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Paper short abstract:

Analysis of a online survey in Japan suggests that stronger racist attitudes and a preference for reducing the government's role correlate with denying the usefulness of the humanities and social sciences. This indicates a political polarization distinct from attitudes towards natural sciences.

Paper long abstract:

In the fields of Public Understanding of Science (PUS) and science sociology, there have been reports on the political polarization of attitudes toward science in general or the natural sciences, but the political polarization of attitudes toward the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) has not been examined. Therefore, this paper analyzes (1) the relationship between attitudes toward the SSH and political attitudes, and (2) how this relationship differs from attitudes toward the natural sciences, using data from Japan, one of the countries where the confrontation between conservative politicians and SSH is prominent. The survey was conducted online in 2018, and it measured perceptions of the “social utility” of ten fields in total, covering both the natural sciences and the SSH. The analysis revealed that the stronger the racism and the greater the desire to reduce the social role of the government, the more likely individuals are to deny the usefulness of the SSH. For the natural sciences, the tendency to deny their usefulness increased with authoritarianism and the desire to reduce the government's social role. These results suggest that while attitudes toward the SSH share a structure of political polarization common to the natural sciences, there is also a possibility of a unique political polarization specific to attitudes toward the SSH.