Posted on 11/07/2013 12:38:04 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
A growing body of research suggests that we are a nation divided not only by partisanship or how we view various issues, but also by dramatically different cognitive styles. Sociologists and psychologists are getting a better understanding about the ways that deep seated emotional responses effect our ideological viewpoints.
Last week, Moyers & Company caught up with Mother Jones science writer Chris Mooney, host of the Inquiring Minds podcast and author of The Republican Brain: the Science of Why They Deny Science and Reality, to talk about what this research may tell us about the attitudes of those involved in the tea party movement. Below is a lightly-edited transcript of our discussion.
Joshua Holland: Chris, lets talk about morality. Im personally offended by the tea partiers resistance to giving uninsured people health care. I find it a bit shocking that a political movement could be so filled with animosity toward the idea. But according to NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and other scholars conservatives have a different moral compass entirely. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Chris Mooney: Absolutely. There are many people doing research in the psychology of politics. Jonathan Haidt is a pioneer in the psychology of morality and how that feeds into politics, and it really helps with something like this where you have strong emotional passions that are irreconcilable on the left and the right.
So what youre describing is his moral foundation of harm, which liberals tend to feel more strongly about. These are emotions relating to empathy and compassion measured by the question of how much someone is suffering and how much that suffering is a moral issue to you. How much is caring for the weak and vulnerable a moral issue to you?
Its not that conservatives dont feel that emotion, but they dont necessarily feel it as strongly. They feel other things more strongly. So to Haidt, this explains the health care debate because liberals feel, most of all, this harm-care-compassion thing. Conservatives feel it a little bit less strongly, even as they have this other morality. Haidt compares it to karma its really interesting where basically, youre supposed to get what you deserve. And what really bothers them is somebody not getting what they deserve. So the government getting involved and interfering with people getting what they deserve is really bad. That, I think, is the clash.
Holland: Jared Piazza a scholar at the University of Pennsylvania did a study which found that political and religious conservatives tend to avoid what he called consequentialist thinking. So basically, they tend to see something as right or a wrong, in black and white, and if a policy that they believe to be right say, not having the government get involved in health care causes real world harm, theyre more likely to dismiss that. That seems consistent with what Haidt is saying, right?
Mooney: Sure. Part of his whole theory is that you feel these views before you think these views, and then you rationalize your beliefs.
Now, he would say that both sides do it. But its actually an open debate whether one side does it more. But certainly, if conservatives have reached a position for moral reasons, are they then more likely to discount evidence suggesting some problem with their position? Absolutely. Theyre also more likely to take whatever evidence there is out there and twist it so that it supports their view. And, the more intelligent ones will be better at doing that. [laughs] Thats what all the research shows.
Holland: Right. And it all seems fairly consistent to me. Ive interviewed George Lakoff at UC Berkeley. He talks about how people dont judge a political issue on its merits, but tend to filter the world through a moral lens. He talks about a moral cascade, where we connect policies with deep-seated values. All of this research seems to be very consistent with what other people are doing.
Mooney: Thats right. And you wouldnt want to believe it if it were just one paper in just one journal by just one researcher. Thats what, as a science writer, were skeptical of. We look for multiple people working in multiple fields all converging and then we say, okay, theres knowledge here, something reliable is being discovered. With the psychology of politics the psychology of ideology it is actually surprising how rapidly all of this knowledge has come together. I dont think were completely there yet, but I think that you cant miss the fact that there are huge commonalities between Lakoff, Haidt and a lot of other people that we havent mentioned who are doing research in this same field.
Holland: Lets dig a bit deeper into Haidts moral foundation theory. In your Mother Jones interview with Haidt you have a graph comparing how liberals, conservatives, and then also libertarians score on what Haidt calls the seven moral foundations.
[graph at source link above]
And when you look at the graph, the biggest disparities between liberals and conservatives and, again, libertarians are purity and authority. Thats where you see the biggest gaps between the groups. What is purity in Haidts reckoning?
