a little reminder... on differences...

[compared2what?]

The guy who's been doing the most popular work on what makes the right and left tick is named Jon Haidt, whose working paradigm is called "moral foundations theory," which measures people's attitudes in connection with five moral foundations. Social psychologists always seem to love five-trait theories, for some reason. In any event. The five moral foundations are:

1) Care/harm: This foundation is related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. It underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance.
2) Fairness/cheating: This foundation is related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. It generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy. [Note: In our original conception, Fairness included concerns about equality, which are more strongly endorsed by political liberals. However, as we reformulated the theory in 2011 based on new data, we emphasize proportionality, which is endorsed by everyone, but is more strongly endorsed by conservatives]
3) Loyalty/betrayal: This foundation is related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. It underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it's "one for all, and all for one."
4) Authority/subversion: This foundation was shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. It underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.
5) Sanctity/degradation: This foundation was shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. It underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions).

________________________

I really, really dislike both what he says about his research and how he says it. But the research itself is kind of interesting. He's done a lot of it -- again, on all types of people, all over the world -- and gotten very, very consistent results showing a big gap between people who self-identify as conservative and people who self-identify as liberal.

Like so:



________________________

If what he's detecting is something real, that also sheds some light on where the hate comes from for social conservatives, at least. (IE -- violations of purity/sanctity, threats to ingroup cohesion, etcetera.)

They say this stuff is innate, but I don't know about that. I think they just like to say that, personally.

ON EDIT: Sorry! I thought I made that chart smaller. Which I will now go do, posthaste.

ON EDIT AGAIN: Done.

[Nordic]

I think there could be something to this. Just look at how the media portrayed OWS to the conservative mindset, for instance. If you go to any boards and watch what the trolls are saying about OWS, they always emphasize the "dirty" aspect of it. "People shitting in public parks" is something you see over ad nauseum, along with the notion that a lot of garbage was created and not picked up. So much for the "purity" aspect.

They also have a real hair up their ass (gosh there I go being "unpure" again) about the fact that OWS is "leaderless". That REALLY gets on their nerves, and the media pushes that button as well. Even with the people they hate, they want a LEADER goddamnit. So much for the "authority" thing.



The media's very good at pushing these people's buttons. And ours, because as long as they rev up the conservatives emotional triggers, we respond with our own. "Fairness" being the real big one that gets our dander up. Just a few bad cops spraying people, and we're on the warpath. Arresting people for just standing there. That sort of thing.

The social engineers really have it pretty easy in America. We're so easy to manipulate it's kind of ridiculous. Maybe people are everywhere, I don't know, but America, being such an adolescent country, well, it follows that Americans are as easy to tweak as adolescents anywhere.

[compared2what?]

Everybody wants to justify their identity and if people can be shown that this can be done through love and integrative thinking better than doing it through coercive and exclusionary demagoguery, then suerly most folk will choose love.

But alas we have allowed the energy of our individual personality traits to be bundled by (now sclerotic) institutions who then sell it back to us as ideology.

This will stop.

It's an article of faith for me that it will eventually. So I agree.

You deserve a much more thoughtful reply than I can muster right now, honey. So please accept my apologies in advance and pretend that I said this in a more interesting and custom-built-for-you kind of way:

I totally agree that most people are good-hearted, fellowship-oriented, kind, caring and decent. Socially and personally. That's why it's not all that unusual for people to have one or two (or -- in my case -- a startling multitude of) close friends/very dearly loved family members/excellent neighbors whose politics they find abhorrent, insane and hateful.

I mean, that might not be common, exactly. But it's not really rare, either, I don't think. On a community/interpersonal level, people who find themselves in one another's company either like each other naturally or learn how to, most of the time. That's just how people are. In my experience, anyway.

But it's not how they are about politics. That's always, always been the case. Since the world began. And I'd therefore say that it's not just because they're manipulated into divisiveness. Would that it were.

I don't know why that disconnect occurs, or how. At all. No clue. And I very much wish that it didn't. But that's reality. So what can you do? You can't get anywhere by not acknowledging it.

[compared2what?]

Sorry but the OP is election year divide/conquer bullshit.

