Why Liberal Suck at Understanding Conservatives and Why it Matters

[Wowbagger]

An Awareness Campaign

This was a topic I had attempted to talk about at SkeptiCamp NYC 2016 (http://skepticampnyc.org/). However, things ran late, and a large chunk of my time was cut off. Although I managed to get out most of my main points, in a rather hurried manner, I figured I would produce this thread to both elaborate on my ideas, and to reboot the discussion. It is possible that some SkeptiCamp attendees might be joining this forum as a result.

Those of you who read "The Righteous Mind", by Johnathan Haidt, will find most of this familiar, since I am blatantly ripping off a lot of his stuff. (Apologies for that!)

Welcome to the True Taste Restaurant
Imagine walking into a restaurant where the only items on the menu were various types of sweeteners: cane sugar, honey, molasses, Sweet-n-Low, Equal, Stevia, etc. And, all you would be served are spoons filled with the ones you ordered.
You ask the manager "How's business?" and he replies: "Terrible, actually. But, at least we are doing better than the place down the street that only serves samples of salt."

That restaurant doesn't exist. But, according to an elaborate study carried out by Haidt, it is analogous to how morality seems to exist among different groups of people.

See the chart image attached below. It summarizes how liberals seem value only a couple of principles, as the "True Morality", while completely dismissing several others. Whereas conservatives seem to accept a wider palate of "taste sensations" as part of their moral foundations.

Liberals do NOT need to agree with those values, but UNDERSTANDING them is an important key to communicating BETTER ideas to conservative folks. Finding ways to *appeal* to conservative values can improve the acceptance of liberal ones.

Of course: Conservatives could also be said to have moral blind spots, but according to the chart, not as bad as liberals do.

For this post, I am leaving out lots of things. The book goes into great detail about how the study was designed and carried out, using various (often rude) questions to isolate the various components of morality.

I am also leaving out the rather fascinating complication of where libertarians fit into this. Haidt spends a good amount of time explaining how his theory had to be re-worked to better explain them.

However, this thread is only intended to be an awareness campaign, not an exhaustive book-length exploration. (There is already a book for that!) This thread is just a teaser to help you become aware of these blind spots, so that you know to read more about them.

Yins and Yangs
Both liberals and conservatives can learn something important from each other's moral values. Liberals emphasize the following 'good points', that perhaps conservatives can take into heart, more effectively:

* Government needs to restrain corporations from doing their worst: Many of them WILL impose externalities (that is: push their own problems) onto innocent people, influence government in unfair ways (such as campaign contributions), and limit the rights of citizens, if they can get away with it. Not all corporations, but enough that completely free markets would not be an adequate solution.

* Some problems can be solved with regulation: The removal of lead from gasoline is a classic example.

But, at the same time, there are also some lessons conservatives could teach liberals about the world:

* Markets are Miraculous: Healthcare cost is less efficient when you can't actually see the costs. Imagine if you bought food from the supermarket the same way: Your items would be rung up, and you would pay a small copay, while Food Insurance covered most of the rest of it. You might get billed later for items that were not covered. I know the analogy is not a very fair one. But, perhaps there is a point to be made about how markets do not need to be over-regulated.

* You Can't Help "Bees" by Destroying the "Hive": A lot of the effort to support ethnic diversity and globalization might b backfiring because most of those efforts do not take Social Capital into account. This is a concept that is a little hard to explain. (The book goes into it more thoroughly.) But, it seems the ideal of "bringing people together" can only work well in certain ways. Too often it can lead to a sense of distrust, among certain people, that can't be forced to be overridden.

Why It Matters
Well, with Donald Trump as our President-elect I suppose it's pretty obvious why this matters, now! But, importantly: Some of us saw this coming!

On June 17, 2015,I happened to notice the cover of The Daily News (NYC newspaper). It said "Clown Runs for Prez", depicting Trump with a red nose and clown makeup. THAT was the day I predicted our country's doom: That Donald Trump might actually win this thing. Instead of laughing the menace off, I felt he needed to be treated as a threat.

