The Prevalence of Anti-Intellectual Attitudes

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 4 provides a data-driven overview of the prevalence of anti-intellectual attitude endorsement in American public life. It begins by discussing how the book uses public-opinion data to devise an aggregated measure of public anti-intellectual sentiments spanning the majority of the past century. This measure summarizes responses to hundreds of aggregated cross-sectional surveys ranging from 1944 to 2021 and incorporates a wide range of measurement and sampling strategies. The chapter then shows that although anti-intellectualism tends to fluctuate over the years, approximately one-third of Americans express anti-intellectual sentiments at any given time. The chapter concludes by offering new evidence of an uptick in public anti-intellectual attitude endorsement on the eve of the candidacies of George Wallace and Donald Trump, two prominent presidential candidates who frequently invoked anti-intellectual rhetoric on the campaign trail and (as described throughout the chapter) often did so in surprisingly similar ways.