Recently, I've been spending some time learning about the intersection of politics and psychology, and I've tried to gain a better understanding of conservative viewpoints.
One paper I read recently is this (it's PLoS ONE, so it should be free for anyone to access). Here's a portion of the Abstract:
quote:2,212 U.S. participants filled out the Moral Foundations Questionnaire with their own answers, or as a typical liberal or conservative would answer. Across the political spectrum, moral stereotypes about typical liberals and conservatives correctly reflected the direction of actual differences in foundation endorsement but exaggerated the magnitude of these differences. Contrary to common theories of stereotyping, the moral stereotypes were not simple underestimations of the political outgroup's morality. Both liberals and conservatives exaggerated the ideological extremity of moral concerns for the ingroup as well as the outgroup. Liberals were least accurate about both groups.
emphasis added
In a nutshell, nobody in the study was particularly good at predicting how someone else would answer the questionnaire; but as it turned out, self-identified liberals were the least accurate in predicting the moral beliefs of other people, including the moral beliefs of hypothetical other liberals!
This result makes me hesitate to criticize people like Faith, who constantly yammer about "Marxist PC" and stuff. "PC" of course means "political correctness," which I understand to be the practice of moderating speech and behavior patterns to at least nominally conform to certain prevailing opinions about morality.
Could it be that people like Faith are better judges of people's morals than we (liberals) are? How could that be? Isn't she, like... a racist, or something?
Or, is she right that political correctness has made liberals completely unable to understand the morality of traditional conservative values?
I guessed correctly that one of the authors was Jonathan Haidt. Does that count for anything? Probably not, this is precisely what he studies and talks publicly about all the time.
quote:The six foundations
Values and their opposites
Care/harm: cherishing and protecting others. Fairness/cheating: rendering justice according to shared rules. (Alternate name: Proportionality) Liberty/oppression: the loathing of tyranny. Loyalty/betrayal: standing with your group, family, nation. (Alternate name: Ingroup) Authority/subversion: obeying tradition and legitimate authority. (Alternate name: Respect.) Sanctity/degradation: abhorrence for disgusting things, foods, actions. (Alternate name: Purity.)
Also, I think the mistake is to thinking that all self-identifying Conservatives as extreme examples of Conservatism, such as Faith. It might be availability bias if liberals actively seek out people to argue with, its likely they'll speak with the argumentative more than the reasonable or quiet. Also liberals in forums do like to skip over reasonable sounding Conservative arguments if there is an insane one to eviscerate in their own personal style
As a US citizen, long time Christian, Registered Republican and Conservative I feel I should at least point out that US Conservative Christian Republicans are not a monolithic group.
This is not all that new. A great example was the division between the Goldwater and Rockefeller camps from the 1940s through the mid to late 1970s. Among the folk that would be considered as "Rockefeller Republicans" would be Presidents Teddy Roosevelt, Hoover, Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford as well many holding other offices like the Romneys and Prescott Bush and Earl Warren.
Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
This result makes me hesitate to criticize people like Faith, who constantly yammer about "Marxist PC" and stuff. "PC" of course means "political correctness," which I understand to be the practice of moderating speech and behavior patterns to at least nominally conform to certain prevailing opinions about morality.
Could it be that people like Faith are better judges of people's morals than we (liberals) are? How could that be? Isn't she, like... a racist, or something?
Or, is she right that political correctness has made liberals completely unable to understand the morality of traditional conservative values?
Faith, I believe is absolutely correct up to a point about the whole PC thing. It exists and it is used as a weapon to cut off any logical argument under the presumption that it is somehow bigoted or offensive somehow. They are "offended" by design, as a way to denude any rational argument. The best way is to just make it completely off limits for your opponents and then sanctimoniously lord over it.
So, up to a point, she is right. The thing with Faith is that she views everything in extremes. There's not much moderation. So if you abstain from using inflammatory comments, you aren't merely exhibiting self-restraint and tact... No, you are actually exhibiting Marxist PC tactics that directly came down off the mountain under the tutelage of comrades Lenin, Stalin, and Mao.
If you don't believe exactly as Faith does about Christianity, well, it's because you aren't a real Christian. GDR evidently is a liberal posing as a Christian. As for myself, in her eyes I went to the dark-side too quickly; I must therefore have never been a Christian, because a real Christian could never abandon Christ.... nevermind Jesus' and Paul's writings saying that you can.
But, oh yes, modern-day Liberals have their whackaloons too.
"Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it" -- Thomas Paine
Or, is she right that political correctness has made liberals completely unable to understand the morality of traditional conservative values?