Amen. Liberals are hardly innocent of hatred.

Nobody is. Or no group is, anyway.

However, as I've already said, the right is more competitive-aggressive in its opposition, and also more hostile to other/unfamiliar/impure.

That's not the be-all and end-all of political horribleness, or anything. And there's vicious sociopathy all over the left-to-right spectrum, in one form or another.

But as far as it goes, I think it's a valid, on-topic characterization of the contemporary American right. Do you disagree?

[Nordic]

However, as I've already said, the right is more competitive-aggressive in its opposition, and also more hostile to other/unfamiliar/impure.

That's not the be-all and end-all of political horribleness, or anything. And there's vicious sociopathy all over the left-to-right spectrum, in one form or another.

But as far as it goes, I think it's a valid, on-topic characterization of the contemporary American right. Do you disagree?

Well, their hatred is promoted! I mean the media covers their hatred 24/7. They have shows, and an entire network, DEVOTED to the hatred of the right. Shows that exist merely to throw gasoline on the flames of right wing hatred!

There's really nothing comparable in the media for the left. Nada, zip, nothing.

In fact, just as an example, I can't think of a single left-wing pundit whose role is to ratchet up the left-wing hatred. Can you?

Yet the right has O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Coulter, Ingraham, Hannity, and that's just the tip of the iceberg, and all of them are paid HUGE sports-star money to do their shtick.

[compared2what?]

Here's the neurological thing I was thinking of. Also, I remember why it irritated me, which was just a stupid, petty and immaterial thing of the kind that sometimes afflicts everyone. I hope....Wait! No, I don't. I don't hope that at all. Sorry.

Anyway. Small study. But fwiw, there's evidently a distinct body of literature on conservatives and disgust. I kept finding different papers than the one I was looking for.

Primal Propensity for Disgust Shapes Political Positions

By Brandon Keim

Though people like to believe their convictions are purely rational, a growing body of research links political differences to deep-seated physiological traits.

The latest such finding comes from a study of people who looked at gross images, such as a man eating earthworms. Viewers who self-identified as conservative, especially those opposing gay marriage, reacted with particularly deep disgust.

The study “suggests that people’s physiological predispositions help to shape their political orientations,” wrote the researchers, who were led by University of Nebraska-Lincoln political scientists Kevin Smith and John Hibbing. “Disgust likely has an effect even without registering in conscious beliefs.”

Published Oct. 19 in Public Library of Science One, Smith and Hibbing’s findings are the latest datapoint in a series of investigations into neurophysiological aspects of morality and, by extension, politics. Other researchers have found that conservatives seemingly tend to have a more rigid, structured cognitive style than liberals, who are more open to ambiguity; conservatives are also quicker to feel threatened.

Disgust is especially interesting to researchers because it’s such a fundamental sensation, an emotional building block so primal that feelings of moral repugnance originate in neurobiological processes shared with a repugnance for rotten food. In questionnaire-based studies, people prone to deep feelings of disgust tend to lean conservative.

The latest study was designed to see if such survey-based reports reflected real-world reactions. Test participants — 27 female and 23 male residents of Lincoln, Nebraska, with an average age of 41, selected from a larger pool of 200 people given lengthy political surveys — were shown a series of disgusting and non-disgusting images. Electrodes on their skin measured subtle conductance changes, a standard indicator of emotional response.

In keeping with earlier observations, conservatives reacted with significantly deeper disgust than liberals. Feelings about gay marriage, an issue tightly bound to notions of purity, were especially predictive.

“It’s a great example of the increasingly sturdy bridge between biology and political science,” said Jonathan Haidt, a New York University psychologist who studies the relationship between disgust and morality.

Smith and Hibbing were careful to note their work’s limitations. Cause and effect isn’t clear; they suspect people gravitate to the political convictions that fit their feelings, but feelings could also be shaped by convictions. Neither is the effect all-encompassing: Even if physiology influences politics, it’s not going to explain every difference and every detail.

“The larger point,” they write, is “that certain political orientations at some unspecified point become housed in our biology, with meaningful political consequences.”

