0:03

Maybe you've noticed, this country

0:05

has fallen into polarized, partisan,

0:07

political bickering. But where

0:09

did we get our rigid political views

0:12

in the first place? Well, obviously,

0:14

by carefully studying the data on each

0:16

issue and thoughtfully choosing our positions

0:19

accordingly. Right? Not

0:21

quite.

0:22

Most of the studies seem to indicate

0:24

that about 60% of the

0:26

difference between you and me

0:28

and anybody else in their political ideology

0:31

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0:33

or heritable factors.

0:34

That's right. You're a liberal or a conservative

0:37

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0:40

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0:42

and channels of persuasion pointless? Is

0:45

it impossible

0:45

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0:48

David Pogue, and this is Unsung

0:51

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0:56

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2:49

Every country around the world has political parties

2:52

that are fundamentally either conservative

2:54

or liberal. In the US, we call

2:56

them Republicans and Democrats. Other

2:58

countries call their parties different things, but

3:01

underlying all of it, they're essentially

3:03

conservative or liberal. And

3:05

just so we're clear on what those words mean, I

3:08

sought answers from the Oracle, ChatGPT.

3:12

Version 4. Yeah, that's right.

3:14

The one that costs money. I went all

3:17

out. Here's what it said. Conservatives

3:20

tend to support existing norms and values

3:22

and resist change. They

3:24

advocate for limited government intervention. They

3:27

support lower taxes, reduced government spending,

3:29

deregulation, and a strong national defense.

3:32

Liberals generally believe in an active

3:34

role for government in addressing societal

3:37

inequalities. They tend to support progressive

3:39

reforms such as LGBTQ

3:42

plus rights, abortion access, and gun

3:44

control measures. Economically,

3:46

they favor regulations on businesses, progressive

3:49

taxation, and social welfare

3:51

programs. It's essential to recognize

3:53

that these are generalizations and that there's

3:56

a broad spectrum of beliefs within each category.

3:58

Well done,

4:01

Chat GPT. So, conservatives

4:03

care a lot more about order, things like purity,

4:05

things like sticking with people who are just

4:08

like you, and liberals

4:10

tend to score high. The main personality characteristic

4:12

is openness, and so it means open to

4:14

new ideas. It might mean openness to different

4:16

forms. There's research showing there are different liberals

4:18

like modern art more than conservatives. Conservatives

4:21

prefer like classic forms of art. This

4:23

is Jay von Babel. He's a psychology

4:25

and neuroscience professor at New York University

4:28

and co-author of The Power

4:30

of Us, a book about the psychology

4:33

of groups. Okay, so today's

4:35

question is how did we get to

4:37

be conservative or liberal? If

4:39

you talk to like an average person on the street, most people

4:42

think that they chose their politics. You

4:44

know, you turn on the presidential debate, and

4:47

you think you're going in with an open mind, and

4:49

you're going to listen to the two ideas

4:51

and maybe change who you vote for. That's kind of the way

4:54

our political system operates with that assumption. But

4:56

what the brain structure data suggests

4:59

is maybe that's not quite true. See,

5:02

this episode has the most bizarre origin

5:04

story in unsung science history.

5:07

I was reading an article on psychologytoday.com.

5:10

It begins like this. Peering

5:14

inside the brain with MRI scans, researchers

5:17

at the University College London found that

5:19

self-described conservative students had

5:21

a larger amygdala than liberals.

5:24

The amygdala is an almond-shaped structure

5:27

deep in the brain that is active during

5:29

states of fear and anxiety. Okay,

5:32

what? So you vote conservative because

5:34

you've got a big amygdala? I mean, if that's

5:36

true, then what are we doing? Why

5:38

are we having debates and discussions and protests

5:41

and policy conversations? If our voting

5:43

patterns are determined at birth by

5:45

the size of some brain organ, then there's no

5:48

hope of convincing anyone of anything. The

5:50

die for every election is already cast. Free

5:53

will is a lie. So

5:56

I contacted political scientist Rose McDermott,

5:59

a professor now at... Brown University who's

6:01

done a ton of studies on the differences

6:03

between these two species, conservative

6:06

and liberal. And when I say different species,

6:09

I'm serious. Wait till I

6:11

tell you about her armpit study.

6:13

Anyway, I sent her the article. I

6:16

can link you to the abstract here. Yeah,

6:19

interesting. And in the article,

6:21

there's a link to a study that it was based on.