Yes. But so what they are all based in traditional racist bias and theocratic exceptionalism.
"You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative" William S. Burroughs
I guessed correctly that one of the authors was Jonathan Haidt. Does that count for anything? Probably not, this is precisely what he studies and talks publicly about all the time.
Go figure you'd have heard of the guy before. I hadn't until just a couple days ago, after following some of Faith's comments on the New Primary thread. I came across this review of Haidt's book, and I tracked the paper down from there. I also read this review, which isn't quite as favorable.
It struck me that this work aligns a bit with the common conservative complaints about liberal PC. Faith often complains about PC liberals putting her in a box or categorizing her, which seems to fit pretty squarely with the notion the liberals defining conservatives too coarsely.
What surprises me about this is I would have expected the opposite. After all, I always feel like conservatives are mischaracterizing my views. But, this has made me re-evaluate myself: maybe I'm not as much as victim as I think I am? Somewhat irritatingly, that also aligns with something conservatives say about liberals.
It certainly opens the mind a little bit, at the very least.
So, up to a point, she is right. The thing with Faith is that she views everything in extremes. There's not much moderation. So if you abstain from using inflammatory comments, you aren't merely exhibiting self-restraint and tact... No, you are actually exhibiting Marxist PC tactics that directly came down off the mountain under the tutelage of comrades Lenin, Stalin, and Mao.
There definitely is some variance around the mean, so there's no guarantee that Faith, specifically, is a superlatively accurate judge of moral character. I think the only point I would make is that those of us who think she's off her rocker should be willing to entertain the notion that there's likely a kernel of truth in her accusations. And our distaste for some aspects of her character doesn't necessarily invalidate some of the points she's trying to make.
{AbE Disclaimer: I think Faith is a decent human being who is not crazy, but is both wrong and misunderstood, depending on circumstance. I did not mean to imply here that I dislike her, that she is crazy, etc.}
The Other, Multiculturalism, and the Villainization of Dissent
How could that be?
It's the silly categorizations.
Too many liberals see the world in a very 'compartmentalized' way - actions and their motives belong to specific binary groups and there is no grey area. These compartments are very often based off of current pop-sociology 'research' (= political correctness indoctrination) and the kind of bastardizations of Karl Marx's ideas you would expect to get from a field dominated with people who 'majored in Chicano/Black/LGBT/etc. studies because they're Latino/African American/Gay/etc.' whose expertise amounts to little more than their aptitude for 'identity politics' sloganeering.
This mostly stems from the 'us/other' (false) dichotomy that seems to serve as the cornerstone of most modern sociology studies. For the millions of liberals who have found themselves entranced by this worldview, perhaps after an optional college course or participation in a 'protest', this binary outlook on the world clouds their perception of people's actual motives as they attempt to view everything in these 'academic' terms.
When you add to this the Multiculturalism notions of cultural and moral relativity - we're really all the same, deep down - it is not hard to see why so many liberals often misjudge people's motives by assuming everyone is just like them despite the fact that people are not all the same and motives vary from person to person and values from culture to culture. (Consider: Muslim terrorists murder people because of political/economic/etc. reasons and not for their god. This nonsense gets thrown around repeatedly, even when we as a society are inundated with actual statements from actual terrorists who describe their motives very clearly to be religious in nature.)
Reality is shut out and conformity to theories is all that matters.
Isn't she, like... a racist, or something?
Bingo. I think you understand what is going on, even if you can't put your finger on it.
Consider when I recently asked for evidence that seas would rise to outrageous levels. I was outright attacked. Referred to off-handedly as a 'denier'. Or when I questioned the efficacy of BLM and, despite repeatedly declaring my motives to be understanding the best way to improve the lives of African Americans, was shouted down as a racist.
The sociologist's false dichotomies completely unrelated to reality can only be maintained through great effort of ignorance, denial, and forced conformance. And that last one is very important, because it is PC in a nutshell (consider the historical meaning of the word): Anyone who questions the prevailing political stance, even just to understand it, is against it and immoral; dismissed as a monster, lunatic, or both. I have heard this referred to as something like the 'villainization of dissent'. Hyroglyphx mentions it in his post upthread. But it is really just political correctness taken to the technical levels of the term's meaning.
And this violent dismissal of contrary opinions is not just silly, but it's toxic in terms of maintaining open communication and meaningful discussion. But closing one's mind to the world is the only way to maintain the false worldviews that underpin the majority of the political and academic left's ideologies. Everything they believe is at stake, and that tends to bring out the worst in people.
