Anti-intellectualism is not just skepticism toward experts. It reflects how societies respond to knowledge, authority and evidence when trust begins to fracture. Recent surveys, social research and public health data together reveal a world where respect for expertise still exists, yet often carries hesitation, political filtering and doubt. Understanding how this sentiment forms, and the consequences it leaves behind, shows why the debate around expertise is no longer academic. It is social, cultural and deeply practical.
A World Increasingly Divided
There is a simple social signal that helps explain public attitudes toward experts. Everyday networks are narrowing across belief lines: recent research finds that fewer than ten percent of American friendships now bridge core political divides, and in some large cities cross-party ties fall to the single digits. Those scarce bridges tend to carry lower trust and weaker mutual understanding, which erodes the ordinary, low-stakes contact where doubts get tested and corrected.
Measured attitudes toward scientists add another layer. In the United States roughly three quarters of adults report at least some confidence in scientists, yet the share expressing the strongest level of trust is lower than it was at the pandemic peak and partisan gaps remain wide; that conditional trust is fragile because it is often qualified by doubts about motives or openness.
The global view is more textured. A recent 68-country survey of more than 71,000 respondents finds that most people still describe scientists as competent and useful to society, but many also want greater transparency and engagement from experts. In short, respect for expertise persists, yet it is increasingly conditional and carries expectations about how knowledge is produced and shared
Civility Is Perceived as Declining
Public perception is an engine of avoidance. A national study published in 2025 dubbed the Civility Paradox found that roughly 53 percent of Americans describe society as uncivil while only about 26 percent say it feels civil. Respondents point to online aggression, partisan rhetoric and fragmented media as primary drivers of that decline. When most people expect debate to be uncivil, they frequently opt out of contentious conversations rather than risk social fallout.
That withdrawal shrinks the kinds of face to face contexts where disagreement can be practiced, and where trust in experts can be formed or repaired. If disagreement gets outsourced to hostile comment threads, expertise loses its public test bed.
Deeper Currents Underlying Anti-Intellectualism
The pattern has multiple overlapping causes. Three mechanisms stand out.
- Political framing and identity politics
When leaders and media frame expertise as a marker of elite identity, scientific advice gets read through the lens of belonging. In those conditions, skepticism about institutions translates into blanket mistrust of experts, especially when complex topics map onto partisan identities. - Information ecosystems and echo chambers
Algorithms favor content that drives engagement, not nuance. That means sensational or contrarian claims get amplified, and people live in partially separate realities. Without a shared baseline of facts, disputes become fights over which reality counts rather than debates over evidence. - Social isolation across belief lines
Friendships and casual ties are where disagreement gets practiced in low stakes settings. The relative absence of cross-ideological friendships reduces opportunities to test ideas with trusted others. That makes people more likely to treat experts they do not know as suspect.
These mechanisms interact. Politicization makes certain facts into identity signals, filter bubbles harden the signal, and social isolation removes the corrective power of ordinary relationships.
The Costs Are Real
This is not abstract. The erosion of trust has measurable consequences for health, policy and innovation.
Public health provides a clear example. In 2025 the United States experienced an unprecedented surge in measles, with public health reporting showing more than two thousand confirmed cases and sustained outbreaks concentrated in communities with falling MMR coverage. Those are concrete outcomes of pockets of vaccine hesitancy and of information ecosystems where misinformation spreads rapidly.
The policy implications extend beyond epidemics. When expertise is viewed as partisan or self-serving, long-term investments in research and climate mitigation become harder to sustain. Innovation suffers when public backing for science falters and when research funding becomes politically volatile. In democracies that rely on informed debate, the loss of a shared evidentiary baseline makes compromise and solution building more difficult.
The Texture of Public Sentiment
The data do not say that science is collapsing. The large international survey and national polls show that many people still value scientific competence. The defining feature now is conditionality. People are more demanding. They want clarity, accountability and explanation of uncertainty, and they expect experts to listen and to connect findings to lived priorities. That nuance is important. It means distrust is not the same as rejection. It is often a demand for better explanation and engagement.
In daily life the result looks like selective trust. Individuals may accept a surgeon’s expertise while distrusting a public health model that seems remote from their community. They may welcome technological advances that help them directly while resisting expert warnings that require collective sacrifice. Those selective patterns make public policy and communication harder to design, because trust is won or lost case by case.
Conclusion
Treating this as a short study yields a simple verdict. Anti-intellectualism is not a single, new monster crawling from nowhere, but a reshaping of how trust in expertise is distributed and sustained. Social fragmentation, polarized information systems and high expectations for transparency combine to make respect for expertise more conditional and more fragile than it once was. The stakes are high because the costs are tangible in health, policy and social cohesion.
For editors and readers, the key takeaway is this. The data show a mixed reality: significant public respect for scientific competence remains, but pockets of deep mistrust have real world effects. Understanding the how and the where of that mistrust is essential for any institution that wants to preserve the role of evidence in public life. The contours of the problem are clear. How societies respond will shape whether expertise regains steady ground or continues to be contested fragment by fragment.