And while this might imply that partisan differences are irreconcilably rooted, the opposite could be true: Acknowledging the role of biology means appreciating that people who disagree with us may not simply be bad, or stupid, but influenced by different and ingrained habits of mind — as are we.

“This recognition could in turn diminish political hostility,” wrote Smith and Hibbing. “After all, if political differences are traceable in part to the fact that people vary in the way they physically experience the world, certitude that any particular worldview is objectively correct may abate, lessening the hubris that fuels political conflict.”

(Links 'n' stuff in original.)

[compared2what?]

However, as I've already said, the right is more competitive-aggressive in its opposition, and also more hostile to other/unfamiliar/impure.

That's not the be-all and end-all of political horribleness, or anything. And there's vicious sociopathy all over the left-to-right spectrum, in one form or another.

But as far as it goes, I think it's a valid, on-topic characterization of the contemporary American right. Do you disagree?

Well, their hatred is promoted! I mean the media covers their hatred 24/7. They have shows, and an entire network, DEVOTED to the hatred of the right. Shows that exist merely to throw gasoline on the flames of right wing hatred!

There's really nothing comparable in the media for the left. Nada, zip, nothing.

In fact, just as an example, I can't think of a single left-wing pundit whose role is to ratchet up the left-wing hatred. Can you?

I can't even think of a left-wing pundit.

So pathetic. I hate want to give single-payer healthcare to the media.

[brainpanhandler]

If the context you hold for engaging with 'the Other' is a Quixotian quest, wont it produce similar Quixotian results?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but if you mean that my expectations will be a self fulfilling prophecy then you might be right. But on the other hand, in my experience, I just don't have any reason to expect anything else. It's not like I'm 20 years old and haven't been trying in every way I can concieve of for more years that I want to admit.

And despite all that it's not like I don't see the wisdom of:

People change.

Indeed, and who among uswill be the judge of which ones can't or won't change? Who does it hurt to assume good will on the part of others unless or until we're proven wrong?

Because I do.

And like C2W...

I totally agree that most people are good-hearted, fellowship-oriented, kind, caring and decent. Socially and personally. That's why it's not all that unusual for people to have one or two (or -- in my case -- a startling multitude of) close friends/very dearly loved family members/excellent neighbors whose politics they find abhorrent, insane and hateful.

I mean, that might not be common, exactly. But it's not really rare, either, I don't think. On a community/interpersonal level, people who find themselves in one another's company either like each other naturally or learn how to, most of the time. That's just how people are. In my experience, anyway.

...I too, like most everyone on this thread, interact with conservatives all the time. I work in a very liberal town and live in a very conservative town.

My father thinks african americans are subhuman, gays should be stoned to death, we should stop screwing around in the middle east and just start dropping nuclear bombs on the ragheads, reagan was the greatest president ever, Bill O'Reilly is a fair and balanced source of news and commentary, and god is on his side. That's what he thinks. I have spent decades of my life arguing with him. I have tried every tactic I can think of to reach him, because surprisingly he's not stupid.

1) There's all sorts of other emotional baggage that goes along with that war which muddies the waters as an example of failure to open the mind of a conservative so I'll not hold that up as being representative of a whole lot.

But 2) I have a theory I've been mulling over about his reactionary recalcitrance to changing/evolving at all that might be more generally applicable to others. Namely: I think he adopted most of his views from older male relatives that he idolized as a young man; male relatives that are now dead. I think in the back of his mind somewhere he feels that he would be betraying their memory if he were to stray from his entrenched beliefs. Just a theory.

Nordic, do me a favor please. As best as is possible describe the type of person you think I oght to try to talk to. I understand it's difficult to "type" people, but try your best please. And then if you would describe the best case scenario of that conversation. I leave it to you to pick the topic of this hypothetical conversation.

Any human with a brain and heart can figure this one out for themselves.

Well I hope you're not suggesting I don't have a brain or a heart.

Now YOU tell us what we should be doing other than talking to them. Hypothetically, what is it you want us to do about the haters in your no talking /no compromise world?

The haters that are unreachable? Marginalize them. Disallow them from infringing on others' liberty or having anything to do with policy.

No talking/no compromise world? Where we each draw the line is going to be different.

