Equalitarianism: A Source of Liberal Bias

Abstract

Recent scholarship has challenged the long-held assumption in the social sciences that Conservatives are more biased than Liberals, yet little work deliberately explores domains of liberal bias. Here, we demonstrate that Liberals (some might call them Progressives) are particularly prone to bias about victims’ groups (e.g. women, Black people) and identify a set of beliefs that consistently predict this bias, termed Equalitarianism. Equalitarianism, we believe, stems from an aversion to inequality and a desire to protect relatively low status groups, and includes three interrelated beliefs: (1) demographic groups do not differ biologically; (2) prejudice is ubiquitous and explains existing group disparities; (3) society can, and should, make all groups equal in society. This leads to bias against information that portrays a perceived privileged group more favorably than a perceived victims’ group. Eight studies and twelve mini meta-analyses (n=3,274) support this theory. Liberalism was associated with perceiving certain groups as victims (Studies 1a-1b). In Studies 2-7 and meta-analyses, Liberals evaluated the same study as less credible when the results portrayed a privileged group (men and White people) more favorably than a victims’ group (women and Black people) than vice versa. Ruling out alternative explanations of normative reasoning, significant order effects in within-subjects designs in Study 6 and Study 7 (preregistered) suggest that Liberals believe they should not evaluate identical information differently depending on which group is portrayed more favorably, yet do so. In all studies, higher equalitarianism mediated the relationship between liberalism and lower credibility ratings when privileged groups were portrayed more favorably. Although not predicted a priori, meta-analyses also revealed Moderates to be the most balanced in their judgments. These findings do not indicate whether this bias is morally justifiable, only that it exists.

Full text

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JOIBS: Month, Year. ISSN xxxx-xxxx
JOIBS © 2023 Winegard
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original
author and source are credited.
Equalitarianism: A source of liberal bias
Bo M. Winegard, Unaffiliated, United States. E-mail: winegabo@gmail.com
Cory Clark, University of Pennsylvania, United States.
Connor R. Hasty, Florida State University, United States.
Roy F. Baumeister, University of Queensland, Australia.
Submitted: February 9, 2022. Accepted: March 13, 2023.
Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that they have no competing interests.
Citation:
Winegard, B.M., Clark C. J., Hasty, C. R., & Baumeister, R. F. (2023). Equalitarianism: A source of liberal
bias. !"#$%&'(")(*+,%(-%.#/$0(/%(1,2&3/"$&'(45/,%5,6((DOI: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Supplementary materials: https://osf.io/mhkxf/?view_only=8010d2a6f83e4847a8ff9f32a0d440bc
Abstract
Recent scholarship has challenged the long-held assumption in the social sciences that Conservatives are
more biased than Liberals, yet little work deliberately explores domains of liberal bias. Here, we
demonstrate that Liberals (some might call them Progressives) are particularly prone to bias about
victims’ groups (e.g. women, Black people) and identify a set of beliefs that consistently predict this bias,
termed 7.#&'/8&$/&%/9:. 7.#&'/8&$/&%/9:, we believe, stems from an aversion to inequality and a desire
to protect relatively low status groups, and includes three interrelated beliefs: (1) demographic groups
do not differ biologically; (2) prejudice is ubiquitous and explains existing group disparities; (3) society
can, and should, make all groups equal in society. This leads to bias &;&/%98 information that portrays a
perceived privileged group more favorably than a perceived victims’ group. Eight studies and twelve mini
meta-analyses (%=3,274) support this theory. Liberalism was associated with perceiving certain groups as
victims (Studies 1a-1b). In Studies 2-7 and meta-analyses, Liberals evaluated the same study as less
credible when the results portrayed a privileged group (men and White people) more favorably than a
victims’ group (women and Black people) than vice versa. Ruling out alternative explanations of
normative reasoning, significant order effects in within-subjects designs in Study 6 and Study 7
(preregistered) suggest that Liberals believe they should not evaluate identical information differently
depending on which group is portrayed more favorably, yet do so. In all studies, higher equalitarianism
mediated the relationship between liberalism and lower credibility ratings when privileged groups were
portrayed more favorably. Although not predicted &(+$/"$/, meta-analyses also revealed Moderates to be
the most balanced in their judgments. These findings do not indicate whether this bias is morally
justifiable, only that it exists.
<,0="$>9: political psychology, liberal bias, motivated cognition, egalitarianism, discrimination
(

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A recent meta-analysis found that both Liberals and Conservatives were roughly equally biased when
evaluating information with conclusions that were more or less congenial with their preferred beliefs
(Ditto et al., 2019a, 2019b). Although many scholars continue to dispute the possibility of roughly
90::,8$/5&' bias among Liberals and Conservatives, even the most skeptical scholars agree that Liberals
likely &$, biased on some issues (e.g., Baron & Jost, 2019; Van Bavel et al., 2020). Indeed, it has been
argued that bias is a natural human tendency that evolved at least partially to facilitate group
cooperation and status attainment within social groups (e.g., Clark et al., 2019; Clark & Winegard, 2020;
Winegard & Clark, 2020), and thus Liberals, as humans, likely are biased in at least some domains.
Despite widespread agreement that Liberals are susceptible to biases, little work has explored domains
in which Liberals display biases. Here we explore one such domain: low status groups. We contend that
Liberals are biased in their evaluations of information that portray low status groups unfavorably
(relative to high status groups). We also find evidence that this bias is at least partially explained by a set
of interrelated beliefs about low status groups that are endorsed more strongly by modern Liberals than
modern Conservatives.
Bias: The Dark Matter of Psychology
Bias is an important concept in social and cognitive psychology. Unfortunately, it is exceedingly difficult
to define or measure. As we will discuss in greater detail later, there are, to our knowledge, no empirical
studies of bias that entirely escape reasonable objections (usually from a Bayesian perspective).
However, broadly conceived, bias is fairly straightforward: It is a preference or commitment that shapes
and distorts cognition away from the truth or from impartiality in a predictable, preference congruent
manner (Ditto et al., 2019a; Kahan & Braman, 2006; Taber & Lodge, 2006). If someone, for example, is a
devoted fan of the New York Yankees (a major-league baseball team) and allows her team preference to
influence her opinion of balls and strikes (smaller strike zone for Yankees batters than for the other
team’s batters), then we would say that she is biased. If, on the other hand, she assessed balls and
strikes in a similar manner across teams, then we would say that she is not biased or that she is
impartial.
Bias can infect the cognitive process from beginning to end and anywhere between (e.g., Ditto & Lopez,
1992; Frenda et al., 2013; Iyengar and Hahn, 2009; Taber & Lodge, 2006). As many scholars have noted,
all reasoning is motivated and most people are prone to bias (Kunda, 1990). Some reasoning is
motivated by a concern for the truth, and therefore is not prone to bias (although it might still lead to
incorrect conclusions); and some is motivated by extraneous concerns such as tribal identity or esteem
needs, and therefore is prone to bias (Taber & Lodge, 2006). As a general rule, bias increases as the
strength of one’s preferences increases (Skitka, 2010; Taber & Lodge, 2006), and preferences that form
an important part of one’s identity are more likely to impel bias than preferences that do not (Haidt,
2012; Tajfel, 1974). Morally valenced identity preferences generally cause the strongest biases (Skitka,
2010; Tetlock, 2003). Last, the clearness of the facts/data affects bias (see Felson, 1981; Kruger &
Dunning, 2011 for similar discussions about ambiguity and bias). Generally speaking, people are not
biased about things that are undeniable and obvious (i.e., that have high clarity). The less clear, the more
ambiguous, facts/data become, the more biased people can be.
On whole, then, bias is a function of clarity, accuracy concerns, and extraneous concerns, such that
extraneous concerns increase bias, and accuracy concerns and clarity decrease bias. This likely explains
why partisan bias is such a potent form of bias. First, clarity is often low. Experts have studied tax policy
for many years, and they still don’t have a clear answer about the optimal marginal rates. And second,
extraneous concerns are often high. Many people highly value their moral and political identities and
want to protect them from potential threats (Haidt, 2012; Kahan & Braman, 2006; Skitka, 2010). Often
moral and political commitments become 9&5$,>(3&'#,9(or values that “a moral community treats as
possessing transcendental significance” and that cannot be sacrificed for other values, even, perhaps,

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the pursuit of truth (Tetlock, 2003, p. 320; also, Atran et al., 2007, Clark et al., 2023). The intensity of
these extraneous values can easily cloud out accuracy concerns especially when clarity is low, creating a
climate extremely conducive to bias. It is worth noting that from an evolutionary perspective, tribal
biases are almost certainly not irrational (Van Bavel & Pereira, 2018). Group membership and status are
probably more important for survival and reproduction than is the truth about abstruse or abstract
questions (Baumeister & Leary, 1995).
Political Bias
For many people, political (and/or moral) preferences are powerful and comprise a narrative (often not
conscious) that is important to one’s identity (Haidt, 2012; Huddy, 2001). Therefore, political
commitments are very likely to give rise to bias. Indeed, for many years now, social scientists have
examined political personality types and prejudices, often creating scales to capture certain traits that
are thought to lead to bias, rigidity, and unpleasant perhaps even deleterious social consequences
(Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, Sandord, 1950; Altmeyer, 1981; 1996; Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski,
Sulloway, 2003; Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, Malle, 1994).
One thing many of these studies and theories share is that they depict political conservatism as
potentially malignant, full of bias, and less explicable than liberalism, which is often assumed to be
“normal” or simply correct and therefore without need of explanation (Haidt, 2012; Tetlock, 1994). (We
will call this, in line with other researchers, the asymmetry hypothesis, which is the belief that
Conservatives are :"$,(biased than Liberals; see Ditto et al., 2019a.) For example, a highly influential
paper that has been cited several thousand times in the literature was entitled “Political conservatism as
:"8/3&8,>(9"5/&'(5";%/8/"%” (Jost et al., 2003; italics added). Although the article briefly acknowledged
the possibility that there could be biased cognition among liberals, its main thrust was to depict
conservatives as rigid, fearful, and biased. Many scales in social science reflect this view. That is, they
appear to assume that liberalism is correct or preferable to conservatism and therefore measure traits
that deviate from liberalism, describe the traits in pejorative ways, and label the traits pejorative names
(see Crawford & Jussim, 2017 for discussion of political bias in social psychology).
However, throughout the history of the study of political bias, some researchers have charged that the
asymmetry hypothesis is wrong (Rokeach, 1956; Taylor, 1960). More recently, many social scientists have
contended that the asymmetry hypothesis might be an unfortunate outgrowth of a liberally biased field
(Clark et al., 2022; Clark & Tetlock, 2022; Duarte et al., 2015; Haidt, 2011; Clark & Winegard, 2020). Inbar
and Lammers (2012) and von Hippel and Buss (2017) have quantified political beliefs in social psychology
and have confirmed suspicions that the field is dominated by social liberals. This provides at least +$/:&(
)&5/, support to the argument that the field’s liberal bias may have contributed to the asymmetry
hypothesis and to the generally unsavory depiction of political conservatives that dominates social
psychology.
Recently, many scholars have worked to correct politically motivated shortcomings in social science,
finding that liberals are often just as biased as conservatives if one scrutinizes in the correct places
(Crawford, 2012; 2014; Graham et al., 2013). In 2019, Ditto and colleagues reported a meta-analysis on
partisan bias and found strong support for a symmetry hypothesis, noting that the overall effect size for
conservative bias was not significantly greater than for liberal bias (conservative $ = .255; liberal $ = .235).
This finding has since been confirmed by an independent team of researchers (Guay & Johnston, 2022).
However, this meta-analysis may have underestimated the size of liberal bias because it only included a
few studies that measured what we will argue is one of the most potent sources of liberal bias:
perceived victims’ groups. And in fact, the one included study that had the most obvious relevance to
victims’ groups (a study regarding affirmative action and same-sex marriage) found one of the largest
effects of liberal bias ($ = .54), and a reverse bias for Conservatives such that they also demonstrated a

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preference for affirmative action and same-sex marriage ($ = -.20), just to a lesser degree (Crawford et
al., 2013). In this article, we want to help rectify this problem by directly examining liberal bias as related
to perceived victims’ groups and by exploring a possible explanation for this bias, a set of interrelated
beliefs about low status groups that we call ,.#&'/8&$/&%/9:.
Liberal Bias and Equalitarianism
The present experimental work expands on work by Winegard and colleagues (Winegard, Winegard &
Geary, 2015; Winegard & Winegard, 2015; 2017; see also Clark & Winegard, 2020), which contends that
Liberals are particularly disturbed by extant inequalities among demographic groups and want to
ameliorate all such disparities. Liberals, more than conservatives, are egalitarian (Jost et al., 2008) and
empathize more with others (e.g., Hasson et a., 2018), particularly disadvantaged others (Lucas & Kteily,
2018; see, also, Jeffries et al., 2012), than do Conservatives. Inequalities among demographic groups
lead Liberals to empathize with groups that are relatively low-status or experiencing relatively poor
outcomes. Although Liberals’ concern for victims’ groups likely stems from admirable compassion, this
can lead to ironic effects, such as patronizing behaviors (Dupree & Fiske, 2019; Purser & Harper, 2023),
and double standards that favor groups that they perceive as victims. For example, one study found that
Liberals were more likely than Conservatives to amplify the successes of women and Black people than
men and White people, whereas Conservatives treated the successes of groups more similarly (Kteily et
al., 2019). Another set of studies study found that Liberals were more censorious of information that
portrayed women, Black people, and Muslims unfavorably than identical information that portrayed
men, White people, and Christians unfavorably, whereas Conservatives treated groups more similarly
(Clark et al., 2020). And numerous studies have found that people more positively evaluated research on
female-favoring sex differences than male-favoring sex differences, especially among more left-leaning
participants (e.g., Stewart-Williams et al., 2021, 2022a, 2022b).
Liberals (more than Conservatives) appear to believe that women and minorities comprise a victims’
group category that needs to be protected from oppression, exploitation, and other social harms. This
suggests that Liberals will be biased when evaluating information about perceived victims’ groups in
predictable ways. Most broadly, Liberals will be especially motivated to reject information that appears
to pose potential threats to victims’ groups. Thus we hypothesized that low status groups are a domain
of bias for Liberals such that they will more negatively evaluate information that portrays low status
groups unfavorably than information that portrays high status groups unfavorably.
Whenever group disparities exist, there are at least two potential explanations. One is that groups differ
for predominantly genetic reasons. Another is that society mistreats certain groups, stunting their
potential and inhibiting their success. For those disturbed by inequality, the latter explanation is
probably more appealing because it suggests that social disparities are caused by injustice, not by
difficult to alter genetic processes. If, for example, women’s underrepresentation among Fields medalists
(an award for achievement in mathematics) is due to genetically caused differences in interests and
ability, then it would require massive (and procedurally unfair) interventions to equalize the
representation. But if this disparity is due to social processes, stereotypes, and sexism, then equality can
be achieved in a meritocratic and unbiased society—one just has to eradicate the sexism. Thus, Liberals
may believe that most socially consequential demographic differences (e.g., in median income,
representation in various fields, criminality) are caused by discrimination and other environmental
forces, not by characterological differences. Indeed, recent research suggests that Liberals are more
inclined to impute motives to researchers who present results suggesting that intrinsic factors such as
genetics, hormones, and neurochemistry influence outcomes such as intelligence, mating strategy, and
violence than to researchers who provide more extrinsic explanations, such as education, nutrition,
socialization and culture, and parenting and development (Hannikainen, 2018).

