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Why do liberals and conservatives think so differently? Why can’t they get along?
No doubt, the growing polarization of the Republican and Democratic parties – the “Red”- “Blue” divide – has spurred psychological research on the causes and consequences of political orientation.
An important stream of research suggests that they see the world very differently. In an interesting series of studies, psychologist Jesse Graham and colleagues asked Americans to rate their political orientation (liberal to conservative) and measure both about their core values and how concerned they were about people who were close to them and to those who are more distant. In fact, the researchers used a graph of concentric circles, with family members in the innermost circle, followed by friends, then neighbors, coworkers, and so on. More distant circles included all the people in the nation, in the world, and then animals and all living things.
The pattern was quite clear: conservatives were more concerned with people who were physically close – in the inner circles. Liberals were more likely to include the outermost circles (i.e., all other humans, animals, and things), among their concerns.
Looking at values, research suggests that liberals’ values are oriented toward equality and an openness to change, while conservatives are more concerned with security and a desire for order and uncertainty reduction.
While these differences are significant, they are not enough to explain the deep and growing divide between liberals and conservatives. In order to explain that we need to look at basic social psychological processes, particularly in-group, out-group bias (the “we-they” effect – “we’re the good guys, they’re the bad guys”). This bias is a very fundamental aspect of how we deal with others, but, in recent years, this bias has been stoked by leaders, and by the rise of social media, where it is easy to attack outgroup members.
What is the antidote to this growing divide?
The answer is civil discourse. We need to be able to bring together members from both sides of the political spectrum to learn to better understand and appreciate (or at least tolerate) the other side’s views. This is particularly important for our legislators. The situation is not going to improve until members of the two political parties can learn to work together to work on common and important goals.
Some resources for civility:
scu.edu/ethics/focus-areas/campus-ethics/free-speech-and-civil-discourse
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References
Graham, J. (2018). Moral circles, political divides. Presented at “Movements, Leaders and Followers in an Era of Divides” conference at Cal Poly Pomona, June.
Jost, J.T. (2017). Ideological asymmetries and the essence of political psychology, Political Psychology, 38, 167-208.
