Secular academics, despite their worldview, respond with rigidity and exhibitionism to threatened core values.

Evidence

Although most academics are avowedly secular in their worldview, they are not immune to the processes discussed here (see Pinker on social-science reactions to evolutionary psychology). The SVPM predicts mental rigidity and moral exhibitionism whenever core values have been threatened–although it leaves as an open question whether sacred values not anchored by mandates from supernatural beings possess less long-term power to block subversive thoughts from either consciousness or public expression. — Philip E. Tetlock, Thinking the unthinkable, 49

Categorization

• QUESTION: Raises the testable question of whether religiously-anchored sacred values resist erosion more durably than secular ones — directly relevant to predicting when manufactured/enemy narratives harden vs. decay.
• XREF: The Pinker reference on academic sacred cows parallels the reader’s interest in whether rational correction backfires when aimed at threat-hardened beliefs inside academic communities themselves. — connects to: People hold central beliefs far more rigidly than peripheral ones — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 2631
• SEED: Angle for an essay: academics stage their own moral panics — replication crisis, cultural-appropriation debates, methodological wars — as secular analogues of the sacred-value defenses Tetlock describes.

Related

• People hold central beliefs far more rigidly than peripheral ones (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• People hold central beliefs far more rigidly than peripheral ones #expands (0.78) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 2631