Conservatives Understand Liberals. Liberals Don't Understand Conservatives.
As a conservative living in San Francisco, I often struggle with a sense of alienation because while I know and understand the liberal mindset of my neighbors, acquaintances and friends, I don't perceive them to understand how I think or to care why I hold the beliefs I do. I often encounter gross stereotypes of conservatives — we're xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic, judgmental racist bigots who want the rich to get richer and the sick and poor to go ahead and die already to reduce the surplus population. And that's not even taking our foreign policy positions into consideration! That one could actually believe all those ugly things about a fellow American who votes for someone like John McCain instead of Barack Obama is mind boggling.
It turns out my perception of how liberals view conservatives isn't too far off the mark. In his NYT op-ed today, Nicholas Kristof writes that conservatives seem to understand liberals far better than liberals understand conservatives.
One academic study asked 2,000 Americans to fill out questionnaires about moral questions. In some cases, they were asked to fill them out as they thought a “typical liberal” or a “typical conservative” would respond.
Moderates and conservatives were adept at guessing how liberals would answer questions. Liberals, especially those who described themselves as “very liberal,” were least able to put themselves in the minds of their adversaries and guess how conservatives would answer.
The 2009 UVA study linked above explains its findings by positing that liberals form their basis of morality by considering three values: caring for the weak, fairness, and liberty. Conservatives, on the other hand, have a much more complex system of morality. In addition to caring about all of the things liberals do—while of course understanding fairness and liberty in very different ways—conservatives factor in loyalty, respect for authority, and sanctity into their conception of morality. It's these added dimensions that seem to baffle the Left. From the study:
Liberals see conservatives as being motivated by an opposition to liberals’ core values of compassion and fairness, as well as being motivated by their own (non-moral) values of ingroup loyalty, respect for authorities and traditions, and spiritual purity. For instance,
when conservatives express binding-foundation moral concerns about gay marriage—e.g., that it subverts traditional gender roles and family structures—liberals may have difficulty perceiving any moral value in such traditional arrangements and therefore conclude that conservatives are motivated by simple homophobia, untempered by concerns about fairness, equality, and rights.This misperception is asymmetrical: conservatives did underestimate liberal moral concerns with the binding foundations, but they were no more likely to underestimate than liberals themselves.
Fascinating findings. But what are we to do with this information?
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Comments:
Jan '11
Re: Conservatives Understand Liberals. Liberals Don't Understand Conservatives.
Oh forget the logic and reasoning, just mug them. They learn quicker that way.
Nov '10
Re: Conservatives Understand Liberals. Liberals Don't Understand Conservatives.
Wow. Liberals, they show, cannot fathom the conservative mindset.
Then these liberals proceed to explain the conservative mindset.
And get it wrong.
This has got to be a showcase for utter lack of self-awareness.
Or something.
May '10
Re: Conservatives Understand Liberals. Liberals Don't Understand Conservatives.
...pay for their birth control so that they "unbreed" themselves out of existence?
May '10
Re: Conservatives Understand Liberals. Liberals Don't Understand Conservatives.
Aaron Miller
Agreed. Liberals are guilty of everything they accuse conservatives of being. · 8 hours ago
I'll claim it's "Strategic Projection".
Ie., intentional. And a remarkably effective offensive strategy.
If your side has some horrible fault, and the other side doesn't, all you need to do is accuse the other side of that very fault. You provide the news media with the examples that normally wouldn't be notable, but in light of this new context they get interpreted as transgressions, and you win. How amazing is that, turning a detriment into an advantage?
Nov '10
Re: Conservatives Understand Liberals. Liberals Don't Understand Conservatives.
So I polled my alumnae listserve about their reactions to the idea that conservatives understand them but they don't understand us. Any guesses as to how they felt about the statement?
The reaction was flat disbelief. They needed to examine the study methodology. Surely the conclusions were more nuanced than that. It would certainly depend on who was polled. It might be true in general, but it didn't apply to them personally, because of who their friends were, or because they had lived in the South, etc. Not one taker.
Anyone surprised?
Nov '11
Re: Conservatives Understand Liberals. Liberals Don't Understand Conservatives.
Don Tillman
Aaron Miller
Agreed. Liberals are guilty of everything they accuse conservatives of being. · 8 hours ago
I'll claim it's "Strategic Projection".
Ie., intentional. And a remarkably effective offensive strategy.
Yes, remarkable it is.. Even when they lose, they win.
I´m not so sure if it is intentional though. I find it to be more of a reflex, something you would expect from a teenager or a child for example.
Although, I may be wrong.
Nov '11
Re: Conservatives Understand Liberals. Liberals Don't Understand Conservatives.
Diane Ellis, Ed.
Daniel Perez: Actually, now that I think about it... Bill Whittle was on right on the money about this topic, where, actually, we kinda suck. It's somewhat of a very condensed version of Sowell'sA Conflict of Visions.
It really defines the issue here, and really hits home on why liberals don't like us. · 2 hours ago
I really enjoyed this. Thanks for sharing. · 11 hours ago
It was my pleasure.
Aug '10
Re: Conservatives Understand Liberals. Liberals Don't Understand Conservatives.
Tom: My one-on-one experiences with liberals has been much the same. They are generally surprised to find that a conservative can put together a cogent sentence, let alone express views calmly and kindly. And they almost never have any sort of principled support for their own thinking. It's mostly about how they "feel."
Dec '10
Re: Conservatives Understand Liberals. Liberals Don't Understand Conservatives.