6:24

She clicked it and noticed something spectacularly

6:27

weird. Well,

6:28

this is funny. This article, one of the authors

6:31

is Colin First, who I think is

6:33

the actor. What? No,

6:35

what? Yeah, no, if you click

6:38

through to the link to the original article

6:40

in Current Biology, he's the third author. So

6:44

that tells you something important.

6:47

And it's also like Current Biology

6:49

is a very respectable journal. And

6:51

it could be a different Colin First, but

6:53

I kind of don't think so. No, it's not because if

6:55

you click his link, the affiliation is BBC

6:58

Radio 4. Yes, it's

7:00

true. The third author of this published

7:03

study, which appeared in the journal Current

7:05

Biology, is this guy.

7:08

What I'm trying to say very

7:10

inarticulately is I like

7:13

you very much, just

7:16

as you are. How on earth does the star

7:18

of Bridget Jones's diary wind

7:20

up publishing a paper in a scientific journal?

7:23

Well, Rose has a theory. I suspect

7:25

the reason he's an author

7:26

is because he funded it, right? So like,

7:29

if you pay for something, you get to be an author.

7:32

Oh, Current Biology is a very reasonable

7:35

place, but the Colin First thing makes me

7:37

suspicious. As it turns out, she

7:39

is right. On December 28, 2010, Colin

7:43

Firth was the guest host of a BBC

7:45

radio show called Today. And

7:48

for his episode, he paid for Professor

7:50

Geraint Reiss to scan the brains

7:53

of two politicians and 90 regular

7:55

people. And they found that there were some key

7:58

differences in the brain structure. In

8:00

particular, it's called gray matter volume

8:02

between liberals and conservatives. Apparently,

8:05

conservatives have more gray matter

8:07

volume in their amygdala. Liberals

8:10

have more of it in a different part of the brain. The

8:12

anterior cingulate cortex. Our

8:15

brains are wired a certain way that filters

8:17

and changes how we see the information

8:20

and in ways that are going to make it very hard to

8:22

persuade us, you know, with rational arguments

8:24

and facts and so forth. And so

8:27

this is something that also is related

8:29

to genetic studies. If you take identical

8:32

twins, identical twins are genetic clones.

8:35

They share 100% of the same genes with one another.

8:37

That's why they look identical. Let's

8:39

say you took two identical twins at

8:41

birth and raised one in a liberal family

8:43

and one in a conservative family. And then you, you

8:45

know, you followed up with them 20 years later to

8:48

see who they voted for. I think most

8:50

people have the assumption that the person, that little baby

8:52

raised a liberal family would be total liberal.

8:55

And the kid raised in a conservative family would

8:57

be totally conservative because... It's not? I

8:59

know. Most, on average,

9:01

those twins are actually going to want to vote the same way. Oh

9:04

my God. The data suggests about half of our political

9:07

preferences are genetic. So half

9:09

are shaped by the environment. A big chunk of it

9:11

is biology. Rose McDermott has studied

9:13

the genetic component of your voting tendencies too.

9:15

And by genetic, I mean that it's heritable, right?

9:18

It goes from parents to kids. But

9:20

importantly, it doesn't necessarily mean you

9:22

share the ideology your parents do. Like,

9:25

think about red hair. You can have red

9:27

hair because your grandparents have red hair or your great

9:29

grandparents have red hair. Ideology

9:31

can work that way too, right? I mean, it's

9:33

a trait that passes through generations.

9:36

Okay, so if that study is true,

9:38

then people with more gray matter volume

9:41

in their amygdalas tend to vote conservative.

9:44

People with less tend to be liberal.

9:46

Aha! But

9:47

remember, one of the golden rules of science,

9:50

correlation does not imply causation.

9:53

Just because two things happen together doesn't

9:56

mean that one causes the other. I

9:58

had a high school science teacher... who made this point with

10:00

a phone example. Every

10:03

summer, ice cream consumption goes

10:06

up. And so, do swimming pool

10:08

drownings. But obviously that doesn't

10:10

mean that eating ice cream increases

10:12

your chances of drowning. Those measurements

10:15

both go up in the summer because it's hot out,

10:17

so people go swimming and people

10:19

eat ice cream. Those two statistics are

10:22

correlated, but one factor does

10:24

not cause the other. Anyway,

10:26

the point is, are you conservative

10:29

because you've got more gray matter volume in

10:31

your amygdala? Or do

10:33

you develop more gray matter volume in your amygdala

10:36

because you're conservative? Yeah,

10:38

there is a bit of a chicken and egg problem.