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We call the commitment that might explain liberal bias about perceived victims’ groups ,.#&'/8&$/&%/9:.
7.#&'/8&$/&%/9:(is composed of three interrelated beliefs: (1) demographic groups do not differ
biologically on socially valued traits, (2) society is rife with sexism and racism and that disparate
demographic outcomes are likely caused by oppression and prejudice, (3) people in society should work
together to combat pervasive racism and sexism, and that if successful, no group differences in life
outcomes (e.g., educational attainment, imprisonment, socioeconomic status) would remain. We
hypothesized that Liberals would endorse these beliefs more than Conservatives and that these beliefs
might at least partially explain the predicted bias against information that portrays low status groups
unfavorably. Note that these beliefs themselves are not necessarily a sort of bias, rather we expect that
they will partially explain the relationship between higher self-reported liberalism and biased responding
in upcoming studies. We contend that Liberals have concerns about protecting victims’ groups (e.g.,
women, Black people; see Study 1a for a list of perceived victims’ groups), which leads Liberals to evince
bias when evaluating information about perceived victims’ groups and about potential demographic
differences on socially valued traits (Bawer, 2012; Winegard & Winegard, 2015). Specifically, we contend
that Liberals will more negatively evaluate information that reports that perceived victims’ groups are(
'"=,$("%(&3,$&;, on socially valued traits than perceived privileged groups than identical information
that supports the opposite conclusion.
Research Overview and General Predictions
Across eight studies, we tested the equalitarian theory of liberal bias.
1
We used a novel measure of
equalitarianism, which had an excellent alpha (.88-.93; see appendix for full scale). Studies 1a-1b did not
test for bias, but rather were equalitarianism validation studies, which simply tested whether liberalism
was associated with perceiving certain groups (e.g., women, Black people, Hispanic people) as victims, a
variety of pro-victims’ group attitudes, and intolerance of putative real-world events in which victims’
groups were harmed (e.g., cop shooting an unarmed Black person), and whether equalitarianism
mediated all of these relationships. The remaining studies tested our main hypotheses regarding liberal
bias. In Studies 2-3, participants read vignettes, which suggested that either a privileged group (men or
White people) or a victims’ group (women or Black people) scored higher on a socially valued trait
(intelligence) and evaluated the credibility of the arguments. Studies 4-5 included conditions in which
both groups were said to be equal. Studies 6-7 were conducted within-subjects to test for order effects
to increase confidence that the obtained results indeed reflect bias. Across all studies, we expected that
Liberals would rate the arguments as less credible when the privileged group was said to be more
intelligent than the victim’s group than vice versa, and that Liberals would rate the arguments that stated
that the privileged group was more intelligent as less credible than Conservatives. However, we expected
that Liberals would rate the argument that stated that both groups are equal as the most credible. We
further predicted that higher equalitarianism would mediate the influence of more liberal ideology on
lower credibility ratings when privileged groups were said to be more intelligent. Table 9 toward the end
summarizes all main results.
Note the present work only made a priori predictions about Liberals because Liberals are a relatively
understudied group (Eitan et al., 2018), and very little work deliberately explores biases among Liberals.
Nonetheless, we will discuss patterns discovered among Moderates and Conservatives as they are
identified. Overall, patterns were less consistent across studies for Moderates and Conservatives than for
Liberals; however, meta-analyses revealed some patterns for these groups as well, which we elaborate
on in results and discussion sections and the general discussion.
Open Science Statement
No participants were excluded from any study. There were no additional undisclosed manipulations,
1
See the Supplement for more thorough discussion on the complications of detecting bias and how our studies dealt with these complications.

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conditions, or outcome variables. No analyses were performed before the corresponding data collection
was complete (except as described in Study 6 of the main text). Data will be made available upon
request. No other studies were conducted testing the present hypothesis that are not reported—there
are no file drawer studies. Only Study 7 was preregistered: http://aspredicted.org/blind.php?x=rz2fv9.
Study 1a
Study 1a tested the hypotheses that stronger liberal ideology would predict stronger beliefs that certain
groups are victims of unfair treatment by society, and that our measure of equalitarianism would
mediate this relationship.
Method
Ethics statement. All studies in the present manuscript were approved by the Florida State University
Human Subjects Committee under protocols HSC #2015.16573 and HSC #2017.22463. Participants
consented to participate by clicking ‘next’ to begin the study after reading a study information sheet.
Participants. U.S. participants (?age = 36.93, 4@ = 12.30; 122 female) were recruited via Amazon
Mechanical Turk (MTurk). We aimed for a fairly large sample size of 200; 202 people participated. This
would allow detection of a small to medium $(effect size around .2 (at + < .05 with 80% power; G*Power;
Faul et al., 2007, 2009). We discuss efforts to maintain and increase power across studies in the Methods
section of Study 2.
Procedure. Order of procedures was randomized. Participants were asked to rate how unfairly various
groups of people are treated in society on 100-point sliding scales from A$,&8,>(5":+',8,'0(#%)&/$'0 to
A$,&8,>(5":+',8,'0()&/$'0. Four were groups that are generally considered victims’ groups (Black people,
Women, Hispanic people, and Muslims); three were groups that are generally considered privileged
groups (White people, Men, and Christians).
2
Participants also completed an equalitarianism measure, which contained 18 items measuring attitudes
about whether 1) all groups are equally endowed with socially desirable traits (e.g., “All ethnic groups
have equal abilities on all tasks [for example, mathematics, sports, creativity]”), 2) prejudiced attitudes
are ubiquitous (e.g., “Racism is everywhere even though people say they are not racist”), and 3) we can
and should strive for a more egalitarian society (e.g., “We should strive to make all groups equal in
society”), rated on 7-point scales from @"(%"8(&;$,,(&8(&'' to B":+',8,'0(&;$,,,
a
= .92 (see supplement
for full scale and principal components analysis). Across all studies reported in the present paper, the
alpha for the equalitarianism measure ranged from .88-.93.
The only other procedure was a demographics survey on which participants reported a variety of
demographic variables, including political ideology, which was reported on a 7-point scale from C,$0(
5"%9,$3&8/3, to C,$0('/ D,$ &'. Combined across all studies, equalitarianism was correlated with more
liberal political ideology, $ = .54, + < .001.
Results
Participants were slightly above the midpoint on liberalism (? = 4.44, 4@ = 1.79) and equalitarianism (?
= 4.69, 4@ = 1.14), and these were positively correlated, $ = .53, +(< .001. As can be seen in Table 1,
participants viewed Whites as treated the most fairly, followed in order by Men, Christians, Women,
2
One additional group was included (atheists), but this group does not clearly fit as a victims’ or privileged
group nor did we have a priori predictions about this group. But to satisfy curiosity, these were the results for
atheists: fairness rating (M = 55.16, SD = 29.46); correlation with liberal ideology, r = -.35, p < .001. Thus, it seems
Liberals believe atheists to be victims as well.

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Hispanics, Blacks, and last, Muslims. As predicted, stronger liberal ideology was significantly negatively
related to fairness ratings for all four victims’ groups: Muslims, Blacks, Hispanics, and Women. Results
were slightly mixed for the privileged groups, such that stronger liberal ideology was significantly
positively related to fairness ratings for Christians, slightly (but non-significantly) positively related to
fairness ratings for Whites, and unrelated or slightly negatively related to fairness ratings for Men.
Tab le 1
((
((
((
((
E&/$%,99($&8/%;9(D0(;$"#+(&%>(82,/$(5"$$,'&8/"%(=/82(F'/D,$&'G(/>,"'";0(
(
(
(
(
Group
M
SD
r
p
Whites
78.92
23.03
0.09
0.231
Men
78.34
23.22
-0.05
0.514
Christians
68.12
27.74
0.32
<.001
Women
59.81
22.85
-0.39
<.001
Hispanics
51.65
25.12
-0.42
<.001
Blacks
50.30
26.23
-0.44
<.001
Muslims
41.94
28.57
-0.39
<.001
Fairness ratings for the victims’ groups were reverse-scored and combined with fairness ratings for the
privileged groups to create an unfairness index,
a
= .77. A bootstrap mediation analysis (10,000
resamples; PROCESS model 4 [Hayes, 2013])
3
revealed a significant indirect effect of ideology on
unfairness ratings through equalitarianism, 95% CI [-2.99, -1.22]. Figures for all mediation analyses are
reported only in the supplement.
Discussion
As predicted, Liberals viewed perceived victims’ groups as treated more unfairly than Conservatives, and
this effect was partially mediated by scores on a measure of equalitarianism.
Study 1b
Study 1b examined the influence of political ideology and equalitarianism on evaluations of news events
and public opinions involving victims’ groups. Participants evaluated two ostensible news events, one
involving a cop shooting an unarmed Black man, and one involving a university using a performance
exam on which men outperform women. We expected that Liberals would evaluate the cop and the
exam more unfavorably, and that these would be at least partially accounted for by their higher
equalitarianism scores. Participants also reported their agreement with a variety of statements relevant
to victims’ groups. We expected that more liberal ideology would predict more pro-victims’ groups and
more anti-privileged groups attitudes, and that these would also be at least partially accounted for by
their higher equalitarianism scores.
Method
Participants. U.S. participants (?age = 34.68, 4@ = 11.14; 100 female) were recruited via MTurk. Given the
strength of the relationships in Study 1a (the correlation between more liberal ideology and overall
unfairness ratings was $ = .45), we aimed for a slightly smaller sample size of 150; 151 people
participated. This would allow us to detect an $(effect size of around .23 (Faul et al., 2007, 2009).
3
In this study and all upcoming studies, this is how we tested simple mediations.

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Participants were slightly above the midpoint on liberalism (? = 4.30, 4@ = 1.77) and equalitarianism (?
= 4.78, 4@ = 1.01), and these were positively correlated, $ = .54, +(< .001.
Procedure. Order of procedures was randomized. Participants completed the same measure of
equalitarianism,
a
= .89, and reported political ideology as in Study 1a. Participants were also asked to
read two ostensible news reports from A2,(H,=(I"$J(A/:,9 and A2,(1"98"%(K'"D, (order of presentation
was counterbalanced). One story was about a police officer killing an unarmed Black man:
*%(82,(%/;28(")(L#;#98(MN82O(!",(4:/82O(&(H,=(I"$J(B/80(+"'/5,:&%(,%5"#%8,$,>(@&$$,%(!"2%9"%O(&%(
L)$/5&%(L:,$/5&%O("%(&(+'&0;$"#%>6(*))/5,$(4:/82(2&>($,5,/3,>(&(5&''(&D"#8(&%(&$:,>($"DD,$(/%(82,(&$,&6(
*))/5,$(4:/82(5"%)$"%8,>(@&$$,%(!"2%9"%(&%>(8"'>(2/:(8"(+#8(2/9(2&%>9(#+6(@&$$,%(!"2%9"%(82,%('/)8,>(&(
92/%0("DP,58(/%8"(82,(&/$(&%>(+"/%8,>(&8(*))/5,$(4:/826(*))/5,$(4:/82()/$,>()/3,(92"89(&8(@&$$,%(!"2%9"%O(
J/''/%;(2/:(/%98&%8'06(L)8,$(82,(92""8/%;O(+"'/5,(>/95"3,$,>(82&8(82,(92/%0("DP,58(=&9(&(D&''+"/%8(+,%6(
The other story was about the introduction of a performance exam, on which men outperform women:
Q&92/%;8"%(48&8,(R%/3,$9/80(/9()&5/%;(5"%8$"3,$90(&)8,$(/%8$">#5/%;(82,(K$&>#&8,(S,$)"$:&%5,(A,98(FKSAG6(
A2,(KSA(+$,>/589(5"'',;,(+,$)"$:&%5,(.#/8,(=,''O(9"(Q&92/%;8"%(48&8,(D,;&%(8"(&>:/%/98,$(/8(8"(/%5":/%;(
)$,92:&%6(T"=,3,$O(:,%(+,$)"$:(:#52(D,88,$(82&%(=":,%("%(/86(4":,(&58/3/989(D,'/,3,(82&8(82,(8,98(/9(
9,U/98(&%>(2&3,(5&'',>("%(&>:/%/98$&8"$9(8"(98"+(#9/%;(/86(T"=,3,$O("82,$9(2&3,(%"8,>(82&8(:,%(+,$)"$:(
D,88,$(/%(5"'',;,(&8(Q&92/%;8"%(48&8,(R%/3,$9/80O(9"(82,(8,98(/9()&/$(&%>(+$,>/58/3,(")(+,$)"$:&%5,6(
Immediately following the cop story, participants responded to four questions (“How justified was the
officer’s shooting?” [reversed], “How wrong was the person who was shot?” [reversed], “Should the
officer be punished?”, and “Should the family of the person who was shot receive money?”) on 7-point
scales from H"8(&8(&'' to C,$ 0(:#52(9", which were combined into an index of belief that the cop was
wrong,
a
= .80. Immediately following the test story, participants responded to four questions (“How
justified was the school in using the Graduate Performance Test?” [reversed], “How right were activists
in trying to get rid of the test?”, “Is the test fair?” [reversed], and “Is the test sexist?”) on 7-point scales
from H"8(&8(&'' to C,$ 0(: #52(9", which were combined into an index of belief that the test is unfair,
a
=
.88.
Participants rated their agreement with several statements relevant to victims’ groups (?"98(+"'/5,(
>,+&$8:,%89(&$,($&5/98O(-9'&:(/9(&($,'/;/"%(")(+,&5,O(?,%(&$,(+209/5&''0(98$"%;,$(82&%(=":,%O(?,%(&$,(
D,88,$(&8(:&82,:&8/59(82&%(=":,%O(A2,(;"3,$%:,%8(92"#'>(9+0("%(?#9'/:9O(!"J,9(&D"#8($&5,(&$,(
")),%9/3,O(L(=":&%V9(+$"+,$($"',(/%(9"5/,80(/9(/%(82,(J/852,%O(&%>(Q":,%(&$,(9:&$8,$(82&%(:,%) on 7-
point scales from 1= H"8(&8(&'' to 7= C,$0(:#52(9".
4
Results
As expected, more liberalism predicted stronger beliefs that the cop was wrong, $ = .45, + < .001, and
stronger beliefs that the test is unfair, $ = .24, + = .003. Moreover, and consistent with predictions,
stronger equalitarian beliefs partially mediated the influence of liberal ideology on beliefs that the cop
was wrong, 95% CI [.04, .23] and that the test is unfair, 95% CI [.06, .25]. One of these mediations is
mapped in the supplement.
We next examined the relationships between ideology and agreement with the statements regarding
4
For purposes of upholding the cover story that the study was about political attitudes, two additional statements were
included (I think gays should be able to marry, and Abortion should be legal). We had no a priori predictions regarding these
items, but to satisfy curiosity, these were the agreement rating and correlation with liberal ideology results for the former:
M = 5.44, SD = 2.13, r = .59, p < .001, and the latter: M = 4.80, SD = 2.36, r = .53, p < .001.

