Why Conservatives and Liberals Think Differently

It may be obvious that people who identify politically as liberals and conservatives think differently because they disagree on issues ranging from immigration to climate change policy. But what are the deeper psychological roots that drive their political beliefs? In the aftermath of the federal election, the Agenda explores the conservative mind vs. the liberal mind.

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the first place Rob well you’ve got the
15:02
floor let’s just dive a little deeper
15:03
here on some of the work that you’ve
15:05
done comparing the moral beliefs of
15:06
conservatives and liberals and let’s
15:08
start with this to what extent do you
15:09
think people on the right and the left
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live in different moral worlds yeah I
15:15
think that I think there’s a lot of
15:16
truth in that there’s pretty robust
15:18
finding in the political psychology
literature that liberals tend to endorse
and and deploy moral values like
protecting people from harm
empathy fairness and equality more than
can
servus do while conservatives deploy
moral values like

  1. group loyalty
  2. patriotism
  3. respect for authority and
  4. moral purity and sanctity

more than then
liberals do and we find that you know
when they go to make the case for those
specific political positions liberals
and conservatives tend to rely on these
their their respective moral values but
this can often lead them to make to make
cases for their politics that don’t
resonate with the other side might not
even be legible to someone on the other
side well that’s lorilynn you’re hearing
yeah let me follow up on that no I do I
want to do two quick follow-ups with you
right here because give us a for
instance if a liberal we’re trying to
change a conservatives mind about for
example climate change what would be the
better arguments to Marshall given what
you’ve just told us
yeah our research suggests that a
conservative might be more responsive to
an argument about the environment or
climate change if it was articulated in
terms of purity sanctity and pollutants
being disgusting D sanctifying human
bodies and and nature
that that’s sort
of a message because it fits with the
conservative value of moral purity we
find tends to be more effective than a
more conventional argument that a
liberal would be more likely to make in
terms of the need to protect vulnerable
ecosystems from from harm which doesn’t
tend to move the needle at least among
conservative and let’s do the other side
of the coin what about a conservative
trying to impress upon a liberal the
importance of let’s say military
spending something like that yeah so we
also find that this principle that if
you want to make an effective political
appeal you ought to think very carefully
about the person you’re communicating
with moral values and deeply all beliefs
we find it applies in both directions so
if you were trying to convince a liberal
to support high levels of military
17:32
spending it might not make a lot of
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sense to make an argument in terms of
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patriotism and the authoritative power
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of the American military and instead you
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might think well how could I tie this in
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with liberal concerns about equal
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opportunity and so we found that
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an appeal that emphasized that the
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military is a place where the poor and
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minorities can achieve on a more level
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playing field than in the you know the
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open society that that’s sort of an
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appeal LED liberals to say oh maybe
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maybe I do support high levels of
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military spending because they can it
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helps the poor and minorities advance in
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society hmm this potentially potentially
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Paul opens the door to well who knows
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everybody’s in their respective corners
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right now in the boxing ring that is you
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know the world today and I wonder if the
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arguments could be reframed so that
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people could speak a little could speak
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to conservatives in a language that they
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would appreciate better and vice versa
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could you reduce polarization in the
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world I think you can I think rob has
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some excellent ideas now to do it I also
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think we could we don’t have to give up
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on idea of focusing on our common ground
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so it’s true that conservatives in some
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ways focus much more on groups and
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issues of patriotism and nationalism but
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liberals are no stranger to calls for
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identity and group identity in fact
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identity politics focusing on your
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ethnicity or your gender your sexual
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orientation is very much of an explicit
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focus of a lot of liberal thoughts so in
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some way they’re speaking the same
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language they’re just talking about
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different things and there’s something
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else as well regarding reconciliation
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and agreement which is I think by nature
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by inclination by how we think there’s
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an enormous amount of overlap between
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liberals and conservatives but in the
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hurly-burly political world and social
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media there was a huge split of us
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versus them where all of a sudden being
a liberal I’m not responding to a
certain claim or idea based on how I
naturally react to it but I is it is it
from my team or is it from your team
and
there’s a lot of research finding that
if you give people an idea cap-and-trade
a response to climate change
funding for private schools and you tell
them this is a liberal idea or this is a
conservative idea they react very
differently to it your study after study
finding people don’t even care about the
idea they just care about is it my team
or is it your team
and if we could rid
political discourse of that or at least
diminish it we do
much much better well Becky let’s do an
example of something you’ve studied
fracking tell us the story so I think
that this speaks to Rob suggestion of
how to play to people’s morality and
having this kind of discussion so we
examined people’s favorability towards
hydraulic fracturing and the degree to
which they thought this was risky and we
found that people who are higher in
political conservatism were more
favorable towards hydraulic fracturing
and they saw it as less risky

