I am constructing a political bias quiz together with Spencer Greenberg, who runs the site Clearer Thinking and wonder if people could help me coming up with questions. The quiz will work like this. First, you'll respond to a number of questions regarding your political views: e.g., republican or democrat, pro-life or pro-choice, pro- or anti-immigration, etc. Then you'll be given a number of factual questions. On the basis of your answers, you'll be given two scores:

1) The number of correct answers - your degree of political knowledge. 2) Your degree of political bias.

The assigmment of political bias will be based on the following reasoning. Suppose you're a hard-core environemntalist, and are consistently right about the questions where hard-core environemntalist like the true answer (e.g. climate change) but consistenly wrong about the questions where they are not (e.g. GMOs). Now this suggests that you have not reviewed these questions impartially, but that you acquire whatever factual beliefs suit your political opinions - i.e. that you're biased. Hence, the higher the ratio between the correct answers you like and the correct answers you dislike is, the more biased you are.

(The argument is slightly more complicated, but this should suffice for the present purposes. Also, the test shouldn't be taken too seriously - the main purpose is to make people think more about political bias as a problem).

The questions are intended for an American audience. I have come up with the following questions so far:

1) Which of the following statements best describes expert scientists’ views of the claim that global temperatures are rising due to human activities (this question is taken from a great paper by Dan Kahan )? (Most agree it's true, divided, most agree it's false)

2) Which of the following statements best describes expert scientists’ views of the claim that genetically modified foods are safe? (Same possible answers)

3) Which of the following statements best describes expert scientists’ views of the claim that humans are causing mass extinction of species at a rate that is at least 100 times the natural rate? (Same possible answers)

4) Which of the following statements best describes expert scientists’ views of the claim that radioactive wastes from nuclear power can be safely disposed of in deep underground storage facilities? (Same possible answers)

5) Which of the following statements best describes expert scientists’ views of the claim that humankind evolved from other species through natural selection. (Same possible answers)

6) Which of the following statements best describes expert scientists’ views of the claim that the death penalty increases homicide rates. (Same possible answers)

7) Studies show that on spatial reasoning tests, male mean scores are higher than females', whereas the converse is true of emotional intelligence tests. (True/false)

8-10) (These are taken from Bryan Caplan's excellent The Myth of the Rational Voter ) Expert economists were given the following possible explanations for why the economy isn't doing better. For each one, please indicate whether they thought it is a major reason the economy is not doing better than it is, a minor reason, or not a reason at all:

8) “Taxes are too high”

9) “Foreign aid spending is too high"

10) “Top executives are paid too much”

11) How much does the US spend on foreign aid, as a share of GDP (0-1 %, 1-3 %, 3+ %).

I need perhaps 10-15 additional questions. The questions need to have the following features:

1) The answer needs to be provable. Hence why ask what expert scientists believe about P – on which there are surveys I can point to – rather than P itself in many of the questions. However, you can also have questions about P itself if you can point to reliable sources such as government statistics, as I do in question 11.

2) They should be “baits” for biased people; i.e. such that biased people should be expected to give the wrong answer if they don’t like the true answer, and the true answer if they like it.

3) The questions shouldn’t be very difficult. If you give people questions on, e.g, numbers, you have to give fairly large intervals, as I do in question 11. Also you cannot ask too outlandish questions (e.g., questions on small parts of the federal budget).

At present I seem to have more questions where the liberal answer is the true one, so “pro-conservative” questions are particularly welcome.

Any suggestions of questions or other forms of input is highly appreciated! :)