I can laugh at a LOT of things. But, Trump is not one of them. My training in understanding conservatives had me thinking differently on this election, than most other people I knew. I needed to encourage others to take him seriously, as well. So, I took seriously his chances of winning.

How serious, you ask? I bet real money on it. I did NOT WANT him to win. But, I predicted this might happen, anyway!

A table of my bets is below. Forum regulars might recognize one of the betting partners:

[TABLE=head]Betting Partner|Amount Bet|Win Status|Collection Status|Worth It If I Had Lost?
Anonymous Colleague|$100|Won, presumably|Collected|Yes: Got lots of entertainment out of it!
The Central Scrutinizer|$100|Pending Electoral College Vote|Awaiting Electoral College Vote|Eh...
Spiro Condos|$1.00|Won, presumably|Collected in front the audience at SkeptiCamp|Meh...
Total|$201.00|Won, presumably|$101 Collected so far|Mostly, yes, it would be.[/TABLE]

My efforts, obviously, were in vain. But, I am only one person, with not even 200 Facebook friends nor Twitter followers. If MORE liberal-minded people, including the Democratic candidates, had read the books I had read, and seen the things I had seen, perhaps this could have been avoided. THAT is why this matters!!

(By the way, the money I collect from these bets will go to charities that will help fight Trump. And,
if the electoral college happens to "go faithless" and reverse the vote, then that means I lost the bets and will need to pay out accordingly. However, I would be OKAY with that!)

Summary and Future Discussion
What you just read was adapted from my original presentation notes. But, there is one presentation that covers these concepts better than I ever could. Johnathan Haidt's TED Talk:
https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind

The idea for my original presentation was to open with a few memes from liberal social media sites, and ask how everyone felt about each one: Were they "fair" or not. Then, after explaining some of this stuff, I would display them again, to see if anyone changed their minds. I did not have time to do that, but perhaps in another post of this thread, I will go into the examples I had chosen.

Also for another future post, I want to talk about how these ideas tie into other books I had read, from authors such as Carol Tavris and Steven Pinker, etc.

 

[Belz...]

Conservatives suck at understanding liberals, too.

It's almost as if people suck at understanding others who are different.

 

[Dumb All Over]

So, why do liberals suck at understanding conservatives, Wowbagger?

 

[WilliamSeger]

Well, I'd say the first thing that liberals need to understand about "conservatives" is that, while everyone likes a simply black-and-white narrative, there is a big difference between conservatism and reactionary anti-liberalism. (One way to tell the difference is to take note of any hypocrisy about the alleged "conservative values.") By definition, there is little if any common ground between progressives and reactionaries.

 

[sunmaster14]

Conservatives suck at understanding liberals, too.

Evidence?

 

[Giz]

It could also be that liberal views are colored by a basic misunderstanding of their opponents.

I.e. conservatives tend to think that liberals are well intentioned but naive. Liberals tend to think that conservatives are evil.

It's hard to engage honestly when your default view of your opponent is "evil"

 

[Wowbagger]

Conservatives suck at understanding liberals, too.

Yes, but liberals have it worse in that department.

So, why do liberals suck at understanding conservatives, Wowbagger?

Differences in our moral foundations, basically. It's more complicated than I what I posted, so far, but I hope to raise awareness to encourage others to learn more.

Well, I'd say the first thing that liberals need to understand about "conservatives" is that, while everyone likes a simply black-and-white narrative, there is a big difference between conservatism and reactionary anti-liberalism.

That is true. But, if you hope to SELL that point to conservatives, you must first learn to understand how they see things.

I.e. conservatives tend to think that liberals are well intentioned but naive. Liberals tend to think that conservatives are evil.

That is also largely true! Learning about our differences from Moral Foundations Theory might help put to rest the idea that conservatives are all "evil". But, this will take some effort on all of our parts.