we also measured knowledge about
fracking and people that knew more about
it had less favorable attitudes
about it
and they thought it’s more risky
however conservatives that knew more
about hydraulic fracturing for them they
had even more favorable attitudes and so
it is even less favorable than
conservatives that didn’t know a lot
about it and you find this same pattern
when you look at climate change so this
kind of goes against this notion that if
we just educate other people and they
know more and they’re more aware of
these issues they’ll get what I think
and they’ll be on board with my attitude
or the way that I see the world
and
that’s not what happens you have another
question yeah do you think I don’t know
if you’ve done this but do you think
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have you told a group of conservatives a
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group of liberals and saying you know
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what do you think of fracking and let me
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tell you this Bernie Sanders Elizabeth
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Warren one thing they agree on is we
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need more fracking of this type it’s
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very important it’s important for their
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environment or to help American business
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to increase minority access to jobs do
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you think being told that would sway
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their views I think it depends on who it
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is so people that don’t know as much
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about politics and don’t have that kind
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of firm identity or just knowledgeable
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for them it could sway them but for
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people that are very knowledgeable at
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these things they understand what
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defines a conservative position and a
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liberal position it’s not going to sway
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them so I think that political identity
21:43
in belonging to these groups is really
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important in dictating our beliefs or
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attitudes how we vote but it’s not the
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only thing and I worry sometimes that we
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overstate it so I think it depends on
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the person and I think it depends on the
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context so in an American context right
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now where the stakes are really high you
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can see how people might be more apt to
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kind of be like okay I can give that up
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right now even it’s important to me
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because I want my team to win but kind
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of under normal circumstances or less
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high threat or high stakes situations it
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shouldn’t have the same kind of impact I
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mean living in a state in the age of
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Trump
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very much in a high polarization time
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there is a study that was recently done
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which ask people about cap and trade
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what do you think of cap and trade and
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people had very strong views about it
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then they asked them another question
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what is cap and trade and I gotta say I
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like I’m not I have found myself
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exposing strong views and realizing I
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don’t know that much I just know what
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views I’m supposed to have yeah I’m
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still waiting for the moment where there
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where the conservative person says wait
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a second Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren
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are in favor of fracking date you don’t
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think anybody would say that they would
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be surprised they would be surprised
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indeed if they were to say that okay
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let’s um yeah
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apropos of my team is better than yours
22:54
let’s go on to this in today’s polarized
world is it simply okay Rob you start
with this is it simply more important
okay for for for people to say I’m with
my team I don’t care I’m not
influenceable by facts I don’t care what
the facts say loyalty to my team is all
what it’s about
nowadays right yeah I
think there’s a lot of evidence for that
and I think that what we see when we
look at trends and polarization in the
US over the last 40 years or so and this
is in the general public mind you that
you don’t see as much of ideological
polarization wherein people are clumping
around coherent ideological worldviews
because people are kind of they’re a
little bit disorganized in in their
thoughts they don’t spend all their time
thinking and talking about politics and
those who do they are very ideological
on average but what we see very clearly
is this rising antipathy across party
lines where Democrats and Republicans
you know increasingly dislike the
political out group and favor their own
in-group over the last 40 years or so
and if you look for like well what what
sparked all this I think that the
biggest thing that sparked it was that
at the elite level elected politicians
Congress people the president and so on
they polarized first they separated
along party lines and became
ideologically distinct you know by the
80s
or so in a way that was not so much
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the case in the 50s and
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once that happened it became easier to
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say okay no I really am a Democrat
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because I’m a liberal and I really am
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not like those other people and in fact
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I really dislike them but when things
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were a little more mixed up in terms of
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what Democrats Republicans believed as
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was the case in the 50s it was harder to
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hate the other side cuz they were not so
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clearly different from from your own
24:50
Becky let me let me pursue with you the
24:53
notion about whether or not we are less
24:54
polarized in Canada than they are in the
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United States basically everybody who
24:59
gets elected down there is a Democrat or
25:00
a Republican basically I mean you got a
25:02
few independents along the way but
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basically that’s it we just had an
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election which is going to send liberals
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and conservatives and New Democrats and
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block East’s and greens to our federal
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parliament and the People’s Party even
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they didn’t win any seats but they got a
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bunch of votes what does that say I
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think there’s several things that are
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going on I think we’re not immune to the
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kind of quote/unquote tribalism that’s
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happening south of the border but I
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think that we have some buffers in the
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sense that we have a multi-party system
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now if any one of those parties should
