by is Mooney
253 “on a multi-item or scale” For the pros: our 12-item scale only achieved a Cronbach’s alpha of .5, and principal components analysis of the 12 items yielded 5 eigenvalues greater than one; moreover, performing factor analysis, extracting multiple factors, and performing promax rotation yielded more or less uncorrelated factors; there just wasn’t a convincingly identifiable single dimension of motivated reasoning.
254 arguing in their heads Taber & Lodge, “Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs,” American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 50, Number 3, July 2006, pp. 755–769.
Conclusion
Rescuing Reality
In November of 2011, as I awaited the results of our study, the following occurred:
1. A new paper came out in a peer reviewed journal, once again detecting differences between liberals and conservatives that appear rooted in the brain. In it, a group of Italian researchers found that conservatives, more than liberals, showed an “automatic selective attention for negative stimuli.”
What does that mean? In one experiment, liberals and conservatives were shown a series of positive and negative words that were presented in different colors, either red or blue. When asked to identify a given word’s color, conservatives appeared more distracted by the negative words (like “vomit,” “horrible,” “disorder,” and “disgust”), and thus performed more poorly at the color-identification task.
It is hard not to wonder: Is the word “liberal” also a negative stimulus for conservatives, one that triggers strong automatic and affective responses? And do liberals respond equally automatically and rapidly to the word “conservative”?
The authors weren’t shy in linking their findings back to prior research on conservatives’ vigilance and responses to threat—and thus, to the amygdala. Indeed, these past studies had informed and guided the design of their experiments.
2. In early November, I released a draft cover image of this book, and a brief description of its subject matter, online. Conservatives then rapidly attacked this negative stimulus, charging that I was practicing a form of “new eugenics” and that the book—not yet in print, not yet even finished—depicts them as “genetically/mentally/psychologically inferior.”
This is incorrect, as anyone reading these pages knows. It is also more than a little inflammatory—not unlike wrongly charging that the health care bill creates “death panels.”
What’s more, not having read the book, there is no way conservatives could actually know whether their charge about it was true or not. But they made the charge anyway—and one conservative blogger in particular, the top climate “skeptic” Anthony Watts, featured it along with an image of an “abnormal” brain from the 1974 Mel Brooks film Young Frankenstein.
3. On the day before Thanksgiving, we finally had all of our data from the study, and Everett rushed to analyze it so that we could report our findings in these pages.
The ultimate result, as you’ve seen, is that in an experiment that tried to take what we know about well-documented liberal and conservative differences, and combine it together with what we know about processes of biased reasoning, we appeared to confirm some expectations, disconfirm others, and also to find something new. The last was most intriguing: Conservatives just weren’t spending as much time reading our essays, a tendency that may be related to less Openness or curiosity. This possibility needs to be further studied. The result is striking and, if real, might explain a lot.
So we examined our data, adjusted our beliefs and hypotheses accordingly—and started to contemplate new research possibilities.
How is all this connected?
Clearly, research on the psychology of ideology, and on the differences between liberals and conservatives, is here to stay. In fact, it is moving into a new stage, one in which these well documented differences are taken as the starting point, and then experiments are designed to figure out what they actually mean in different, increasingly realistic contexts. One of those contexts will of course involve the processing of inconvenient or threatening information—whether political or otherwise.
This trajectory of research cannot be stopped. It cannot be put back in the box. It is too intriguing, and too important.
Indeed, the research has already established some strong findings, such as the relationship between liberalism and Openness. And it is probing further into areas of uncertainty—for example, concerning the left, the right, and motivated or defensive reasoning.
An accurate depiction of the current state of knowledge, as it bears on the thesis of this book, might be this: We know liberals overall are more Open, and conservatives are less so, with all that entails. So we know this difference probably helps to explain much about our political battles over what’s true. But at the same time, there is still a great deal to learn about how these differences play out in the real live political and media world.
In particular, following on our latest results, I wonder whether stronger group or “team” affiliations play a role in driving conservatives’ biased reasoning about politics in particular. We know conservatives tend to be more intense in their loyalty and dedication to their group. And if that group is the “Republicans,” maybe this helps to explain their willingness to double down on certain wrong beliefs that are politically vital to the party. They’re defending their “band of brothers,” so to speak.
It is also clearly going to be important to get a better understand of the relationship between conservatives reacting rapidly and automatically on the one hand, and their engaging in more elaborate defensive reasoning processes on the other—especially, in the latter case, when they are politically sophisticated. In other words, we need to know much more about how liberals and conservatives, respectively, rely on System 1 and System 2.