9
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victims’ groups and privileged groups. As can be seen in Table 2, more liberal ideology was significantly
positively related to beliefs that most police departments are racist and that Islam is a religion of peace
and significantly negatively related to beliefs that men are physically stronger than women, that men are
better at math than women, that the government should spy on Muslims, and that a woman’s place in
society is in the kitchen. There was also a small (but not significant) negative relationship between
liberalism and beliefs that jokes about race are offensive. There was no significant relationship between
ideology and beliefs that women are smarter than men (later studies will suggest that both
Conservatives and Liberals prefer this conclusion). Higher equalitarian attitudes significantly mediated all
relationships except the relationship between ideology and beliefs that the government should spy on
Muslims and the non-significant relationship between ideology and beliefs that women are smarter than
men. Thus, other than these two exceptions, results were consistent with predictions that more liberal
ideology predicts more pro-victims’ groups attitudes and more anti-privileged groups attitudes, and that
these relationships are partially explained by stronger equalitarian beliefs.
Tab le 2
((
((
((
((
L;$,,:,%8(=/82(3/58/:9W(;$"#+9(98&8,:,%89O(82,/$(5"$$,'&8/"%(=/82(F'/D,$&'G(/>,"'";0O(
&%>(:,>/&8/"%(")(82&8($,'&8/"%92/+(D0(,.#&'/8&$/&%/9:(/%(48#>0(MD((
((
(
(
(
(
Mediation
Group
M
SD
r
p
95% CI
Most police departments are racist.
3.27
1.82
.42
<.001
.13, .32
Islam is a religion of peace.
3.98
1.83
.53
<.001
.06, .25
Men are physically stronger than women.
4.93
1.77
-.31
<.001
-.30, -.08
Men are better at mathematics than women.
2.50
1.57
-.20
.017
-.35, -.12
The government should spy on Muslims.
2.70
1.89
-.56
<.001
-.18, .05
Jokes about race are offensive.
5.08
1.80
-.13
.102
.09, .34
A woman's proper role in society is in the
kitchen.
1.67
1.25
-.24
.003
-.21, -.06
Women are smarter than men.
3.39
1.54
.03
.742
-.05, .13
Note. 1 = not at all agree; 7 = agree very much so
Discussion
As predicted, more liberalism predicted greater opposition to using a test that favored men and more
unfavorable judgments of a police officer who shot an unarmed black person; and these relationships
were partially mediated by higher equalitarianism. More liberalism also predicted more positive victims’
group attitudes and more negative privileged group attitudes, and equalitarianism generally mediated
these relationships. Studies 1a and 1b showed that liberalism and equalitarianism were related to group
attitudes in the expected ways. Studies 2 through 7 moved on to test the hypotheses that liberalism and
equalitarianism predict biases against information that portray privileged groups more favorably than
victims’ groups.
Study 2
So far, liberal ideology predicts 1) beliefs that victims’ groups are treated more unfairly by society, 2) that
a cop shooting an unarmed black man was more wrong, 3) that it is more unacceptable to use
performance exams on which men outperform women, and 4) more favorable attitudes toward victims’
groups/less favorable attitudes toward privileged groups. Liberals’ higher equalitarian attitudes at least
partially accounted for nearly all these outcomes. These validation studies suggest that Liberals’ have
greater concern for victims’ groups. Thus, this concern could be a potential source of liberal bias. In the
remaining studies, we expanded our investigation to test whether Liberals’ stronger equalitarian

10
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attitudes were related to bias against biological group equality, especially when those threats indicated
that privileged groups score higher than victims’ groups on a socially valued trait.
In Study 2, using standard methods to detect bias, we had participants read one of two vignettes about a
university’s use of a performance exam, and randomly assigned them to read either that men
outperform women or that women outperform men (on average). Participants then evaluated whether
it is acceptable to use the test. We predicted that liberal participants would be biased such that they
would rate the exam as less acceptable when men outperform women than when women outperform
men6 We also expected that Liberals would rate the exam more unacceptable than Conservatives when
men outperform women. These results would indicate that 1) Liberals evaluate information in a biased
manner when that information could portray victims’ groups or privileged groups in a more or less
favorable light, and 2) Liberals (relative to Conservatives) are particularly motivated to disparage
information that appears to favor a privileged group over a victims’ groups.
Method
Participants. U.S. participants (?age = 36.80, 4@ = 12.75; 113 female) were recruited via MTurk. We
aimed for 100 participants per condition (200 total); 205 participated. In this study, sample size was
derived from the researchers’ personal experience conducting similar work. To maintain sufficient power,
we increased the number of participants per cell with each increasingly complex experimental design,
(100 per condition in studies with two groups [Studies 2 and 3], 150 per condition in studies with three
groups [Studies 4 and 5], and 200 per condition in studies with four groups [i.e., 2 x 2 designs; Studies 6
and 7]). Participants were slightly above the midpoint on liberalism (? = 4.30, 4@ = 1.66) and
equalitarianism (? = 4.68, 4@ = 1.02),
5
and these were positively correlated, $ = .42, +(< .001.
Procedure. As in Studies 1a and 1b, order of procedures was randomized. Equalitarian attitudes,
a
= .90,
and political ideology were measured with the same procedures as in Studies 1a and 1b. Participants
also read a short vignette about a college entrance exam (below), and were randomly assigned to read
that either men outperform women or women outperform men:
-%(82,(+&98(>,5&>,O(82,(B"'',;,(7%8$&%5,(7U&:(FB77G(2&9(D,,%(;/3,%(8"(2/;2(952""'(98#>,%896(-8(2&9(D,,%(
92"=%(8"(2&3,($,:&$J&D',(&55#$&50(&8(+$,>/58/%;(&5&>,:/5(+,$)"$:&%5,(/%(5"'',;,6(
T"=,3,$O(#%/3,$9/8/,9(2&3,(D,,%(>,D&8/%;(=2,82,$(8"(#9,(82,(,U&:("$(%"8(D,5&#9,(=":,%XF:,%GO("%(
&3,$&;,O(95"$,(:#52(2/;2,$(82&%(:,%XF=":,%G("%(82,(,U&:O(',&>/%;(8"(82,(&55,+8&%5,(")(:"$,(
=":,%XF:,%G(8"(5"'',;,(82&%(:,%XF=":,%G6(
Following this vignette, participants responded to three questions (“How much do you think the test
should be used?”, “How fair do you think the test is?”, and “How sexist do you think the test is?”
[reverse-scored]) on 7-point scales from 1= H"8(&8(&'' to 7= C,$0(:#52(9", which were combined into an
index of test acceptability,
a
= .85.
Results
For this and all subsequent studies, interactions could be computed with either the continuous measure
of ideology or by categorizing participants as Liberals (those who responded 1-3 on the continuous
scale), Moderates (those who responded 4), and Conservatives (those who responded 5-7). The former
strategy retains all available information, but the latter is easier to comprehend particularly as the
designs get more complicated in later studies. For these reasons, and for the sake of open reporting, we
report continuous regression results in the main text and the categorical results in the supplement for
5
In this study only, a slightly modified version of the scale was used, which replaced item 4 with “Many people are biased against people, and such biases
threaten society” and item 18 with “With the right policies, we will increase equality in society”.

11
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Studies 2-5. In Studies 6 and 7, all results are reported in the main text to help aid interpretation. And in
all studies, we retain the categorical figures in the main text for ease of visualization. Note that across all
studies, both analysis strategies yield similar interpretations of the data, though in some cases, the
continuous analyses have slightly larger overall effect sizes or smaller +-values, especially for the relevant
interaction effects.
Continuous. We regressed test acceptability ratings on the Sex condition, ideology (centered), and the
interaction, controlling for sex.
6
As can be seen in Table 3, there was a significant main effect of Sex
condition on test acceptability such that the test was considered less acceptable if men outperform
women than if women outperform men. There was also a main effect of ideology such that liberalism
predicted lower test acceptability. Somewhat consistent with predictions, there was a small, trending
(but not statistically significant) interaction between the condition and ideology.
Consistent with predictions, simple slopes one standard deviation above and below the mean of political
ideology revealed that liberal participants found the test significantly less acceptable when men
outperform women than vice versa (D = 1.02), 8 = 3.54, + = .001. In contrast, conservative participants
(one standard deviation below the mean) found the test equally acceptable regardless of whether
women outperform men or men outperform women (D = .40), 8 = 1.38, + = .171, though they were still
trending in the same direction as Liberals.
Examining the interaction another way, in the condition in which women outperform men, there was
virtually no effect of ideology on test acceptability (D = .01), 8 = 0.12, + = .902. Both Liberals and
Conservatives found the test reasonably acceptable (above the midpoint) if women outperform men.
However, in the condition in which men outperform women, more liberal ideology predicted lower test
acceptability (D = -.18), 8 = -2.10, + = .037. See the Supplement for the categorical results.
Tab le 3
A,98(&55,+8& D / ' / 8 0($&8 / % ; 9 ( $,;$,9 9 , > ( "%(4,U(5"% > / 8 / "%(FY Z ( ? , % (*#8+, $ ) " $ : O (
MZ(Q":,%(*#8+,$)"$:GO(/>,"'";0O(&%>(82,(/%8,$&58/"%O(5"%8$"''/%;()"$(9,U(
[(
8(
+(
95% CI
semipartial $
Sex
-0.28
-4.33
<.001
-1.28, -.48
-.28
Condition
.23
3.46
.001
.30, 1.11
.23
Ideology
-.19
-2.13
.034
-.34, -.01
-.14
Condition x Ideology
.13
1.52
.129
-.06, .43
.10
6
Removing sex as a control does not affect the statistical significance of any effects.

12
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(
(
E/;#$,(M6 Te st ac ce p ta b il i ty by S e x c on di t io n w i th i n e ac h i d eo l og ic a l g ro u p. E r ro r b a rs a r e st a nd a rd er ro rs .
Moderated Mediation and Mediations. Equalitarianism mediated the interactive effect of Sex condition
and (continuous) ideology on test acceptability, based on PROCESS model 5 (10,000 resamples; Hayes,
2013),
7
specifying ideology as the independent variable and Sex condition as the moderator, 95% CI [-
.24, -.07]. To model this interaction simply, we then tested simple mediations within each condition.
Confirming the results of the moderated mediation, equalitarianism did not mediate the (non)effect of
ideology on test acceptability in the condition in which women outperform men, 95% CI [-.20, .01], but it
did mediate the influence of ideology on test acceptability in the condition in which men outperform
women, 95% CI [-.36, -.12]. Higher equalitarianism fully accounted for the relationship between more
liberal ideology and lower ratings of test acceptability in the condition in which men outperform women
on the test (see Supplement).
Discussion
Study 2 found a general pattern of biased evaluation. Across the full sample, participants objected to a
test more if men outperformed women than if women outperformed men. Consistent with our
predictions, this was strongest (and significant) among Liberals. Also consistent with predictions, Liberals
objected to the test more than Conservatives only in the condition in which men outperformed women.
However, the full interactions did not reach statistical significance. The upcoming studies shed more light
on this pattern.
We should address an important challenge to our argument. Perhaps Liberals are not biased at all, but
rather are using some Bayesian-type reasoning. More women than men are going to college, and women
tend to earn higher GPAs in college than men, so perhaps it is rational to conclude that a college test that
favored men is sexist and unfair (it contradicts real base rates). Upcoming studies seek to address this
limitation by examining sex differences in IQ (men and women score similarly on IQ tests) and by using
within-subjects designs.
It is also possible that Liberals were not biased against the validity of the test per se, but rather
concerned about the explicitly stated downstream consequences (i.e., that fewer women would be
7
This is how we tested moderated mediation in this study and all subsequent studies.
3
3.5
4
4.5
5
5.5
6
Liberals
Moderates
Conservatives
Men Outperform
Women Outperform

13
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in Behavioral Science Equalitarianism
admitted to college). If so, Liberals were not biased against the test, but were rationally concerned about
the potential deleterious consequences to women. To address this objection, the upcoming studies
avoided manipulating downstream consequences of differences and focused only the stated differences
themselves.
Another plausible objection to the bias argument is that Liberals were using a different but equally
rational prior that altered their response patterns when men outperform women: The base rate of
sexism. If society is more sexist against women than against men, then perhaps it is rational to conclude
that a test or policy that favors men is likely less fair and more sexist than a test or policy that favors
women. We address this objection as fully as we can in Studies 6 and 7. The best methodological
strategies to ensure that one is measuring bias are to use matched materials, to ask questions about the
matched information and not the manipulated information (Ditto et al., 2019a), to use examples in
which base rates go against the no bias explanation, and to use within-subjects designs. We improved
upon all these in upcoming studies.
Study 3
Study 3 was similar to Study 2 but focused on race instead of gender. Study 3 also sought to minimize
potential Bayesian counter-explanations for the bias by having participants evaluate the credibility of
identical scientific arguments that only differed in their conclusions. In both conditions, participants read
an argument about the discovery of a gene that was associated with higher IQ scores and that may
explain intelligence differences between Black people and White people. The only difference between
conditions was whether the gene explained why Black people score higher on IQ tests than White people
or why White people score higher on IQ tests than Black people.
We once again expected that Liberals would display bias such that they would evaluate the credibility of
the argument more unfavorably if the gene was said to explain why White people have higher IQs than
Black people than vice versa. We again expected that ideological differences in argument credibility
ratings would be largest in the condition that casts a victims’ group in a less favorable light than a
privileged group such that Liberals would be particularly motivated to disparage information that
suggests that White people have higher IQs than Black people (relative to Conservatives).
Method
Participants. U.S. participants (?age = 37.65, 4@ = 12.65; 118 female; 159 White, 17 Asian, 13 Latino, 12
Black, 1 Middle Eastern) were recruited via MTurk. As in Study 2, we aimed for 100 participants per
condition (200 total); 202 participated. Participants were slightly above the midpoint on liberalism (? =
4.55) and equalitarianism (? = 4.81), and these were positively correlated, $ = .53, +(< .001.
Procedure. Procedures were identical to Study 2 (equalitarian scale
a
= .92), except participants read a
different vignette and responded to different questions in response to the vignette. This vignette was an
ostensible A2,(H,=(I"$J(A/:,9 science article, which described research about the discovery of a gene
that might explain racial differences in IQ. We used a racially neutral name, Tom Berry (and used this
name in all studies that used a variation of this vignette). Participants were randomly assigned to read
that this gene might explain either why White people score higher on IQ tests than Black people (Whites
Higher condition), or why Black people score higher on IQ tests than White people (Blacks Higher
condition):((
(
\,9,&$52,$9()$":(&('&$;,($,9,&$52(/%98/8#8/"%(2&3,(>/95"3,$,>(&(;,%,(82&8(:/;28(,U+'&/%(/%8,''/;,%5,(
>/)),$,%5,9(D,8=,,%(1'&5J9(&%>(Q2/8,96(E"$(:&%0(0,&$9O($,9,&$52,$9(2&3,()"#%>(82&8(1'&5J9XFQ2/8,9G(