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gain more popularity to kind of lose
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some of those I think we would be in
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greater danger of having this kind of us
25:41
versus them mentality and I think that
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still exists here but it’s difficult to
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have that to the same extreme because we
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have more than one party so there’s
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multiple people kind of vying for power
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how accurate do you think the view that
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conservatives have of liberals and vice
25:55
versa
25:56
all is yeah there’s been a lot of work
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on this and and there are two things one
26:01
thing is that psychologists are always
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interesting everybody’s interested in
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bias against against women against black
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people against gays and their subtle
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measures of this but the bias is we have
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at least in the states towards the other
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political team are anything but subtle
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they’re powerful people to say if you’re
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a Republican I don’t want to see a
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Democrat I don’t want my kid to marry a
26:21
Democrat and then you get to kick the
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question of accuracy so when you ask
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people about other groups let me ask you
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some questions about about gay people
26:28
about women it turns out a lot of
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studies have been done showing that to
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bet people have a pretty good perception
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of the other group what jobs they tend
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to have all sorts of other factors about
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them but this goes to garbage
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when you ask people politics so Liberals
26:44
have very confused ideas about
26:46
conservatives and conservatives very
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confused ideas about liberals and what
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happens is that this sort of tribalism
26:52
we’re talking about distorts our
26:54
thinking if you’re my worst enemy in the
26:56
world I’m not gonna think about you in
26:58
an objective fashion I’m gonna pile upon
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you every stupid and ugly attitude and
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and and you know if if if not it’s not
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hard to see that this is not a good
27:08
thing politically and maybe this is why
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Canadian politics which doesn’t have too
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strict you know either-or dichotomy that
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American politics has is less vicious
27:17
than American politics so a lot less
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interesting too the last time you were
27:21
on this program and in fact I can see
27:23
your book on the Shelf right over there
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we talked about your book about empathy
27:27
and so I’m going to facetiously say to
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you right now because I know what your
27:30
answer is gonna be more empathy would
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help this right well I’m not gonna say
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yes come on I’m sighs you to say yes I’m
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sure will surprise me which is it
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depends what you mean by empathy so so
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one sort of empathy which means feeling
27:43
the pain of others feeling the suffering
27:45
of others a study came out last week
27:47
which is causing a lot of play which
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finds that the more empathy you have of
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that sort the the more you hate the
27:53
other group why because you devote all
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that feeling and empathy towards your
27:58
own group it makes you more tribal on
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the other hand there’s another sort of
28:03
empathy which the most understanding
28:04
people perspective taking and I think
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that is mostly for the good I think that
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that you know if I if I was I was a
28:12
Hillary voter I don’t need to put myself
28:15
in the shoes of a trump voter but I
28:17
should try to understand why they voted
28:18
for Trump among other things if I want
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my side to win the next time it sure
28:23
helps to know why why I didn’t win last
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time just a few minutes to go here and
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let me get Jonathan Hyde into this
28:30
conversation and the social psychologist
28:32
recently had this to say left and right
28:34
are like yin and yang both see different
28:37
threats push in different directions and
28:39
protect different things that matter and
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that are at risk of getting trampled by
28:44
the other side okay bigger picture here
28:47
do liberals and conservatives need each
28:49
other in some way less their own
28:51
impulses turn inward and destructive
28:54
back
28:55
so I’d say on a macro level that is
28:57
probably beneficial to have a diverse
28:59
pool of ideological outlooks
29:01
I think anything in the extreme could
29:03
kind of lead us down a dangerous path
29:05
and I think there’s many examples of
29:07
very extreme right-wing or left-wing
29:09
governments around the world the kind of
29:10
plate of that to illustrate kind of the
29:12
dangers I think having a sort of push
29:14
each other back and forth and keep us in
29:15
check again on a macro level is probably
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beneficial on the whole Rob I disagree
29:20
with everything you say but damn it all
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I need you is that what we’re saying i I
29:24
you know I think there’s a lot of truth
29:26
in that I think ideological diversity
29:28
can help groups make better I’d you know
29:31
better decisions and come up with more
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different possibly better ideas I also
29:36
think that an ideologically pluralistic
29:38
society is a difficult one to steer
29:42
effectively because it’s disposed to
29:45
creating these sort of tribal
29:47
differences
29:48
so if I have deeply different views on
29:50
things that matter a lot from you in an
29:53
ideal world we get together we you know
29:55
we come up with a way to get all the
29:57
advantages out of that and none of the
29:58
weaknesses but I think there is also a
30:01
very strong tendency for us to decide
30:02
that we are fundamentally different and
30:04
our differences are irreconcilable
30:06
because they go all the way down to our
30:08
bones to our values and so I have a
30:11
little bit less of a rosy picture of
30:13
moral pluralism Paul last thirty Seconds
30:16
to you we know that when political
30:17
parties want to raise money all they do
30:19
is put every alleged sin of their
30:22
opponents in those letters and they just
30:24
watch the shekels come in we’re kind of
30:26
doomed in this regard aren’t we we have
30:29
our worst instincts and people there’s a
30:31
lot of money and votes and power in
30:33
exaggerating the differences that exist
30:36
between these groups but I I agree with
30:38
with these other guys on pluralism is
30:40
what we should we just aspire for as
30:42
voters and as individuals authoritarians
30:45
on both sides will try to shut that down
30:46
they’ll try to shut down free speech
30:47
they’ll try to shut down communication
30:49
and I think we have a sort of moral duty
30:51
liberals and conservatives both to to
30:54
try to listen and try to try to get
30:56
together and try to be pluralistic in
30:57
the best of all possible ways amen
30:59
that’s a great place to leave it I want
31:01
to thank all three of you for coming out
31:02
of TVO tonight Rob will are at Stanford
31:04
University in California
31:06
Becky Toma from Ryerson University
31:08
in toronto Paul bloom from Yale
31:10
University in New Haven Connecticut it’s
31:13
great to have all of you on TV Oh
31:14
tonight thanks so much thank you
31:19
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Freakonomics Radio Live: “Would You Eat a Piece of Chocolate Shaped Like Dog Poop?” (Ep. 372)

