Rural Identity as a Contributing Factor to Anti-Intellectualism in the U.S.

Abstract

Anti-intellectualism—a distrust of intellectuals and experts—has had a significant political presence in the U.S. and globally, especially in recent years. Anti-intellectualism drives support for phenomena such as populism, a rejection of scientific consensus, and health and science misinformation endorsement. Therefore, discovering what drives someone to be more anti-intellectual is highly important in understanding contemporary public opinion and political behavior. Here, I argue that a significant and overlooked factor contributing to anti-intellectualism is rural social identification—a psychological attachment to being from a rural area or small town—because rural identity in particular views experts and intellectuals as an out-group. Using 2019 ANES pilot data (N = 3000), original survey data (N = 811) and a separate original survey experiment, I find that rural social identification significantly predicts greater anti-intellectualism. Conversely, anti-intellectualism is not significantly associated with rural residency alone, as theoretically speaking, simply living in a rural area does not capture the affective dimension of rural psychological attachment. These findings have implications for health and science attitudes, populist support, and other relevant political matters. They also have implications for what it means to hold a rural identity beyond anti-urban sentiment, and for understanding the urban–rural divide. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11109-022-09770-w.

Rural identity and LGBTQ public opinion in the United States

“…For these reasons, researchers might be better placed gauging individuals' subjective conceptualizations of place, as well as the extent of their psychological attachment to place (Munis 2022). Recent work demonstrates the relevance of place-based identities for understanding rural-urban differences in a variety political attitudes and behaviors (Trujillo 2022b, Lyons & Utych 2021, and that this psychological attachment to rurality is not necessarily tied to whether individuals live in a rural area (Trujillo 2022a). In many cases here, I find the size of the coefficients for rural identity are larger than those for subjective urbanicity, suggesting that, when it comes to understanding public opinion on LGBTQ individuals and rights, the extent to which individuals see themselves as rural matters more than whether they actually live in a rural area.…”

Loving life? Loving science? Quality of life perceptions predict public attitudes towards science.

“…Though results generally support my main expectation, some countries (mostly in southeastern Europe) show deviations from the general trend on some outcomes (supplementary materials section 5). This could be the result of survey translations, cultural differences (Bauer et al, 2012;Lunz Trujillo, 2022;Bazzi et al, 2021), institutional setups (Bauer et al, 1994), national discourse, etc. Related to this, is the question of my theoretical population, and the generalizability of the findings.…”

“…This paper turns its attention to such an underexplored avenue of understanding science attitudes, by studying how science attitudes is influenced by psychologically local factors. Such factors have received almost no attention in prior research (though see related work on social identity; Hornsey and Fielding, 2017;social embeddedness;Gauchat, 2008; affect and trust in science; Furman, 2020;psychological distance to science;McPhetres, 2019;and rural identity;Lunz Trujillo, 2022). Specifically, I argue that life satisfaction matters for science attitudes.…”

Who supports science-related populism? A nationally representative survey on the prevalence and explanatory factors of populist attitudes toward science in Switzerland

“…But empirical evidence for these arguments is inconclusive. On the one hand, several studies have shown that men, older adults, people with lower formal education, or inhabitants of rural regions are indeed more likely to support political populism [ 43 ], lack confidence in science [ 9 ], consider scientific innovations like artificial intelligence as harmful for society [ 5 ], have anti-intellectual attitudes [ 44 ], and think that “common wisdom” [ 45 ] and the “opinion of ordinary people” [ 27 ] supersede expert knowledge [re-analysis of 46‘s replication data]. Yet on the other hand, critical orientations toward science and political populist attitudes were also found among women [ 34 ] and people who are younger [ 47 ], have better formal education [re-analysis of 46’s replication data], and reside in big cities [ 48 ].…”