14
Journal of Open Inquiry
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95"$,(2/;2,$("%(5,$8&/%(/%8,''/;,%5,(8,989(82&%(Q2/8,9XF1'&5J9G6(A":(1,$$0(&%>(2/9(5"'',&;#,9(2&3,(8$/,>(8"(
)/%>(;,%,8/5(5&#9,9()"$(82,(>/9+&$/80(/%(/%8,''/;,%5,(95"$,9O(&$;#/%;(82&8(,%3/$"%:,%8&'(,U+'&%&8/"%9(
5&%%"8(,U+'&/%(82,(-](;&+6(^A2,$,(/9(9/:+'0(%"($,&9"%&D',(,%3/$"%:,%8&'(,U+'&%&8/"%()"$(82,(-](;&+(82&8(
=,(5&%()/%>("$(82&8("82,$($,9,&$52,$9(2&3,(+$"+"9,>O^(@$6(1,$$0(,U+'&/%,>6(
(
1,$$0(&%>(2/9(8,&:(82/%J(82,0(2&3,(&%(&%9=,$6(A2,0(/9"'&8,>(&(;,%,("%(82,(_M98(52$":"9":,(82&8(/9(
$,'/&D'0(&99"5/&8,>(=/82(2/;2,$(-](95"$,96(A2,(;,%,(+"'0:"$+2/9:O(5&'',>(AT4`ab\\O(=&9()/$98()"#%>(/%(
MNNNO(D#8($,9,&$52,$9(>/>%W8(J%"=(82&8(/8(=&9($,'&8,>(8"(2/;2,$(-](95"$,96(1,$$0(&%>(2/9(8,&:()"#%>(82&8(
/8(=&9(98$"%;'0($,'&8,>(8"(-](95"$,96(
(
A2,0(&'9"()"#%>(82&8(82,(;,%,(/9(:#52(:"$,(5"::"%(/%(L:,$/5&%(1'&5J9XFQ2/8,9G(82&%(Q2/8,9XF1'&5J9G6(
^LD"#8(Ncd(")(1'&5J9XFQ2/8,9G(5&$$0(82,(;,%,O^(@$6(1,$$0(9&/>O(^=2,$,&9("%'0(MYd(")(Q2/8,9XF1'&5J9G(
5&$$0(/86(Q,($,&''0(82/%J(82/9(:/;28(,U+'&/%(82,(-](;&+6^(
(
Participants responded to the news article on six questions (“How credible do you find Dr. Berry’s
argument?”, “Do you believe Dr. Berry’s argument?”, “Is Dr. Berry’s argument racist?” [reversed], “Is Dr.
Berry’s argument logical?”, “How important is this research?”, and “Do you think we should fund more of
this type of research?”) rated on 7-point scales from H"8(&8(&'' to C,$0(:# 52( 9" (first four questions) or
H"8(&8(&'' to 7U8$,:,'0X@,)/%/8,'0, which were combined into an index of argument credibility,
a
= .92.
Results
Continuous. We regressed argument credibility ratings on the Race condition, ideology (centered), and
the interaction. As can be seen in Table 4, there was a significant main effect of the Race condition such
that the argument was considered more credible in the Blacks Higher (? = 3.61, 4@ = 1.38) than Whites
Higher condition (? = 3.15, 4@ = 1.59). There was also a main effect of ideology such that more
liberalism was associated with lower credibility ratings.
There was also a statistically significant interaction between the Race condition and ideology. Consistent
with predictions, simple slopes one standard deviation above and below the mean revealed that more
liberal participants found the argument more credible in the Blacks Higher condition (D = 1.04), 8 = 3.40,
+ = .001. In contrast, more conservative participants found the argument equally credible regardless of
which race was higher (D = -0.12), 8 = -0.40, + = .693.
Examining the interaction another way, in the Blacks Higher condition, ideology was unrelated to
argument credibility ratings (D = 0.11), 8 = 1.16, + = .248. However, as predicted, in the Whites Higher
condition, more liberal ideology predicted lower argument credibility ratings (D = -0.22), 8 = -2.84, + =
.005. See the Supplement for the categorical results.
Tab le 4
L$;#:,%8(5$,>/D/'/80($&8/%;9($,;$,99,>("%(\&5,(5"%>/8/"%(FYZ(Q2/8,9(T/;2,$e((
MZ(1'&5J9(T/;2,$GO(/>,"'";0O(&%>(82,(/%8,$&58/"%(
((
[(
8(
+(
95% CI
semipartial $
Condition
.15
2.13
.034
.04, .89
.15
Ideology
-.25
-2.91
.004
-.37, -.07
-.20
Condition x Ideology
.23
2.71
.007
.09, .58
.19

15
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in Behavioral Science Equalitarianism
(
E/;#$,(_6 Argument Credibility by Race condition within each ideological group. Error bars are standard
errors.
Moderated Mediation and Simple Mediations. We next tested whether equalitarianism mediated the
interactive effect of Race condition and ideology on argument credibility, specifying ideology as the
independent variable and Race condition as the moderator. As expected, higher equalitarianism
mediated the interactive effect, 95% CI [-.24, -.07]. Simple mediations within each condition confirmed
the results of the moderated mediation: equalitarianism did not mediate the (non)effect of ideology on
argument credibility in the Blacks Higher condition, 95% CI [-.10, .10], but did mediate the influence of
ideology on argument credibility in the Whites Higher condition, 95% CI [-.42, -.16]. Higher
equalitarianism fully accounted for the relationship between more liberal ideology and lower ratings of
argument credibility in the Whites Higher condition (see Supplement).
Discussion
Study 3 replicated the basic pattern of results of Study 2 with materials more resistant to potential
Bayesian-type counterarguments. Specifically, it found that Liberals, but not Conservatives, were biased
against genetic explanations for race differences in IQ when White people were said to score higher (on
average).
These findings do not rule out an objection about pervasive racism. That is, one could argue that modern
society is rife with racism and that therefore any explanation, any test, any policy, that appears to
disfavor Black people is likely to be unfair and racist. This does seem a plausible objection to some of our
questions (e.g., “should this research be funded?”), but it seems less plausible to raise this objection to
other questions (e.g., “Is Dr. Barry’s argument logical?”). In the upcoming studies, we dropped the
objectionable questions, and in Study 6, we seek to examine the plausibility of this alternate explanation
with a within-subjects design.
Study 4
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
4.5
5
Liberals
Moderates
Conservatives
Whites Higher
Blacks Higher

16
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Study 4 sought to replicate and extend the results of Study 3 by including an Equal condition, in which it
was said that a gene explained individual differences in intelligence, that the gene was found in equal
degrees in both races, and that this explains why Black people and White people score similarly on
intelligence tests. We added this condition to explore whether Liberals are motivated to reject the
conclusion that White people have higher IQs, motivated to accept the conclusion that Black people
have higher IQs, or perhaps motivated to reject both but to different degrees relative to an Equal
condition. We predicted that Liberals would find the Equal condition most credible, followed by Blacks
higher and then last by Whites higher. Regarding Conservatives, our main prediction (as in previous
studies) was that they would be more accepting of the argument when the privileged group (here, White
people) is said to have higher IQs than the victims’ group (here, Black people) relative to Liberals, though
we did not have predictions for Conservatives regarding differences between conditions.
Method
Participants. U.S. participants (?age = 36.96, 4@ = 12.34; 233 female; 341 White, 48 Asian, 34 Black, 28
Latino, 1 Middle Eastern) were recruited via MTurk. Because of the addition of the Equal condition, we
aimed for 150 participants per condition (450 total); 452 participated. Participants were slightly above
the midpoint on liberalism (? = 4.49) and equalitarianism (? = 4.70), and these were positively
correlated, $ = .54, +(< .001.
Procedure. Methods were identical to Study 3 (equalitarian scale
a
= .92) with two exceptions. First, we
used only the one question from Study 3 that was the least vulnerable to Bayesian counter-explanation:
“Is Dr. Berry’s argument logical?” We also added two additional items that should be minimally
vulnerable to Bayesian counter-explanations: “How reasonable do you find Dr. Berry’s argument?” and
“How plausible is it that a gene could explain IQ differences?”, which were combined into an index of
argument credibility, a = .91. Second, an Equal condition was also included (pasted below).
8
\,9,&$52,$9()$":(&('&$;,($,9,&$52(/%98/8#8/"%(2&3,(>/95"3,$,>(&(;,%,(82&8(:/;28(,U+'&/%(/%8,''/;,%5,(
9/:/'&$/8/,9(&:"%;(1'&5J9(&%>(Q2/8,96(E"$(:&%0(0,&$9O($,9,&$52,$9(2&3,()"#%>(82&8(Q2/8,9(&%>(1'&5J9(
95"$,(9/:/'&$'0("%(5,$8&/%(/%8,''/;,%5,(8,9896(A":(1,$$0(&%>(2/9(5"'',&;#,9(2&3,(8$/,>(8"()/%>(;,%,8/5(5&#9,9(
)"$(/%8,''/;,%5,(95"$,9O(&$;#/%;(82&8(,%3/$"%:,%8&'()&58"$9(5&%%"8(,U+'&/%(-]6(^A2,$,(/9(9/:+'0(%"(
$,&9"%&D',(,%3/$"%:,%8&'(,U+'&%&8/"%()"$(-](>/)),$,%5,9(=/82/%($&5,9(82&8(=,(5&%()/%>("$(82&8("82,$(
$,9,&$52,$9(2&3,(+$"+"9,>O^(@$6(1,$$0(,U+'&/%,>6(
(
1,$$0(&%>(2/9(8,&:(82/%J(82,0(2&3,(&%(&%9=,$6(A2,0(/9"'&8,>(&(;,%,("%(82,(_M98(52$":"9":,(82&8(/9(
$,'/&D'0(&99"5/&8,>(=/82(2/;2,$(-](95"$,96(A2,(;,%,(+"'0:"$+2/9:O(5&'',>(AT4`ab\\O(=&9()/$98()"#%>(/%(
MNNNO(D#8($,9,&$52,$9(>/>%W8(J%"=(82&8(/8(=&9($,'&8,>(8"(2/;2,$(-](95"$,96(1,$$0(&%>(2/9(8,&:()"#%>(
82&8(/8(=&9(98$"%;'0($,'&8,>(8"(-](95"$,96(
(
A2,0(&'9"()"#%>(82&8(82,(;,%,(/9(,.#&''0(5"::"%(/%(L:,$/5&%(Q2/8,9(&%>(1'&5J96(^LD"#8(bY`bad(")(D"82(
Q2/8,9(&%>(1'&5J9(5&$$0(82,(;,%,O^(@$6(1,$$0(9&/>O(^Q,($,&''0(82/%J(82/9(:/;28(,U+'&/%(9/:/'&$/8/,9(/%(
/%8,''/;,%5,(95"$,9(D,8=,,%(82,:6^(
Results
Continuous. We regressed argument credibility ratings on the Race condition dummy coded with the
Equal condition as the reference category, ideology (centered), and the interactions. As can be seen in
Tab le 5 , th er e we re s ig ni fi ca nt m ai n ef fe ct s fo r bo th d um my v ar ia bles su ch t ha t pa rt icipant s ra te d th e
arguments as less credible in the Black Higher and White Higher conditions than the Equal condition.
8
There were a few other trivial changes that apply to Studies 4-7: Order of procedures was fixed rather than randomized (science article and DVs came
first, then the equalitarianism scale, then demographics), some unrelated and unreported demographic questions were removed (e.g., relationship status,
sexual orientation), and open-ended suspicion probes and comment boxes were added.

17
Journal of Open Inquiry
in Behavioral Science Equalitarianism
There was no main effect of ideology.
There was no significant interaction between the Blacks Higher dummy variable and ideology. But, as
expected, there was a significant interaction between the Whites Higher dummy variable and ideology.
Simple slopes at each level of the Whites Higher dummy variable revealed that in the Whites Higher
condition, more liberal ideology predicted lower ratings of credibility (D = -.24), 8 = -3.76, + < .001. In the
other conditions, ideology was unrelated to credibility ratings (D = -.03), 8 = -.41, + = .680. See the
Supplement for the categorical results.
Tab le 5
L$;#:,%8(5$,>/D/'/80($&8/%;9($,;$,99,>("%(>#::0(5">,>(\&5,(5"%>/8/"%9O(/>,"'";0O((
&%>(82,(/%8,$&58/"%9(
((
[(
8(
+(
95% CI
semipartial $
Black Higher
-.21
-3.95
<.001
-1.02, -.34
-.18
White Higher
-.23
-4.43
<.001
-1.10, -.42
-.20
Ideology
-.04
-0.42
.673
-.18, .12
-.02
Black x Ideology
.02
0.35
.724
-.17, .24
.02
White x Ideology
-.14
-2.05
.041
-.40, -.01
-.09
(
(
(
(
(
(
E/;#$,(c6 Argument credibility by Race condition within each ideological group. Error bars are standard
errors.
Mediations. We next examined whether higher equalitarianism mediated the influence of ideology on
argument credibility ratings within each Race condition. In the Equal and Blacks Higher conditions,
equalitarianism did not mediate the (non-effect) of ideology on argument credibility ratings, 95% CI [-
.12, .09] and 95% CI [-.10, .13], respectively. Consistent with all results thus far, in the Whites Higher
condition, higher equalitarianism fully mediated the influence of more liberal ideology on lower
argument credibility ratings, 95% CI [-.28, -.08] (see Supplement).
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
4.5
5
Liberals
Moderates
Conservatives
Equal
Blacks Higher
Whites Higher

18
Journal of Open Inquiry
in Behavioral Science Equalitarianism
Discussion
Results were mostly consistent with predictions. As in Studies 2 and 3, ideological differences in
argument credibility only emerged in the condition in which the privileged group was portrayed more
favorably, such that Liberals found the Whites Higher argument less credible than Moderates and
Conservatives. And higher equalitarianism mediated the influence of ideology on lower credibility ratings
in the Whites Higher condition. Liberals, Moderates, and Conservatives did not significantly differ in their
credibility ratings of the Blacks Higher or Equal arguments.
Also consistent with predictions (and Studies 2-3), Liberals found the Whites Higher argument less
credible than the Equal and Blacks Higher arguments. Conservatives (and Moderates) showed no
(significant) difference in credibility ratings between the Whites Higher and Blacks Higher arguments.
It may seem surprising that all ideological groups (Conservatives, Moderates, and Liberals) rated the
Equal argument as more credible than the other arguments (though note, not significantly more than
Whites Higher for Conservatives and Moderates). This suggests that all groups have some preference for
group equality, and perhaps simply Conservatives and Moderates are somewhat more willing to accept
that that might not be the case (or Liberals are somewhat more unwilling), especially if those differences
favor the privileged group. While apparently people across the political spectrum preferred to hear that
the races have equal IQs, Liberals stood out in rejecting the message of higher average intelligence
among White people. They were readier to accept that Black people have higher average IQs, whereas
Moderates and Conservatives showed a (non-significant) tendency toward the reverse.
Study 5
Study 5 explored biases when the targets are men (privileged group) and women (victims’ group). Study
5 replicated the methods of Study 4 exactly, but manipulated sex rather than race. The objective
psychometric facts would incline a purely data-driven person toward regarding the two as roughly equal,
but it may be equally reasonable to conclude that men have slightly higher IQs than women or vice
versa. Large-scale comparisons of intelligence test performance suggest that adult men and women have
nearly equal intelligence, with the male mean being very slightly higher. Women outperform men in
school, whereas men slightly outperform women on the SAT. There is also a substantial difference in
variance, with more men at both extremes, and so someone exposed to more exemplars of either
extreme might generalize mistakenly.
However, we expected that people would answer based more on their prejudices than on published IQ
data. We predicted that Liberals in particular would evince bias such that they would evaluate the Men
Higher argument as less credible than the Equal or Women Higher arguments, due to their protective
concern for women as a victim class. Furthermore, we expected Liberals to rate the Men Higher
argument as less credible than Conservatives, and that higher equalitarianism would mediate the
influence of more liberal ideology on lower credibility ratings in the Men Higher condition.
We were less confident and more uncertain about our predictions for Conservatives. But, we suspected
that Conservatives might demonstrate a slight preference for the Equal argument (as in Study 4) over the
other two arguments, and possibly also a slight preference for the Women Higher argument over the
Men Higher argument (as in Study 2).
Method
Participants. U.S. participants (?age = 36.42, 4@ = 11.52; 254 female; 353 White, 35 Black, 32 Asian, 31
Latino, 2 Middle Eastern) were recruited via MTurk. We again aimed for 450 participants (150 per
condition); 454 participated. Participants were slightly above the midpoint on liberalism (? = 4.51) and