From the Occupy thread:

I dunno if this has been posted yet, but here's a smart young gent. His voice unfortunately is starting to crack, but he's passionate. I'll be attending the Vancouver one up here.

Interesting. Such a passionate young man. I love to see that sort of passion. But he illustrates the messiness of true democracy. He makes a number of points I could not agree with more, like, end the fed, end the wars, decentralize political power, end the corporate influence on our political life... but then he wants to elect Ron Paul, and he wants to "defend our borders" and he seems to want to return to some sort of fabled status quo that existed three decades ago. He's sort of a reactionary in a way. America has to let go of the illusion that we can return to some past where life was fairer and easier. The truth is it was fairer and easier because lots of human beings around the globe were suffering to make it "fairer and easier" for us.

My point is.... somehow, someway, we have to embrace each other. This guy is my ally, my friend. He has to be, despite whatever differences we might have. We share enough that we can and should find common cause. We must find common cause. If we don't we're doomed. It's not that the differences should be ignored, but they should be set aside for a bit.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=32630&start=510

Nordic, do me a favor please. As best as is possible describe the type of person you think I oght to try to talk to. I understand it's difficult to "type" people, but try your best please. And then if you would describe the best case scenario of that conversation. I leave it to you to pick the topic of this hypothetical conversation.

I actually do this fairly frequently, and I have to do it whenever I talk to certain members of my family.

What's important is to avoid the usual push-button topics and responses. Also, if they're religious you can use religion in your favor, because after all Jesus was about as liberal as you can get.

I find we have a lot of common ground with these people until they start, say, blaming Obama for everything and going off on their brainwashing points, at which point there's almost no way to engage them, although I did stymie my stepmom a while back asking her for some specific examples of any actions Obama has taken that could be called "liberal". Her mind went blank there.

I think its important for people to blend as much as possible so we can see that those "other people" are human too. My dad is like the fellow Neon describes above -- if you're his neighbor he'll give you the shirt off his back and do damn near anything for you.

However if you're up against truly sociopathic people, like racists who would actually enjoy dragging a black guy behind their truck just because he's black, obviously there's no reason to be talking to them because they're just dangerous criminal bullies, and the best way to deal with them is with the threat of a 2x4 upside the head.

Ok so, there are subsets that are reachabe and unreachable. We can all agree on that although where we draw these lines will vary, possibly even greatly.

Please believe me whan I say I have tried every conceivable way of reaching the unreachables, at least every way I can conceive of. Including things like pretending to be something I am not, which is surprisingly easy and is an instructive experiment. I'd recommend it. Pretend you're "one of them" and note what effect that has on you emotionally/psychologically. Enter their head space and from inside their confidence try to plant seeds. Can't really say that it has never worked at all. Sometimes we don't know the effects of our actions.

The thing to remember is that a large percentage of people think they're doing the best thing, even if they're completely wrong. They have been whipped into a frenzy of hate by the hyponotists of our time.

I'm not gonna cut them that much slack. The propagandists/cultural engineers are in fact pretty effective but people are responsible for their own brains and actions.

[brainpanhandler]

When I do talk to these conservative folks, it becomes quickly apparent that their hatred is rooted in fear. They are the most fearful people I've ever met. And they would rather just destroy things that they fear rather than try to understand them. They don't want to take any chances that way! Heaven forbid the things they fear might actually infect their brain!

Except that I think their brains are already "infected". That's the projection part of the equation.

“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian

It's why you constantly see this radical hypocrisy on the right. They quite literally deny and blot out awareness of aspects of themselves they cannot reconcile with their distorted ideals. There is no way around that. People can be ingenius at deceiving themselves.

When I feel hatred I eventually feel the need for self reflection.

[Searcher08]

bph, I was thinking about what you posted about your father and was wondering whether one of Leary's Neurological Circuits is involved, where your dad will refuse ANY form of imprinting from you because in the context of the relationship HE sees himself as the the Alpha Male and will not allow 'imprinting' by a 'lower status' male.

There is also an interesting elephant in the room here, which is

How often are people really changed by logic and reason?
or are people changed by changing their perceptions?

[Nordic]

Bph, reading everything you wrote above, I can't disagree with any of it.