New studies can help tease this out. But of course, most of these studies will be designed by academic liberals, who naturally want to gain a better understanding of the dysfunctional nature of our politics. Consequently, there is every reason to expect that conservatives will lash out and attack these findings. They’ll assume it’s just another case of liberal academia bashing them—and so may dismiss a growing body of solid knowledge with a wave of the hand.
Such a defensive reaction, ironically, would be a highly un-nuanced way of understanding what the science actually suggests.
If anything, I come out of a yearlong immersion in this research with a newfound admiration for conservatives. No, I don’t think they’re very good at getting the facts right in politicized and contested areas. And I think I know a lot more about why. But the same knowledge suggests that conservatives are much better than liberals at other things—like, say, showing determination, leadership, loyalty, perseverance—and that liberals have a great deal to learn from them.
Despite this, however, research on the science of our politics will probably continue to be attacked by the very same people who, in a less polarized context, would make for very loyal allies, teammates, friends.
But for those who are Open to what I’m saying, I think we are now prepared to attempt—very tentatively—to sketch a “nature” meets “environment” account of the conservative denial of reality. Multiple factors seem at play; things can go very differently because of any single one of them. And by no means is our knowledge complete. But the big picture, I suspect, may ultimately look something like this.
First, there is “nature” or “psychology,” which is probably partially influenced by our genes. These, acting through individual cells (especially in our brains), help to create a variety of propensities and traits, such as personalities or dispositions. Some of these have latent ideological implications, and may predispose us towards the adoption of beliefs that “feel” right to us—religious beliefs and political beliefs, among others. We are not really aware of this happening—it just does.
Next, there is the “environment” in which we grow up. We do not enter it as a blank slate, but we’re certainly influenced by it.
Here, we’re shaped by our families (political beliefs expressed by our parents, whether the lawn has a Republican or Democrat sign at election time), our schools, our churches, our peers. This early environment interacts with our genes and who we are, as our experiences change and shape our brains—and so we develop an identity and a view of the world.
Now, both our personalities and the context in which we’ve grown up have tilted us towards adopting some beliefs more than others.
Third, there is the overarching political context—the region and country in which we live, the era, the political structures in existence, the communication technologies in use. These control the kinds of ideas we’re exposed to, as well as how much choice we have in the information we consume and the ideas we embrace. For instance, in some communities—the white South—there is greater social pressure to adopt a Republican ideology, whether or not one has a personality or disposition with which this ideology is very consistent. Ideological choice is thus constrained by social desirability factors imposed by the group or community, sometimes subtly, and sometimes more overtly.
Now our personalities, the context in which we’ve grown up, and broader societal factors have all tilted us towards adopting some beliefs more than others.
There are also large scale events—like 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the Great Recession—which cause powerful emotions (fear, empathy) in the population and can cause ideological shifts or conversions. Slower political changes over time can do the same. In this complex way, ideologies are formed, sets of beliefs are assembled—and then, sometimes, they are challenged.
At this point, our core natures or personalities once again condition how we respond. But so do all the ties and commitments we’ve made, the tone of conversation we’ve learned, the political context and the communication technologies—all of which may make it easier, or harder, for us to reinforce our beliefs. Also at play are factors like the time we have available to pay attention to a given topic or issue, and the time we’ve spent engaging with it in the past, getting up to speed, learning to care and to have arguments and responses.
All of this shapes whether we fight the facts, or whether we shift our views more flexibly. So in no way is it a simple story. And in no way is it determinism.
But it looks as though some of these factors, working together, have created a vast amount of ideologically driven misinformation on the political right today. Among these factors, personalities and psychological needs (authoritarianism, the need for closure) seem important, but so do levels of political engagement or knowledge, and divergent communication and information channels. And so does the tone of discourse and the standards of acceptable political behavior, which are strongly influenced by political elites.
What’s new about this book is its synthesis of a large body of evidence suggesting that despite the contribution of so many disparate factors, “nature”—more specifically, psychology and personality—still seem to shine through.
But given that that is the case, how should we respond to this reality—that people are who they are, that conservatism itself is part of human nature, and that people fight back vigorously to defend their beliefs, and intellectually sophisticated conservatives perhaps most of all?
First, the very same body of science suggests a variety of interventions that actually work to change people’s minds, at least to an extent. Recent research by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler, for instance, has shown that if you want to make people less defensive and biased, a technique called “self affirmation” holds great promise. What is self-affirmation?
Before hitting people with inconvenient facts in a recent motivated reasoning study, Nyhan and Reifler first had their subjects write a short essay describing something good about themselves—a moment when their core values or identities led to a positive outcome. Something they could be proud of.
