Citizens express higher trust in less politicized scientific fields (mathematics, astronomy, etc.) than politicized ones (economics & climate science), & these trust gaps stem from different ideological biases against the politicized fields

Don't Tell Me What I Don't Want to Hear! Politicization and Ideological Conflict Explain Why Citizens Have Lower Trust in Climate Scientists and Economists Than in Other Natural Scientists. Thor Bech Schrøder. Political Psychology, November 11 2022. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12866

Abstract: Studies suggest that citizens have higher trust in some groups of scientists than in others. However, we still know little about the causes of these trust gaps. The current study fills this knowledge gap by examining Norwegian citizens' trust in climate scientists, economists, and so-called “less politicized natural scientists.” I argue that trust in climate scientists and economists is lower than trust in less politicized natural scientists because the former fields are politicized, while the latter are not. Politicization strengthens ideological conflicts between citizens' ideology and research produced by climate scientists and economists, which leads to lower trust in these groups of scientists. I test this argument by running regression analyses on data from a representative survey of the Norwegian population. The results support the argument: Citizens have significantly higher trust in less politicized natural scientists than in both climate scientists and economists, and these differences can be explained by ideological biases in trust. Citizens with a proeconomic growth ideology have significantly lower trust in climate scientists than in less politicized natural scientists, and citizens with a left-wing economic ideology have significantly lower trust in economists than in less politicized natural scientists.

Discussion

The study provides evidence for the argument that citizens express lower trust in scientific areas which are politicized and ideologically dissonant. However, the study also has certain limitations that should be discussed. First, while the study only investigates ideological explanations of trust gaps in one country, Norway has several characteristics that makes it a good empirical case for investigating ideological biases in trust in scientists. Because science is only partly politicized in Norway (some scientific fields are politicized and others are not), the country provides a good case for investigating how politicization affects trust in scientists. By showing that citizens do in fact express higher trust in less politicized scientific fields (mathematics, astronomy etc.) than politicized ones (economics and climate science), and that these trust gaps stem from different ideological biases against the politicized fields, the study provides strong support for the politicization hypothesis. Further, given that we generally observe lower trust in scientists across the board in the United States, where most scientific fields are politicized (Blank & Shaw, 2015), the findings are likely generalizable beyond the Norwegian case. However, future research should test whether these findings can be replicated in other Western countries. The study also underlines the importance of science politicization beyond the Norwegian setting because Norway provides a strong test of the politicization hypothesis due to its' low levels of political polarization (Knudsen, 2021; Lindqvist & Östling, 2010). Citizens with more extreme attitudes are more likely to engage in motivated reasoning, and motivated reasoning has been shown to increase attitude polarization (Taber & Lodge, 2006). Therefore, we should be less likely to observe ideological biases in trust in scientists in countries with low political polarization, like Norway. Since we still find ideological biases in trust in different scientists in Norway under these conditions, we should also expect to find ideological biases in citizens' trust in scientists in countries with higher political polarization. Second, my measure of environmentalist ideology has some weaknesses because it forces citizens to make a trade-off between environmental protection and economic growth and a high standard of living. However, this trade-off is a theoretical construction that not all citizens necessarily agree with, as many mainstream European parties argue that technology and “green” economic growth is the solution to the climate crisis (Nisbet, 2009). Thus, citizens with a moderate environmentalist ideology might not feel that either ends of the scale accurately reflect their attitudes. This could force them to give an answer that does not accurately reflect their attitudes or to answer “do not know.” Third, the environmentalist (growth-protection) and economic ideology dimensions used in the study are conceptually related. Having a right-wing economic ideology (supporting the free market) is associated with prioritizing economic growth with other environmental protection (Crawley, 2021), and this association is theoretically attributed to ideological conflicts between economic growth-oriented right-wing economic ideology and environmentalist policies of market regulation (Crawley, 2021). Therefore, the association between right-wing economic ideology and progrowth environmentalist ideology and trust in climate scientists is likely related to the same mechanism (conflict between climate science and free market/economic growth ideologies). This study cannot directly assess whether this is case, but future research should try to solve this conundrum. Fourth, it might affect the results that the data were collected during the COVID-19 pandemic. Political crises are known to lead to high levels of political and government trust through so-called “rally ‘round the flag” effects (Mueller, 1970; Oneal & Bryan, 1995). Citizens feel that the crisis calls for national unity, and therefore they express trust in the government even if they would not do so in a no-crisis situation. Because the COVID-19 pandemic was a global health crisis, where scientists played an important role in the crisis management (Christensen & Lægreid, 2020a), citizens might have reacted with similar rally effects and expressed higher-than-normal levels of trust in scientists out of a sense of public duty. Since public health scientists were the most visible experts in the COVID-19 crisis management in Norway (Christensen & Lægreid, 2020a), they are more likely to have experienced a rally ‘round-the-flag trust boost than climate scientists or economists. This could lead to an overestimation of the size of the trust gaps between economists and climate scientists and less politicized natural scientists if citizens expressed abnormally high levels of trust in health scientists but maintained their prepandemic trust in economists and climate scientists. Fifth, because the study relies on cross-sectional survey data, I cannot directly test the motivated-reasoning mechanisms that I argue to be the causal mechanisms through which politicization and ideology leads to trust gaps between more politicized and less politicized groups of scientists. The study can only show that environmentalist and economic ideology statistically explain variations in the trust gaps between less politicized natural science and economists and climate scientists respectively, which still is an important contribution to the literature. Future studies should use experimental methods to better test the argument that trust gaps between different groups of scientists stem from motivated processing of scientific information.