19
Journal of Open Inquiry
in Behavioral Science Equalitarianism
equalitarianism (? = 4.78), and these were positively correlated, $ = .51, +(< .001.
Procedure. Methods were identical to Study 3 (equalitarian scale
a
= .90; argument credibility, a = .91)
with one exception: we manipulated which sex was said to have a higher IQ (or that the sexes have
roughly equal IQs) instead of which race.
Results
Continuous. We regressed argument credibility ratings on the Sex condition dummy coded with the
Equal condition as the reference category, ideology (centered), and the interactions. As can be seen in
Tab le 6 , th er e wa s on ly a main e ffe ct of th e Me n Hi gh er dummy v ar iable, s uc h th at p ar ti cipant s ra te d th e
Men Higher argument as less credible than the other arguments. No other effects were significant
(including the expected Men Higher x ideology interaction).
Nonetheless, the simple slopes at each level of the Men Higher dummy variable revealed that in the
condition in which Men were said to have a higher IQ than Women, more liberal ideology predicted
marginally lower credibility ratings (D = -.12), 8 = -1.90, + = .058 (consistent with predictions). In the other
conditions, ideology was unrelated to credibility ratings (D = -.07), 8 = -1.11, + = .269, (consistent with
predictions, though note this relationship was trending in the same direction as the Men Higher
condition, hence, the non-significant interaction). See the Supplement for the categorical results.
Tab le 6
L$;#:,%8(5$,>/D/'/80($&8/%;9($,;$,99,>("%(>#::0(5">,>(4,U(5"%>/8/"%9O(/>,"'";0O((
&%>(82,(/%8,$&58/"%9(
((
[(
8(
+(
95% CI
semipartial $
Women Higher
-.04
-0.38
.474
-.43, .20
-.03
Men Higher
-.23
-4.38
<.001
-1.02, -.39
-.20
Ideology
-.09
-1.08
.280
-.20, .06
-.05
Women x Ideology
-.04
-0.58
.563
-.23, .13
-.03
Men x Ideology
-.04
-0.57
.573
-.23, .13
-.03

20
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in Behavioral Science Equalitarianism
E/;#$,(f6 Argument credibility by Sex condition within each ideological group. Error bars are standard
errors.
Mediations. We next examined whether equalitarianism scores mediated the influence of ideology on
argument credibility ratings within each Sex condition. As expected, and consistent with Studies 2-4), in
the condition in which the victims’ group was said to be higher (Women, in this case), there was no
significant mediation, 95% CI [-.06, .09].
As expected, in the Men Higher condition, higher equalitarianism fully mediated the marginal influence
of more liberal ideology on lower argument credibility ratings, 95% CI [-.23, -.02] (see Supplement).
Unexpectedly (and unlike Study 4), in the Equal condition, equalitarianism mediated the influence of
ideology on argument credibility ratings, 95% CI [.02, .16]; see Supplement for discussion.
Discussion
Results were partially consistent with predictions. As expected, Liberals appeared biased against
arguments that suggested that a privileged group scores higher on a socially valued trait than a victims’
group: They rated the Men Higher argument as less credible than the Women Higher and the Equal
arguments. And as in Studies 2-4, ideological differences in credibility ratings emerged only in the
condition in which the privileged group was said to be higher such that Liberals found the Men Higher
argument (marginally) less credible than Conservatives, and this was mediated by higher equalitarianism
scores.
As in Study 4, all ideological groups generally rated the Equal condition as the most credible. However,
unlike Study 4, there were generally no differences in credibility ratings between the Equal condition and
the Victims’ Group (women) Higher condition, for any ideological group. Also, and surprisingly, all groups
rated the Privileged (men) Higher condition as the least credible (significantly lower than the other two
conditions for Liberals and Conservatives, but not for Moderates). In Study 4, on the other hand,
Conservatives and Moderates showed a slight (but not significant) reverse effect such that they rated the
Victims’ Group Higher (Black) condition as less credible than the Privileged Group Higher (White)
condition.
2.5
3
3.5
4
4.5
5
5.5
Liberals
Moderates
Conservatives
Equal
Women Higher
Men Higher

21
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in Behavioral Science Equalitarianism
So far, our results have consistently shown that Liberals are biased against information that suggests that
a privileged group is higher in a socially valued trait than a victims’ group relative to information that
suggests that a victims’ group is higher or that the two groups are equal. Our results have also
consistently shown that higher liberalism scores predict lower credibility ratings of vignettes that suggest
that suggest that a privileged group is higher in a socially valued trait than a victims’ group, and this has
been consistently mediated by scores on our equalitarianism scale.
However, the story for Conservatives is more mixed and more difficult to summarize. In this study,
Conservatives’ results looked like Liberals’ results. However, in previous studies that used race instead of
sex, Conservatives either evinced no bias or appeared to “favor” the Privileged Group (White) over the
Victims’ group (Black) (though they demonstrated the strongest preference for Equal). There are multiple
possible explanations for Conservatives’ pattern of results, such as that they are racially biased against
Blacks and sexually biased against men; or that they believe that which race or sex is said to be higher is
a valid input into argument credibility evaluations (see PRE principle); or that our results for
Conservatives are false positives (given the inconsistency of the size and direction of these differences
for Conservatives). Though we cannot address all these explanations assiduously in a few studies, and
though the primary focus of this paper is on Liberal bias, which has been very consistent and predictable
in all studies—we do explore them further in Studies 6 and 7.
Of course, there are possible objections to our interpretation of our results thus far, the two most
serious are these: (1) Perhaps the results do not show that Liberals are biased but rather that they are
using appropriate Bayesian reasoning; and/or (2) Perhaps the results do not show that Liberals are
biased but rather that they are appropriately skeptical of the powerful (privileged groups) when they (or
anyone) claim that their group (Whites or Men) scores higher on a socially valued trait. One might
contend that (1) powerful groups in society often forward narratives, including even putatively scientific
narratives, that cast them in a favorable light while casting less powerful groups in a negative light and
(2) Liberals are more sensitive to this reality than Conservatives.
These alternative hypotheses are difficult to rule out entirely, but we believe that a within-subjects
design is the best tool to do so. Therefore, in Studies 6 and 7, we used such a design. We explain the
logic in more detail below.
Study 6
Study 6 sought to replicate Study 4 and attempt to rule out possible alternative explanations by
parlaying a within-subjects design. For the sake of simplicity, the Equal condition was dropped from
Study 4. All other materials were identical. Within-subjects designs are useful for studying bias because it
allows us to ascertain whether participants D,'/,3,(they should answer both vignettes consistently. Every
participant gets both vignettes. Some get the Whites Higher first; others get the Blacks Higher first. If
they believe that they should rate them consistently, then they should anchor their second response to
their first. This would suggest that they believe it is biased (or that it looks biased) to rate them
differently. Bias would manifest as an "$>,$(,)),58 such that if participants see preference congruent
information first, then they would rate both arguments higher (on average) than when preference
incongruent information came first (because they are anchoring their second response to their first). On
the other hand, if they don’t think they should answer them consistently, because they think it is rational
to let which group is said to be higher influence their judgments (e.g., because it is right and rational to
be skeptical of information that suggests that privileged groups are higher), then we should not see an
order effect, and conclude that perhaps this is not a bias after all.
To s e e t hi s m or e c l ea r ly, im a gi n e t ha t w e u se d t wo vi g ne t te s d es c ri b in g i d en ti c al re se ar ch pr o ce d ur es . I n
one, a scientist concluded, “A squirrel is larger than a bear.” And in the other, he/she concluded, “A bear
is larger than a squirrel.” And then we asked how credible each procedure was. We might not expect an

22
Journal of Open Inquiry
in Behavioral Science Equalitarianism
order effect because people believe that it is rational not to answer these two statements consistently
because one is clearly wrong and the other is clearly correct. Now imagine two vignettes in which either
a very attractive or a very unattractive woman applied for an office job with the exact same résumé. And
then we asked, “how qualified is the candidate?” Here, we might expect an order effect because
participants know that it would be biased to rate the candidates differently, but they also might have a
propensity to rate the attractive candidate as more qualified. In this case, we would see that when they
evaluate the attractive candidate first, they would evaluate her as relatively qualified, and then upon
viewing the exact same résumé from a less attractive candidate, evaluate her similarly as high; but if they
evaluated the less attractive candidate first, they would evaluate her as relatively less qualified, and then
upon viewing the exact same résumé from the more attractive candidate, evaluate her similarly as low.
The presence of this kind of "$>,$(,)),58 can suggest that participants are not basing their evaluations on
different rational criteria for the two different conditions, but rather that they believe it is unreasonable
and biased to do so.
For Liberals, we expected an order effect such that they would evaluate both arguments more favorably
if they first read the Blacks Higher argument and then the Whites Higher argument than if the arguments
were presented in reverse order. We also expected Liberals to rate both Race conditions more similarly
within order condition than between order conditions, which would indicate that Liberals at least D,'/,3,
it is irrational to evaluate the two arguments differently, despite evincing this exact bias in the order
effect.
For Conservatives, we expected a possible main effect of race (consistent with the trending but non-
significant patterns in Studies 3-4) such that they would rate the Whites Higher argument somewhat
more credible than the Blacks Higher argument. We did not have strong predictions about whether there
would be an order effect for Conservatives, but we did think the presence or absence of it would be
informative for understanding the underlying reasons for a possible race effect for Conservatives. If we
did observe an order effect, this would provide evidence that Conservatives demonstrate a reverse bias
as Liberals, with a preference for information that portrays high status groups favorably over information
that portrays low status groups favorably (at least on race—their patterns were trending in the opposite
direction for sex). If we did not observe an order effect, this might suggest that Conservatives have an
intuition about average differences in IQ scores between races (Hunt, 2011; Mackintosh, 2011) and thus
believe it is rational to treat these conditions differently.
Method
Participants. U.S. participants (?age = 35.41, 4@ = 11.88; 421 female; 604 White, 83 Black, 75 Asian, 34
Latino, 5 Middle Eastern) were recruited via MTurk. We originally aimed for 400 participants (401
participated) and analyzed the results after 401. The Order condition x ideology interaction was trending
in an informative direction but was not statistically significant. We then conducted a second wave of
recruitment a few days later for 400 more participants (800 total); 803 participated. After recruiting
these additional participants, observed power = .79 for the Order x ideology interaction. Participants
were slightly above the midpoint on liberalism (? = 4.53) and slightly above the midpoint on
equalitarianism (? = 4.70), and these were positively correlated, $ = .56, +(< .001.
Procedure. Methods were identical to Study 3 with one exception (equalitarian scale,
a
= .92; Blacks
Higher credibility,
a
= .93; Whites Higher credibility,
a
= .94): it was conducted within subjects rather
than between. Order of presentation was randomly assigned. After reading the first argument, they
received the direction below before receiving the second:
-%(82,(&$8/5',(0"#(P#98($,&>O(=,(&'8,$,>(82,(>/$,58/"%(")(82,(-](;&+(82&8(@$6(1,$$0(=&9(8$0/%;(8"(,U+'&/%(&%>(
82,($,9#'89(82&8(@$6(1,$$0()"#%>6(A2&8(/9O(=,(52&%;,>(82,(&$8/5',(8"(9&0(82&8(@$6(1,$$0(=&9(8$0/%;(8"(,U+'&/%(
=20(Q2/8,9FX1'&5J9G(95"$,(2/;2,$("%(5,$8&/%(-](8,989(82&%(1'&5J9FXQ2/8,9GO(&%>(82&8(2,()"#%>(82&8(Ncd(")(

23
Journal of Open Inquiry
in Behavioral Science Equalitarianism
Q2/8,9FX1'&5J9G(5&$$0(82,(/%8,''/;,%5,(;,%,(=2,$,&9("%'0(MYd(")(1'&5J9FXQ2/8,9G(5&$$0(/86(
-%($,&'/80O(@$6(1,$$0(=&9(8$0/%;(8"(,U+'&/%(=20(1'&5J9FXQ2/8,9G(95"$,(2/;2,$("%(5,$8&/%(-](8,989(82&%(
Q2/8,9FX1'&5J9GO(&%>(2,()"#%>(82&8(Ncd(")(1'&5J9FXQ2/8,9G(5&$$0(82,(/%8,''/;,%5,(;,%,(=2,$,&9("%'0(MYd(
")(Q2/8,9FX1'&5J9G(5&$$0(/86(
*%(82,(%,U8(+&;,O(0"#(=/''($,&>(82,(&58#&'(&$8/5',(&9(/8(=&9("$/;/%&''0(+#D'/92,>(&%>($,9+"%>("%(82,(9&:,(
82$,,(.#,98/"%96(
Results
We first entered credibility ratings into a general linear model, with Order condition (between: Whites
Higher First vs. Blacks Higher First), Race condition (within: Whites Higher vs. Blacks Higher), ideology
(centered), and all interactions as predictors. As can be seen in Table 7, there was a significant main
effect of Race condition such that the argument was perceived as somewhat more credible when the
gene explained why Whites score higher on intelligence tests than Blacks (? = 3.70, 4@ = 1.72) than vice
versa (? = 3.59, 4@ = 1.65). There was no main effect of order. There was a main effect of ideology such
that more liberal ideology predicted lower argument credibility ratings. All two-way interactions and the
three-way interaction were statistically significant.
Tab le 7
A2,(/%)'#,%5,(")(82,(\&5,(B"%>/8/"%(FQ2/8,9(T/;2,$(5$,>/D/'/80e(1'&5J9(T/;2,$(
5$,>/D/'/80GO(*$>,$(B"%>/8/"%(FYZ(Q2/8,9(T/;2,$(E/$98e(MZ(1'&5J9(T/;2,$(E/$98GO(
/>,"'";0O(&%>(82,(/%8,$&58/"%9("%(&$;#:,%8(5$,>/D/'/80(
E(
+(
h
p2(
Race condition
26.52
<.001
.033
Order condition
1.49
.223
.002
Ideology
3.49
.002
.026
Race x Order
8.78
.003
.011
Race x Ideology
11.93
<.001
.083
Order x Ideology
2.22
.039
.017
Race x Order x Ideology
5.22
<.001
.038
B"%9,$3&8/3,9(*%'0(
Race condition
25.71
<.001
.113
Order condition
0.38
.540
.002
Race x Order
2.61
.108
.013
?">,$&8,9(*%'0(
Race condition
3.83
.052
.021
Order condition
2.20
.140
.012
Race x Order
4.49
.035
.024
g/D,$&'9(*%'0(
Race condition
12.71
<.001
.030
Order condition
5.47
.020
.013
Race x Order
0.11
.737
.000
As in previous studies, we broke the model down into categorical ideological groups. We reran the model
among only Conservatives (% =204), among only Moderates (% = 183), and among only Liberals (% =414)
with Order condition (between: Whites Higher First vs. Blacks Higher First), Race condition (within:

