The study, which originally appeared in the January 2022 issue of Political Behavior, found that people with a rural social identification are more likely to view experts and intellectuals as outsiders, according to its author, Kristin Lunz Trujillo, a post-doctoral candidate at the Covid States Project of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and Northeastern University.

“Feeling psychologically attached to being someone from a rural area shapes your attitude towards other groups in society,” Lunz Trujillo told Newsweek. “People who have this rural identity see experts skeptically. There is a perception that these experts will come in from outside and impose their ideas.”

In her study, Lunz Trujillo said anti-intellectualism “drives support for phenomena such as populism, a rejection of scientific consensus, and health and science misinformation endorsement.” Understanding what encourages people to be anti-intellectual is important in understanding public behavior, she said.