The Influence of Political Attitudes on Trust in Sciences and Humanities

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of conservative political ideologies on attitudes to sciences and humanities in Japan. As the conservativeness is multidimensional, we measure it with four scales: self identification with liberal/conservative, support for a coservative regime (Abe cabinet), authoritarian attitudes, and chauvinism. The attitudes to sciences and humanities are measured with six scales: recognition of utility coming from sciences and humanities and relative trust on ecologists, life scientists, economists, historians, and scholars of constitutional law. The results show the tendencies that the more conservative are, the more negative to sciences and humanities, while several exceptions are observed. Conservative recognize more utility of sciences and humanities than liberal, and conservative trust life scientists as much as liberal.