Ideologically-Driven Perception of Claims and Experts

The political polarization over science is often attributed to conservatives’ distrust of scientific institutions and people conducting research, while liberals are seen as more trusting. Drawing from Cultural Cognition Theory and the Four-Level Model of Science Polarization, this study investigates how political ideology interacts with expert sources to shape perceptions of expert claims. We hypothesize that distrust in science is not a conservative-exclusive trait and manifests itself in ideology-dependent preferences for research fields and specific claims. To test this, we conducted a randomized online experiment with U.S. participants (N = 1054) who evaluated four typically contested claims: the lack of a connection between immigration and criminality, the existence of the Laffer curve, the safety of genetically modified organisms for consumption, and the anthropogenic nature of climate change. We manipulated the expert uttering the claim–either from commercial or basic research fields–to assess how political identity interacts with expert sources to influence the perceived accuracy of the claim. Participants then indicated how much trust they placed in five experts in a separate battery of questions. Our results show that liberals rated most claims as more accurate than conservatives, specifically in the context of immigration, climate change, and genetically modified organisms. Additionally, liberals reported significantly higher trust in experts than conservatives. We found no significant difference in perceived accuracy between claims made by experts from commercial versus basic research fields. Notably, mentioning an expert as the source of a claim increased its perceived accuracy, even when the content of the claim conflicted with participants’ political beliefs. These findings suggest that expert endorsements can bridge ideological divides in the perception of expert claims.