A study examining the association between political conservatism and mental health has been retracted by the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology following a postpublication peer review that identified “major errors involving methods, theory, and normatively biased language.”

The article, Do Conservatives Really Have an Advantage in Mental Health? An Examination of Measurement Invariance, authored by Edward Dutton and Emil Kirkegaard, analyzed data from 2 Finnish survey samples (N = 848 and 4,978). It reported that a higher score on a “wokeness” scale correlated negatively with mental health outcomes. The authors stated that “the correlation between index scores of wokeness and mental health (internalizing) was −0.36,” which increased to −0.41 after correction for measurement error.

Postpublication Review Process

The retraction followed concerns raised by third parties regarding the study’s conclusions. According to correspondence from Wiley’s Integrity Assurance and Case Resolution office, the publisher conducted a postpublication review using “anonymous expert reviewers with no conflicts of interest” who “provided independent feedback.”

“Based on the results of the postpublication peer review, the editors have concluded that there are major errors in the article and that the article cannot stand in its current form,” wrote Mark H. Paalman, PhD, Senior Manager of Integrity Assurance and Case Resolution at Wiley.

The final retraction notice, published on March 26, 2025, was issued by agreement between the journal’s Editor-in-Chief, the Scandinavian Psychological Associations, and Wiley.

Methodological Criticisms

Postpublication reviewers raised several issues related to the study's theoretical framework and analytic design. Reviewer 1 highlighted that the authors claimed to use 32 items derived from Lahtinen’s 2024 development of a leftism scale, but the original Lahtinen scale—formally the 7-item Critical Social Justice Attitudes Scale (CSJAS)—only included 26 measurable items in its item pool.

Reviewer 1 noted that the authors 

created a "32-item wokeness scale," which is not recognized in Lahtinen’s work. 

This misalignment, the reviewer concluded, compromised the validity of the reanalysis.

Reviewer 2 identified additional theoretical concerns, including the conflation of religiosity and spirituality and the manuscript’s invocation of speculative genetic explanations. The reviewer wrote:

“The manuscript posits that ‘mutational load’ leads to liberalism via pleiotropic effects, linking it to such outcomes as neuroticism and mental illness. This is speculative and unsupported by data.”

Language and Bias Concerns

Both reviewers criticized the study’s language as inappropriate for academic publication. Reviewer 2 cited examples such as:

• “More anxious and higher in neuroticism” to describe liberals

• “Creating a narcissistic morally superior self” as a liberal coping strategy

“These phrases are subjective, pejorative, and lack empirical support. Such language reflects ideological bias rather than objective scientific analysis, damaging the credibility of the work,” the reviewer wrote.

Reviewer 2 also stated that the manuscript portrayed conservatism “in exclusively positive terms (e.g., as aligned with sound mental health and religiosity) while casting liberalism as a result of personal dysfunction or maladaptation.”

Authors’ Response and Disagreement

The authors objected to the retraction and disputed the validity of the postpublication review. “Our study already underwent regular peer-review, and we object to being subject to a second round of hostile peer review,” they wrote in a published response. “To our eyes, this comes off as an attempt to recruit hostile reviewers to axe the paper.”

They argued that the reviewers’ criticisms stemmed from coding inconsistencies in the original data set and claimed that corrections to those issues produced similar or slightly stronger results. After adjusting for item coding errors, the correlation between wokeness and anxiety was recalculated as r = −0.37. They also reported minor updates to regression results, including changes in model coefficients and statistical output.

On the criticism of ideological bias, the authors wrote:

“If the authors write a discussion of the findings from their point of view, the discussion section is attacked for not being sufficiently left-wing (too right-wing).”

The authors declined an invitation to revise and resubmit the manuscript.

Journal’s Final Position

Despite the authors’ objections, the journal proceeded with the retraction. The final notice stated that the article “contains major errors involving methods, theory, and normatively biased language. These errors bring into doubt the conclusions drawn by the authors”.

The retraction also acknowledged that “the authors disagree with the decision,” in accordance with standard disclosure procedures for contested retractions.

Sources: Retraction notice - Scandinavian Journal of Psychology and My first politically motivated retraction blog