Now the sad part: I consider myself liberal, and so this behavior really troubles me. It impedes good conversation and exists only to keep people in step with the party line. Worse, it prevents us from solving real problems, helping people, and moving the world forward, which should be the ultimate motives of any good liberal - not the tired attempts to 'spot the bigot' or strip everyone of their unique characteristics to fit them into bad molds.
Or, is she right that political correctness has made liberals completely unable to understand the morality of traditional conservative values?
To an extent, yes, but I think it comes down to this: Instead of trying to fit everything into academic stereotypes like 'class struggles' and 'identity politics' or write everyone off who disagrees with you as immoral and unworthy, folks on the right might be more likely to base their opinions of others on their actions or words, and so are better able to define and understand those actions and words.
Liberals, on the other hand, in trying to fit everything into their false categories, misjudge everyone - including other liberals. This probably comes from the fact that many on the right lack the indoctrination in political leftism that often results from obtaining a four-year college degree in America. They simply don't have as many of the tools that allow liberals to misjudge others and so naturally misjudge people at a lower rate.
If you don't believe exactly as Faith does about Christianity, well, it's because you aren't a real Christian. GDR evidently is a liberal posing as a Christian. As for myself, in her eyes I went to the dark-side too quickly; I must therefore have never been a Christian, because a real Christian could never abandon Christ.... nevermind Jesus' and Paul's writings saying that you can.
As I understand Faith I'm not sure that she would agree with that. I think that she would say that as a Christian I'm not faithful to Biblical Christianity. (I would dispute that but that would be her view I believe.) Actually in my own denomination, the "Anglican Church of Canada" I'm considered to be somewhat conservative.
I wind up arguing a lot with Faith as I contend that she has essentially replaced Jesus with the Bible. However, I think that I have read enough of what she has written to think that the way our beliefs play out in our lives is in many ways similar. I believe that she does actually follow the teaching of Jesus and does reject the more violent aspects of the OT and then finds ways to rationalize her views. For example public stonings were necessary then but not any more.)
I've seen Faith described as being bigoted and uncaring, but I have a strong feeling that if we were allowed to see how she lives out her life we would find her to be exactly the opposite.
He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God.
While I expect the thread to devolve into some sub argument liberal vs conservative at some point as potshots turn to bickering, it might be nice to discuss the reasons the paper proposes. The study was intended to some extent as a test of The Moral Foundations Theory as well as just data collection and analysis.
The Theory predicts that since liberals focus on three area of moral concern whereas the conservatives focus on six the liberals were more likely to misunderstand a conservatives morals stance as they would consider 'ingroup loyalty' and 'purity' concerns as they manifest in notorious cases, suggests to them that deep down conservatives don't care about fairness, liberty or harm.
quote:Finally, we found some support for the hypothesis that conservatives would be the most accurate, which they were in the case of the individualizing foundations. In line with Moral Foundations Theory, liberals dramatically underestimated the Harm and Fairness concerns of conservatives. These findings add to the literature on moral foundations by demonstrating a novel form of pragmatic validity [16] for the theory: conceptualizing and measuring the moral stereotypes people have of different social groups.
They do also spend some time discussing their sample, which they acknowledge could not be considered a representative sample and reasons why this might not be as bad as it sounds. This is worth noting, but while there are many interpretations of the results, Haidt has a Theory that at least makes sense of the data.
It exists and it is used as a weapon to cut off any logical argument under the presumption that it is somehow bigoted or offensive somehow.
Actually, when I accuse someone of bigotry, it is not to cut off discussion, it is because I find the actions/statements examples of bigotry. Yes it is true that not all people oppose illegal immigration, for example, out of bigotry, but some comments and statements, particularly extreme ones that needlessly attack an entire country or nationality, are bigoted. At the very least, the users of such verbiage are partially responsible for their own dismissal.
In many cases accusation of PC are made to cut off legitimate complaints about language, etc. Calling someone on calling another person a slut in a discussion about birth control is not PC and is not done to cut off discussion.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King
If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
In a nutshell, nobody in the study was particularly good at predicting how someone else would answer the questionnaire; but as it turned out, self-identified liberals were the least accurate in predicting the moral beliefs of other people, including the moral beliefs of hypothetical other liberals!
Are the accusations that fly around here, particularly the ones leveled at the right far right opinions, really examples of predicting moral beliefs rather than reacting to expressions of those beliefs. It is a long time since I have been truly surprised at Faith's stance on an issue. But what examples are there of participants assuming that someone will have a particular belief? How often does this happen in our discussions?
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King
If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
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