Mooney: Purity is basically whether you feel moral emotions when someone does something you view as disgusting or indecent. A lot of this is going to involve your judgments about whats sexually proper, but it could be other things that are disgusting. Basically, this is a way of measuring the emotion of disgust, and what this shows this is the most striking disparity of all of them is that liberals and libertarians really dont sense disgust very much. And theyre together on that completely. Theres an amazing number of things that liberals and libertarians are together on. But conservatives feel it much more than either of them. And so this can explain a great deal in politics its most regularly invoked to explain gay rights and how people respond to that, which I think is very appropriate. But I think it also gets into a lot of bioethical issues.
Holland: And weve discussed authority before. Thats really central to understanding the conservative mindset. Theres been a lot of research on the so-called authoritarian personality type, and I want to connect this with the idea of political polarization.
One of the things that we understand about authoritarians is that they have a stronger sense of the importance of loyalty to ones own in-group. How does that factor into this equation, do you think?
Mooney: Again, this is an area where liberals and libertarians differ from conservatives markedly. Liberals and libertarians arent particularly tribal in the sense of having loyalty to their group, and they arent particularly authoritarian in the sense of thinking you have to follow a strong leader. And basically, authoritarianism is also associated with sort of black and white, youre with me or youre against me thinking. But its also about deference to authority, whether thats the police officer or your father or God. You must obey authority and if you dont, thats a moral wrong.
Holland: Jonathan Weiler at the University of North Carolina did a study which found that you can predict a persons ideological leanings by how they answered just a few questions about child rearing. And one of the questions was whether someone values obedience or creativity more in a child. Its really its telling stuff.
Mooney: Yeah, this is another way of measuring authoritarianism, because the theory is and it seems pretty sound to me that if youre an authoritarian, one of the places its going to come out is in how you view child rearing. That is a situation in which the parent has to exert some level of authority, but parents interpret that differently. And if someone interprets parenting as sort of a strict father model you need to obey the rules then thats an authoritarian style of parenting. So hes just saying, lets ask about parenting and well figure out who our authoritarians are, and whats good about that as a scientific method is that youre not actually asking anything that seems politically tinged. You could be confounding your variables if people get the sense that youre asking them something political, but thats not the case here youre just asking about parenting. Thats whats nice about it.
Holland: Now, George Lakoff says that our brains have both liberal and conservative moral circuits if you will neural pathways. And when one set gets activated again and again it grows stronger and the other set becomes weaker. How does Fox and the right wing blogs and the whole conservative media bubble play into this pattern of polarization, if we accept Lakoffs argument?
Mooney: Right, and I dont think Lakoff would be necessarily inconsistent with others here. Youre reinforcing a circuit in the brain, so to speak, and the more its used the more powerful it becomes and the more it becomes habitual to use it. I think its a very different thing, but if you just think about how if youre a musician, and you practice the guitar every day, then basically you wire your brain to have a certain aptitude, and every time you pick up the instrument, youre going to be just as good. But if you then dont practice for a year, you pick it up, and boy, some things are still going to be there, but some things are going to be lost. If you reinforce these political/emotional circuits, its a similar effect. The more you use it, the more it becomes part of you.
So what this is getting at is that the brain is plastic to a certain extent, but at the same time, a lot of the research suggests that theres something very deep about political differences. So youre probably predisposed to feel a certain way, but then if you reinforce the circuit you can strengthen that, or if your life experiences take you in a different direction, it can weaken those views.
Holland: You spoke earlier about how we all have a tendency to marshal evidence that confirms our previously held worldview and reject evidence that contradicts it this is known as motivated reasoning. Is that something that both liberals and conservatives do to a similar degree, or do we see differences in this area?
Mooney: Theres no doubt that both do it. All the studies show that. And this is a debated issue right know whether theres asymmetry or not. I can point you to a number of papers that seem to suggest some sort of asymmetry. But there are researchers who are not convinced, and there are some papers that dont show asymmetry. So its a big debate and it depends largely upon what kind of evidence you buy.
I would expect you to have asymmetry. I would at least expect that on those issues where conservatives have a stronger moral sense, say about an in-group thing, I would expect their emotionally motivated response to be stronger just because theyre feeling this more strongly. So I would certainly expect more response in one of those areas where just generally its something they feel more strongly about. That doesnt seem like a hard thing to assume.
