Political polarization over whether humans cause climate change increases as individuals score higher on a standard measure of actively open-minded thinking. This research note documents that unexpected relationship and outlines its implications.
📊 How the evidence was measured
- A standard measure of actively open-minded thinking was used alongside measures of belief in the reality of human-caused climate change.
- Patterns in those measures were compared to assess how partisan differences vary with open-minded thinking scores.
🔎 Key finding
- Higher scores on actively open-minded thinking are associated with larger partisan gaps in acceptance of human-caused climate change.
- This pattern runs counter to the claim that factual disagreement is primarily due to a personality trait of closed-mindedness concentrated among political conservatives.
⚖️ Why it matters
- The result challenges simple accounts that blame factual political conflict on conservative closed-mindedness.
- Points to the need to rethink how cognitive style and partisan identity interact when people evaluate contested facts, and to investigate how "open-minded" cognitive tendencies can produce counterintuitive polarization outcomes.