And you have my sympathy for having a father with the views you describe. That's tough. I have similar issues with my father but we've learned to find things to talk about that avoid the hotbutton topics. At least we both hate Obama these days.

[Wombaticus Rex]

C2W thanks for the heads up on Jon Haidt. Like a more interesting/detailed version of Lakoff's work.

When I think about hatred and weird beliefs, I often muse about Toxoplasmosis. The content might be irrelevant to the mechanism, you know?

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/ ... 9&start=30

[sunny]

Well I hope you're not suggesting I don't have a brain or a heart.

Of course not! But how else would you suggest I answer a wholly insincere rhetorical question? You're better than that BECAUSE you have a heart and a brain.

Sunny wrote:
Now YOU tell us what we should be doing other than talking to them. Hypothetically, what is it you want us to do about the haters in your no talking /no compromise world?




The haters that are unreachable? Marginalize them. Disallow them from infringing on others' liberty or having anything to do with policy.

How do you know they're unreachable until you've walked at least a minute in his shoes? To do that you have to talk to him. And nothing I've suggested about respecting their humanity rules out disallowing them from infringing on our rights. In fact I recommend it, with whatever useful persuasive tool that comes to hand. The more you use those tools of communication the more he gets to know YOU. And when he does he might think 'hmmm, if this fella is a librul so maybe not all of them are as bad as I thought. Maybe I better adjust my thinking'. If you can do that with at least one person isn't it worth the effort?

[brainpanhandler]

I feel as though I have offended you sunny. If I have I apologize. It's not my intent. Admittedly my style in threads like these is a bit confrontational. Maybe that goes some way to explaining my lack of success at opening the minds of conservatives.

Well I hope you're not suggesting I don't have a brain or a heart.

Of course not! But how else would you suggest I answer a wholly insincere rhetorical question? You're better than that BECAUSE you have a heart and a brain.

Cross my heart and hope to die it really was an honest invitation to try a thought experiment, which is not to say I might not have criticized Nordic's imaginary conversation. In fact I imagine I almost certainly would have. But then I would have felt obliged to try it myself and would have expected to defend my own imaginings.

Now YOU tell us what we should be doing other than talking to them. Hypothetically, what is it you want us to do about the haters in your no talking /no compromise world?

The haters that are unreachable? Marginalize them. Disallow them from infringing on others' liberty or having anything to do with policy.

How do you know they're unreachable until you've walked at least a minute in his shoes? To do that you have to talk to him. And nothing I've suggested about respecting their humanity rules out disallowing them from infringing on our rights. In fact I recommend it, with whatever useful persuasive tool that comes to hand. The more you use those tools of communication the more he gets to know YOU. And when he does he might think 'hmmm, if this fella is a librul so maybe not all of them are as bad as I thought. Maybe I better adjust my thinking'. If you can do that with at least one person isn't it worth the effort?

Yes.

If you haven't read my entire posts above then I'd ask you to please do so. I suggest a technique that is in essence "walking in someone else's shoes" as a method for understanding and gaining the confidence of people with whom you have fundamental differences and are trying to successfully communicate with. And also learning something about yourself in the process.

As an example consider prolife activists demonstrating, carrying signs with pictures of aborted fetuses; militant, determined, in some cases fundamentalist and extremist. It's easy to dismiss them as kooky fringe christian fundies. It's harder to try to imagine what really motivates them. But when you do it becomes apparent that they literally believe babies are being murdered. I then imagine I'm standing outside a building within which I know there are 2 month old babies being killed as a matter of routine. How would I feel about that? Militant? Determined? Extremist? In performing this thought exercise I gain some insight into the other that might help me understand them.


Can I count on them to do the same?

And if you want to learn more about them and yourself pretend to be one of them. Once you have their trust and confidence they'll open up and speak freely what they would otherwise censor.

It's instructive which types of people I find this easiest with. For instance I find it easy to pretend to be a racist. What does that say about me?

Do they ever ask themselves similar questions?

[Simulist]

There is also an interesting elephant in the room here, which is

How often are people really changed by logic and reason?
or are people changed by changing their perceptions?

People often change as they become able to perceive a benefit in it for them.