This exercise, the study showed, brought about an overall debiasing and less defensive responses. And not surprisingly: Because motivated reasoning is an emotional process, you can’t expect to short circuit it with reason or arguments. Rather, only by lessening emotion and defensiveness—causing partisans to disarm—can you establish a conversation or exchange of information that is unthreatening.
On a person-to-person level, such an approach will assuredly work far better than getting into a shouting match. And that is how we ought to be having conversations—calmly and interpersonally, if honest give-and-take is the goal.
In such situations, it is also vitally important to demonstrate that there is common ground before broaching anything controversial, and to frame the information to be shared in a non-threatening manner. In another study, for instance, Dan Kahan and his colleagues found that conservatives were more open to the science of global warming if it was framed as supporting the expansion of nuclear power—but very closed to the science if it was framed as supporting traditional pollution controls, which fly in the face of their values.
All of this has profound implications for liberals, and scientists, who hold Enlightenment values and want to share their knowledge. These thinkers tend to be wedded to the idea that facts ought to win the day, that the truth emerges from vigorous clashes and debates of ideas. And that approach might very well work among people who share the same Enlightenment values, and honor and respect academic and scientific norms.
But matters are very different when you are trying to communicate with someone who does not share your Enlightenment values—or indeed, with the public at large. Here, the tacit assumptions of those who think “facts” and “reason” are the way to convince people are actually likely to be a hindrance to success.
Such are some scientific ways of trying to communicate and persuade—but liberals and scientists should not get overoptimistic about the idea of convincing conservatives to change their most deeply held beliefs. There are far too many factors arrayed against this possibility at present—not only the psychology of conservatism itself, but our current political polarization, by parties and also by information channels.
You can’t have an unemotional conversation when everything is framed as a battle, as it currently is. Our warfare over reality, and for control of the country, is just too intense. This unending combat is terribly destructive for America, and I don’t really know of any good way to bring an end to it.
Actually, that’s not quite right: I don’t know of a way to stop it that conservatives would actually agree on. But if conservatives were interested in compromise, an olive branch, then this might be a way to achieve it.
Imagine that liberals and conservatives were to agree to a truce, based on a joint acceptance of the body of science surveyed in this book. Both sides would respectfully conclude from this science that liberals and conservatives both have different strengths and weaknesses, which come out in separate situations.
Liberals are better at getting at the truth in complex, nuanced situations—as are their psychological brethren, scientists. And that’s in significant part because they have the dispositions and personalities for it—they tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty, and they like engaging in deep and taxing thinking. So part of the truce would require conservatives to recognize that if you want knowledge, you must go to a person (or better yet, group of persons, like the scientific community) that is adept at determining what it actually is. You don’t just get to make it up for yourself and deny what actual experts say, because you’re sure you’re right.
But conservatives are clearly better at being decisive, sticking to a course, being unwavering. So part of the truce would require liberals to recognize that conservatives must play a critically important role in a variety of leadership positions, in making sure that choices get made—provided that they heed liberals and lead in a reality-based fashion. I am not talking about going to war with Iraq based on misinformation, and being unswervingly convinced that this is a good idea. Rather, I am talking about something like, say, leading a patriotic campaign to make America the best nation in the wo
rld at dealing with climate change and adopting clean energy technologies.
This may sound a little Kumbaya—but I am serious in my view that our politics would be vastly more healthy if we acknowledged our strengths and weaknesses, and showed one another some deference in our respective areas of strength. I want to have liberals around to tell me what is true, but I want conservatives on my team, and to help me be decisive, effective, and stay the course.
To see as much, consider a few recent examples of conservative strength and liberal weakness. As I was completing this book, the nations of Europe were trying to patch together yet another plan to fix their gigantic debt problems, after “kicking the can down the road” for months and months. And Occupy Wall Street protesters were engaging in chaotic and largely incoherent protests, thus probably assuring that they’ll never be as politically effective as the right wing movement with which they’re so often compared: The Tea Party.
To my mind, these are very different but related examples of inadequate psychological conservatism. Europe needed one decisive shock and awe plan to fix everything—one big blast from a really big bazooka—rather than endless dithering and summits.
And Occupy Wall Street needed a clear agenda that directly advanced the electoral hopes of President Obama and the Democratic Party—for that is the only way there will ever be progress on behalf of the 99 percent, and against the one.
But were either Europe’s “leaders,” or Occupy Wall Street’s “leaders,” aware that psychological liberalism was their problem, and that they needed to go against their instincts? I doubt it.
