Which is the "most analytical" political group?

By Tyler Cowen for Bloomberg View

Maybe you're one of those people who thinks being "analytical" is a good thing. We usually associate "analysis" with people who are intelligent, well-informed, and relatively unbiased in their assessments.

You might think that politics is an area where being analytical is particularly useful. If you think the above is true, I have news for you: Libertarians are the most analytical political group. This is according to the so-called "cognitive reflection test," which is designed to determine whether a person is able to overcome their immediate emotional reactions and subject a given issue to a deeper and more impartial analysis. So if you're not a libertarian, maybe you should take a look at this philosophy. It's a relatively exclusive club, made up of people who are politically engaged, who can handle abstract arguments, and who are capable of deeper reasoning.

What else can we learn from this new study of political and analytical trends, conducted by Gordon Pennycook and David G. Rand of Yale University?

Left-wing liberals are nowhere near as analytical as they think they are

For the 2016 election, one group that was rated as particularly unanalytical were Democrats who crossed party lines and voted for Donald Trump. There is a stereotype of a less educated voter, perhaps a white male, who reacts negatively and emotionally to Hillary Clinton and therefore decides to vote for Trump, even if Trump’s actual policies are not in his personal interest. Bearing in mind all the risks associated with over-stereotyping, the survey data is consistent with this widely held notion.

Both nonvoters and independents (voters for independent candidates) do not perform very well on the analytical dimension. There is a myth of a sensible, rational, and politically independent America, located in the middle of the political spectrum, carefully weighing the arguments of all sides and seeing which candidate or party has the better ideas and platform. In reality, this group comes off relatively impulsive and prone to more uninformed judgments and conclusions.

If you're a Democrat, you might be pleased to find that Democrats/liberals are a bit more analytical than Republicans/conservatives. But if you think being analytical is a positive trait, you might feel at least a little bit of an attraction to libertarians. At the very least, you might find it harder to attack or mock Republicans for being intellectually backward because you, as a Democratic liberal, no longer sit at the top of the hierarchy of reason. Note that individuals who are economically conservative are, on average, rated as more analytical than those who are not. This is a slightly unpleasant result for those on the left of the political spectrum. The opposite is true for social conservatives, by the way - on average, they are less analytical.

Do these results, combined with the presumption that analyticity is a good thing, mean that you necessarily have to be a libertarian? Well, no - and I write this as someone with relatively strong libertarian leanings.

Of course, analytical skills are not always the most important thing.

First, every test has biases, and this test was conducted online, as was previous, and broadly consistent, work by other researchers. Perhaps it's just that internet libertarians have more sophisticated analytical skills. There may be another group of less rational libertarians who are too busy kicking and punching walls while cursing the government to have time to participate in an online survey. I can assure you that I've met some not-so-rational libertarians. In fact, with any niche political school, you can expect that there are some particularly smart, responsible people in each of them, and some not so smart. And I don't think this is just about libertarians; I think it's about socialists and Marxists as well.

Second, being very analytical to some extent takes you too far from the mentality of a large portion of American citizens. For better or worse, people have emotional and irrational components that can be limited or better managed, but can never be eliminated. Highly analytical leaders might be best at managing an organization of predominantly analytical people, but that doesn't mean they will make good national politicians.

Ronald Reagan would be an example of a successful American leader who shared some (not all) libertarian beliefs, but whose strengths were more intuitive and communicative than analytical. I don't think, for example, that the most analytical people are the most influential on television.

Perhaps a political philosophy cannot be much more analytical than the people who live in the society from which it emerges. If leaders avoid emphasizing the obvious, empathetic dimensions of their choices too much, they may face backlash and rebellion. This may also be why libertarians are kept "on the sidelines" to some extent.

But ultimately, it's hard to imagine American society as overly analytical right now. So, as for online libertarians...whether you agree with them or not, they deserve a higher status for their analytical bent. Give them a pass.

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