“In their desire for groups to BE equal, Liberals have a bias towards PERCEIVING groups to be equal… Inequality must therefore always be explained through discrimination and prejudice, rather than evolved or genetic differences”

Turi talks with Dr. Cory Clark about the origins of bias - why it is so ingrained in our thinking, its evolutionary uses, and whether bias (or ‘motivated reasoning’) is equally shared by people on all sides of the political spectrum.

Conservatives have historically got a terrible rap for being anti-science, creationists, climate change deniers… able to ignore objective facts that attack their world views.

Liberals, on the other hand, are the party of empiricism - they are more educated, are more likely to trust experts, and make up the massive majority of scientists and academics themselves…

And there’s the rub. Because at the heart of the Liberal view is a fundamental structuring bias around equality. Liberals so desire to see equality in the world that they are blind to instances of true genetic or evolved differences. This is what Cory Clark calls the ‘Equalitarianism’

Listen to hear Cory and Turi discuss:

• ‘Equalitarianism’, the liberal bias that underpins all others
• Tribalism and its evolutionary advantages
• ‘Ideological Epistemology’ - how we frame our ideas politically
• Liberal Bias in academia
• Whether, despite warping research, Liberal Bias might be a good thing for the world
• Whether there is an evolutionary purpose to our political differences

Works cited include:

• Bo Winegard and his work on Equalitarianism
• Roy Baumeister and his work on wealth creators vs wealth distributors.

Cory Clark

Cory Clark is a Social Psychologist and a Visiting Scholar in Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her primary research interests social cognition, politics, morality and metascience.

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