Psychological Differences between Liberals and Conservatives

I continue writing about the study of 1,252 people by Wilhelm Hofmann et al. (Science, 2014) that I summarized in the preceding essay. One of the purposes of the study was to compare the moral values of liberals with those of conservatives.

Liberals cared more about fairness, liberty, and honesty, while conservatives cared more about loyalty, authority, and sanctity. That is, the values to which conservatives fundamentally cling are those that make them march in lock-step with one another and believe whatever their religious and political leaders tell them. Many of us would say that the moral values of liberals—try to be fair to and honest with people, and give them the liberty to live as they please, so long as they do not harm others—are superior to the moral values of conservatives, that is, to impose their moral values on other people.

In what I write next, I am going beyond the conclusions of the paper.

It is the conservative moral values that are leading our nation and world into peril. Conservatives are loyal to the Republican party and defend the authority of Donald Trump (though this was not yet the case at the time the article was published). They believe themselves to have sanctity, that is, saintliness, and for anyone who disagrees with them to be impure. Whatever their leaders tell them, they cling to it and are ready to rise up and fight any who differ from them, under the right conditions.

The values to which we liberals cling, however, are not those that are getting the world into trouble. We want to be fair to everybody: for example, it may be fair for you to have a gun, but it is fair for us to not be shot by your gun, and life is more valuable than gun possession. We liberals want liberty for everyone, but we recognize that your gun liberty is restricting our liberty to live. And we want to be honest, which is why our statements are more moderate and cautious than the simplistic and flaming rhetoric of the conservatives, and why such a breathtakingly high number of lies have issued forth from the current Republican political leaders. Practically every Trump tweet contains an easily recognizable lie. Conservatives want to be loyal to their party and to their exalted leader, and will make stuff up to bolster that loyalty.

Of course, there are spectra of liberals and of conservatives. But the liberals are more likely to recognize this. A typical conservative cannot have a decent conversation with any liberal: loyalty, authority, and sanctity are of prime importance. But I would rather have an honest conversation with a thoughtful conservative than spend time with a ranting liberal. I doubt, however, that most conservatives would prefer talking quietly to me to listening to the rants of Rush Limbaugh.

One cannot help being attracted to a political viewpoint that matches his or her psychological inclinations; but some of those inclinations endanger the future of the world, and others do not. Your desire to shoot me, and my desire to not be shot by you, may be equally the products of our inclinations; but your desire is bad, and mine is good.

Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) said on a February 21, 2018 news program that most mass shooters are Democrats. I wonder if she, and others like her, are beginning to stir up the moral sentiments of conservatives to begin to take physical action against liberals.

Go East, Young Man

Horace Greeley famously urged young Americans to go west. But my advice to young academics is to go east.

Unless personal ties totally prevent you from going there, China would probably be a wonderful place for young American scientists. In two recent issues of Science magazine (9 December and 16 December, 2016), China bought huge advertisements to tell you young American scientists how much they want you. They bought 72 pages of some of the most expensive advertising in the magazine world to invite you. This is in addition to the numerous smaller advertisements about which I reported earlier this year. Though they did not say so, it is clear that they are capitalizing on the hostility that American scientists are receiving from the Trump Administration.

France has made their call even clearer. At the head of the news section in the February 10, 2017 issue of Science, there is a quote from Emmanuel Macron, who is the new president of France. Macron issued a “solemn call” to American scientists. He said, “From next May, you will have a new homeland: France.”

The American federal government, and numerous state governments (such as Oklahoma, where I live), scientists are considered to be liabilities and even mildly dangerous. A law that its sponsors intended as a way of rescuing students from evil scientists narrowly missed passage in the Oklahoma House.

Personally, I just want to hold out until retirement. But for those of you younger scientists who have a little career flexibility, consider accepting an offer from a country that wants you.

Two Parties of Political Parasites

Cultural evolution has its own versions of parasitism, and these versions are as diverse as they are in biological evolution. I wish to briefly describe two examples of cultural parasites: the Republican Party, and the Democratic Party.