10:41

So we don't fully know. There's kind of like a little bit

10:43

of a missing link there

10:45

right now in that area of science.

10:48

The Psychology Today article points out that your

10:50

amygdala is active when you're fearful.

10:53

No wonder the author says that the

10:55

conservative party is big on national

10:57

defense and magnifies our perception

10:59

of threat, or foreign aggressors,

11:01

immigrants, terrorists, or invading

11:03

ideologies like communism. To a conservative,

11:06

the world really is a frightening place.

11:10

And Brown's Rose McDermott has studied this question.

11:12

My colleague, Peter Tommy, who

11:15

I've done most of this work with, and I did

11:17

a piece really

11:20

before its time. It was about 2012 on fear. And

11:23

what we found really is that fear

11:26

makes people conservative. It's not that conservative

11:29

people are fearful.

11:31

So it's not that you're conservative

11:33

and therefore you're scared. It's that you're scared

11:35

and

11:36

that makes you

11:38

conservative.

11:39

And the reason for that makes sense, right?

11:41

That if you're scared,

11:42

one of the things you want to do is control

11:44

the environment

11:45

so you reduce

11:46

the amount of uncertainty, you reduce

11:48

the amount of things that could

11:50

hurt you.

11:51

It's like the old saying, a conservative

11:54

is a liberal who's been mugged. Right,

11:57

right, right, right, right, right. Social and political

11:59

scientists. seem to uphold the theory

12:01

that a conservative person sees more

12:03

things to be feared in the world than a liberal

12:05

does. And that your amygdala's

12:08

makeup seems to correlate with your political

12:10

leanings. But J. von Bebel's research

12:12

doesn't back up the notion that your

12:15

amygdala size is tied to

12:17

your fearfulness. That's not

12:19

quite the same thing. The Psychology

12:21

Today article, the Oracle

12:24

of this whole thing, spoke

12:26

a lot about fear. The

12:29

article kind of said, well, the amygdala is the

12:31

fear center. And so that makes

12:33

sense because conservatives are

12:35

more fearful than liberals. Yeah, I mean, I actually

12:38

bought into that theory at one

12:40

point. But I've done a bunch of research since

12:42

and a bunch of other labs have,

12:44

and they really find that the fear conservative

12:46

link, it seems to be overstated

12:49

very significantly. Really? Yeah.

12:51

So I've changed my opinion. Or if there's a weak link,

12:53

it's very, very weak. We ran a structural

12:56

MRI study, two of them at NYU,

12:58

where I work, just like the one they ran in

13:00

London. And the variable we found that seemed

13:02

to be related to amygdala size,

13:05

first of all, was support for the status

13:08

quo and defense of the existing

13:10

system. And so conservatives tend to score higher

13:13

on support for the status quo. In fact, that's almost the

13:15

definition of conservatism, is

13:17

just conserving and sustaining the status quo.

13:20

And liberals want to challenge it more. And

13:22

so that seems to be the key variable, at least,

13:25

that we found that's correlated with amygdala volume.

13:27

We found it in two studies. And then we followed

13:29

up those people in our study, I think up

13:31

to a year later. And we found that the people who

13:33

had really low gray matter volume

13:35

density in their amygdala were the people who are more likely

13:37

to go to protests. And so these are the people

13:40

at Black Lives Matter protest, Global

13:42

Climate Change protest, Occupy

13:44

Wall Street protest. And so they're out

13:46

there challenging the system and trying to change it. And

13:49

it doesn't really seem like it maps really cleanly onto

13:51

fear. It seems like it maps more into sustaining

13:53

status quo and existing hierarchies and things like

13:56

that. In other words, like so

13:58

many other things in science. and the real

14:00

world, the truth involves accepting

14:02

a bit of nuance. Your amygdala does

14:05

affect your political leanings, and your

14:07

fear level does too, but it's

14:09

not necessarily true that your amygdala

14:12

determines your general fearfulness level.

14:17

Anyway, none of that changes the startling

14:19

fact that apparently your

14:22

genes help determine your vote.

