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Study shows Republicans are more diverse.

Study: ‘More Diversity of Thought on the Political Right Than on the Political Left’ – And It’s Not Even Close

British Journal of Social Psychology A 2023 study in the British Journal of Social Psychology has recently gone viral, co...


A 2023 study in the British Journal of Social Psychology has recently gone viral, confirming objectively what critical thinkers in the previous decade had already deduced: that the political right “diverges widely” in thought, whereas the political left “coalesces around a very narrow set of opinion.”[/b]
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Interesting study, to say the least. But I'm not sure diversity on these particular topics really means Republicans are more "open minded." You need to consider the topics chosen and not chosen, as well as what was being studied, identification.


According to
the present findings, Democrats (more than Republicans) tightly centre their belief-system around
a set of positions at the extremes of these particular items, implying that people who deviate from
these positions are likely to be considered as outgroup members (extremity should thereby be un-
derstood as a function of both, the formulation of the item and the response). It is possible that
holding extreme (and thus unnegotiable) attitudes on important social-political issues has become
increasingly identity defining for Democrats, not least in response to Donald Trump's controversial
presidency. The pattern does not imply that Republicans are more tolerant than Democrats, nor that
Republicans could deal better with attitudinal uncertainty. It does imply, however, that – at this par-
ticular moment in time– Democrats and Republicans are constructing and managing their partisan
identities differently in relation to the topics reflected in these questionnaire items. Research sug-
gests that social category membership (e.g., being White, Christian) is more important for the construction of Republican identity than it is for Democrat identity (Mason & Wronski, 2018). Fulfilling
such normative criteria may hence qualify someone as a valid group member even if that same per-
son may hold somewhat liberal views on, for example, gay marriage.