I've also found Bay Area liberals so firewalled in their consideration of other viewpoints that they're unable to distinguish "Republicans" from "Conservatives". That's usually the first correction I have to make when I come out of the closet as a "friend of Ronnie." The other contrast is that we can recite their arguments back to them before we trump them with our own, without mentally short-circuiting. Ask them to do the same and they're generally unable to get the words of their mouths - it's so much easier just to caricature and call names.
Re: Conservatives Understand Liberals. Liberals Don't Understand Conservatives.
Lucy Pevensie: So I polled my alumnae listserve about their reactions to the idea that conservatives understand them but they don't understand us. Any guesses as to how they felt about the statement?
The reaction was flat disbelief. They needed to examine the study methodology. Surely the conclusions were more nuanced than that. It would certainly depend on who was polled. It might be true in general, but it didn't apply to them personally, because of who their friends were, or because they had lived in the South, etc. Not one taker.
Anyone surprised? · 3 hours ago
Nope, not surprised. You're pretty gutsy, Lucy.
May '10
Re: Conservatives Understand Liberals. Liberals Don't Understand Conservatives.
Don Tillman
Aaron Miller
Agreed. Liberals are guilty of everything they accuse conservatives of being.
I'll claim it's "Strategic Projection".
Yes and no. Politicians and many pundits do it strategically. But everyday liberals (voters) do it because they are lemmings or because, as Daniel says, they never grew out of the teenage mentality that always assumes other people are at fault.
Aug '10
Re: Conservatives Understand Liberals. Liberals Don't Understand Conservatives.
Interesting article. But I don't buy that conservatives are conservatives largely because we're more prone to feeling squeamishness and disgust than liberals, a claim he seems to be making:
In my experience, liberals are squeamish about plenty of things, just different things. If you've ever seen the squeamishness of a vegetarian realizing a meal might be contaminated with a minuscule amount of meat, or of an environmentalist with an empty soda can and no recycling bin handy...
Personally, eating worms doesn't disgust me, though I prefer mine cooked and well-seasoned. My left-leaning sister, however, even gets squeamish over eating duck and rabbit, despite being a meat-eater generally. (Maybe it's the cute factor, though that wouldn't explain her squeamishness over organ meats.)
Edited on March 23, 2012 at 5:30pmNov '10
Re: Conservatives Understand Liberals. Liberals Don't Understand Conservatives.
Midget Faded Rattlesnake: Interesting article. But I don't buy that conservatives are conservatives largely because we're more prone to feeling squeamishness and disgust than liberals, a claim he seems to be making:
I agree that this seems implausible to me. I gather, however, that there are data to support this assertion. It may be of interest to search around on the web for the original research, rather than taking the word of a NYT columnist, even if some of his points seem to be consonant with our observations.
Aug '10
Re: Conservatives Understand Liberals. Liberals Don't Understand Conservatives.
Lucy Pevensie
I agree that this seems implausible to me. I gather, however, that there are data to support this assertion. It may be of interest to search around on the web for the original research, rather than taking the word of a NYT columnist, even if some of his points seem to be consonant with our observations.
Agreed!
May '10
Re: Conservatives Understand Liberals. Liberals Don't Understand Conservatives.
Aaron Miller
Don Tillman
I'll claim it's "Strategic Projection".
Yes and no. Politicians and many pundits do it strategically. But everyday liberals (voters) do it because they are lemmings or because, as Daniel says, they never grew out of the teenage mentality that always assumes other people are at fault. · 15 hours ago
Indeed, there is a difference between the lefty operatives and regular liberal voters, and it is significant. The lefty operatives incorporate Strategic Projection as they define the narrative, and regular liberal voters tend to follow the narrative.
Still, it's a very powerful and efficient mechanism.
And conservatives, unfortunately, have nothing close.
Nov '11
Re: Conservatives Understand Liberals. Liberals Don't Understand Conservatives.
Don Tillman
Aaron Miller
Don Tillman
I'll claim it's "Strategic Projection".
Yes and no. Politicians and many pundits do it strategically. But everyday liberals (voters) do it because they are lemmings or because, as Daniel says, they never grew out of the teenage mentality that always assumes other people are at fault. · 15 hours ago
Indeed, there is a difference between the lefty operatives and regular liberal voters, and it is significant. The lefty operatives incorporate Strategic Projection as they define the narrative, and regular liberal voters tend to follow the narrative.
Still, it's a very powerful and efficient mechanism.
And conservatives, unfortunately, have nothing close. · Mar 24 at 12:09am
True. So very true.
Nov '10
Re: Conservatives Understand Liberals. Liberals Don't Understand Conservatives.
Diane Ellis, Ed.
Nathaniel Wright: Ah yes...the eternal Adorno inspired "respect for authority" factor. One can be plenty conservative and have very little respect for authority -- let alone have an Authoritarian Mind -- after all what is the intent of limited government other than a desire to limit authority?
The findings on who understands who is interesting, the moral construct less so. · 6 minutes ago
My instinct was to see "respect for authority" listed and gag at the choice of words, but the description of this dimension used in the study (and in a new book by Jonathan Haidt, one of the study's authors) includes things like a reverence toward God and a respect for the military and traditional institutions such as the family and the church. One needn't be an authoritarian to respect and value authorities bigger than one's self. · Mar 22 at 12:34pm
Conservatives tend to respect, but question authority. Liberals tend to appeal to authority, after which there are to be no questions.