14:25

Whoa! I mean, I can imagine

14:27

a lot of people reacting

14:29

negatively to this news that sounds like we're

14:32

being puppeteered to a certain

14:34

extent by our genetics and by

14:36

our amygdala size, but it doesn't

14:39

give us the credit for being our own thinkers

14:41

and cultivating our own independent

14:43

opinions. If that's true, then

14:46

there's no point to anything. There's

14:48

no point to every tweet and every

14:50

argument and every debate

14:52

on stage. But I always want to keep

14:54

hammering this home. This is about half of the story. The

14:57

other half of it is that we

14:59

also have these huge prefrontal cortices, which

15:02

sometimes engage in rationalization, but a lot of times

15:04

they're actually thinking. People are reading

15:06

new things, they're learning, they're exposed

15:09

to new people, and they're contemplating

15:11

it all and making decisions. You're shaped by your social

15:13

environments, the groups that you're in, the peer

15:15

groups that you have. And so that

15:18

can guide us in different directions than our predisposition.

15:21

Okay, so there's some hope

15:23

for our egos in thinking

15:25

that we can make up our own minds. Yeah, yeah,

15:27

yeah. There's some hope that we have a little bit

15:29

of rationality.

15:32

And that's not the only reassuring tidbit I

15:34

picked up from these interviews. After the break,

15:36

our guests are going to put the American partisan

15:38

mudslinging into perspective, and

15:41

I will tell you at last about

15:43

Rose McDermott's farm pit study.

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17:17

Welcome back.

17:18

This whole episode is dedicated to the proposition

17:21

that at least half your political tendencies

17:24

are outside your control. They

17:26

were determined by your genes. It's

17:29

not impossible for you to change your beliefs, but

17:31

Rose McDermott says it's pretty unlikely.

17:34

Does anybody ever switch

17:38

from

17:38

liberal to conservative? Oh, sure. I mean,

17:40

I'm not going

17:41

to say it's common,

17:42

but this is where I think environment really matters.

17:45

So

17:45

there's good data, for example, that having a

17:47

divorce really changes people's attitudes

17:50

about certain things. So we have to have

17:52

parts of that ideology that are receptive

17:55

to stimulus that we get from the environment. When

17:58

your child gets killed in a...

18:01

mass shooting event, when you

18:03

have cancer, when, you know, there's a big

18:05

thing that happens in your life, it

18:08

can dramatically and very rapidly

18:10

change your ideology in either direction, right?

18:13

And there's pretty good evidence to show

18:15

that. But

18:16

I mean, if we're these genetically pre-programmed

18:19

voting robots, well, half

18:21

pre-programmed, that makes us sound like we're

18:23

two totally different tribes, or

18:25

even totally different species.

18:28

Let's say I'm a liberal and you're a conservative

18:30

and we're fighting over some stimulus.

18:33

The main part of what we're fighting about

18:35

is that we're actually seeing different things. We're

18:38

hearing different things. We're experiencing

18:40

different things. But we think that

18:42

we're each seeing the same thing.

18:45

She says it's like that crazy Internet meme

18:47

from a few years back, where it was a

18:49

photo of a dress and half the

18:51

population insisted that it was a blue dress

18:54

with black stripes and half insisted

18:56

that it was gold and white.

18:57

Just because

18:58

you see it one way and you know other

19:01

people see it a different way doesn't

19:02

change how you see it. You

19:05

just think those other people are wrong. They

19:07

just really should see the dress as gold or the

19:09

dress as blue or whatever it is.

19:12

So, for example, you can do this with these

19:14

eye tracking studies we've done where you show people

19:16

pictures of, for example, a soldier

19:19

picking up a child.

19:22

And liberals will be looking

19:24

at the child who's got blood dripping

19:27

from it and not really paying attention

19:29

to anything else in the picture because you

19:31

can see with eye tracking what they're looking at.

19:34

And the conservative person will be paying attention

19:36

to the uniform, the gun

19:38

on the hip of the person who's carrying

19:41

the child. They won't even see the

19:43

child.

19:44

And then they have

19:45

a fight about whether or not.

19:48

U.S. forces should do humanitarian

19:50

intervention and they think they're fighting

19:52

about humanitarian intervention.

19:55

They don't know that one

19:57

group of people only sees the bleeding child.

19:59

and the other group of people only sees the,

20:02

you know, threatening characters

20:04

with guns. And so

20:07

it's very difficult to have a conversation

20:09

and achieve a compromise when you don't know

20:12

that you don't know that you're not experiencing

20:15

the same phenomenon. I

20:17

see that going on a lot these days where

20:20

people think that they're fighting over values,

20:22

but they're really fighting over perception.

20:24

And that's where her armpit stink

20:27

study comes in.

20:28

The

20:30

armpits really trying to look

20:32

at whether how it is that people

20:34

recognize each other in mating, right?