24
Journal of Open Inquiry
in Behavioral Science Equalitarianism
Whites Higher vs. Blacks Higher), and the two-way interaction as predictors. As predicted, and as can be
seen in Figure 5, Liberals displayed an order effect such that they rated both arguments (averaged) as
more credible if they read the Blacks Higher argument first and then the Whites Higher (? = 3.63, 4@ =
1.63) than when the arguments were presented in the reverse order (? = 3.26, 4@ = 1.65). However,
Liberals also display a main effect of race such that they rated the Blacks Higher argument as more
credible (? = 3.51, 4@ = 1.64) than the Whites Higher argument (? = 3.37, 4@ = 1.67). As can be seen in
Figure 5, simple contrasts revealed that Liberals rated both the Blacks Higher argument, + = .028, and the
Whites Higher argument, + = .020, as more credible in the Blacks Higher First condition than the Whites
Higher First condition. Liberals also rated the argument more credible in the Blacks Higher condition
than the Whites Higher condition regardless of which argument came first, +s < .023. Note that
magnitude of the difference between the two Order conditions within each Race condition was more
than double the magnitude of the difference between each Race condition within each Order condition.
In other words, within each order condition, Liberals evaluated the Blacks Higher and Whites Higher
arguments more similarly to each other than how similarly they rated the exact same Blacks Higher
argument across order conditions and how similarly they rated the exact same Whites Higher argument
across order conditions.
Among Conservatives, there was only a significant main effect of Race condition, such that Conservatives
evaluated the argument as more credible in the Whites Higher condition (? = 4.25, 4@ = 1.75) than in
the Blacks Higher condition (? = 3.67, 4@ = 1.69), somewhat similarly to Studies 3-4, which found
trending but non-significant effects in the same direction. The Order effect and interaction were not
significant (see Table 8). As can be seen in Figure 5, simple contrasts revealed that Conservatives rated
the argument more credible in the Whites Higher condition than the Blacks Higher regardless of which
argument came first, +s < .014, and the order condition had no significant influence on credibility ratings
for either the Blacks Higher or Whites Higher argument, +s > .178.
Among Moderates, there was a marginal main effect of Race condition, such that they evaluated the
argument as more credible in the Whites Higher condition (? = 3.82, 4@ = 1.65) than the Blacks Higher
condition (? = 3.68, 4@ = 1.63), similar to Conservatives. The Order condition was not significant, but the
interaction was. As can be seen in Figure 5, simple contrasts revealed that Moderates rated the Whites
Higher argument as more credible when they saw it second than when they saw it first, + = .044, but
evaluated the Blacks Higher argument as equally credible regardless of order of presentation, + = .241.
When the Whites Higher argument was presented first, Moderates rated the Blacks Higher and Whites
Higher arguments roughly equally, + = .910, but when the Blacks Higher argument was presented first,
Moderates rated the Whites Higher argument as more credible than the Blacks Higher argument, + =
.004.

25
Journal of Open Inquiry
in Behavioral Science Equalitarianism
(
(
(
E/;#$,(a6 Argument credibility by Race and Order conditions within each ideological group.
Notes. Within each ideological group, the center two bars are credibility ratings of the Blacks Higher
argument and the outer two bars are ratings of the Whites Higher argument; the left two bars are ratings
within the condition in which the Whites Higher argument came first and the right two bars are ratings
within the condition in which the Blacks Higher argument came first.
Moderated Mediations and Mediations. We next tested whether equalitarianism mediated the
interactive effect of Order condition and ideology on argument credibility (within each Race condition),
specifying ideology as the independent variable and Order condition as the moderator. For Whites
Higher credibility ratings, equalitarianism mediated the interactive effect, 95% CI [-.21, -.11].
Unexpectedly, there was also a smaller but significant moderated mediation for argument credibility in
the Blacks Higher condition, 95% CI [-.12, -.02].
We then ran simple mediations within each Order condition. Consistent with the results of the
moderated mediation, equalitarianism mediated the effect of ideology on Whites Higher argument
credibility when they read the Whites Higher argument first, 95% CI [-.27, -.11]. Higher equalitarianism
accounted for the relationship between more liberal ideology and lower ratings of argument credibility
when Whites were higher and that condition came first (see Supplement).
These relationships were somewhat smaller, but generally similar when they read the Whites Higher
argument second, 95% CI [-.19, -.07], such that higher equalitarianism mediated the relationship
between more liberalism and lower ratings of argument credibility that Whites are higher (see
Supplement).
On the Blacks Higher outcome, equalitarianism did not mediate ideology on argument credibility when
the argument came first 95% CI [-.12, .00], but did when the argument came second 95% CI [-.17, -.01].
Higher equalitarianism fully accounted for the relationship between more liberal ideology and '"=,$
ratings of argument credibility when Blacks were said to be higher and that argument came second (see
Supplement).
Discussion
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
4.5
5
Liberals
Moderates
Conservatives
Whites Higher First
Blacks Higher Second
Blacks Higher First
Whites Higher Second

26
Journal of Open Inquiry
in Behavioral Science Equalitarianism
For Liberals, the results were almost exactly consistent with predictions derived from equalitarianism.
They evinced an order effect such that they rated both arguments as more credible when they received
the preference consistent argument (Blacks Higher) first than when the arguments were presented in
reverse order. Within each order condition, there were only small differences between the Blacks Higher
and Whites Higher arguments (though, they did consistently rate the Blacks Higher argument as slightly
more credible), whereas there were larger differences in argument credibility ratings for the identical
Blacks Higher and Whites Higher arguments between order conditions. This suggests that Liberals
believe that the race of the higher IQ group should not (much) affect their assessment of the argument’s
credibility. However, despite this, our previous results and the order effect in this study show that the
race of the higher group does in fact affect their rating. This supports our contention that the difference
in credibility ratings between race conditions is the result of motivated cognition and constitutes a bias.
Furthermore, and consistent with previous results, more liberal opposition to the Whites Higher
argument was again mediated by higher equalitarianism.
Unexpectedly, we also found that higher equalitarianism mediated the relationship between more liberal
ideology and '"=,$ ratings of argument credibility when Blacks were said to be higher and that argument
came 9,5"%>. It might seem surprising at first that Liberals found it less credible that Blacks have higher
IQ than Conservatives did, but it appears consistent with our theory (though, we did not predict it).
When the Blacks Higher argument came second, participants had already read the Whites Higher
argument (which Liberals had evaluated as relatively non-credible). This lowered the anchor point for
Liberals (compared to Conservatives). When Liberals rated the Whites Higher argument as non-credible,
presumably in an effort to maintain consistency, they then rated the second argument as less credible
than did Conservatives, even though it favored a victims’ group (and, indeed, in the Blacks Higher first
condition, Liberals rated the Blacks Higher argument as somewhat [though not significantly] more
credible than did Conservatives). Therefore, equalitarianism mediated the relationship between liberal
ideology and rating the Blacks Higher argument as less credible when participants had already read the
Whites Higher vignette.
For the first time, Conservatives displayed a significant effect of Race condition, such that they evaluated
the Whites Higher argument as more credible than the Blacks Higher argument. Though this effect was
not significant for Conservatives in Studies 3 and 4, the difference was in the same direction in those
studies, and the difference was fairly large in the present study, so this is likely to be a real and replicable
effect for Conservatives. The meaning of this difference is not obvious. Perhaps one’s first reaction to the
result would be to accuse Conservatives of anti-Black bias. And this is certainly possible; however, other
results are not so consistent with an anti-Black bias interpretation. First, in previous studies,
Conservatives rated the Equal condition as slightly more (though not statistically significantly more)
credible than the Whites Higher condition, which is hard to square with a posited anti-Black bias (why
then would they not rate the argument that said White people score higher than Black people the most
favorably?). Still, they did rate Blacks Higher as the least credible, which, one might argue, does suggest
&(J/%>(")(&%8/`1'&5J(D/&96 But second, Conservatives did not display an order effect, suggesting that they
thought it was rational (or defensible) to rate the stories differently. And this is congruent with current
psychometric data, which show that White people score somewhat higher than Black people on
intelligence tests on average (Hunt, 2011; Mackintosh, 2011; though note, the underlying reasons for
this difference are still debated). Future studies should further explore whether Conservatives
demonstrate anti-Black biases.
Study 7
In Study 6, we provided evidence of Liberal bias against information that appears to favor a privileged
group over a victims’ group because Liberals demonstrated an order effect, which weakens the force of
Bayesian objections. In the current study, we extended the investigation further by using the same

27
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in Behavioral Science Equalitarianism
design but different examples of privileged and victims’ groups: men and women. All methods were
identical to Study 6 except instead of manipulating which race was said to perform better on certain IQ
tests, we manipulated which sex was said to perform better on certain IQ tests (men vs. women). We
again predicted an order effect for Liberals such that they would rate both arguments are less credible
when they read the Men Higher (privileged group) argument first than when they read the Women
Higher (victims’ group) argument first. We also expected that equalitarianism would mediate the
influence of more liberal ideology on lower argument credibility ratings that men are more intelligent
than women when this argument came first. We did not have strong predictions about Conservatives.
We guessed that they would roughly match Liberals’ response pattern for the Sex condition (as they did
in Study 3), but we did not know whether to expect an order effect for Conservatives.
Method
Participants. U.S. participants (?age = 35.84, 4@ = 12.05; 417 female; 625 White, 62 Black, 67 Asian, 49
Latino, 2 Middle Eastern) were recruited via Mturk. We again aimed for 800 participants total; 805
participated. Participants were slightly above the midpoint on liberalism (? = 4.54) and slightly above
the midpoint on equalitarianism (? = 4.72), and these were positively correlated, $ = .57, +(< .001.
Procedure. This study was preregistered: http://aspredicted.org/blind.php?x=rz2fv9. We followed this
preregistration exactly, with the exception that we said that we would report the results for Moderates
in the supplemental materials only, but instead we report them in the main text as we did in previous
studies (though note, we had no a priori predictions about Moderates, nor are they the focus of this
paper). Methods were identical to Study 6 (equalitarianism scale a = .92; Women Higher credibility a =
.92; Men Higher credibility a = .92) with one exception: sex was manipulated instead of race (i.e., the
words “Whites” and “Blacks” were swapped with the words “men” and “women”).
Results
We first entered credibility ratings into a general linear model, with Order condition (between: Men
Higher First vs. Women Higher First), Sex condition (within: Men Higher vs. Women Higher), ideology
(centered), and all interactions as predictors. As can be seen in Table 8, there was a significant main
effect of Sex condition such that the argument was perceived as somewhat more credible when the gene
explained why women score higher on intelligence tests than men (? = 4.15, 4@ = 1.50) than vice versa
(? = 3.90, 4@ = 1.53). There was no main effect of order. There was a main effect of ideology such that
more liberal ideology predicted lower argument credibility ratings. All two-way interactions were
significant or marginal. There was no significant three-way interaction.
To d i ss e ct th e t hr e e-way interaction further, we again reran the model among only Conservatives (%
=229), only Moderates (% =163) and only Liberals (% =413) with Order condition (between: Men Higher
First vs. Women Higher First), Sex condition (within: Men Higher vs. Women Higher), and the two-way
interaction as predictors. These results are presented in Table 8 and Figure 6.
Among Liberals, there was a significant main effect of Sex condition, such that Liberals evaluated the
argument as more credible when the gene explained why women score higher on some intelligence tests
than men (? = 4.04, 4@ = 1.55) than vice versa (? = 3.65, 4@ = 1.56). As predicted, there was also a
significant effect of Order condition such that Liberals evaluated the arguments as more credible when
they read the Women Higher argument first (? = 4.09, 4@ = 1.47) than when they read the Men Higher
argument first (? = 3.62, 4@ = 1.59). There was also a marginal interaction such that the difference
between the Sex conditions was larger when participants read the Men Higher argument first. As can be
seen in Figure 6, simple contrasts revealed that Liberals who read the Women Higher argument first
rated both the Women Higher argument, + = .010, and the Men Higher argument, + < .001, as
significantly more credible than those who read the Men Higher argument first. Liberals also rated the

28
Journal of Open Inquiry
in Behavioral Science Equalitarianism
Women Higher argument as more credible in both order conditions, + < .001. Note that the magnitude
of the difference in credibility ratings between the Men Higher condition and Women Higher condition
when each argument came first was nearly ten times the difference between these conditions than
when each came second, which demonstrates a clear attempt to anchor the second judgment to the
first.
Among Conservatives, there was a significant main effect of Sex condition, such that Conservatives
evaluated the argument as more credible when the gene explained why women score higher on some
intelligence tests than men (? = 4.42, 4@ = 1.33) than vice versa (? = 4.28, 4@ = 1.39). Conservatives
displayed similar patterns in Study 5 and Study 2 (though it was only significant in Study 5). As in Study 6,
the Order condition was not significant for Conservatives. Unexpectedly, there was a significant two-way
interaction between Sex and Order, such that there was only a significant effect of Sex in the Men Higher
First condition. When Conservatives read the Men Higher argument first and then the Women Higher
argument, they rated the Women Higher argument as significantly more credible, + = .001, than the Men
Higher argument. When Conservatives read the Women Higher argument first and then the Men Higher
argument, they rated the arguments as equally credible, + = 1.00. There were no significant differences
in credibility ratings in the Men Higher or Women Higher conditions between order, +s > .247. Across
Studies 2, 5, and 7, Conservatives demonstrated a somewhat consistent pattern such that they rated the
Women Higher argument as either more credible than the Men Higher argument, or rated the
arguments as equally credible. Conservatives never rated the Men Higher argument as more credible
(nor did any other group).
Among Moderates, neither main effects nor the interaction approached significance, +s > .658.
Moderates rated all arguments virtually equally credible. Thus, across the three studies that manipulated
sex, Moderates consistently rated either the Women Higher argument as more credible than the Men
Higher argument or rated the two arguments as equally credible (similar to Conservatives).
Tab le 8
A2,(/%)'#,%5,(")(82,(4,U(B"%>/8/"%(F?,%(T/;2,$(5$,>/D/'/80e(Q":,%(T/;2,$(
5$,>/D/'/80GO(*$>,$(B"%>/8/"%(FYZ(?,%(T/;2,$(E/$98e(MZ(Q":,%(T/;2,$(E/$98GO(
/>,"'";0O(&%>(82,(/%8,$&58/"%9("%(&$;#:,%8(5$,>/D/'/80(
E(
+(
h
p2(
Sex condition
36.17
<.001
.044
Order condition
1.30
.255
.002
Ideology
4.47
<.001
.033
Sex x Order
6.70
.010
.008
Sex x Ideology
3.02
.006
.022
Order x Ideology
2.07
.055
.015
Sex x Order x Ideology
0.72
.631
.005
B"%9,$3&8/3,9(*%'0(
Sex condition
5.44
.021
.023
Order condition
0.10
.747
.000
Sex x Order
5.44
.021
.023
?">,$&8,9(*%'0(
Sex condition
0.20
.659
.001
Order condition
0.01
.938
.000
Sex x Order
0.02
.880
.000