 

[Vortigern99]

I'm not really understanding the OP. I don't follow the many-sugar, only-salt analogy. Can you please clarify how that metaphor works?

My experience with family members and acquaintances who are conservative has shown that, far from perceiving different shades of morality, they simply lack social conscience or compassion for the suffering of those who are not in their immediate family or peer group. They also tend to resist rational thought and critical analysis of their own claims.

I'm not seeing any of that represented in the rather bewildering OP of this thread.

 

[Dumb All Over]

So, why do liberals suck at understanding conservatives, Wowbagger?

Differences in our moral foundations, basically. It's more complicated than I what I posted, so far, but I hope to raise awareness to encourage others to learn more.

I appreciate the response.

In other words, if liberals had the same moral foundations as conservatives, they would not suck so much at understanding conservatives. I would be inclined to take that a step further. If liberals had the same moral foundations as conservatives, they'd be conservatives.

 

[TragicMonkey]

It could also be that liberal views are colored by a basic misunderstanding of their opponents.

I.e. conservatives tend to think that liberals are well intentioned but naive. Liberals tend to think that conservatives are evil.

It's hard to engage honestly when your default view of your opponent is "evil"

Yeah, those people screaming outside Planned Parenthood are all about "we think you're well-intentioned but naive". They even write that on the giant posters of bloody fetuses! And certainly no conservative has ever said people go to hell for being gay, or that Hillary Clinton is a literal demon. Because they're all about the honest engagement.

 

[Vortigern99]

Yeah, those people screaming outside Planned Parenthood are all about "we think you're well-intentioned but naive". They even write that on the giant posters of bloody fetuses! And certainly no conservative has ever said people go to hell for being gay, or that Hillary Clinton is a literal demon. Because they're all about the honest engagement.

This is where my thoughts run as well, whenever liberals are accused of demonizing conservatives. This is a group of people who wants to limit impoverished children's access to government-provided food, limit services available to the mentally disabled, strip social security benefits from people who have been paying into that service for decades, diminish the ability of Medicare and Medicaid to help the elderly and the poor, and punish people they call criminals to the full extent of the law in torturous conditions inside inhumane prisons, while themselves breaking blatant environmental and other laws and regulations in the name of capitalism. Etc. etc. etc. But I'm asked to limit my outrage and reduce my hositility in the name of fairness to their injurious and unjust ideologies?

 

[Meadmaker]

I, also, would like a better explanation of the OP. I don't get the sugar/salt analogy, and I'm kind of puzzled by the idea of conservatism as having a broader moral "palate".

It seems to me that conservatives value things that are traditional. That's pretty much it, although one might throw in "small government", if that is construed as applying only to economic interference. Conservatives in the USA tend to want less taxes, less regulation, and less government interference with business, but they also tend to be perfectly happy with interfering in people's personal lives.

One complicating factor is the use of "liberal" and "conservative" to apply generally to the Republican and Demcratic parties. They aren't very good labels anymore. I am among those people who think being liberal is a very good thing, but think that the modern American left has abandoned some liberal principles.

 

[Cain]

I'm not really understanding the OP.

Conservatives generally have a few more moral buttons than liberals. For a liberal, harm and fairness are the two main considerations in the realm of morality.

A conservative agrees harm and fairness matter, but believe other things matter as well. Conservatives are more likely to respect authority, express in-group loyalty, and find value in sanctity or purity. A liberal will say there's nothing wrong with gay marriage because, hell, who does it harm? Conservatives will say homosexuality is "disgusting."

I've been a fan of Haidt, and I think he's onto something from an empirical perspective, but there's a difference between how we do reason and we ought to reason.

He also overstates the importance of his insight. Conservatives and liberals disagree over what constitutes harm (e.g. abortion) or what's truly fair (flat tax versus a progressive tax). Modernity is about challenging tribalism, tradition, and religion. We can recognize the weight of those structures while also saying they're trumped by individualism, science, and reason.