But an interesting question is this: if you get something that liberals feel really strongly about, something about equality or something about harm, are they equally biased? And I think that we still need more research on this, but Im suspecting that were going to see real differences. And I think that theres some evidence which points that way already.
Holland: One of the things that I think does point that way is the tendency of people with authoritarian personalities to be really sensitive to cognitive dissonance. That would seem to lead to a more fervent desire to ignore contradictory evidence that causes kind of a psychic pain, if you will.
Mooney: Right. There was the recent study and this can show you both why I suspect youre right, but also why these researchers are unsure there was a recent study that actually showed that conservatives were less willing to entertain cognitive dissonance than liberals were. It was by some political psychologists at NYU, and what they did was they asked people, would you be willing to write an essay talking about how the president you dislike did a good job? So in other words, would liberals write an essay on the good things about George W. Bush and would conservatives write an essay on good things about Barack Obamaand the liberals were more willing to write that essay. It required them to entertain cognitive dissonance for a time.
But whats difficult when you break it down is this: what if liberals just dont hate George W. Bush as much as conservatives hate Barack Obama? I mean, what if the emotions are not as raw anymore? After all, a lot of time has passed. What if this isnt the perfect apples to apples comparison? And thats why these kinds of studies are hard to conduct.
White gun owners more likely to be racists: study "................................Citing results that show attitudes among white people toward guns appear to be influenced by illogical racial biases, the studys authors suggest that gun-control policies might need to be implemented independent of public opinion.
How hard is it to come up with the logic that if you make a dollar and spend three that you have a spending problem.
Where is the problem in understanding that?
Better dead than red. The left is so stupid.
Laying the groundwork for Soviet-style “You don’t agree with the regime? Then you must be crazy. Off to a mental institution with you.”
How about this to explain Tea Party “rage”:
we’re tired of being stolen from. Period.
I will refrain from what I was going to say about this Nazi propaganda.
Libturds -- like Moyers -- have a hard time working up a rage. Hell, given their normal posture (depicted below), most of them can hardly BREATHE!
Here is my absolutely free, concise and irrefutable study...
Tea Party Rage is explained by accepting that its members are informed citizens of average or higher intelligence.
Duh, libs can find much about W to like. The only good thing I can say about Obama is he appears to love his children.
Only skimmed this nonsense but I got a got a good chuckle from their ascribing authoritarian personalities to tea party members. Which of course is opposite case.
I hate to give them fodder. But rage is such a tame, pedestrian word
to describe what I feel toward the POSOTUS and his minions.
Just sayin’.
"People like us tend to be more understanding and caring, according to the latest research conducted by people like us. We also tend to be smarter. People like them are just angry all the time, like the stupid people who are angry that their tax dollars helped fund our valuable super smart and excellent study. They're always angry about things that are good and excellent, you know, the stuff we do. See how stupid people like them are? This study proves it!"
Liberal: “You’re Phsycotic!”
Conservative: “Oh, yeah? You’re crazier than a loon!”
Scientist: “Hmm, upon scientific study, there’s a real difference in thinking here!”
Liberal and Conservative: “Scientists are idiots!”
Scientist: “Oops, maybe not?”
Amazing isn’t it?
They can’t even see their own biases coming out in their conversation.
I find it fascinating.
Notice how they’re working to get many studies to support these theories about conservatives - going for a consensus - like global warming, where there anyone who disagrees is a “denier” and should not be allowed a voice in the discussion.
Oh yes.
Lol
There you go again - raging.
Mooney: Again, this is an area where liberals and libertarians differ from conservatives markedly. Liberals and libertarians arent particularly tribal in the sense of having loyalty to their group, and they arent particularly authoritarian in the sense of thinking you have to follow a strong leader.
Did Mooney sleep through the 2008 and 2012 elections? The Dems did everything but have torchlit parades in honor of Obama.
nice that they have the conclusion right there in the title! that sure saves time.
How about a study to explain liberal idiocy?
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