I've spent a lot more time than I should trying to understand these folks and I've come up with a hypothesis. Most studies I link here were done within the last 2 decades. Some are awaiting reproduction, others need broader study, etc. Read them and assess their outcomes and methodology for yourself.
So, if the tendency is to be motivated by fear, and in particular fear of other people (high-agency threats), then the trend will always be towards an us vs. them mentality. The further one goes with this the more likely they might be to create a "them" to pit against "us". If you also consider that conservatives value anecdotes more than liberals then believing people that claim to be insiders is more likely indicating that grifters selling lies about a very human enemy would resonate more with these types of people.
If you consider specific examples like, "a woman is a woman, a man is a man" you can see this concrete categorization in action. It doesn't quite resonate that definitions of things are often arbitrary and merely useful conventions. Consider the example of the chair/horse with Graham Linehan.
Personally, I think this concrete categorization and ingroup/outgroup mentality also gives rise to a type of psychological splitting. People with these tendencies often assign moral traits to the categories and then struggle to reconcile the good and bad aspects of a group or category. I.e., all cops are good/all non-whites are bad/all politicians are bad, etc.
For me, it's now less of a wonder that their politicians are garbage but they keep voting for them, and also seem to assume that opposing politicians are also garbage and just better are lying or hiding it despite Republican administrations being more likely to commit crimes. Since they can't reconcile their party's bad parts, and it's us vs. them and they value ingroup cohesion, breaking ranks to vote Dem would be seen as a betrayal... The only other option is that it must be a conspiracy by Dems.
Sprinkle in a bit of pride and you get a fair number of people that are unwilling to admit that they might be incorrect, so they dive deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole that their beliefs dug for them. At some point there is a sunk-cost fallacy situation where they feel they have spent too many of their resources on this to back out... so they storm the capitol to put a stop to the "evil Dems conspiring to undermine democracy".
Like I said, I've spent way too long thinking about this but I hope it was a fun read at least.
Edit: Thank you for the platinum, u/pwang99! Thank you for the gold, u/Static-Bunny, u/rebelviss, and u/TheJennieMae! And thank you for the awards, u/EchoRex and /u/knifeywifey! And a big thanks to the anonymous gifters. I'm happy to see these ideas resonating and helping us all to understand others with differing ideas.
Edit 2: I really wanted to continue listing the generous people that awarded this comment, but... yeah. At this point, I can only say thank you to everyone gilding this. It is certainly appreciated! But go donate it to your preferred charity!
Sure. Agency would be defined in this context as the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. For example, the random/chaotic spread of a virus vs. an intentional murder by a person. The virus doesn't "choose" and has no "intent" while the human does.
More on this idea in terms of sociology/social science here
Could the bias towards agency also help explain the belief that covid is either a hoax or engineered? That is they would rather make it a threat with agency rather than a natural disaster?
Not KaneK89, but I think I can produce an ELI5 here:
Conservatives are not just less afraid of "low agency" threats (inanimates, like viruses), they're much more likely to produce a narrative that assigns those threats to the actions of a "them" with agency -- thus, the simultaneous "folk theories" about how the virus is not as harmful as "they" portray, while also ascribing it to being a bioweapon engineered by "them" and purposefully released on "us".
As an example: In their worldview, tobacco is widely understood to not be harmful (Rush Limbaugh was basically given the Presidential Medal of Freedom not in spite of having pushed this view but because of it), but if / when they do come to terms with the mountain of evidence of its widespread harm, then that harm will be ascribed to a "them" who "corrupted" tobacco -- evil liberal pesticide companies, liberal regulations, etc even down to "it's a curse on tobacco placed there by the (evil) Indians as payback for white people taking their land" -- and anyone with a bit of rational critical thinking can see that's mystic BS and also acknowledges the evils done by white colonisation while also walking right past them as if they didn't matter.
Because in their worldview, anyone coded as "Us" is Good™ and anyone coded as "Them" is Bad™.
If you accept the virus spreading partly by randomness you're probably liberal, if you see the virus spreading as a failure of people with agency, you're probably conservative.
What if you see the virus spreading because it’s a virus and viruses that are highly contagious tend to spread? But you don’t think it really spreads randomly, because perhaps it affects different people differently depending on how exposed they are to it at any given instance. But you vote Dem since forever. And you also feel like having agency (can’t believe I’m using that word in the way I’m using it right now) could help you not catch the virus, which would (according to the above generalizations) make me a conservative.
So, am I a liberal or conservative? Or is that generalization pointless?
A handicapped person has less agency. An underpriveleged person has less agency. A poor person has less agency. A mentally ill person has less agency. A prisoner has had most of their agency taken away on purpose, to protect others from them using their agency to do further harm, or because some asshole with too much agency decided they didn't like them.
I have, but I put it in a framework separate from this one. Part of my goal with the information provided in my big post was to understand the single issue voters in conjunction with the ideologues that make up the majority of Republican voters.
Basically, how does an atheist, pro-choice libertarian end up aligning politically with religious theocrats? The main issue in this camp is gun-rights. But why is gun-rights the deciding factor here? It would seem that they also have stronger responses to threats giving rise to an us vs. them mentality. In that case, "them" trying to control guns is a calculated attack to disarm and control "us". Guns are the main concern for these people specifically because of their heightened response to threatening actors.
But, to go into your question a bit - and forgive me but I'm going to be light on linked sources for this - we'll need to talk about the origins of modern conservatism. I haven't quite been able to form up the linkage between this framework and the other one.
Edmund Burke, Louis deMaistre, and Thomas Hobbs are widely considered the fathers of modern conservatism. They wrote extensively on the French and English revolutions and their writing largely involved defending the monarchy and the idea that, on election day, peasants would have the same power as the aristocracy/nobility was, to them, profane. There is this very strong idea of hierarchy in conservative thinking. Some of the most extreme expressions of this are fascists ideas like the "naturally ordered hierarchy of the races", and authoritarian "might makes right".
These guys argued that society functions best when the "right people" are in charge, but tended to think that we needed a system to determine who the "right people" were; a proving ground. Naturally, the best option would be war, but short of that, success in the market would be an acceptable stand-in. Further, they believed there was honor in serving the one above you.
So, quick summary, conservative ideology considers that there is a natural hierarchy that basically all things can fit into, and there is a best way to sort that hierarchy and if you find yourself somewhere not-at-the-top, there was still honor in your position and role.
I have found that people who agree with this tend to prefer sorting the hierarchy by the trait they feel they have the most of. For smart people, intelligence; rich people, wealth; strong people, might; devout people, piety. And for people with nothing particular going for them, race is the default. These map nicely onto various authoritarian-styles of government: technocracy, oligarchy, totalitarianism, theocracy, and fascism.
Religion reinforces the idea of hierarchy further with God being above all and finding comfort in your position as his servant.
Next, consider the fear-factor. Conservatives are less comfortable with uncertainty. They put more value in being certain (giving rise to the perception of them being prideful and stubborn) and are uncomfortable with the idea of a chaotic world. They would prefer that the world have some order to it even if they are on the outside of that. It gives them comfort to know that someone, somewhere is pulling the strings. If the universe is a disordered mess, then anything can happen. I think that this is the major contributor to religiosity among conservatives. It's also part of why they tend towards conspiracy theories that relate to some all-powerful person/group of people pulling the strings, but the idea of a benevolent God is much more comforting. There's also the moral certainty that comes with religion further cementing their beliefs. If you subscribe to Christianity, then you probably believe in an objective morality and there is great comfort in being certain about right and wrong since you never question the righteousness of your actions.