 

[sunmaster14]

This is where my thoughts run as well, whenever liberals are accused of demonizing conservatives. This is a group of people who wants to limit impoverished children's access to government-provided food, limit services available to the mentally disabled, strip social security benefits from people who have been paying into that service for decades, diminish the ability of Medicare and Medicaid to help the elderly and the poor, and punish people they call criminals to the full extent of the law in torturous conditions inside inhumane prisons, while themselves breaking blatant environmental and other laws and regulations in the name of capitalism. Etc. etc. etc. But I'm asked to limit my outrage and reduce my hositility in the name of fairness to their injurious and unjust ideologies?

This is an absolutely perfect example of the bubble that many (most actually) liberals have created for themselves. There are perfectly good reasons for opposing the mainstream liberal position on each and every one of these issues, and yet many liberals won't even allow for that possibility - instead resorting to the effortless and comfortable conclusion that their political opponents are simply motivated by greed or hate. If they're being particularly generous, they might concede that their political opponents are just irredeemably stupid.

Most conservatives I know think of such liberals as being misguided and close-minded. Not evil, or even stupid.

 

[Vortigern99]

This is an absolutely perfect example of the bubble that many (most actually) liberals have created for themselves. There are perfectly good reasons for opposing the mainstream liberal position on each and every one of these issues, and yet many liberals won't even allow for that possibility - instead resorting to the effortless and comfortable conclusion that their political opponents are simply motivated by greed or hate. If they're being particularly generous, they might concede that their political opponents are just irredeemably stupid.

Most conservatives I know think of such liberals as being misguided and close-minded. Not evil, or even stupid.

I see conservatives as close-minded, misguided, resistant to data that challenges their worldview, and lacking in empathy. I've never used the word "evil" to describe a fellow human being because it's simplistic.

As to hate, yes -- all the conservatives I've known and with whom I've had discussions on these topics have expressed hate for LGBT persons and the poor.

As to greed, yes again -- conservatives as a group tend to place personal enrichment above the suffering of those they have never met and whom they do not understand.

 

[sunmaster14]

I see conservatives as close-minded, misguided, resistant to data that challenges their worldview, and lacking in empathy. I've never used the word "evil" to describe a fellow human being because it's simplistic.

As to hate, yes -- all the conservatives I've known and with whom I've had discussions on these topics have expressed hate for LGBT persons and the poor.

I guess we live in different bubbles. I've never met a single conservative who hates LGBT people or the poor.

As to greed, yes again -- conservatives as a group tend to place personal enrichment above the suffering of those they have never met and whom they do not understand.

Nor have I met a single conservative who would admit putting his own personal enrichment above the suffering of others. Maybe some would. Maybe I would at times. But it certainly isn't acceptable to admit to such a quality among conservatives. Quite the opposite in fact. I've found conservatives to be much more genuine about their concern for human beings than liberals. Some of the most right-wing people I know do a tremendous amount of personal charity work. The liberals I know mostly give money; some even think that voting for liberal causes and politicians is sufficient to be considered caring and compassionate.

 

[Earthborn]

That restaurant doesn't exist.

I don't understand this analogy.

See the chart image attached below. It summarizes how liberals seem value only a couple of principles, as the "True Morality", while completely dismissing several others.

"Liberals" are more likely to be moral relativists, moral subjectivists or even moral nihilists. It comes with the term "liberal"; that is being more permissive when it comes to people defining their own moralities.

In the video you linked to, Haidt actually argues that "liberals" tend to be more "open to experience".

Haidt spends a good amount of time explaining how his theory had to be re-worked to better explain them.

I think his theory need to be reworked until it fits a lot more political philosophies than "liberalism", "conservatism" and "libertarianism". There are quite a few more than three.