29
Journal of Open Inquiry
in Behavioral Science Equalitarianism
g/D,$&'9(*%'0(
Sex condition
61.70
<.001
.131
Order condition
11.28
.001
.027
Sex x Order
3.09
.079
.007
(
(
(
E/;#$,(b6 Argument credibility by Sex and Order conditions within each ideological group.
Notes. Within each ideological group, the center two bars are credibility ratings of the Women Higher
argument and the outer two bars are ratings of the Men Higher argument; the left two bars are ratings
within the condition in which the Men Higher argument came first and the right two bars are ratings
within the condition in which the Women Higher argument came first.
Moderated Mediations and Mediations. We next tested whether equalitarianism mediated the
interactive effect of Order condition and ideology on argument credibility (within each Sex condition),
specifying ideology as the independent variable and Order condition as the moderator. For Men Higher
argument credibility, equalitarianism mediated the interactive effect, 95% CI [-.14, -.05]. There was no
significant moderated mediation for Women Higher argument credibility, 95% CI [-.04, .04].
To m o de l t h es e i nt e ra ct i on s s i mp l y, w e t he n te st e d s im p le m e di a ti o ns wi t hi n e ac h Order condition. As
predicted, equalitarianism mediated the influence of ideology on Men Higher argument credibility when
they read the Men Higher argument first, 95% CI [-.19, -.07] (see Supplement). Confirming the results of
the moderated mediation, equalitarianism did not mediate the effect of ideology on Men Higher
argument credibility when they read the Men Higher argument second, 95% CI [-.11, .03].
As expected, on the Women Higher outcome, equalitarianism did not mediate ideology on argument
credibility in either Order condition, Women Higher First 95% CI [-.04, .09], Men Higher First 95% CI [-.08,
.04].
2.5
3
3.5
4
4.5
5
5.5
Liberals
Moderates
Conservatives
Men Higher First
Women Higher Second
Women Higher First
Men Higher Second

30
Journal of Open Inquiry
in Behavioral Science Equalitarianism
Discussion
Liberals displayed the expected pattern of results exactly. Specifically, they again demonstrated an order
effect such that they evaluated both arguments more favorably when they received the preference
congruent argument (Women Higher) first than when they received the preference incongruent
argument (Men Higher) first. Even so, they still consistently rated the Women Higher argument as more
credible than the Men Higher argument in both order conditions, particularly so when they read the
Men Higher argument first (i.e., they were willing to significantly adjust their credibility rating up when
the conclusions changed and the argument said women were actually higher). This suggests that Liberals
might think it is acceptable (and rational) to permit the direction of the sex difference to influence their
judgments somewhat, though not to the extent that sex actually does influence their judgments as
demonstrated by the roughly 2-3 times greater difference in credibility ratings between the arguments
when each was presented first than the differences between the arguments within each order condition.
Also as predicted, and consistent with all previous results, higher equalitarianism mediated the influence
of more liberal ideology on lower argument credibility ratings in the Privileged Group (men) Higher
condition.
Again, results were somewhat less clear for Conservatives. Differences were generally small. Participants
who read the Women Higher argument first rated both arguments virtually identically. Participants who
read the Men Higher argument first demonstrated a small trend similar to the pattern for Liberals (and
the previous studies) such that they adjusted their rating up somewhat when the argument conclusions
changed and said women are actually higher. However, there was no main effect for order, which would
indicate a bias.
Moderates rated all arguments virtually identically regardless of Sex condition or Order of presentation.
A possible limitation of these within-subjects studies is that the instruction between the two arguments
may have made participants suspicious of the experimenter, thus influencing their evaluations. It seems
that if this were the case, participants would have generally evaluated the second argument less
favorably than the first (suspicion of the argument should make the argument seem less credible), yet
we did not observe this pattern in either Study 6 or 7, thus we believe this is unlikely. Nonetheless, we
hope readers note this limitation in their evaluations of these studies, and we hope future researchers
will try other “cover stories” in within-subjects designs to rule this possibility out more thoroughly.
Results Summary and Meta-analyses
Tab le 9 b el ow s um marize s the re sults of a ll s im pl e co nt ra st s (with eff ec t si ze s) bet we en ex periment al
conditions among Conservatives, Moderates, and Liberals. The table lists which group was marginally or
significantly #%)&3"$,> by each ideological group (relative to the favored group). By unfavored, we mean
that participants rated vignettes that said that this group was higher on a socially valued trait (generally,
IQ) as less credible than the comparison condition (either groups are equal or the other group was
higher). Although the term “unfavored” is slightly clumsy, it allowed us to condense a great deal of
information into one table.
In general, neither Conservatives nor Liberals appeared to desire that one group perform better than
another group (on a socially valued trait). Rather, both seemed to prefer that both groups be equal.
However, relative to Conservatives, and relative to information that portrayed victims’ groups more
favorably, Liberals were averse to information that portrayed privileged groups more favorably than
victims’ groups. This is the clear and consistent pattern observed in Table 9. But, and importantly,
Liberals didn’t seem biased )"$(information that favored victims’ groups (Black people, women). Instead,
our results support our contention that Liberals prefer that all demographic groups be roughly similar on
socially valued traits. However, if demographic groups are not similar, Liberals seem particularly averse to

31
Journal of Open Inquiry
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the notion that the privileged group would have a more desirable quality. Despite some inconsistencies
across studies for both Moderates and Conservatives, the meta-analyses below allowed us to identify
some likely real patterns for these groups.
Ta bl e 9
Simple contrasts and Cohen's d between indicated binary conditions within each categorical ideological group for
each experimental study
Study
Bias Effect
Ideological Group
Conservatives
Moderates
Liberals
Unfavored
Unfavored
Unfavored
Group
p
d
Group
p
d
Group
p
d
2
Sex Condition
.44
.17
Men
**
.64
3
Race Condition
-.20
.28
Whites
**
.58
4
Race (White/Black)
-.33
-.31
Whites
*
.39
Race (Equal/Black)
Blacks
*
-.58
Blacks
*
-.57
Blacks
*
-.36
Race (Equal/White)
.26
.24
Whites
*
.69
5
Sex (Men/Women)
Men
*
.45
.33
Men
**
.41
Sex (Equal/Women)
.04
-.03
-.17
Sex (Equal/Men)
Men
+
.39
.36
Men
***
.59
6
Race Condition
Blacks
***
-.34
Blacks
+
-.09
Whites
***
.08
Order Condition
-.08
.21
Whites
*
.22
Race Within BH1
Blacks
***
-.50
Blacks
**
-.17
Whites
*
.08
Race Within WH1
Blacks
*
-.22
-.01
Whites
**
.10
BH Between Order
-.19
.12
Whites
*
.21
WH Between Order
.03
Whites
*
.30
Whites
*
.23
7
Sex Condition
Men
*
.10
.03
Men
***
.25
Order Condition
-.04
.01
Men
*
.31
Sex Within WH1
.00
.03
Men
***
.21
Sex Within MH1
Men
**
.21
.01
Men
***
.29
WH Between Order
-.16
.02
Men
**
.26
MH Between Order
.06
.00
Men
***
.37
Notes. Blank cell = No preference at p >.10; +p <.10, *p <.05, **p <.01, ***p <.001.
Shaded cell = Privileged group unfavored; Unshaded cell (if not blank) = Victims' group unfavored.
In Study 6, BH1 = Blacks Higher First condition; WH1 = Whites Higher First condition;
BH = Blacks Higher evaluation; WH = Whites Higher evaluation.
In Study 7, WH1 = Women Higher First condition; MH1 = Men Higher First condition;
WH = Women Higher evaluation; MH = Men Higher evaluation.
Positive Cohen's ds indicate privileged group unfavored; Negative indicates victims' group unfavored on relevant
comparisons. Bold indicates a Cohen's d > .199 (or -.199), the threshold for a "small effect."
Meta-Analyses
As a last step, we conducted 12 mini meta-analyses of the interaction effect between the experimental
manipulations and continuous political ideology as well as of the condition effect among categorical
Conservatives, Moderates, and Liberals for Studies 2 through 7. Method. We used procedures outlined
by Goh et al. (2016). To make effect sizes comparable across studies, we dropped the equal conditions

32
Journal of Open Inquiry
in Behavioral Science Equalitarianism
from Studies 4 and 5, and we used only participants’ first evaluation in Studies 6 and 7 so they could be
treated as a between-subjects designs as in Studies 2 through 5. For the interaction effects between the
experimental manipulations and continuous ideology, we used the semipartial $s of the interactions as
effect size estimates. To test the bias effect size among Conservatives, Moderates, and Liberals
separately, we computed $ effect sizes from the ?s, 4@s, and %s for each experimental condition in each
study. The $ effect sizes were then Fisher’s h transformed to $i. We used random effects to meta-analyze
the overall interactions and overall effect sizes among Conservatives, Moderates, and Liberals because
there were at least two kinds of studies: those that manipulated race and those that manipulated
gender.
We then conducted fixed effects meta-analyses to test the interaction effect and manipulation effect
sizes among each ideological group only on the subset of studies that manipulated sex (Studies 2, 5, and
7) and on the subset that manipulated race (Studies 3, 4, and 6) separately. Fixed effects is appropriate
for these meta-analyses because the studies were nearly identical within manipulation type, and thus
weighting by sample size is preferred (see Goh et al., 2016). The $is were weighted and averaged using
the formula: Weighted $ji = Σ ([N-3]($i) / Σ (N-3). To estimate statistical significance, we used the
Stouffer’s Z test, in which the + values for each effect size were converted to hs, combined using the
formula: hcombined = Σ Z / sqrt(k), and then converted back to +s.
Results. For the fixed effects analyses, we conducted four single-sample 8-tests on the $is. Consistent
with hypotheses, there was a significant effect of the interaction between the experimental
manipulations and continuous political ideology (J=6, %=2,617), $i = .12, 8(5)=4.50, +=.006, 95% CI [.05,
.19]. Also consistent with hypotheses, among Liberals, there was a significant overall effect of the
experimental manipulations (J=6, %=1,320), $i = .23, 8(5)= 9.19, +<.001, 95% CI [.17, .30]. Among
Conservatives, there was no overall significant effect of the experimental manipulations (J=6, %=729), $i
= .00, 8(5)=-0.02, +=.983, 95% CI [-.20, .19]. And among Moderates, there was no overall significant effect
of the experimental manipulations (J=6, %=568), $i = .01, 8(5)=0.13, +=.899, 95% CI [-.12, .14].
Among studies that manipulated sex, there was a significant effect of the interaction (J=3, %=1,313), $i =
.10, +=.004. This significant interaction effect reflected the relatively larger effect size among Liberals
than Conservatives. There was a small but significant effect of the sex manipulation on Conservatives
(J=3, %=380), $i = .10, +=.016, and a larger one among Liberals (J=3, %=654), $i = .27, +<.00001. There
was no significant effect of the sex manipulation among Moderates (J=3, %=279), $i = .06, +=.235.
Among studies that manipulated race, there was again a significant effect of the interaction (J=3,
%=1,304), $i = .16, +<.00001. There was again no significant effect among Moderates (J=3, %=289), $i = -
.01, +=.492 Conservatives displayed a reverse effect such that they evaluated the argument more
positively when it favored White people than when it favored Black people (J=3, %=349), $i = -.18,
+=.003. And Liberals displayed the hypothesized effect (J=3, %=666), $i = .18, +<.00001.
General Discussion
Take n to ge th er, the dat a fro m thes e st ud ie s st ro ng ly s up port t he e qu al it ar ia n a cc ou nt o f li be ra l bi as.
First, Liberals appeared committed to intrinsic group equality. They were biased such that they found
vignettes that stated that two demographic groups were equal more (although not statistically
significantly relative to Women Higher in Study 5) credible than vignettes that stated that one group
outperformed another. Second, they were consistently biased against results that favored a privileged
group over a victims’ group. In every single study, they rated the Privileged Group Higher vignette as less
credible than the Victims’ Group Higher. And third, scores on our equalitarian measure mediated our
results in every study such that higher scores on the equalitarian measure predicted more bias among
Liberals. Consistent with our hypotheses, meta-analyses revealed a significant interaction effect overall
as well as within studies that manipulated sex and those that manipulated race, such that increased

33
Journal of Open Inquiry
in Behavioral Science Equalitarianism
liberalism predicted a larger bias against information that portrays high status groups more favorably
than low status groups relative to the reverse. Also consistent with hypotheses, meta-analyses revealed
the hypothesized effects for Liberals overall and within both types of studies. The meta-analyses also
revealed a relatively smaller but still significant effect of the sex manipulation for Conservatives in the
same direction as for Liberals, and a significant effect of the race manipulation for Conservatives in the
opposite direction as for Liberals. Among Moderates, there were no significant effects of the conditions.
Our theory builds from previous work, but goes beyond it, providing a framework for understanding a
powerful and largely empirically unexplored—but not undiscussed—source of bias. Many scholars have
noted—some lamenting and some championing—that many Liberals have protective concerns for
victims’ groups (e.g., Bawer, 2012; Haidt, 2012; Mac Donald, 2018; Pinker, 2003) and that those concerns
can lead to powerful biases about victims’ groups. Therefore, at minimum, our theory is &(+$/"$/
plausible. But it is also largely congruent with many previous analyses of Liberals and provides a
potential explanation for previous findings. For example, Liberals have a stronger pro-black bias than
Conservatives (Axt et al., 2016), Liberals but not Conservatives are less willing to sacrifice the life of a
Black man than a White man to save 100 others (Uhlmann et al., 2009), one of the largest discrepancies
among liberal and conservative bias in the Ditto et al. (2019a) meta-analysis came from a study involving
victims’ groups (Crawford et al., 2013), Liberals are more inclined to impute motives to scientists who
propose biological explanations for life outcomes than those who propose more extrinsic explanations
(Hannikainen, 2018), and Liberals are particularly opposed to research on male-favoring sex-differences
(Stewart-Williams et al., 2021). And this theory makes novel predictions, one of which was supported in
this paper. The consistency of our results across studies and with established empirical data and with
recent controversies in the academic community increases our confidence in our theory and persuades
us that it might be a powerful framework for understanding certain political and even scientific biases.
Furthermore, our theory contributes to a burgeoning area of research on liberal bias that has challenged
prior assumptions about the relation between political ideology and bias. For a long time, many scholars
contended that Conservatives were more prone to bias than Liberals (e.g., Jost et al., 2003). However,
recent evidence and arguments have challenged this asymmetry argument, asserting that bias is likely
equal across political ideologies (Ditto et al., 2019a; Guay & Johnston, 2022). Although some scholars
have been troubled by this (e.g., Baron & Jost, 2019), our results also challenge the asymmetry argument
and illustrate the importance of exploring many different areas of bias. Because most social
psychologists are liberal, they may take liberal biases for granted; that is, they simply assume that liberal
biases are correct and are not biases at all. Indeed, even when people are aware bias exists, they seem
unable to identify bias in themselves (Pronin, Lin, & Ross, 2002). Furthermore, liberal social psychologists
might not be as motivated to discover and shed light on liberal bias as they are for conservative bias,
because conservative thought seems more peculiar and foreign to them. When scholars have looked in
the right places, though, they have found more equivalent levels of bias between ideological groups
(e.g., Crawford, 2012; 2014; Brandt et al., 2014). Of course, our results cannot settle this important
debate, but they do add plausibility to the symmetrical bias thesis, or at least a ‘not as asymmetrical as
previously thought’ hypothesis. And they forward a novel domain and direction of bias among Liberals.
Before expanding our interpretation (and to include Conservatives), discussing possible alternative
explanations, and forwarding some ideas for future directions, we should address limitations.
Limitations
All studies were conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk. We used this population because we could get
a more diverse sample than we could from most University participant pools (Casler et al., 2013).
Furthermore, research suggests that Mturk participants are not insouciant survey takers; they pay
attention and provide reliable data (Hauser & Schwartz, 2016). But this also means that all data were