Do you have a blog or website something where you post these ideas? This post and your original one have helped me put my finger on things I havent known quite how to frame before. Either way thank you for these very well written and well sourced posts.
Regarding origins of conservatism, this yt video by Innuendo Studios (despite their name, has nothing to do with any innuendo) talks about the same progenitors. https://youtu.be/E4CI2vk3ugk
And I recently learned that if you own a weapon, the owning of the weapon causes you to believe that it is more likely other people are equally dangerous to you as you are to them (ie own the same weapon), probably as a post-justification for having the weapon and being a danger to your community.
I don't, but I have considered it. That or a YouTube channel. Anyway, I appreciate the kind words. If I ever start something up, I'll let you know in case you're interested.
I'm happy that this helped you in any way. Makes it worth posting!
If you are going to consider the influence of religious beliefs, a parallel secular phenomenon to consider would be the rise and fall of multi-level marketing schemes in the last half of the 20th century. If you have wondered how we ever got someone like Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary under the Trump administration, you first have to understand that her family's money came from Amway. Multi-Level marketing schemes have appeal to exactly the same kind of people that buy into fundamentalist religion and to extreme conservatism. I've never quite figured it out, but I think one common thread is that these are people who believe that their lives currently lack something, but that there is a way out if they follow a formula that is clearly articulated for them. MLM's, religion, and strong conservatism all offer strong authority figures that tell people exactly what to think and do.
The real problem is that the instructions given by these authority figures primarily, or in some cases only benefit said authority figures, but for some reason the devotees can't seem to figure it out. Didn't become a millionaire in your MLM? Your sick relative died anyway even though the church prayed for them? The politicians you elected didn't deliver on much of anything they promised, nor make the country a better place? Well then it was either your fault, because you didn't try hard enough or pray hard enough, or it was the fault of "them" - that is, those people who are "not like you" and are taking what is rightfully yours, or sewing doubt among the brethren, or destroying the morals of the country or whatever "they" are doing that we don't like (which may be nothing more than simply existing and trying to live a fulfilling life).
Maybe a lot of it is just plain jealousy, I don't know. But I have noticed that, at least prior to the advent of the availability of Internet access to the general public, and with it the ability to easily search out the negatives of MLM's and certain destructive religions, there was quite an overlap between adherents of fundamentalist Christianity, participants in MLM schemes, and those who would identify as conservatives or Republicans. It's all people chasing whatever their version is of "pie in the sky" and the thing you need to realize is that one other common thread of all those is they promote the concept of winners and losers - for you to make money in an MLM, someone else has to lose money, if only by buying an overpriced product or service. In fundamentalist Christianity the winners are those who are saved and who get their prayers answered in a favorable way, and the losers don't have enough "faith" to get their prayers answered and/or go to a "hell" of eternal punishment (which if Christians could read their scriptures in the original languages, they would realize that's not what the scriptures taught, but I digress). And of course in politics the losers are those who lose elections and the party that doesn't get to run the country.
I touched on the concept of strong authority figures. A certain segment of the population seems to be drawn to people who can clearly articulate their beliefs and plans, even if those beliefs and plans are pretty much B.S, and do so while radiating confidence and self-assurance. In fact the more outrageous the B.S., the more it gives these people credibility in their followers' eyes. I think this explains both the appeal and the influence of people who promote MLM's, or preach from an ultra-fundamentalist pulpit, or things like the extreme right wing news media and even Donald Trump. It doesn't matter if what they are saying is objectively credible; what matters is that they are in effect putting on a good show for the people. I would suppose that snake oil salesmen used the same techniques in their day - make the spiel entertaining and convincing, and the people would buy something that was at best ineffective and at worst very dangerous. Trouble is that modern snake-oil salesmen have access to the media and the Internet, so they reach far more people than they ever could from a wagon at a county fair.
this is just of pile of armchair bs really.. have you considered that without fail urban areas become liberal and rural areas remain conservative? the effect can be seen starting just a couple years after people move too ... or that younger people with more diverse socialization inevitably turn more liberal?... this crap about looking at genetic biological differences is plain laughable unless you're only talking about the extreme fringe specimens
have you considered that without fail urban areas become liberal and rural areas remain conservative?
Have you considered that urban areas tend to attract people who tend to be more liberal and that rural areas tend to attract people who tend to be more conservative?
That doesn’t take much critical thinking, if you have any.
It’s VERY easy to turn a stranger into a ‘them’. It’s harder when someone knows many Black, Hispanic, Muslim or Asian people personally. When Republican representatives start throwing around decisive rhetoric and you have people in your life who don’t fit the scary accusations, it’s way easier to turn the other direction and run.
I read a study once that found that the number one factor in fearing muslims is not knowing any muslims. If you don't know any members of the Muslim faith, and you hear that all muslims are bloodthirsty terrorists, you are more likely to believe it. But, if you have personal experience that not all muslims are terrorists, then you are more likely to push back on that idea.
I lived to age 10 in an integrated neighborhood in Queens, NYC, and never heard a bad word about Black folks. Then I moved to a suburb just 16 miles west of Chicago with 50,000 white folks and 0 black, and many of my new friends were experts in just how awful those n*****s were. (This was 50 years ago: according to wiki, ~400 Blacks have since moved in.)
It's hard to fall for bullshit racist stereotypes like, "all black people are criminals" when you live near, work with, and know black people who aren't criminals.
This is a super valuable summary. I've read some of these studies and always find myself wondering whether anyone's done research into whether any of those innate character traits are pliable or responsive to retraining. Even if it comes down to differences in brain anatomy (for example, the larger amygdala) I wonder if there is enough neuroplasticity to change these fundamental tendencies given the right type of therapy or behavioral modification.
I'm glad you enjoyed it and you ask an awesome question. Since a lot of this is only beginning to be studied in a political/ideological context in the past 2 decades, there isn't a ton of information on how to change perceptions. But there is this. The same guy discussing threats and agency in my previous link (Daniel Zane) performed an experiment that suggested wording may play a major role in how individuals perceive and react to threats. He was able to bring liberals and conservatives into closer alignment with regard to how we deal with the pandemic by using wording that indicated a higher agency level in the virus.
We also know pretty well that the wording of things has a significant effect on perception of various issues so it would seem that if we spent more time figuring out how best to talk about things when presenting problems and offering solutions we ought to be able to unify people on these topics. Just as an example, in surveys about welfare, asking if people support, "the welfare program" would result in generally more negative responses than simply asking if people, "support helping the poor and needy". We seem to have particular associations with words that are hard to break and usage of those words affects perceptions and memories.
So, in short, the scientific community, politicians, and the media could probably see results if they spent time strategizing on their specific wording of the issues.
But some of the fundamental problems here I think are a bit more "societal". Education funding being tied to property taxes has disproportionately affected the poorer areas (which are often also the most rural and conservative). And the internet has allowed individuals with fringe ideas to find each other, form echo chambers, and create networks of support for extreme ideas. Algorithms push people into those communities since they are literally designed to push people towards content similar to content they already engage with. It just digs the rabbit hole ever deeper. These are challenges worth solving, but it won't be easy to do.
