Individuals with greater science literacy and education have more polarized beliefs on controversial science topics

Abstract

Although Americans generally hold science in high regard and respect its findings, for some contested issues, such as the existence of anthropogenic climate change, public opinion is polarized along religious and political lines. We ask whether individuals with more general education and greater science knowledge, measured in terms of science education and science literacy, display more (or less) polarized beliefs on several such issues. We report secondary analyses of a nationally representative dataset (the General Social Survey), examining the predictors of beliefs regarding six potentially controversial issues. We find that beliefs are correlated with both political and religious identity for stem cell research, the Big Bang, and human evolution, and with political identity alone on climate change. Individuals with greater education, science education, and science literacy display more polarized beliefs on these issues. We find little evidence of political or religious polarization regarding nanotechnology and genetically modified foods. On all six topics, people who trust the scientific enterprise more are also more likely to accept its findings. We discuss the causal mechanisms that might underlie the correlation between education and identity-based polarization.

Keywords: polarization; science communication; science education; science literacy; trust.

Fig. 1.

Fitted values depicting interactions between political identity and general education (column 1), science education (column 2), and science literacy (column 3) for each of the six issues. The lines reflect participants’ responses to the political identity measure: black line, extremely liberal (lib.); dashed red line, liberal; dotted green line, slightly liberal; alternating dot-dash dark blue line, moderate; dashed light blue line, slightly conservative (cons.); solid pink line, conservative; dashed purple line, extremely conservative. Fitted values were estimated with unweighted linear (stem cell research and climate change) and logistic [the Big Bang, human evolution, nanotechnology, and genetically modified (GM) foods] regressions, including all covariates from Table 1. Interactions from these regressions are reported in Table 2; full regression models can be found in SI Appendix, Tables S2–S7. HS, high school; BA, baccalaureate; Grad, graduate school.

Fig. 2.

Fitted values depicting interactions between religious identity and general education (column 1), science education (column 2), and science literacy (column 3) for each of the six issues. The lines reflect participants’ responses to the religious identity measure: solid black line, liberal; dashed red line, moderate; dotted green line, fundamentalist. Fitted values were estimated with unweighted linear (stem cell research, climate change) and logistic [the Big Bang, human evolution, nanotechnology, and genetically modified (GM) foods] regressions, including all covariates from Table 1. Interactions from these regressions are reported in Table 2; full regression models can be found in SI Appendix, Tables S2–S7. HS, high school; BA, baccalaureate; Grad, graduate school.