Like lay people, experts vary in their technology optimism or pessimism about scientific endeavors, for reasons that are poorly understood. We explore experts’ technology optimism through a focus on genomics; its novelty, life-and-death implications, complex technology, and broad but as yet unknown societal implications make it an excellent subject for studying views about new knowledge. We use…
The cultural cognition thesis posits that individuals rely extensively on cultural meanings in forming perceptions of risk. The logic of the cultural cognition thesis suggests that a two-channel science communication strategy, combining information content (“Channel 1”) with cultural meanings (“Channel 2”), could promote open-minded assessment of information across diverse communities. We test …
Numerous factors shape citizens’ beliefs about global warming, but there is very little research that compares the views of the public with key actors in the policymaking process. We analyze data from simultaneous and parallel surveys of (1) the U.S. public, (2) scientists who actively publish research on energy technologies in the United States, and (3) congressional policy advisors and find t…
Evolution deniers do not need to establish their own scientific position but merely cast doubt on some aspect of evolution or obtain a small amount of legitimacy for creationism or intelligent design to sow sufficient doubt in the mainstream. This doubt is one of three pillars, along with demands for equal time and the incompatibility of science and religion, that Eugenie Scott has argued defin…
We use an experiment with a nationally representative sample of the U.S. population to examine how political partisans consume and process media reports about nanotechnology—a scientific issue that is unfamiliar to most Americans. We manipulate the extent to which participants receive ideological cues contextualizing a news article, and follow their subsequent information seeking about nanotech…
Health issues are increasingly becoming politicized, but little is known about how politicization takes shape in the news and its effect on the public. We analyze the evolution of politicization in news coverage of two health controversies: the uproar over the 2009 mammography screening guidelines and the 2006–2007 debate over mandating the HPV vaccine as a requirement for middle school–aged gi…
During the George W. Bush administration, intense debate focused on the administration’s interference with the work of government scientists. In this study, analyzing a May/June 2009 survey of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), we evaluate the factors during this period that influenced scientists’ awareness of political interference and their media outrea…
A great deal of research has been dedicated to understanding the relationship of public preferences to public policy. Much of this literature, though, does not account for risk perception, an important characteristic that affects individuals’ preferences. In terms of policy, those who perceive high risk in association with a particular issue should be more likely to oppose policies that would i…
Advances in neuroscience are beginning to shape law and public policy, giving rise to the field of “neurolaw.” The impact of neuroscientific evidence on how laws are written and interpreted in practice will depend in part on how neurolaw is understood by the public. Drawing on a nationally representative telephone survey experiment, this article presents the first evidence on public approval of…
Despite strong agreement among scientists, public opinion surveys reveal wide partisan disagreement on climate issues in the United States. We suggest that this divide may be exaggerated by questionnaire design variables. Following a brief literature review, we report on a national survey experiment involving U.S. Democrats and Republicans (n = 2,041) (fielded August 25–September 5, 2012) that …
There has been deepening concern about political polarization in public attitudes toward the scientific community. The “intrinsic thesis” attributes this polarization to psychological deficiencies among conservatives as compared to liberals. The “contextual thesis” makes no such claims about inherent psychological differences between conservatives and liberals, but rather points to interacting …
The editors asked for my view on whether, in the current political climate, the recommendations in this volume of The ANNALS are likely to be heeded. The question that precedes this one is whether the volume’s contributors understand why policy-makers make use of science at all. “No” is the obvious answer, though I see this not as a failure particular to their effort but rather as a broader fai…
Since Alan Krueger’s christening of the Great Gatsby curve, there has been increased attention given to the relationship between inequality and intergenerational social mobility in the United States. Studying intergenerational mobility (IGM) requires longitudinal data across large spans of time as well as the ability to follow parents and children over multiple generations. Few longitudinal dat…
In this article I define the main criteria that ought to be considered in evaluating the costs and benefits of various data resources that might be used for a new study of social and economic mobility in the United States. These criteria include population definition and coverage, sample size, topical coverage, temporal issues, spatial issues, sustainability, financial expense, and privacy and …
Participation in extracurricular activities is associated with positive youth outcomes such as higher education attainment and greater future earnings. We present new analyses of four national longitudinal surveys of American high school students that reveal a sharp increase in the class gap in extracurricular involvement. Since the 1970s, upper-middle-class students have become increasingly ac…
Scholarly investigations of intergenerational mobility typically focus on either the occupations of fathers and sons or their incomes. Using an identical sample of fathers and sons, we examine how estimates of intergenerational mobility in income and occupational prestige are affected by (1) measurement that uses long time averages and (2) varying the point in the life cycle when outcomes are m…
The American creed stresses political equality and political involvement, but substantial political inequality still persists from one generation to the next. Despite the importance of political inequality, not enough is known about the mechanisms that reproduce it. Political socialization research has focused on the transmission of political attitudes and culture across generations, but it has…
This article reviews recent developments in measuring education and skill that need to be taken into account in any new initiative to monitor social mobility. Over the past half-century, patterns of educational participation and attainment have become more heterogeneous, a trend that has been accompanied by increases in assessment and testing practices, and the availability of electronic data s…
Over the last several decades, two of the most significant developments in the U.S. labor market have been (1) rising inequality and (2) growth in both the size and the diversity of immigration flows. Because a large share of new immigrants arrive with very low levels of schooling, English proficiency, and other skills that have become increasingly important determinants of success in the U.S. …
Studies of social mobility typically focus on the associations between the socioeconomic characteristics of individuals and families in one generation and those same characteristics for the next generation. Yet the life chances of individuals may be affected by a wider network of kin than just the nuclear family, including grandparents, aunts and uncles, siblings, and even more remote kin. In p…