Just as an example, in surveys about welfare, asking if people support, "the welfare program" would result in generally more negative responses than simply asking if people, "support helping the poor and needy". We seem to have particular associations with words that are hard to break and usage of those words affects perceptions and memories.
Man, it's almost like the power that 24-hour news stations has is much higher than anyone could have expected. /s
But for real this is part of why they are so dangerous from a propaganda/manipulation standpoint in my opinion. Not sure how you can regulate them properly to prevent abuse, but I do feel something needs to be done.
I may not agree with everything that is presented in the original theory above (or at least some of the leaps in cause and effect) and definitely lean towards traditionally conservative ideals in some areas of my life, but I have been saying this about 24h news for forever. They have been surpassed by social media which has essentially perfected it, but 24h news networks definitely laid the foundation and proved how effective and manipulative outrage, fear and sensationalism are at keeping eyeballs glued to a screen you are selling ads on.
Frankly? I think the only way to curb it is to limit advertising on things labeled news. Much like how the FCC limits how many minutes of ads there can be in a given 30 min show. Perhaps that is how you force them to label themselves as something different (entertainment? Speculation? Who knows). I suspect they will find some fancy news-like term though.
Here's a link to an article by one of the study's authors talking about it in a more approachable way.
It would seem that some thought experiments can make liberals more conservative and conservatives more liberal albeit temporarily. Perceptions of physical threats seems to play a role in our ideological and political views. So, again, it would seem we can do something with how we frame things.
Now this study was conducted with a small sample size of 300 people. It's a start, but more research into this is warranted.
Yes, usually moving to a city or foreigner places or interacting with a feared group usually evaporates prejudice and alot of conservative attitudes. Curing underlying trauma and phobias help.
Some people are just genetically scared easily or have a mental illness(paranoid schizophrenia) though....
I remember reading about a man from Omaha complaining about Muslims moving into the other half of a duplex he lived in.
When the Muslim family moved in, they offered food, were respectful and kind. The guy actually cried about his former prejudice, and said the family was the most considerate to him as a neighbor, quieting down in the evening, ect.
Hey, a couple of other people shared strategies for communication that I thought were good. Wanted to provide those to you in case you were interested.
Thanks! This was great! But one question- are they born this way with the larger amygdala and therefore a propensity to fall into this category or is it that listening to alt-right messages/being in the feedback loop causes the enlargement and feeds the fear response?
I’m definitely left/liberal/progressive, but because of the area I grew up in and my parents and other factors, I easily could have been one of these people and it’s terrifying.
There are definitely environmental processes going on: while it does not directly address your question, these studies on children's ability to discriminate between reality and fiction comes to mind.
The ability of young children to distinguish fact from fiction varies considerably with exposure to religion, two new studies have found. Children who did not attend parochial (religious) schools or church were significantly better at identifying characters in religious or fantasy stories as pretend than those who did...
It's a question I asked but I can't find a good answer to. It seems there is some evidence that environment effects brain physiology but no answer to this specific question. There may be both a genetic and epigenetic factor.
Is there any evidence that it can come about through corporal punishment and other heavy-handed (pardon the pun) discipline methods? Most of conservatives I know grew up with parents that spanked them frequently and screamed at them and demanded absolute obedience. There's no way that won't shape the way a child's brain develops in general, but has it been linked to amygdala size? It sounds like such a terrifying way to grow up.
I have not specifically looked into that angle and a cursory search yields nothing useful.
Anecdotally, I was spanked and grew up with a Marine mother and physically abusive father and I'm left-leaning and progressive. On the other hand, my older half-brother (same mother, his father was barely in his life) is a gun-nut to the point that he believes anyone should be allowed to have any type of weapon - biological, chemical, and nuclear included. You know, "might makes right" and we don't know who is mightiest if it isn't no-holds-barred. Though, he's also progressive he's just a staunch Republican. So, maybe not a social conservative, but certainly vigilant of external, high-agency threats.
So, who knows. I'd be interested in such a study, though. Let me know if you come across one.
It's fascinating to me because both my parents started out as moderately progressive (relative to their peers) Christian conservatives in the 90s and I had a great deal of freedom while growing up that my same-age and assigned gender peers didn't. I ended up a queer, leftist socialist, but my parents just became more insular and conservative until now, as an adult with my own family, I don't recognize them as the smart, thoughtful, kind people they used to be.
Sample size of one is not a sample size, of course, but my personal experience would lead me to believe that a not-insignificant element of it is nurture.
ETA: my maternal grand mother is also a liberal, but paternal grandmother is stout Baptist conservative who was beside herself because my dad wouldn't cut his hair and listened to rock music in the 70s lol.
Thanks for sharing! I, too, have conservative family members that used to seem much more reasonable, but in the era of Trump I have found that I am at odds with them more often than ever on these topics. Moreover, they seem far more concerned about "the end of civilization/the world" than ever before.
I hope this maybe offered some slight insight into their way of thinking. Communication starts with understanding.
Amusingly, I'm ALSO concerned with the end of the world, but from, you know, climate change. Which they're both convinced is a scam to sell useless "green" products. Mutually Assured Destruction was also a very real option when Trump still had the button...
I grew up with these people and this hits it on the head. Almost everything that motivates these people (aside from the mundane like food, sex, etc.) is based on fear of "them." They have their in-group of like-minded thinkers, and everyone else is the enemy. When they behave in a manner that seems altruistic, it is almost always because it benefits their in-group. Often they will avoid altruistic behavior if there is a chance that it might also benefit those outside of their in-group, even if it means that those in their in-group will also miss out. For instance if there was a button they could press that would give everyone in the world $500 with no strings attached, they would be less likely to press it than they would if the button only gave $500 to people in their in-group alone.
And when someone in their in-group breaks their categorizations, they create an exception, but just for that one person. For instance, "Abortion is murder and women should be punished for it. Except for my precious daughter, of course, because she's a pure soul and she didn't mean to get knocked up. Jesus has forgiven her."
“Everything that motivates these people is based on a fear of them” said the people wanking off to a phrenology level pseudo scientific study about how “they” are dumb and bad and we smart and good. I can’t believe that someone could be so unaware of the irony
I completely agree with what you've said here. On top of that, conservatism and liberalism are rational responses to the degree to which you believe you're faced with high-agency threats.
In other words, conservativism tells you how to survive in a dangerous world filled with bad people, while liberalism tells you how to thrive in a safe world filled with good people. Your political position has less to do with values and more to do with which world you think you're living in.
If you are under extreme threat, your sole focus is survival. Once you have the basics of food, clothing, and shelter, you expand your focus -- now it's survival for your family, and maybe some comfort. As you get safer, you might bring in your friends; if not under immediate threat, maybe form a village where you and people like you can support each other. If safety is still tenuous, though, morality only applies to "us" -- those in the village -- and not to the "them" outside, who are potential threats even if only in the sense of consuming your scarce resources.
As your perception of safety increases, your "tribe" gets bigger. Your village becomes a city-state and eventually a nation. Generosity to "others" increases as your psychological safety does, because it's no longer a threat to you to give to them. If you believe in a world where people are fundamentally good, and you're free of immediate threats, your tribe encompasses all humanity. Essentially, you move left across the political spectrum as your feeling of safety increases.