20:37

If liberals are marrying liberals and conservatives are

20:39

marrying conservatives, how is it that

20:41

they're finding each other? We thought,

20:44

gee, we wonder if we're actually looking for somebody

20:46

who aligns with you who's similar to you

20:48

on your ideology.

20:50

And so we had all these

20:52

subjects who were extreme liberals

20:54

or extreme conservatives, and

20:56

we did all these things to make sure that

21:00

we got a kind of pure sense of their smell.

21:02

So they had to wash their hair and their

21:04

bodies in scent-free shampoo

21:07

and soap, and they

21:09

couldn't sleep in a bed with somebody else for two

21:11

days, and they had to eat food that wasn't

21:13

spicy, and they couldn't, you

21:16

know, sleep with their animals, and I couldn't believe people

21:18

would do it for 20 bucks. I wouldn't have done it before.

21:22

And then we had them wear

21:24

gauze pads under their arms so that we

21:26

could get their sweat. And then we

21:29

extracted that and had

21:30

others looked at who they

21:32

found attractive.

21:33

It was completely predictive.

21:36

So liberals found other liberals,

21:39

the smell of other liberals, really attractive. Conservatives

21:41

found the smell of other conservatives really attractive.

21:44

I wasn't sure it was going to work because it was, you know, everybody

21:46

thought I was crazy for doing it to begin with. They just

21:48

thought it was the nuttiest thing that ever hurt. And

21:50

so the first day I was standing with

21:53

the first vial and I opened the first vial

21:55

and I smelled it

21:56

and I couldn't smell anything. And I thought, oh, this is really

21:59

not going to work. work.

22:00

And then the guy who was doing the statistical

22:03

analysis was there too. And I gave it to him

22:05

and I, he's one of my coauthors and I said,

22:07

can you smell anything? And he

22:09

took a whiff, and he almost

22:11

started to throw

22:12

up. I was like, yeah, it

22:14

did work. On the last day of the study, two

22:17

subjects approached McDermott. So

22:19

there was a guy who

22:21

said, I have to tell you, one of

22:23

your samples is rancid. It

22:26

was so disgusting, so awful. I just

22:28

want to tell you. And I was like, okay. And

22:30

I took down the number and everything. And

22:33

then right after that, a woman came

22:35

in and she said, what are you going to do with

22:37

samples? And I said, I'm

22:39

going to do a molecular fraction on it. She's

22:41

like, well,

22:43

can I take one of them home with me? I

22:46

want to sleep with it under my pillow. And

22:50

I said, why would you want to do that? And she's like, it's

22:52

the best thing I've ever smelled in my life.

22:54

It's the same one that was thought

22:56

to be rancid. It's the exact

22:57

same number as the guy who

23:00

one minute before had told me it was

23:02

rancid and I had to stop the study because

23:04

it

23:04

was so vile. Exact same

23:07

one. What it was, was that

23:09

the sample was a very conservative

23:12

male. The male who said it was rancid

23:14

was a very liberal male. And

23:16

the woman who wanted to take it home with

23:18

her was a very

23:19

conservative female. So

23:21

we think that we're smelling the same thing, but we're

23:24

actually not. There's no way to know what someone

23:26

else experiences. We were

23:28

able to show that we

23:30

could predict political ideology based

23:32

on the attraction that people found

23:35

to the different smells that they had. But

23:38

it just doesn't make any sense. Your

23:41

political leaning is a thought

23:43

process. It's in your brain. It doesn't

23:46

affect your armpits stink. Oh,

23:48

but see, your brain isn't your brain, right?

23:50

Your brain is also your body.

23:52

Right? Those things are intricately interconnected

23:56

and they're connected in a deep somatic

23:58

way.

23:59

So

24:00

information that we get from the world and

24:02

smell is very potent. Smell

24:05

can be a very powerful reminder. Perfume,

24:08

you know, a certain perfume that we associate with a person

24:10

or you know, you

24:11

go to Hawaii and you smell plumeria

24:13

and it reminds you of all the experiences you've

24:15

had in Hawaii.

24:17

You know, there's certain smells that

24:19

are very evocative. And

24:21

so we have more of that

24:24

available to us than we realize and we

24:26

get more information than we consciously process.

24:28

We undervalue those things because we privilege

24:31

our brains

24:32

and think that, you know, our bodies are

24:34

just the, you know,

24:36

six figures that carry our brains around.