DUBNER: Jody Avirgan, David Pizarro has been telling us about the politics of disgust, which are really interesting, and lead to a lot of interesting thoughts and questions. Anything factual we should know?

AVIRGAN: This isn’t exactly a fact check. But I do want to go back to how you actually measure disgust. You ask people about hypothetical scenarios, and ask them to rate how disgusted they were. Do you trust that?

PIZARRO: That’s one way. Other people have done the work of correlating—

AVIRGAN: Of actually disgusting people in real time — love it.

PIZARRO: Of actually disgusting people. So they’ve brought people into the lab and they’ve asked them to do really gross but safe things. So, would you eat a piece of chocolate shaped like dog poop?

DUCKWORTH: Yes.

DUBNER: I think Angela’s answer says less about her liberalism than about her chocolate attitude.

PIZARRO: That may be right. And that’s why it’s a noisy measure.

The roots of male rage, on show at the Kavanaugh hearing

American men do have genuine reasons for anxiety. The traditional jobs that many men have filled are disappearing, thanks to automation and outsourcing. The jobs that remain require, in most cases, higher education, which is increasingly difficult for non-affluent families to afford. We should indeed tremble for the future of both men and women in our country unless we address that problem, and related problems of declining health and well-being for working-class men.

.. Three emotions, all infused by fear, play a role in today’s misogyny. The most obvious is anger — at women making demands, speaking up, in general standing in the way of unearned male privilege. Women were once good mothers and good wives, props and supports for male ambition, the idea goes –but here they are asserting themselves in the workplace. Here they are daring to speak about their histories of sexual abuse at the hands of powerful men. It’s okay for women to charge strangers with rape, especially if the rapist is of inferior social status. But to dare to accuse the powerful is to assail a bastion of privilege to which men still cling.

.. Coupled with anger is envy. All over the world, women are seeing unprecedented success in higher education, holding a majority of university seats. In our nation many universities quietly practice affirmative action for males with inferior scores, to achieve a “gender balance” that is sometimes dictated by commitment to male sports teams, given Title IX’s mandate of proportional funding.

.. But men still feel that women are taking “their” places in college classes, in professional schools.

.. Envy, propelled by fear, can be even more toxic than anger, because it involves the thought that other people enjoy the good things of life which the envier can’t hope to attain through hard work and emulation. Envy is the emotion of Aaron Burr in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton”

.. And then, beneath the hysteria, lurks a more primitive emotion: disgust at women’s animal bodies.