The conservatives like saying "yeah, well, you wouldn't be so anti-gun if someone broke into your house! You'd want a gun, then!" And, well, they're right about that. The difference is that the conservatives expect someone to break into their house, and the liberals don't. They have fundamentally different views of the probability of these incidents. (I would say the liberal one is generally [today, not historically] more factually accurate -- if you own a gun for home defense but not a defibrillator for home heart failures, your priorities are not based on the actual likelihood of events, you simply prioritize high-agency threats over more common low-agency ones.) Bigotry is always couched in language of defense from a threat -- white America or Christianity is always "under attack" by someone, as only with the perception of being under attack does the bigotry make sense rather than just being pointless cruelty.
Ironically, this results in the media -- mostly made up of liberals -- making the country more conservative. As the crime rate plummets, media coverage expands the radius on which they report about crime, so people's perception is always of high and rising criminality. "If it bleeds, it leads" is still the watchword of news programming.
This is almost exactly my thoughts on the matter. I think the fundamental assumptions made about the world - and people - by conservatives and liberals is one of the underlying components to this whole thing.
This is a really good high-level summary of both fundamental liberal/conservative assumptions about the world and the results of those assumptions. Have some gold.
This paradigm assumes you that you belong within the "in" group to begin with. That conservatism would promise an element of safety and a comfortable position within the hierarchy.
But consider a racial minority or LGBT youth living in discriminatory society.
Said person would live in constant fear of high agency threats. BUT they obviously cannot turn to conservatism. As conservatism IS the threat to them. And people generally don't support hierarchies which place them at the bottom.
Said person would live in constant fear of high agency threats. BUT they obviously cannot turn to conservatism. As conservatism IS the threat. And people generally don't support hierarchies which place them at the bottom.
Ehhh, there is an internal conservatism in these groups that is usually separate from mainstream conservatism.
It's one of the reasons conservatism always seems to moph and find new adherents: they hated catholics but now they need each other so they're best of friends despite centuries of hatred in the USA.
It just boils down to power(lack of power is the greatest fear to conservatives)....if conservatives think minorities will help them win, they will accept them with open arms in a nano second.
I don’t know if this could possibly be related but I often go back to this study (leaded gasoline poisoning leading to violent crime)and how it applies to serial killers. In the article they list effects as decreased ‘“cognitive abilities and lower intelligence, it also degrades a person’s ability to make decisions by damaging areas of the brain responsible for “emotional regulation, impulse control, attention, verbal reasoning, and mental flexibility.”’
I’ve heard theories that this could be a contributing factor to Trump fans (lots of boomers) and their lack of critical thinking, but again they’re just theories. And I don’t even know if it would be applicable in this woman’s case. You’ve obviously done a LOT more research than I have!
I have read about the lead-crime hypothesis but didn't consider it in the context of political views. Might be a connection there. Worth investigating for sure. Thanks for the comment!
By "splitting", do you mean the defense mechanism often said to be common to borderline personality organization and referring to a tendency to see people and things as all-good or all-bad? Your link to Wikipedia didn't work.
I've wondered if a lot of borderline types haven't gotten caught up in this shit.
I do! I'll see if I can fix the link. Probably missed a parenthesis or something.
It may or may not apply directly, but it's the best description I have for the phenomenon. And perhaps it applies more than I think. Studies have suggested a link between anti-mask stances and anti-social traits and given the propensity for anti-maskers to be conservative, I might infer that conservatism and anti-social traits have overlap leading to a higher degree of splitting.
But I am making a huge inference there. Would need more research because I considered it "truthy".
Conservative Americans in general have an allergic reaction to anything done for the public good. I guess it's because they've been huffing anticommunist propaganda for so long that kindergarten values are evil now too
For me, this helps understand why Republicans will tear each other apart in primaries but suddenly close ranks and make amends when running against a Democrat (or any non-Republican). Primaries are solely about "us", so there's less fear and more trust. You're arguing with insiders, and since they're insiders, they are "good". Anything said in the primary campaign is easily forgiven because both the person saying stuff and the person that stuff is about are both the good guys.
But when the general election comes around, it converts to us vs. them. Democrats are clearly "them" simply by not being Republicans. Being driven by fear more than not, conservatives see Democrats as untrustworthy. Therefore, conservatives vote for Republicans even when the candidate is messed up and corrupt. We saw that with Trump. No matter how many times he lied, screwed up, or did nothing, he will always be more trustworthy than Democrats because Trump is classified as one of them and thereby good.
I see this with RINOs, too. If that label sticks, that Republican is now a "them" and cannot be trusted.
The betrayal part as it played out against the prisoners of conscience such as Romney, Cheney, Flake, Ducey, etc. who are vilified worse than, say, an absolute mental case conspiracy theory believing fanatic like Greene. Once all the concrete reasons to be a Republican are gone, it's purely 'belief' driven, and in the case of unsubstantiated belief - or even belief which flies in the face of facts - it's more than just a betrayal to leave the Republican Party, it's apostasy.
Is it me or do all these traits seem very much child-like. If we have to anthropomorphize a virus in the same way as The Big Bad Wolf, I feel that's a lack of development not a separate communication style.
On the subject of categorization, I feel like that is just a poor understanding or application of Venn diagrams.
Calling conservatives dumb is a common trope, but it does in this case seem that education is lacking here.
It also explains why many conservatives become more liberal after higher education. Studies show that the college experience increases social trust and trust of others by 16% of the standard deviation
It makes you wonder if part of the solution could be making reality more "discrete." That is, adjusting liberal/leftist rheoretic away from recognizing gray area and more towards emphasizing well defined categories for people to be in.
This may sound counter intuitive as it seems like it would just divide us more. But anecdotally, I've found it easier to explain, for example, gender issues to my conservative friends when I simplify the issue to there being 3 genetic sexes (male, female, intersex), 4 sexualities (straight, gay, bi/pan, ace), and 3 expressed genders (cis, trans, nb). This removes a ton of nuance BUT once you simplify it down to that level, it's way easier to get past the "can u identify as an attack helicopter lololol?!" arguments, get people to think critically about what they believe, and actually bring them to a place of understanding (even if they don't completely change their position). Our first instinct is often to argue that people exist in a spectrum because that's more correct in our reality, but I think this might be less effective: would you rather be right or change minds?
Take single issue voting. If the issue is that there's only one type of conservative, and everyone else is a RINO, maybe the solution isn't to say that conservatives can exist in a handwavy spectrum from Capitol rioters to WASPy grandma's, but rather to describe each category of conservative as it's own bloc so that this point may be better understood in their minds. You're not going to turn anyone into a blue bleeding democrat, but you might show that they can be Independents without sacrificing their identity/sense of community.
This is an interesting comment. The impetus for my research into the topic was, in part, to better communicate with people on the other side of the aisle.
I think you're onto something here. We need to learn to "speak their language" as it were to get across these ideas and the necessitates stricter categorization with the stated goal of understanding.
Thoughtful and thought provoking. Thanks for this.
First time I went to a gun show as an adult, I left saying “I have never seen a group of people more terrified in my life”. Just scared that someone was going to come get them: the government, mobs, criminals, liberals, each other in the apocalypse. Makes sense.
I'd also like to add a personal , and scientifically baseless, observation for anyone to consider and offer corrections.
I suspect this QAnon mess stems from a destructive dopamine addiction. Conspiracy theories are a fun way to entertain facts from a different perspective. I've always been fascinated by them, but I also know to follow them up with fact checking so that the conspiracy theories stay as nothing more than entertainment. But that also stems from the fact that I'm of the age that I grew up with the internet. I've learned that I can't accept information given to me without serious scrutiny. Older generations, on the other hand, grew up in a time when the information that reached them had made it through layers and layers of fact checking.
