New Research Suggests Americans Revolting Against Left’s Favorite Special Interest

A new paper published by researchers at Harvard University claims that “the long-standing decline in prejudice has halted or reversed” among Americans, particularly younger Americans.

Researchers examined data from 2.5 million U.S. respondents collected between 2021 and 2024, examining “[i]implicit and explicit attitudes… towards seven social groups: sexuality, race, skin color, age, disability, weight and, more recently, transgender identity.

“All seven attitudes showed increasing bias, with the largest increases in attitudes related to race, skin color, sexuality, and transgender, the latter two particularly among self-identified conservatives.” (RELATED: Only One Democratic White House Candidate Is Ready to Tell the Truth About Trans People)

Let’s focus on “transgender sexuality and attitudes.” Could it be possible that years of broadcasting deranged sexual stuff into the public sphere and demanding enthusiastic applause have caused a bit of gay fatigue? The goals shifted pretty quickly from “love is love” to “let a transvestite read to your kindergartner or you’re an evil bigot.”

“The new biases observed, which have become more pronounced since 2021, highlight the way in which minds are reshaped by radical sociocultural change,” say the authors in their summary.

“New research… reveals that the decades-long increase in gay acceptance in the United States peaked around 2020 and has sharply reversed since then… Perhaps most surprising is that these trends were markedly robust among America’s youngest adults – under 25.” » https://t.co/b1BdnfSooT

– Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) January 22, 2026

“Radical sociocultural change” is a good description for the years between about 1965 and 2020. Additionally, I’m not sure the authors have enough evidence to claim that minds were “reshaped” in four years. Their data only tells us what people are willing to say publicly about what they believe. It is quite possible that a person who was hesitant to express negative opinions about fat people in 2021 will express these opinions more easily in 2026.

To assess implicit attitudes, researchers used Implicit Association Tests (IAT).

The authors explain that the IAT is “a computerized reaction time task that compares participants’ speed of categorizing picture and word stimuli into “congruent” blocks (e.g., Thin = good/Fat = bad) to the speed of categorizing picture and word stimuli into “incongruent” blocks (e.g., Fat = good/Thin = bad). The psychological hypothesis behind the test is that faster sorting into congruent blocks indicates that congruent pairs (e.g., Thin = good/Fat = bad) are more strongly and commonly associated in a participant’s mind and culture.

IATs are extraordinarily easy to manipulate. I encourage you to try the test for yourself. By counting to two or three in your head before reacting to a word stimulus, you will be considered free from prejudice. For this reason, I will disregard the conclusions drawn by the authors about implicit bias.

From 1995 to 2015, Americans were warned that if they didn’t allow gay people to marry, they would be hateful and bigoted. The Americans are not, so they acquiesced.

What happened next was almost none of them got married, the transgender/queer stuff started openly targeting children, and monkey pox. https://t.co/1xHWnNBvF0

– ib (@Indian_Bronson) June 18, 2023

Their methodology for testing explicit preferences is better.

“To assess explicit attitudes, we used a 7-point scale ranging from -3 reflecting strong countercultural preferences, such as “I strongly prefer fat people to thin people” to +3, reflecting strong normative cultural preferences, such as “I strongly prefer thin people to fat people.”

Again: Participants’ responses do not tell us whether “Americans are becoming more or less biased,” only whether Americans are becoming more or less comfortable expressing their biases. (RELATED: Gay Hockey Stars to Carry the Torch to the Winter Olympics)

The authors note that “young people booked relatively faster than older people…today’s young people appear primed to regress. Critically, the current work suggests that such toxic ideologies do not remain hidden in the online corners of subpopulations (e.g., conservative young men) but are spreading to entire populations of young people, including young liberals and young women.”

Young people who adhere to “toxic ideologies” come from diverse backgrounds. Huge win for advocates of equity and inclusion.

Follow Natalie Sandoval on X: @NatSandovalDC