Both Red and Blue America Are Often Overconfident About Facts

Epistemic hubris—the expression of unwarranted factual certitude—is a conspicuous yet understudied democratic hazard.

🔎 Two Nationally Representative Surveys

Two nationally representative studies measured epistemic hubris and examined its features and variance across the U.S. adult population. The research tested the hypothesis that epistemic hubris is (a) prevalent, (b) bipartisan, and (c) associated with both intellectualism (an identity marked by ruminative habits and learning for its own sake) and anti-intellectualism (negative affect toward intellectuals and the intellectual establishment).

🧪 How Certainty and Identities Were Measured

• Survey measures captured expressions of unwarranted factual certitude (epistemic hubris).
• Respondent profiles included indicators of intellectualism and anti-intellectualism.
• Analyses assessed prevalence, partisan distribution, and associations between hubris and these identities.

📌 Key Findings

• Epistemic hubris is widespread in the U.S. public.
• Epistemic hubris appears on both sides of the political divide: it is bipartisan.
• Epistemic hubris correlates with both intellectualism and anti-intellectualism.
• These correlates are themselves partisan: intellectualism is disproportionately Democratic, while anti-intellectualism is disproportionately Republican.

💡 Why It Matters

The findings imply that both the intellectualism common in Blue America and the anti-intellectualism common in Red America contribute to the intemperance and intransigence visible in American civil society. These results highlight a democratic hazard—widespread overconfidence in factual claims—whose drivers differ by party. The associations reported are robust across two nationally representative studies but should be interpreted as associations rather than proven causal pathways.