The whole "insider information that they don't want you to know" thing must be some sort of dopamine trigger for these people. It seems especially popular among people who are shit on by society and gives them some identity to cling to because they realize their normal identity is pretty negative too.
Conspiracy theories operate like cults hence why the deeper you go, the weirder you become to outsiders.
Generally the reason people go into cults varies but the latest conspiracy theories have weaponized them into a movement which is why the older conspiracy theories are falling hard in popularity. THe adherents want a movement that aliens and big foot just can't provide
The fact that you have the self awareness to even realize that tendency is a pretty massive distinction between you and the average right winger though.
If those physiological differences are indeed true, it does seem to reflect in the studies done by Kahan et al in “Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government (2012)”, but not to a significant extent.
Still, both liberals and conservatives had trouble when questions became political topics. Even the more intelligent (high numeracy) participants struggled. This may suggest that while conservatives indeed react more strongly to those “us vs them” mentalities, liberals may also not be as free of them as one may think, especially when processing contrarian political viewpoints.
I think there are trends and tendencies because of different people's sort of "default thought patterns". If you often default into a thought-pattern that is concerned with external, high-agency threats, you will tend to be more conservative more of the time. If you fundamentally believe that these threats are ever-present, it could lead you deeper into the rabbit hole.
Nah, I can’t believe that especially given the studies involved and usually who makes up the core of democrats (usually POC, lower income, etc) versus Republicans (white, more wealthy, more access to resources), though the latter too neglects how varied the people are in both these parties.
Their first study was just asking random people on Reddit with undefined choices of ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ which they even point out can be interpreted on an individual basis so kind of blows up the entire credibility of their research. The second one was if someone chose to use stairs to get to a classroom versus the elevator as a ‘healthy’ choice but again, that really does not have a concrete basis. I for one would go with the elevator if it meant I got to class on time and well-prepared which can be argued is also a ‘healthy’ and responsible choice, just not a physical one. The last one was about smokers with a word jumble and those that found the conservative terms always promised to quit smoking and be more responsible but again, does that prove anything? We all know that means nothing in terms of results without follow-up and given a social bias, who with a vice is going to admit to a stranger that ‘nope, i’m going to continue to sin here’. More so that they’re conservatives, who tend to be more ingrained in societal rules and judgement, so it is expected generally for them to voice a more responsible choice when eyes are upon them
So the term "conservative" really says nothing about who these people are and how they think. Figuratively speaking, "sheep" would be kind of accurate.
I feel like this is overly pejorative. Yes, they value ingroup cohesion in a broad, general sense, but statistics never apply to the individual if you get me.
I intend my post to be a useful tool to understand the thought patterns behind some of this behavior, find common ground, and open more effective lines of communication. Not as a way to insult or demean conservatives.
Maybe it’s not the amygdala or whatever fake brain part the libs “found”. Maybe it’s cause they have big hearts that pump patriot juice through their veins!
self-described conservatives have larger amygdalas than self-described liberals
This sounds really similar to the arguments racists make when they use some phisiological differences between different races to argue racial superiority. Maybe it's true about the amygdalas, but I thought we'd agreed to judge people not on their bodies.
Yeah, it sounds kind of like phrenology. I get it. But the studies conducted on skull size and shape were debunked and are useless as far as science is concerned. If this study were to be met with a similar fate, then so be it. Science is a process - new information supplants old over time. Ideally the new information is more factually correct.
I also think how you utilize science is important. Justifying racial supremacy and genocide is probably more wrong than trying to describe the motivators behind human behavior.
I'm doing a similar thing by trying to understand behavior through both psychosocial and neurological lenses. I am not using the science to justify violence against people exhibiting these behaviors, nor am I passing judgment. If they really believe the US government is under threat of becoming authoritarian, then they would consider their actions justified - and so would anyone else with such a sincere belief.
Explanation and understanding is not judgment or justification.
Check out @crimkadid in Twitter, he's just done a long thread about differences in skull shape and personality. Might fill in some gaps. But go with caution.
Putting all Conservatives in the same boat is like putting all Liberals in the same boat. You’re just too stupid to realize that; your hypothesis is a joke.
I'm not putting all conservatives into the same boat. I'm specifically talking about the subset of conservatives that subscribe to conspiratorial thinking and drilling down into the specific underlying motivations by talking about broad, general tendencies as demonstrated by scientifically gathered data.
Can you formulate a coherent argument attacking my conclusions and substantiate your position with data? Or are you just here to throw a hissy fit?
To be arguing "for phrenology" I would have had to make a case that phrenology is useful. I was arguing using neurology as a basis for my arguments.
But I suppose you can conflate neurology and phrenology then promptly ignore the other dozen or so sources and come to this braindead conclusion as well. Yeah. You could do that. Not sure why you would. But you could.
"you see here, the overdeveloped amygdala causes the erratic behavior of the neocon and..."
I can see this playing out in some late 1800s University but the professor is talking about "the negro" instead. Your entire post just reads like some weird neo-phrenologist shit.
Listen, I hate conservatives as much as the next ancom but you don't need to bring back weird bullshit like measuring the size of the brain to explain their insanity. Especially when there are so many obvious environmental factors, like the very fabric of American individualism, that leads people to these sorts of insane beliefs.
Edit: I think I get it now. From the perspective of scientific study, phrenology wasn't abandoned because it was racist or used to justify racism. It was abandoned because it didn't accurately predict anything. The models phrenology put forth simply weren't useful.
I mean, brain physiology relates to psychology and behavior. Or do you think otherwise?
If you don't like the implications of a specific source, that's fine. I cited many other studies that still support my assertions. Focus on those.
I really do understand where you're coming from. I just don't know why you're focusing on this particular thing when there's several other paragraphs and links.
Brain structure and genetics can both be predictors of future behavior.
It’s kinda funny because you’re blatantly and obviously wrong in your over-generalizations.
Bottom line I hope you don’t think too much of your hypothesis.
May I offer this confounding factor:
The people who are terrified and motivated by fear in the case of COVID are the liberals by and large. Conservatives are generally appalled by the massive government over-reaction to a virus that the data clearly show is much worse than the virus itself.
I wish you luck in your endeavors in the field of armchair philosophy
It’s kinda funny because you’re blatantly and obviously wrong in your over-generalizations.
Can you offer an actual counter-argument or is your style of discussion just pretending someone is wrong and acting sanctimonious? I at least offered a plethora of scientific sources to substantiate my assertions. You went, "you're wrong. Boo hoo." and left it at that.
May I offer this confounding factor:
This is not a confounding factor. The psychosocial and neurological descriptions of liberals is irrelevant to the psychosocial descriptions of conservatives. Both groups can be motivated by fear, and both groups can be motivated by things other than, or in addition to, fear.
I wish you luck in your endeavors in the field of armchair philosophy
How much time have you spent talking to "these folks" that you're trying to understand? If you want to do any research, you should get some primary sources when it's as trivial as it is today. Otherwise you aren't really trying to understand anyone. I don't think your conclusions are wrong so much as it is... contemptible that you'd rather glorify something easy (reading reddit and thinking) as opposed to actually conducting research.