In fact, the characteristics of "care", "fairness", "loyalty", "authority", "sanctity" should probably be axis on a 5 dimensional graph; that would provide a lot more insight than trying to project all of them onto a 2 dimensional plane and having "liberal" and "conservative" as ends on a spectrum... even though they are not. The opposite of conservative is not "liberal" it is progressive. The opposite of liberal is not "conservative", it is illiberal or intolerant.

Markets are Miraculous

They're really not. In fact many of the people who voted for Trump are people who have been screwed over by "The Market", particularly the labour market.

You Can't Help "Bees" by Destroying the "Hive": A lot of the effort to support ethnic diversity and globalization might b backfiring because most of those efforts do not take Social Capital into account.

Criticism of globalisation has largely been part of "the Left". That is because the push for globalisation was largely a push to globalise markets and trade without much regard for workers and marginalised populations. Or the environment. Which is why a lot of jobs have been outsourced to places where people have fewer rights. It is certainly backfiring, with protectionist ideologies being on the rise.

Such ideas can certainly be called "conservative", but they aren't what American politicians who call themselves "Conservative" have traditionally pushed for.

If MORE liberal-minded people, including the Democratic candidates, had read the books I had read, and seen the things I had seen, perhaps this could have been avoided.

"If only people thought more like me, the world would be so much better" is never a good argument. It is certainly not a good start for understanding other people's views.

 

[Dumb All Over]

"Liberals suck at understanding conservatives because they have not read the same book I have read."
"Liberals suck at understanding conservatives because sweeteners come in many different varieties and salt does not."
"Liberals suck at understanding conservatives because they don't understand loyalty, authority and sanctity."
"Liberals suck at understanding conservatives because of differences between their moral foundations."
"Liberals suck at understanding conservatives because they did not place bets on Trump like I did."
"Liberals suck at understanding conservatives because it is very complicated."

Wowbagger, respectfully, your OP needs a do-over.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I saw Haidt discuss his book when he was in Seattle a few years back. I didn't buy the premise then and still don't. About the only thing I could relate to was his over-simplistic hypothesis of how the two groups evolved, some stayed in the caves and survived, some left to explore the world and survived.

So now we have Conservatives who resist change and Progressives who welcome it. Not that useful of a metaphor if you ask me.

Just looking at one free market example from the OP:

But, at the same time, there are also some lessons conservatives could teach liberals about the world:

* Markets are Miraculous: Healthcare cost is less efficient when you can't actually see the costs. Imagine if you bought food from the supermarket the same way: Your items would be rung up, and you would pay a small copay, while Food Insurance covered most of the rest of it. You might get billed later for items that were not covered. I know the analogy is not a very fair one. But, perhaps there is a point to be made about how markets do not need to be over-regulated.

Naive ideology.

Most consumers are not equipped to shop around for health care. Even if you tried to create a grade, what would you base it on, people's opinions? So one disgruntled consumer trashes a reputation. We see that now on Yelp and Angie's List. Or, you cite infections and death rates, but it turns out some of the best doctors see the sickest patients and the poor outcomes are based on that fact and not on the medical care.

Look at the price of epi-pens for proof the free market is not magical.

I have mentioned before the reason the free market is not the best way to get new antibiotics. Pharmaceutical companies find investing in copycat drugs and getting a slice of a known market (often by marketing, not because the drug is better), is a more profitable route than investing R&D dollars in the promise of long range profits.

And billionaires like the Kochs and the Scaifes fight regulations that cut into their profits, horrendous pollution be damned.

