The Tribe Has Spoken: Evidence for the Impact of Tribal Differences in Social Science Is Equivocal

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Notes

1 The focus on the American political system in analyses of bias in social science has been criticized elsewhere (e.g., Bilewicz, Cichocka, Górska, & Szabó, 2015).

2 See Pfister and Böhm (2015) for a cautionary opinion on whether opposing political orientations will “cancel out” biases versus lead to greater polarization.

3 Note that we disagree with their characterization of liberal sacred values, but this point is beyond the scope of our commentary.

4 The table highlights three other findings that point to ideological differences: (a) Liberals were more likely than conservatives to retweet cross-ideological tweets (Barberá, Jost, Nagler, Tucker, & Bonneau, 2015), (b) conservatives (Republicans) were more likely than liberals (Republicans) to consume at least one cross-cutting media outlet (Stroud, 2008), and (c) conservatives (Republicans) were more accepting than liberals (Democrats) of politicians lying (De keersmaecker & Roets, 2019). These findings, however, are more relevant to the question of tribalism degree than to the question being asked here of whether liberal overrepresentation is consequential for science.