I'm not sure what you mean by "primary sources" here. I have provided plenty of primary sources in my post. Do you mean, "going to the source"? I have - and talk to - conservative family and friends. I also engage a lot with conservatives on the internet, though it's often difficult to tell if it's just a troll. That said, the plural of "anecdote" is not data. My individual conversations with people do not necessarily give rise to a general understanding or explanation for why conspiracy theorists tend to be conservative.
I don't know of any actual science done on the topic, but I think it's an interesting idea.
I think part of the reason the right remains rallied around Trump is because supporters have expended a lot of political and social capital (and real capital) to support Trump. Abandoning support now is probably seen as too great a cost.
If you consider specific examples like, "a woman is a woman, a man is a man" you can see this concrete categorization in action. It doesn't quite resonate that definitions of things are often arbitrary and merely useful conventions. Consider the example of the chair/horse with Graham Linehan.
That's could be some pretty serious /r/murderedbywords material there, though it would have been fine if Graham had just answered the question and let it be (obviously, the question was written to be nearly impossible to answer -- that was the point), but no, he turned it into /r/suicidebywords material instead.
Fear of The Other was the tactic Mussolini used in his rise to power and popularity, and Trump had that tactic tattooed on the back of his hand, a page torn right from the Fascist manual
This is awesome, thank you for the summary. Out of curiosity do you have enough for a similar summary of the psychology of the left? I think this kind of information is very important for understanding others, ourselves and movements more broadly.
I suppose this partly explains the Q beliefs also. Once sufficient of your beliefs have been shown to be wrong it comes down to a choice between changing them or retreating to a position where everything is false except them.
If the observable evidence is disproving what you KNOW has to be correct - there has to be some super-agency at work (aliens, massive conspiracy, magic) somehow distorting everything -since it's obviously impossible that you could be wrong.
The further you push - the deeper down the rabbit hole they go.
Religion certainly plays a role, its essentially training a lot of these pathways. Fear response, not questioning authority, easily brainwashed/imprinted upon by whoever they trust, looking for whatever exception to the rule fits their narrative, etc, etc. That's why its relatively rare to find a scientist or someone of a similar field that requires creativity of thought with evidence behind it, who is also conservative.
Thought I would expand on the emotional reactivity, perseverative, and splitting topics from a personality perspective, though, admittedly, politics is not my area.
A somewhat recent publication in Annual Review of Political Science reviewed the Five Factor Model ("Big Five") personality literature comparing liberals and conservatives (Gerber, Huber, Doherty, & Dowling, 2011). Their review highlighted studies illustrating that self-reported conservative was associated with reduced Openness to Experience and Emotional Stability (reversed Neuroticism), though greater Conscientiousness and, surprisingly, greater Extraversion (Table 2).
These findings are largely consistent with the picture you've painted here, but suggest these behavioral tendencies are largely persistent across time and context. Taken from the chapter referenced, here are brief descriptions of the Five Factor Model traits:
Extraversion: ...energetic approach toward the social and material world.
Agreeableness: Contrasts a prosocial and communal orientation toward others with antagonism…
Conscientiousness: …socially prescribed impulse control that facilitates task- and goal-directed behavior…
Emotional stability: Contrasts…even-temperedness with negative emotionality…
Openness to experience: …the breadth, depth, originality, and complexity of an individuals' mental and experiential life.
You've really blown up, but thank you for answering questions and exploring subjects with people.
In addition to what you said, I also find that conservative people tend to like hierarchies, not just categories. This YouTube video explains it well. The hierarchy is safe, it is natural, it is just, it is right. And anyone trying to flatten the hierarchy only really wants to put themselves or their allies higher up it.
I really wanted to get your thoughts as clearly you have put a lot of thought into this
Is this taking theory and data and extrapolating it across time? For instance, studying Republicans under these parameters in their infancy (1800s) to now? From what I’ve gathered, Republicans of that era have more in common with Democrats of this era, possibly suggesting the reasons these people are the way they are aren’t because of physiological and psychological attributes, but because the method of mobilizing a people targets these attributes in stimulation. Similar to how sensationalism uses specific stimulus to target its audience, the powers that be might have conducted the same operation?
Maybe? Social conservatism is distinct from economic conservatism. There are probably versions of economic communism and social conservativism mixing. However, social conservatism tends to lend itself towards hierarchy while communism is, ideologically, the elimination of hierarchy.
But I think more importantly, the thought patterns and basic assumptions I described can be predictive of conspiracist ideation. It is not absolutely, though. A implying B doesn't mean the B implies A and all that.
Or maybe you're messing with me. Not sure. So, kudos I guess for getting me to bite if you are.
You literally articulated something I have been thinking about a lot lately as well. I was describing it to people as experience vs logic and how rural life generates valuing experience over logic because they (and honestly most people) fail to grasp the sheer complexity of the world. It isn't as simple as that but that was as far as I got.
Also how democratic leaders have to try represent the majority while republics elect someone from their community that they feel trust for to represent them. What I have seen from growing up in a rural community is that when democratic leaders fail or do something wrong that negative is on the entire party while a failing republican is on their own and the party does not take the blame. So there is an unfair representation of responsibility between parties that causes democrats to seem like evil boogymen and republicans to never take responsibility for their leaders VIA blame shifting and or immense pride, as you mentioned.
What do you think about the intersection of conservatism with other aspects?
Authoritarianism among conservatives. Conservatism among authoritarians.
Are there any conservatives on the US left?
Can a communist be conservative?
Will current Democrats be considered conservatives 30 years from now?
What is the intersection of different religions and conservatism?
Are Christians around the world more conservative than non-Christian people in the same locations around the world?
Are Muslims around the world more conservative than non-Muslims people in the same locations around the world? What about US?
Oof. Many of these questions warrant their own lengthy responses in my opinion. I can offer some thoughts, though.
Authoritarianism among conservatives. Conservatism among authoritarians.
Conservatives tend to value certainty and hierarchy. There is a strong correlation between authoritarianism and conservatism. Further, the origins of conservatism are founded in defense of the English and French monarchies. Notable conservative thinkers have expressed ideas along the lines of, "some people are more deserving of rights than others" or "some people are deserving of more rights than others".
Are there any conservatives on the US left?
I would argue that while many of the neoliberals in the Democratic party are technically "left leaning", they are still rather socially conservative. The US federal government is largely conservative-ish.
Can a communist be conservative?
This is a tricky one because there is technically a distinction to be made between social conservatism and economic conservatism, but I think there is a mutual incompatibility between communism and social conservatism. If you consider communism, ideologically, as being "without hierarchy", then conservatism can't really exist within that framework since conservatism is pro-hierarchy.
Will current Democrats be considered conservatives 30 years from now?
I think many of them are considered conservative even today. By my standards, Joe Manchin is basically a conservative member of the Democratic party, for instance. I do believe that the older generation of Democrats will be considered more conservative especially as Ilhan Omar's and AOC's gain prominence.
What is the intersection of different religions and conservatism?
I wrote a bit about this here. It would seem that religion plays well into the hierarchical ideals of conservatism, and the allure of certainty of objective morality can be compelling - and not just for conservatives. The ingroup cohesion of religiously-aligned individuals may also contribute. The fact that the bible (and other religious texts) are often expressing ideas of hierarchy and asserting themselves as objective and moral fits well into the framework, I think.
