Is liberalism committed to its own demise?

The most interesting articles that came to our attention this week

Politicized Scientists: Credibility Cost of Political Expression on Twitter. Eleonora Alabrese and colleagues examine scientists’ political expression on Twitter and public perceptions of their credibility. Analysing 98,000 scientists between 2016 and 2022, they find that most are politically neutral, but a sizeable minority have very liberal views. Those with both very liberal and very conservative views are perceived as less credible by the public.

Distribution of academic scientists on six measures of political views. Vertical lines show means.

The Left Has an Authoritarian Problem (but Doesn’t Know It). Luke Conway examines left-wing authoritarianism in the US. He and his colleagues gave a large sample of Americans an authoritarianism questionnaire and then asked them whether they saw themself as authoritarian. The authors found that, among liberals, those who scored high on authoritarianism were less likely to see themselves as authoritarian.