Parasitism is a spectrum, but it can be roughly categorized into chronic and acute parasites. Acute parasites make you very sick very fast, and you either die or you get well pretty soon. Chronic parasites make you mildly sick for a long time. For parasites that spread by direct contact, natural selection often favors evolution from acute toward chronic parasitism.

The Democratic Party is a chronic parasite. Democratic politicians are relatively harmless. But their ideas continue to sap the economy and the country. They do not seem to take the problem of deficit spending seriously. And their solution (more so in the past than at present) is often to create a government bureaucracy to solve a problem. Each component of the bureaucracy has a certain amount of inefficiency, and the whole thing compounds into a tremendous amount of inefficiency. They are like a very big but harmless tick that rides on your back and gives you a massage. You will notice that the Democrats nod their heads toward science and the environment, but take little meaningful action. (One exception: Barack Obama decided to take action on global climate change last week, rather than to wait for Congressional Democrats or Republicans to do so.) At this time of year, we all recognize the IRS as a very inefficient system. We have to pay taxes, but what about the hundreds of hours of our lives required to correctly fill out all of the forms? (Don’t forget the AMT form. It appears to be required.) I think that, for the first time ever, I have gotten the hang of it, and it took only a dozen hours or so for me to complete my taxes.

Do you remember back to 2009, when President Obama wanted to give tax credits to working people? It was $400 per individual, $800 per couple. But to get these credits, you had to fill out a separate schedule, which required more calculations. He meant well, but this sort of thing is a Democrat’s idea of being nice: create a nice new level of bureaucracy.

In contrast, the Republican Party is an acute parasite. They approve budgets that they know they will not go along with, and then when the government tries to pay its bills, they create an artificial crisis. They have one scheduled this month. They plan to not raise the debt ceiling to pay the bills they already authorized. The last time they did this, they led us a few hours into default. If they cause the country’s credit rating to drop, we will be even deeper in debt due to possible hikes in interest rates. They can kill us, and they know it; they apparently plan to take us to the edge of mortality once again.

The Republican Party is the Ebola virus of cultural evolution, and the Democratic Party is the walking pneumonia of cultural evolution. I will take my chances with the pneumonia, but I’m (cough, cough) not happy about it.

A Congressional Lovefest?

A few weeks ago I posted an entry entitled “Attention All Investors” in which I said that Congrass (oops I meant Congress) was willing to sink the American economy in order to gain political dominance; that this state of affairs was likely to continue indefinitely into the future; and that, therefore, America was not a good place for long-term investment. (The old meaning of the word "congress" is "copulation," and maybe this is what Congress is doing to us.) This essay got more hits than most others. Since there were no comments left, I do not know if the reaction was positive or negative.

Since that time, the budget impasse has been resolved. In December 2013, Paul Ryan (Republican member of the House) and Patty Murray (Democratic Senator) announced a bipartisan budget agreement that has proven acceptable to both parties. Finally, in January, both houses of Congress passed a budget that forestalls any future battles until September of this year. All of the announcements were celebrational; a Congressional lovefest seems to have begun.

Strangely absent was any Republican attempt to destroy the Affordable Health Care Act. This was what they insisted on eliminating in October, absent which they were willing to crash the economy. Also absent was any Republican mention that they have changed their views. There was no repentance. None of them, to my knowledge, said, “We have decided that the Republican Party was a destructive force in the world, and that we henceforward wish to be constructive, and to love those whom we formerly and very publicly hated.” The Republicans just changed their approach, suddenly and without explanation. It is as if Viking raiders in an Irish monastery suddenly treated their former victims to a feast in their honor. It is as if Scrooge became an altruist without ever having been visited by the three ghosts and not having a change of heart.

Republicans, after having tried intimidation, have decided to embrace altruism.

Needless to say, I do not trust them. This is because I see all politicians (Democrats as well, though less dangerously so) as acting solely in their own interests, desiring only to increase their dominance in society. Animals use whatever behavior patterns they can to gain dominance in their societies. In many mammal species, dominant males use intimidation. But altruism can also be used as a behavior pattern to gain dominance. This pattern is mostly known from humans, either in tribal or civilized societies. The altruistic humans benefit from indirect reciprocity, that is, they gain social capital by getting other people to think they are nice and generous. Politicians are now, as ever, simply trying to manipulate their images.