Inside the Koch Brothers' Toxic Empire

Dark Money

Why is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? Why, despite the desperate need to address climate change, have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers?
The conventional answer is that a popular uprising against “big government” led to the ascendancy of a broad-based conservative movement. But as Jane Mayer shows in this powerful, meticulously reported history, a network of exceedingly wealthy people with extreme libertarian views bankrolled a systematic, step-by-step plan to fundamentally alter the American political system.
The network has brought together some of the richest people on the planet. Their core beliefs—that taxes are a form of tyranny; that government oversight of business is an assault on freedom—are sincerely held. But these beliefs also advance their personal and corporate interests: Many of their companies have run afoul of federal pollution, worker safety, securities, and tax laws.
The chief figures in the network are Charles and David Koch, whose father made his fortune in part by building oil refineries in Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany. The patriarch later was a founding member of the John Birch Society, whose politics were so radical it believed Dwight Eisenhower was a communist. The brothers were schooled in a political philosophy that asserted the only role of government is to provide security and to enforce property rights.
When libertarian ideas proved decidedly unpopular with voters, the Koch brothers and their allies chose another path. If they pooled their vast resources, they could fund an interlocking array of organizations that could work in tandem to influence and ultimately control academic institutions, think tanks, the courts, statehouses, Congress, and, they hoped, the presidency. Richard Mellon Scaife, the mercurial heir to banking and oil fortunes, had the brilliant insight that most of their political activities could be written off as tax-deductible “philanthropy.”
These organizations were given innocuous names such as Americans for Prosperity. Funding sources were hidden whenever possible. This process reached its apotheosis with the allegedly populist Tea Party movement, abetted mightily by the Citizens United decision—a case conceived of by legal advocates funded by the network.
The political operatives the network employs are disciplined, smart, and at times ruthless. Mayer documents instances in which people affiliated with these groups hired private detectives to impugn whistle-blowers, journalists, and even government investigators. And their efforts have been remarkably successful. Libertarian views on taxes and regulation, once far outside the mainstream and still rejected by most Americans, are ascendant in the majority of state governments, the Supreme Court, and Congress. Meaningful environmental, labor, finance, and tax reforms have been stymied. ....

Sorry, I get it not to lump all conservatives into the same barrel of rotten fish, but I don't buy that I have anything to learn from the free market unless the human species evolves beyond the selfishness and greed that currently exists.

I should clarify, I think a mix of socialism and capitalism is the best political/economic system.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

I appreciate the response.

In other words, if liberals had the same moral foundations as conservatives, they would not suck so much at understanding conservatives. I would be inclined to take that a step further. If liberals had the same moral foundations as conservatives, they'd be conservatives.

This is the surface analysis, providing topical answers conforming to preference and expectation.

The actual main difference is in levels of understanding integrative complexity (cf Tetlock), such as using dichotomies vs shaded meanings, and adherence (or not) to the idea that examining alternatives can lead to better answers. Basically, tolerance of uncertainty (liberal) vs absolute truths (conservative). There is also more "if my group thinks X, then by golly it's X" among those who value group loyalty more (conservatives, cf Haidt).

This is a bit beyond debate in 2016, in that we have conservatives adopting anti-science across the board. Frank woo right out in the silly open. This is game over regarding the ability to handle fact and reason. You can find this irrationality on the fringe left, but even then, in forms more amenable to argument. However, there is no arguing with an absolutist holding tribal-centric views, replete with the catch phrases to repeat, and beholden to models that are largely based on (ir)rational conjecture, as opposed to empirical confirmation.

I do understand conservatives. Invariably, those today calling themselves conservative are as about as deep as a coloring book, detest nuance, and panic when confronted with fact.

Today, the divide is very much fact vs myth, best fit to theory vs "bigly truths, oft stated so true." Why and how such truths take hold in the mind is not something really studied or understood by the right, so there is admittedly a gap hard to bridge. My take is that rampant and naked policy failure, with no fig leaves around, will help, nearly on the order of how seeing the gas chambers helped closet Nazi sympathizers get over their boners for law and order.

Which means, thank Trump for the epic, epic fails he will bring about gazing at his nonsense, just as Greenspan trusted enlightened libertarianism, and saw instead the dinner scene from Viridiana (face-stuffing party, along with elbow digs), giving us the financial meltdown.

Reason and truth will out. In the long run. The question is, will we survive this iteration of right-wing simpletons imposing nonsense as if it were the gospel.