Betting on science

A few years ago, psychologist Brian Nosek and two graduate students, Jeffrey Spies and Matt Motyl, conducted an experiment that measured people’s ability to differentiate shades of gray across a gradient. Nearly 2,000 participants of various political bents took part, and “the results were stunning,” the researchers wrote in a 2012 paper about the project.

Moderates more accurately perceived the various shades of gray than did extremists on either the left or right of the political spectrum. An analysis showed that the differences they found were statistically significant, with a p-value of 0.01, and the researchers concluded that “political extremists perceive the world in black and white figuratively and literally.”

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