Just in time for an election year, Republicans have tried to change their image from dominant gorilla to cheerful altruist. As voters go to the polls, they will have forgotten what the Republicans did in 2011 and 2013. Every odd-numbered year is a time for Republicans to turn into gorillas. Even-numbered years are times for them to become altruists. I am not accusing Republicans of doing something supremely evil; I am merely calling them human.

But some of us are not fooled.

How Not to be an Alpha Male (or Female)

As several recent books have shown, humans have behavior patterns similar to those of other apes, although we dress it up and use the power and complexity of language to perpetuate them. These patterns can be good (as described in de Waal’s Age of Empathy) or bad (see parts of Conniff’s Ape in the Corner Office). There are two ways in which alpha males get to the top of their societies, and in nearly all cases the alpha males use a combination of the two. The first is sheer bluster and violence. The second is altruism (in this case, acquiring the friendship of supporters). Gorillas use more of the former, chimps more of the latter. Different human societies throughout history have used more of one or more of the other. The spread of freedom and democracy supposedly entails the growth of the latter and diminishment of the former.

Democracy is the formalized requirement that leaders attain power by the consent of the governed. This would make it appear that our leaders would want to do things that would make us support, or at least approve of, them. Why is it, then, that our leaders do things that make themselves objects of ridicule? In sociobiological terms, the behavior of America’s leaders is dysfunctional.

So it is not surprising that Congress has, as of this past week, an approval rating of 9 percent. This is the first time that Congress has had a single-digit rating since approval ratings began to be monitored decades ago. UPI listed ten things that have been more popular than Congress now is:

• President Obama has a 46% approval rating.
• The Internal Revenue Service has a 40% approval rating.
• Lawyers have a 29% approval rating.
• The airline industry has a 29% approval rating.
• At the nadir of his scandals, Richard Nixon still had a 24% approval rating.
• Banks, even at the worst of the financial scandals, had a 23% approval rating.
• The oil and gas industry has a 20% approval rating.
• Even during the Deepwater Horizon blowout, BP had a 16% approval rating.
• Paris Hilton has a 15% approval rating.
• Even the idea that America should become a communist nation has an 11% approval rating.

Other sources report that colonoscopies have a higher approval rating than Congress, although gonorrhea is still less popular. That is, the antics of Congress (which columnist Jack Anderson used to call the Washington Merry-Go-Round) are obliterating the one and only thing from which they can obtain their social power: the goodwill of the citizens.

As a progressive, I attribute most of this to the Repuglicans. They could defend a truly conservative viewpoint, but instead they are just the Party of No. They will oppose anything Democrats want. The worst example of this was when Senator McConnell filibustered his own bill. It was the Repuglicans who took us not just up to but over the fiscal cliff. And now they promise to do so again, with the debt ceiling argument scheduled for a few weeks hence. They took the federal government to the brink of default before, in the summer of 2011, by refusing to allow payment for projects they had already approved. This is the exact equivalent of refusing to pay bills for items you have already purchased and used. To do this would cause the credit rating of the federal government to decline, perhaps causing the government to have to pay millions of dollars more on debt interest. It is principally because of the Repuglicans that America sneers its own Congress.

But the solution is not to give our allegiance to the Dismal-crats. For it is from their Treasury Department that a breathtakingly stupid idea has come. Or, it would be stupid if they actually intended to do it. But if they think it is a funny joke, they might want to reconsider. I refer to the idea of the trillion-dollar platinum coin. Apparently it is entirely legal for the Treasury Department to mint a commemorative coin of whatever denomination they choose. They would then deposit such a coin (or two of them) and use that “money” to pay bills, even if Congress votes to authorize no payment on programs they have already approved.