.. In the United States, we observe this dynamic in racism, in homophobia and even in revulsion toward the bodies of people who are aging. But in every culture male disgust targets women, as emblems of bodily nature, symbolic animals by contrast to males, almost angels with pure minds.

.. Disgust for women’s bodily fluids is fully compatible with sexual desire. Indeed, it often singles out women seen as promiscuous, the repositories of many men’s fluids.

.. as with the apparent defamation of Renate Dolphin in Kavanaugh’s infamous yearbook, men often crow with pride over intercourse with a woman imagined as sluttish and at the same time defame and marginalize her.

.. Disgust is often more deeply buried than envy and anger, but it compounds and intensifies the other negative emotions.

.. Our president seems to be especially gripped by disgust: for women’s menstrual fluids, their bathroom breaks, the blood imagined streaming from their surgical incisions, even their flesh, if they are more than stick-thin.

U.S. Officials ‘at a Fucking Loss’ Over Latest Russia Sellout

Current and former American diplomats are expressing disgust and horror over the White House’s willingness to entertain permitting Russian officials to question a prominent former U.S. ambassador.

.. “It’s beyond disgraceful. It’s fundamentally ignorant with regard to how we conduct diplomacy or what that means. It really puts in jeopardy the professional independence of diplomats anywhere in the world, if the consequence of their actions is going to be potentially being turned over to a foreign government,”

.. During President Trump’s press conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Putin pivoted a question about extraditing the 12 Russian intelligence officers whom Robert Mueller has indicted into a quid pro quo for going after longtime betes noire currently beyond his reach.

.. Putin singled out Bill Browder, whose exposure of widespread Russian tax fraud led to the passage of a U.S. human rights sanctions law Putin hates. Standing next to Trump, the Russian president accused Browder of masterminding an illegal campaign contribution to Hillary Clinton and alleging vaguely that he had “solid reason to believe that some intelligence officers guided these transactions.” Should Trump permit the Russians to question people around Browder, Putin hinted, he will let Mueller’s people be “present at questioning” of the intelligence officers.

.. On Wednesday, Russian prosecutors escalated the stakes. The prosecutor-general’s office said it wanted to interview Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, another Putin bete noire. McFaul—the Obama-era ambassador to Moscow—replied on Twitter that the Russians know well that he wasn’t even in Russia during the relevant time frame for any case against Browder.
.. Sarah Huckabee Sanders declined to rule out permitting the Russians to question McFaul. Sanders said that there had been “some conversation” in Helsinki about the issue, though Trump made no “commitment.”
.. Heather Nauert called the Russian request for McFaul “absolutely absurd”—which was closer in line with how former U.S. diplomats viewed Putin’s gambit.If the U.S. would make a former diplomat avail for questioning by a foreign government without evidence of wrongdoing, then that would be quite horrifying,” said Ron Neumann,
.. Susan Rice, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and Barack Obama’s national security adviser, tweeted that the lack of commitment to protecting McFaul was “beyond outrageous.
.. If the White House cannot defend and protect our diplomats, like our service members, they are serving a hostile foreign power not the American people.”
.. “To even hint that there’s some element of credibility to Russian disruptions and distractions puts a bullseye on the back of any diplomat and invites authoritarian regimes to bully and threaten American public servants for the crime of doing their job
.. Ned Price, a former CIA analyst and spokesman for the Obama National Security Council, said Sanders’ comments made Trump look “even weaker” than during Trump’s Monday press conference with Putin. “Trump has always been all too eager to cave to Putin, but, as far as we know, it’d been largely in the abstract. He sells out our intelligence community, attacks NATO, shelves our commitment to human rights. But Putin now has specific demands in the form of human beings—one of them formerly our designated representative to Russia,” Price said.
.. “By failing to reject the idea out of hand – immediately and forcefully – Trump signaled that absolutely nothing is off limits when it comes to Putin. And just as shocking, he’s willing to play Putin’s brand of ball, in which the world is purely transactional and lives are expendable.”
.. The current U.S. diplomat said the openness to turning over McFaul capped off a shocking week for U.S. geopolitics.
.. The president has first and foremost his interests at the top of his mind, as opposed to the government’s. That’s very clear over the past week and a half, between shitting on our NATO allies and kissing Putin’s ass,” the diplomat said. “He cares more about himself than the nation and any of us who serve it.”The diplomat continued: “Either he’s compromised by Putin or he’s a pussy, in which case he should grab himself.”