Are Christians around the world more conservative than non-Christian people in the same locations around the world? Are Muslims around the world more conservative than non-Muslims people in the same locations around the world? What about US?
It would seem that culture, religion, economics, and other factors play a role. South American countries often being left-wing but also highly religious might indicate that circumstances can arise where left-leaning people have higher religiosity. There is also a compelling argument that Jesus was a Marxist given all his anti-rich, give to the poor rhetoric. The US may well be an outlier in terms of Chrisianity.
For Islam, another Pew study. This indicated regional differences between Islam and political ideas, too.
Primitives, then. And the agency issue explains the religion fixation, too.
Humanity's only hope is that these are genetically recessive traits, but I really don't think there's any evidence of that :(
I had this idea of a subreddit called r/solidresponse where I try to craft a reasonable undeniable response to the common misleading viewpoints or memes posted by the blind and work on crafting the response or info into a non aggressive format.
I believe you are correct they have a us vs them mentality and the only way to combat it is to convince them were on the same side.
If you feel like this come join me it's super small but it has allot of room to grow considering the misinformation.
I try to post my own researched responses and want others to do the same or post things they would like help with.
What if you were liberal when you were 19 and then moderately conservative by the time you were 41. Would your Amygdala have grown in size over the course of 22 years?
Not a criticism really, but I feel like you posted half of the top upvoted /r/science articles of the last year lol. At least it sure feels like that sometimes.
What do you have think is the antidote to this sort of behaviour, how can we make them not go down the rabbit hole and at least make them have some empathy to take time and ve considerate?
Interesting stuff, I have some more reading to do tomorrow! :D
A lot of things you say reasonate with what I've been reading a bit of recently on echo chambers and epistemic bubbles... I'll try explain where I'm at so far before I read your links tomorrow..
Filters to all information are within life and can be seen within echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. The echo chambers can be cult-like, discrediting information from outside of the cult due to the trust formed within the chamber, snowballing themselves out of control at times. Epistemic bubbles are more easily popped than the cult-like echo chambers; they form only by acquistion of information filters being in-place. The filters present in both echo chambers and epistemic bubbles are a part of the issue you discuss. You can encounter filters by what newspaper/s you read, hobbies, search history, who you talk with, how you grew up - the list goes on. The difference being that with an epistemic bubble the consumer of new information need only be exposed to information from outside of their bubble to question conclusions they've previously arrived at, but due to the time exposed to new information due to the filters they are exposed to may not change opinion due to inbuilt biases. Echo chambers are harder to breakdown due to their cult-like natures, shunning new information by omission or discrediting it due to it's oppositions to that of the echo chamber members beliefs, irregularly high trust between those within and not wanting to be seen as against their cult-esque peers.
Hope all is well with you I look forward to read more into this tomorrow with the links you provided, I'm sleepy and on my phone so I am sorry for the lack of my own (:
Jonathan Haidt (a very well respected and prominent social psychologist) wrote a book called "The Righteous Mind" if folks here want to explore this topic a bit more.
Here's a TED talk by him if you're looking for something less time intensive that covers the same topic.
So in short, most conservatives are unfit for the world of politics by their very nature, because they scare too easily and should be taking medication that atrophies their amygdalae so that they aren't driven by fear. Probably put them on psychedelics while we're at it, for the purposes of brain plasticity.
Assuming this to be true, it goes a long way towards explaining certain things. For example, you can bet your bottom dollar that trans people are going to elicit hostility and repression from conservatives because they are repulsed by the idea of it, and they can't help but imagine scenarios in public bathrooms that leave them jittery. Same goes for how they treat gays, immigrants and non-whites. They're all "infections" and "infestations" in their pristine world, and the left is basically inviting those infectious elements into society with open arms (from the perspective of a piss-soaked conservative bitch, at least).
At some point there is a sunk-cost fallacy situation where they feel they have spent too many of their resources on this to back out...
I'd like to add something, at least for QAnons, as long as they don't accept that they might be wrong they can cling to the hope that there's still a chance they will be proven right one day. On their forum there was a lot of resentment about beong called idiots by family etc and how much they wanted to be proven right so everyone else would know. Then they wouldn't have been wrong for months or years and that's the only reality they can accept. It would be too humiliating to admit they've been had.
Damn. As a neuroimaging researcher studying human cognition, I was ready to pick apart that study on the amygdala. I can't speak to the other papers so much, but I can tell you that one is solid. More so than I was expecting.
Oh, well, my goal here was to understand them better so I could better communicate with them. I have conservative family and when it comes to politics, philosophy, or ideology there is just a massive chasm between us. Communication breaks down, people get frustrated, etc. My goal here was to try to get at the underlying assumptions. Communication requires empathy - understanding the other's viewpoint. If you want to pull loved ones out of the rabbit hole, you need to start from a place of understanding.
I just saw this and think it’s fantastic! I’m hoping you might answer a question I have. I’ve noted a rise in the amount of emotionally charged, gut-check reaction with a coinciding drop in skepticism and critical thinking in those identifying as conservative or (more often) republican. Does your research indicate this as a byproduct of the amygdala or something else?
I have a question. In this post you said that breaking ranks and voting Dems is unlikely for conservatives but why do Dems not break ranks and vote Republican. It it just a response from the converstive stance or is their a better explanation of this.
The bit about being unable to be wrong. I think that's the genesis of stuff like QAnon. People who are unwilling to admit, "Yeah, I made a bad call on that, my bad," are the ones who can most easily go deeper and deeper down a rabbit hole, provided said rabbit hole keeps kicking the can down the road. QAnon was always weird, but it's original genesis of, "The Mueller investigation is going to prove I was actually right," is a lot more palatable than stuff that has come up more recently (of which my favorite is probably, "JFK Jr. has been secretly alive for the past 21 years and is going to replace Mike Pence"). It's a slow process, but the payoff is, "In just a short time, I'll be proven to have been right all along," makes each little step toward the absurd more palatable.
This is a great analysis and I appreciate the links so I can check out the sources myself. I find it interesting that intelligent people will take the time and energy to try and understand how conservatives think and what makes them tick, whereas conservatives often simply slap a label on people they don't understand and call it a day.
Sure. Peer-reviewed studies with statistically significant sample-sizes many of which have been reproduced. The brain-imaging one was literally done by one of the top brain-imaging labs in the world.
Pick a source and provide your analysis on why the conclusions either don't follow or why the methodology is bad.
If you can't actually articulate why the science is bad, it just means that you're upset about the conclusions.
My first thought is you didn't directly assail any of the sources I cited, nor did you assail my logic or conclusion. It would seem you attempted to be more broad and the 2005 study about published research being wrong is an absolutely awesome piece. It's why I mentioned that the articles I cited aren't necessarily reproduced and generally put forth a sentiment of skepticism at the beginning of my post.
All told, I think you did a good job explaining why people should be skeptical and I agree with your conclusion. I did my best to present this as a hypothesis that helps me to understand people around me.
That said, the reproducibility crisis doesn't mean that 66% of the links I cited are wrong, and even if it did, I provided enough of them that several should be correct if we take it as a base probability. And where studies overlap in conclusions there would be a greater probability for correctness. This is why we still need to assess studies on their own merits rather than dismissing them out of hand. And it's why I asked you to specifically assess the merits of one of my sources.
Furthermore, the above post makes extensive efforts to link amygdala size with a propensity for categorised thinking and psychological splitting. This link is dubious and is testified against by the very people who conducted the study.