Inside the Beltway is a world that is total fantasy, as far as most Americans are concerned. Washington does not have the power to force us to be their friends, as an alpha male gorilla might, nor have they any inclination to earn our approval, as an alpha chimp might. Even Genghis Khan tried to gain some measure of approval among his victims. He allowed a measure of autonomous rule and religious and cultural freedom to conquered territories, so long as they paid their ransom. If our romper-room Congrass (oops) is the flower of democracy, then what faith can we have in the future? There is no species of animal that has this dysfunctional kind of social leadership. And if there ever was such a species, it is now extinct.

Appealing to the Basest Instincts

What is human nature? This is one of the most basic evolutionary questions. The liberal idea of previous decades, that the human mind is a blank slate upon which human nature is written by childhood experiences, has been largely discarded even by liberals. It is clear to about half of the people in America that human nature is the product of evolution. The other half of the people think it is the product of a joint venture between God and Satan: God created the good part, and for some inexplicable reason allowed Satan to create the bad part. And that bad part will get us sent to hell unless we assent to certain doctrinal beliefs.

What kind of human nature has evolution left us with? It is a complex mixture. A lot of human nature is altruistic—we have a deep emotional urge to help others, even sacrificially. And a lot of human nature is hateful—a desire to defeat, even to kill, those whom we view as a threat. The mixture is not so hard to understand. We feel altruism toward members of our group, and to hate members outside of our group. Although human nature has not changed during history, we have learned to gradually move the dividing line outward, so as to include and love more and more people in our group. The Christian ideal is to include all of humankind in the group that we love; and some parts of the Bible imply that we should love all of the living world.

But however much we have extended our boundaries of altruism, hatred remains a basic, and base, instinct. It is always going to be stronger than altruism. Here is why. Hatred is a quick and pervasive way of arousing the human body to respond to deadly conflict. If you perceive a danger, rage will allow you to respond to it quickly; if you wait and think, you might be dead. The consequences of attacking something or someone that or who turns out to not be a threat (Type II error, in statistical terminology) are far less than the consequences of failing to respond to a real threat (Type I error). This is why, throughout the animal kingdom, rage circumvents conscious thought, while altruism incorporates it. It is quite normal, though horrible, for people to respond to hatred more than to love.

Any public figure who appeals to the base instinct of hatred is going to get more unquestioning support than someone who appeals to love and reason. The altruist may get more reasoned support, but cannot win the battle for unquestioning support. And today in America, it is the conservatives who appeal to the base instinct of hatred. Probably the best example is Rush Limbaugh, who became infamous recently for his statements about a female college student (Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke). He called her a slut, and said, first, that she had so much sex that it was surprising that she could walk, and second, that Americans should have access to videos of her sexual encounters so that we could see what we were getting for our money. These statements were so outrageous that advertisers began pulling their support from Limbaugh’s radio show; and Limbaugh later issued a perfunctory apology, which was clearly not repentance.

But what response did the Republican presidential candidates have? As of this writing, Mitt Romney has avoided any criticism of Rush Limbaugh. And Rick Santorum has even praised Rush Limbaugh. On a March 10 visit to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, Limbaugh’s hometown, Santorum said, “It’s good to be in the hometown of Rush Limbaugh, which some people see as a trip to Mecca.” He was careful to say “some people,” but he was clearly including himself in that statement. He considers himself a Christian, yet (according to his own words) reveres Limbaugh with the same intensity that Muslims revere Mohammed.

Some politicians appeal to reason. This includes many Democrats, and a few Republicans (my favorite reasonable Republican is Mickey Edwards). Other politicians appeal to anger. This appears to include most Republicans, and some liberals. The angry liberals may be just as outrageous as Rush Limbaugh, but clearly their audience is much smaller than his. (My favorite example of an unreasonable liberal was Lynn Samuels, who died last December. Whenever I ran across her on liberal talk radio, my skin would crawl.) This is the generalization that emerges: Republicans use propaganda to appeal to the base instinct of hatred, while Democrats use reasoning to appeal to the higher instinct of altruism. This is strange, since most Republicans do not accept evolution, and believe that hatred was created by Satan.

This essay will soon appear on my website. Please post comments in the comment box.