M., PETERS, E., DAWSON, E. C., & SLOVIC, P. (2017) · Behavioural Public Policy · doi:10.1017/bpp.2016.2 · Cited by 883
Schaffner, B. F., Macwilliams, M., & Nteta, T. (2018) · Political Science Quarterly · doi:10.1002/polq.12737 · Cited by 541
Nisbet, E. C., Cooper, K. E., & Garrett, R. K. (2015) · The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science · doi:10.1177/0002716214555474 · Cited by 437
Cited by
Motta, M., Callaghan, T., & Sylvester, S. (2018) · Social Science & Medicine · doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.06.032 · Cited by 355
Self-citationUscinski, J. E., Enders, A. M., Seelig, M. I., Klofstad, C. A., Funchion, J. R., Everett, C., Wuchty, S., Premaratne, K., & Murthi, M. N. (2021) · American Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1111/ajps.12616 · Cited by 205
Knowledge, Counter-Knowledge, Pseudo-Science in Populism
Eslen-Ziya, H. (2022) · Populism and Science in Europe · doi:10.1007/978-3-030-97535-7_2 · Cited by 23
Metadata
- Authors
- Motta, M.
- Venue
- American Politics Research
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2017-07-11
- Volume
- 46
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 465-498
- ISSN
- 0044-7803 (ISSN-L)
- 1532-673X
- 1552-3373
- OpenAlex
- W2735275651
- Cited by
- 247
- References
- 11
- FWCI
- 66.32
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The Dynamics and Political Implications of Anti-Intellectualism in the United States. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1177/1532673x17719507
- The paper
- Motta, M. (2018). The Dynamics and Political Implications of Anti-Intellectualism in the United States. American Politics Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673x17719507
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