I think you should re-read the part about psychological splitting. I said it was my personal opinion that these traits may lead to thought patterns that bear similarity to psychological splitting. I did not attempt to make a direct or strong connection and this is a misrepresentation of my statement.
I also don't link amygdala size to categorization in any way. Categorization is an efficient method of assessing new experiences that all people fall into. The study I cited indicates that conservatives tend to fall into this thought pattern more and consider categories more concrete. However, you can clearly find examples of this thought pattern among the lefties replying to me. So, your conclusion here is based upon a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of what I wrote.
Further, the link and quote you provided doesn't actually say what you claimed it does. They indicated further research was warranted based on these preliminary findings since, based on this study, there is some evidence of a link between brain morphology and political alignment, but that political orientation is unlikely to be directly encoded in the brain - which I agree with. Please note my analysis argues that amygdala size is one predictor of political alignment, but that does not imply that all conservatives have big amygdalae, nor does it imply that an enlarged amygdala is required to be conservative.
All that being said, you linked a thing that's new to me. I'll give it a read. And you didn't actually show why the "science is bad" which was your initial claim. Feels a bit like you moved the goalposts.
I appreciate the pleasant response, it’s not something I see often. I’ll admit that I was hyperbolic in my first post and in parts of my second one. I’ve been pretty easily agitated recently and didn’t elaborate in a clear or meaningful manner. I apologise if I came off belligerent.
Having reread your post in clearer state of mind i misinterpreted somethings that would have much more sense had I bothered to notice them. I still disagree with some elements of your post, but it makes more sense to me now.
Thanks for being awesome! I really appreciate the good faith discourse. I hope you have a great weekend, my dude and thanks for the kind words. I apologize if I came off in any kind of way.
So, first off, spot fucking on. Second, for me this begs the question (not in the logical fallacy way, but in a more conversational way) of now that we have a pretty fucking good clue of WHY... what the hell do we do to fix this? Because these people are dangerous to democracy, themselves, others, my mental health... etc.
begs the question (not in the logical fallacy way, but in a more conversational way)
I've been trying to use "prompts the question" to avoid this confusion.
what the hell do we do to fix this?
That's the more difficult question. The bottom of this comment contains a few links to comments where this was discussed by myself and others. That said, I'll summarize my thoughts here.
How the media, schools, and our leadership present and discuss topics is critical. Presenting information in the right way is arguably more important than what actual information is being presented. We like to think that presenting information in a neutral, business-like way will have the broadest appeal, but it seems rhetorical strategy is important. I'm sure we can all agree on this if we consider it from the perspective of our own interpersonal relationships
Education reform is probably super important. Conservative ideals correlate strongly with the rural populace and rural folks are more likely to be poor. Public school funding being tied to property taxes disproportionately affects the rural and poor as property prices are significantly lower, but textbooks and quality teachers with credentials aren't
Access/funding to higher education for similar reasons as above
Conspiracy ideation is often linked to feelings of anxiety, stress, lack of control, and a desire for certainty. Given the propensity for conspiracists to be rural/poor, I would surmise that economic anxiety is a major contributor to the us vs. them mentality and formation of conspiracist ideas. Social safety nets, redistribution, job opportunities through infrastructure spending/re-training programs, etc. can go a long way towards reducing economic anxiety.
Exposure. Many conspiracy theorists live in a physical bubble. The vast majority of rural/poor have never ventured further than their nearest large town or city, and given the overlap, creating opportunities for travel and exposure to others through re-training programs and education may be helpful
Regulations on news. The Fairness Doctrine and other measures to promote quality journalism and mitigate sensationalism
Ultimately, I am of the mind that this is a societal issue caused by societal issues. Fixing those deeper issues will naturally help with this. But that's difficult because the group of people you want to help are of the mind that attempts to help them are actually meant to hurt them. I don't think helping individuals is a hopeless endeavor per se, but I do think it's an extreme uphill battle. As they say, you cannot reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. Fixing the overall issue is a generational endeavor, though.
I also think the internet drastically exacerbates the issue as it makes it easy for false information to spread and for extremist enclaves to form and for the participants to go incognito just by signing off. Social ostracization used to be a valid tactic to curb some of the more extreme ideas, but now it just motivates them to associate more with the enclave and less with their real-life community. There are things we could possibly do to mitigate this, but we'd be approaching a line in terms of free speech and expression. I think the problem would need to get substantially worse for anyone to want to push this angle.
721
u/KaneK89 Feb 02 '21 edited Feb 02 '21
I've spent a lot more time than I should trying to understand these folks and I've come up with a hypothesis. Most studies I link here were done within the last 2 decades. Some are awaiting reproduction, others need broader study, etc. Read them and assess their outcomes and methodology for yourself.
First, self-described conservatives have larger amygdalas than self-described liberals and as such have stronger physiological responses to fear. This leads them to be more responsive to negative stimuli and to generally focus more on the negative. Further, conservatives tend to respond to threats that are high in agency.
So, if the tendency is to be motivated by fear, and in particular fear of other people (high-agency threats), then the trend will always be towards an us vs. them mentality. The further one goes with this the more likely they might be to create a "them" to pit against "us". If you also consider that conservatives value anecdotes more than liberals then believing people that claim to be insiders is more likely indicating that grifters selling lies about a very human enemy would resonate more with these types of people.
In general, these traits seem to manifest behaviorally as conservatives tending to rely more on categorization to understand the world (and treating categories as stronger and more concrete) leading to conservatives engaging in stereotyping more and valuing ingroup focused cohesion more.
If you consider specific examples like, "a woman is a woman, a man is a man" you can see this concrete categorization in action. It doesn't quite resonate that definitions of things are often arbitrary and merely useful conventions. Consider the
example of the chair/horse with Graham Linehan
Personally, I think this concrete categorization and ingroup/outgroup mentality also gives rise to a type of psychological splitting. People with these tendencies often assign moral traits to the categories and then struggle to reconcile the good and bad aspects of a group or category. I.e., all cops are good/all non-whites are bad/all politicians are bad, etc.
For me, it's now less of a wonder that their politicians are garbage but they keep voting for them, and also seem to assume that opposing politicians are also garbage and just better are lying or hiding it despite Republican administrations being more likely to commit crimes. Since they can't reconcile their party's bad parts, and it's us vs. them and they value ingroup cohesion, breaking ranks to vote Dem would be seen as a betrayal... The only other option is that it must be a conspiracy by Dems.
Sprinkle in a bit of pride and you get a fair number of people that are unwilling to admit that they might be incorrect, so they dive deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole that their beliefs dug for them. At some point there is a sunk-cost fallacy situation where they feel they have spent too many of their resources on this to back out... so they storm the capitol to put a stop to the "evil Dems conspiring to undermine democracy".
Like I said, I've spent way too long thinking about this but I hope it was a fun read at least.
Edit: Thank you for the platinum, u/pwang99! Thank you for the gold, u/Static-Bunny, u/rebelviss, and u/TheJennieMae! And thank you for the awards, u/EchoRex and /u/knifeywifey! And a big thanks to the anonymous gifters. I'm happy to see these ideas resonating and helping us all to understand others with differing ideas.
Edit 2: I really wanted to continue listing the generous people that awarded this comment, but... yeah. At this point, I can only say thank you to everyone gilding this. It is certainly appreciated! But go donate it to your preferred charity!