34
Journal of Open Inquiry
in Behavioral Science Equalitarianism
self-report. This comes with standard problems such as desirability biases. It is certainly possible that
Liberals and Conservatives have slightly different presentational values (Liberals have more equalitarian
presentational values) and that our results simply reflect those values and not biased assessments of our
vignettes. Future work would also benefit from testing these biases among nationally representative
samples, which would have more balanced numbers between Liberals and Conservatives as well as a
more representative spread of Liberals and Conservatives within each ideological group.
Probably the most severe methodological limitation of our investigation was that we focused on only
one socially valued trait: Intelligence. Equalitarianism predicts that Liberals (and others who score high
on this trait/philosophy) will be biased against information that suggests that demographic groups differ
on &':"98(&%0(socially valued trait; and that they will be especially biased against information that
suggests that a privileged group is “better” than a victims’ group on such a trait. We focused on
intelligence alone, and thus it remains unknown whether or results would replicate for other traits.
However, in the time since we conducted these studies, a set of scholars have provided some evidence
that this bias likely extends to other traits. For example, Stewart-Williams and colleagues (2021) found
that people more negatively evaluated research on sex differences that favored males (that men are
better at drawing and lie less often) than research that drew the reverse conclusions, and that this
tendency was stronger among more liberal participants. And Clark and colleagues (2020) found that
people had greater desire to censor science that argued that men evolved to be better leaders than
women than science that argued the reverse, especially among Liberals. We hope future research will
continue to explore these patterns with numerous socially valued traits (e.g., self-control, ambition,
agreeableness, criminality, etc.) and across different kinds of groups that are perceived as more
advantaged or disadvantaged. In general, we would predict that the more intensively valued the trait,
the more intense the bias. The exception is traits whose differences across demographic groups are too
conspicuous to deny (thus increasing clarity of the difference and reducing bias) such as physical
strength differences between men and women. Though note, Study 1b did demonstrate that Liberals
agree less with this contention than Conservatives.
Focusing only on intelligence allowed us to scrutinize the bias carefully across different demographic
target groups (sex-based and race-based) while using varied study designs to refine the theory, replicate
the effects, and rule out alternate explanations. Furthermore, intelligence is a highly socially valued trait,
perhaps one of the highest, and discussion about demographic differences in intelligence is often
morally supercharged, vitriolic, and even counterproductive (Hunt, 2011). It may be that equalitarian
bias plays a role in the unfortunate tone and results of many such discussions.
Our measure of equalitarianism also has limitations. In the present paper, we focused on identifying a
particular form of biased responding among Liberals, trying to rule out as many potential alternate
explanations as possible (though of course not all of them). We did not, however, assiduously validate
the equalitarianism measure by establishing convergent and discriminant validity with other scales,
establishing retest reliability, or narrowing our set of items down to a perhaps better (or less redundant)
set. Although this scale had high internal consistency and very consistently mediated our findings across
studies, it is possible future research will identify a construct that can better explain our findings, and
perhaps one that is more established and has already undergone several perfecting revisions over time.
In other words, we may not need an entirely new construct to explain the present findings. We hope
future researchers will seek to compare this measure of equalitarianism to other similar constructs, such
as Social Dominance Orientation (Pratto et al., 1994) or Preference for Merit (Davey et al., 1999), and
their relation to biased evaluations of information with significance to group differences. If our measure
of equalitarianism proves uniquely useful for studying liberal bias, and particularly liberal bias regarding
low status groups, we hope future research will refine the measure and perhaps generate a more
concise measure. If not, we hope our findings regarding the equalitarianism scale will help scholars
identify the construct that better explains the identified liberal bias.

35
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Alternate Explanations
We can think of at least two serious alternative explanations to our analysis: (1) It is rational to be
skeptical of scientific results which seem to favor the powerful over the oppressed; and (2) it is rational
to believe it more plausible that genetics explain higher IQ scores among victims' groups than that they
explain higher IQ scores among privileged groups. This second explanation seems compelling because
the environment that victims' groups navigate is likely harsher and less conducive to thriving than the
environment that privileged groups experience. Therefore, if a privileged group scores higher, it could be
because of the environment; but if a victims’ group scores higher, then it must be because of genes
(because it couldn’t be caused by the [worse] environment).
It is almost impossible to rule out completely the first explanation. Powerful people have doubtlessly
used science to justify their privilege and to pacify the less fortunate by claiming that the indigent
“deserve” their lot because of thei r inferiority (Gould, 1996). So, according to this argument, when
socially conscious and concerned Liberals are confronted with data that claim that White people score
higher than Black people on IQ scores because of genetics, they rationally assess it as implausible (and
probably as politically motivated). The same holds for data that claim that men score higher than
women. We believe, however, that the within-subjects design studies at least mitigate the force of this
argument. If Liberals believe they are rational to rate arguments that favor privileged groups as less
credible than arguments that favor victims’ groups, then it is unclear why we would see an order effect.
The order effects suggest that Liberals realize that they should answer the two vignettes consistently (or
at least somewhat consistently), which suggests that they believe it would be biased not to do so.
It is possible however that the order effects are simply standard anchoring effects (Furnham & Boo,
2011). That is, perhaps the order effects don’t reflect a concern for appearing or being unbiased, but
simply reflect a psychological anchoring heuristic. Although this is certainly possible, Conservatives (and
Moderates) did not display an anchoring effect, suggesting that anchoring is not a necessary outcome of
such an experimental design. Furthermore, it strikes us as rather implausible that such an anchoring
92"#'>("55#$. In fact, if anything, if not for concerns of bias, we would probably predict that a within-
subjects design would augment differences. Consider, for example, a study in which there were two
conditions: In one cheetahs were said to be faster than dogs and in the other, dogs were said to be faster
than cheetahs. The researchers asked participants to rate the plausibility of the stories. If cheetah faster
came first and got a high plausibility rating, it would seem sensible that dogs faster would get an even
lower rating than if it came first, because the participant would think, “Well, I already noted that
Cheetahs were faster…no way can dogs also be faster.” S t i l l, t h i s i s a p o s si b l e co u n te r a rg u m e nt t ha t
future researchers should address in more detail. A helpful reviewer suggested a possible route of
casting further doubt on this alternate explanation in future work: explicitly making the scientist in the
vignette a black woman. This should minimize, at least to some extent, skepticism that the scientist is
motivated by racism or sexism in the conditions in which the privileged group is said to perform better
on the test.
The order effects cast doubt on the second explanation in the same way they do for the first explanation.
However, one might speculate that whereas Liberals are using their knowledge of alternate
environmental explanations that could explain higher IQ scores among privileged groups than victims’
groups in the between subjects design, the within subjects design compels them to disregard this
knowledge in order to appear consistent in their judgment even though consistency is not the only
rational response pattern. This argument seems to make more sense when applied to race differences in
IQ than to sex differences. Men and women inhabit largely the same environment (same socioeconomic
status and schools, for example) and, in fact, girls and women outperform boys in every stage of
education, from elementary school through college (Duckworth & Seligman, 2006). Still, one might
contend—and Liberals might rationally believe—that they are held back by pernicious and invidious

36
Journal of Open Inquiry
in Behavioral Science Equalitarianism
stereotypes or more subtle forms of sexism (Spencer et al., 1999). Our present investigation does not
allow us definitively to rule out this explanation. We believe, as of now, that our equalitarian theory of
bias is a better, more parsimonious explanation, but researchers should continue to pursue these
questions so that we can continue to update our understanding of these biases (or patterns of
responses, if they are, indeed, not biases).
Conservatives (and Moderates)
In the present investigation, we predicted that Liberals would evince a specific and consistent pattern of
biased responding, one that was supported by the data across all studies and meta-analyses of those
studies. We focused on Liberals because they are a relatively understudied group (Eitan et al., 2018),
very little work deliberately explores biases among Liberals, and recent work has suggested there are
likely domains of liberal bias yet to be fully uncovered (Ditto et al., 2019a, 2019b). However, by including
participants across the ideological spectrum, we were able to discover patterns among Conservatives
and Moderates as well.
Although the patterns were less consistent for Conservatives across studies, the meta-analyses revealed
two patterns for Conservatives. First, in contrast to Liberals, Conservatives rated the argument that a
gene explains why Whites score higher on IQ tests as more credible than the argument that a gene
explains why Blacks score higher. As we noted earlier (see discussion section of Study 6), this might
suggest a bias against Blacks, or this might suggest that Conservatives believe it is rational to treat these
two arguments differently. Although it would be rash to conclude one way or another, there are at least
a few reasons to doubt the anti-Black bias account. Conservatives rated the Equal condition as the most
credible (in Study 4), suggesting a slight “preference” for equality (although this was not statistically
significant). Conservatives did not display an order effect and so appeared to believe that it was rational
to rate the Whites Higher condition as more credible than the Blacks Higher conditions (from a Bayesian
perspective, this could possibly be a rational response). And, a growing body of recent work suggests
that whereas Liberals are biased in favor of Black people over White people, Conservatives’ judgments
and evaluations are relatively less influenced by race manipulations (e.g., Axt et al., 2016; Clark, 2021;
Kteily et al., 2019; Purser & Harper, 2023; Uhlmann et al., 2009; Winegard et al., 2019). We hope future
research will explore the possibility of an anti-black racial bias among Conservatives across numerous
kinds of judgments and evaluations—it might be that they have biases in particular domains and not
others.
Second, like Liberals, Conservatives seemed to have a slight preference for women having higher IQ than
men than vice versa, although to a weaker extent than Liberals. Unfortunately, their order effect in Study
7 was relatively uninformative. When they received the women higher argument first, they anchored
their second judgment to the first, consistent with a bias explanation; when they received the men
higher argument first, they evaluated the women higher argument as more credible, less consistent with
a bias explanation. Other work seems to support the idea that Conservatives, like Liberals, have a pro-
female bias, just to a lesser degree (e.g., Clark et al., 2019; Stewart-Williams et al., 2020). We hope
future work will further explore this possibility as well.
Moderates demonstrated some inconsistent patterns across studies, but the meta-analyses suggested
that they were relatively unaffected by the manipulations—they evaluated research similarly credible
regardless of whether findings favored high or low status groups. Such findings may be consistent with
the $/;/>/80`")`82,`,U8$,:, hypothesis, which suggests that more extreme partisan attachments,
whether more right or more left, are associated with more rigid, dogmatic, and biased cognition
(Zmigrod, 2020). Future work should explore numerous kinds of biases to further test the possibility that
those more centrist tend to display the smallest and fewest biases.
Overall, whereas our studies demonstrated very consistent patterns for Liberals, they were somewhat

37
Journal of Open Inquiry
in Behavioral Science Equalitarianism
less consistent among Moderates and Conservatives, but we do hope the patterns we discovered here
for Moderates and Conservatives will be useful for generating new hypotheses regarding the biases of
these groups.
Future Directions
Before briefly discussing some future directions, we should note that equalitarianism :/;28(D,(&(:"$&''0(
$&8/"%&'(="$'>`3/,=(&%>(82,(D/&9,9(82&8(98,:()$":(/8(:/;28(D,(P#98/)/&D',6(One might argue that even if
one accepts that our results stem from bias, one could still argue that such a bias is rational because
racism and sexism are grave threats in the United States and we need to be vigilant against them. From
this perspective, it is better to err on the side of caution &;&/%98(results that seem to buttress the current
system of power or that seem to disparage historically oppressed and marginalized peoples. We think
that is a perfectly sensible argument. It may be right. Our goal in this paper was to understand
equalitarianism and how it contributed to liberal bias, not to assess it morally. We do think that such
biases could lead to indefensible accusations toward scholars who forward certain kinds of explanations
and even informal censorship of certain kinds of explanations, but we do not doubt that they could be
morally justifiable on whole.
In the future, researchers should expand our investigation by examining more privileged and victims’
groups (e.g., Muslims, homosexuals, Native Americans). They should also examine more socially valued
traits than intelligence (e.g., self-control, ambition, criminal propensities). And they should test whether
such biases are moderated by the demographic characteristics of person making the evaluation.
Another future direction is to explore how ideology relates to beliefs in and motivations for numerous
kinds of explanations for group differences. Here, we explored a possible aversion to one kind of
explanation (a biological one) for one particular kind of group difference (intelligence) across only two
group categories (race and sex). However, there are numerous possible explanations for group
inequalities: social norms, cultural differences, historical discrimination, natural environment features
(e.g., water quality, exposure to natural disasters), “free choice” (however one defines it), among many
others. For example, previous work has found that Conservatives more than Liberals believe in the
concept of “free will” because of their stronger desire to hold people morally responsible for their bad
behavior—and that both Liberals and Conservatives selectively appeal to this explanation when it is
ideologically convenient (Everett et al., 2021). Likely, which explanations seem the most plausible and
desirable to particular ideologies vary according to which groups and outcomes they have significance to,
and future research should study these beliefs and motivations sedulously, as these variations likely
explain a great deal of ideological conflict and polarization.
Conclusions
For a long time, many social psychologists contended that Conservatives are more biased than Liberals.
Recent scholarship has strongly challenged this argument. Conservatives and Liberals appear roughly
equally biased. Our research adds to this important debate and suggests one domain in which Liberals
demonstrate a consistent bias. Because most social psychologists are Liberals and because demographic
differences are such an explosive topic, this bias has remained unstudied and largely unknown (although
researchers speculated about it). Our hope here is to provoke more internal reflection among Liberals
and liberal scholars on whether such biases may affect their own evaluations, discussions, and
scholarship.

38
Journal of Open Inquiry
in Behavioral Science Equalitarianism
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