24:38

And so, yes, it is

24:41

distinct,

24:42

but it's also integrated. But we

24:44

are saying that in this case, something

24:47

about the way you perceive the world politically

24:50

is affecting the

24:52

chemicals coming out of your... Oh,

24:54

absolutely. Yeah. It's

24:56

crazy. It's affecting not just

24:59

the chemicals, but the way that we perceive other

25:01

people's chemicals. Right.

25:03

And we're not aware of that.

25:05

We think everybody else is having the same experience

25:08

that we're having.

25:09

And so, you know, if there's one

25:11

takeaway that I try to teach my

25:13

students, which never works,

25:16

is don't think that your perception is

25:19

the perception. That the way

25:21

you see the world, hear the world, smell

25:23

the world, feel the world

25:25

is the truth. It's a

25:28

truth. It's your truth, but it's

25:30

not

25:30

necessarily everybody else's truth.

25:33

And that I would hope that that kind of humility

25:36

would allow for a particular kind of mercy toward

25:38

other people that you disagree with.

25:41

Aha. A takeaway from all this, a

25:43

strategy to use, a conclusion

25:45

from all this science that we can use in the

25:47

real world. J. Von Bevel has similar

25:50

advice based on his research indicating

25:52

that conservatives care about purity

25:55

and liberals care about harm.

26:00

convince, say, conservatives to

26:02

support climate change more, you should use

26:04

language that frames it in the type of

26:06

personality style and moral values that they care

26:08

about. So one of the studies

26:11

on this found that if you frame climate change

26:13

in terms of harm, well, that's something

26:15

that liberals care a lot about. But

26:17

it doesn't really translate to conservatives. It doesn't resonate

26:20

with them in the same way. But if you use

26:22

the language of purity, which is

26:24

something that conservatives resonate with

26:26

more, that they're more convinced

26:28

to support climate change because they don't like

26:30

things that are impure, and vice

26:32

versa. If conservatives want to change

26:35

liberals' attitudes about immigration

26:38

policy, they can frame it through the language

26:40

of harm and care in ways that will

26:42

resonate with them more. That's the type of insight

26:44

that this gives us. Wow. This

26:47

whole episode is kind of taking a hopeful

26:49

turn as it approaches the end, isn't it? What

26:51

a beautiful structure. Its writer

26:53

must be some kind of genius.

26:56

There's good news about polarization, too.

26:58

Yeah, yeah. America is divided

27:00

against itself. We all rip each other apart online,

27:03

blah, blah, blah. But according

27:05

to Rose McDermott, you've got to consider us in the spectrum

27:07

of the whole world. I

27:10

hear four sets of terms referring

27:12

to political leanings. You hear left

27:14

and right. You

27:17

hear liberal, conservative, Democrat,

27:19

Republican, blue state, red state. Are those all

27:21

equivalent? No.

27:26

So when you talk about liberal and conservative in the world sense,

27:29

it's much, much wider than Democratic and Republican

27:32

in the American sense.

27:35

And to be clear, the world's spectrum

27:37

left liberal

27:41

would be communism.

27:42

It would be like what the Soviet Union

27:44

was.

27:46

And right is conservative.

27:48

Is

27:51

conservative is fascism the way

27:53

that

27:54

Hitler was. So

27:57

America actually is in the middle

27:59

of it. those things.

28:01

There's still nowhere near as extreme

28:04

as it can be in the world spectrum.

28:06

And so those terms are often used

28:09

anonymously, but they're actually not the same.

28:11

So Republicans and Democrats in this country

28:13

are actually closer than we think?

28:16

Way closer.

28:17

Really?

28:19

We're getting more divided.

28:21

But in terms of world political

28:23

spectrum of liberal to conservative, we're

28:25

much closer than we think that we are.

28:27

So world spectrum issue

28:30

is much broader.

28:31

Of course, we have a two party system

28:33

in the US, which you might think would make

28:36

it harder to compare us with other countries. But

28:38

as it turns out, there are two fundamental

28:41

views of the world that are universal,

28:44

conservative and liberal. Does

28:47

the thing about favoring

28:50

the status quo versus favoring change,

28:52

does that translate universally, even

28:55

if the parties have different names in other countries? Yeah.

28:58

So the tendency, and

29:00

it's called system justification, it was developed by

29:03

a colleague of mine, John Jost, is that some people

29:05

score high in system justification, they want to defend and support

29:07

the system. Other people really want to challenge the system.

29:10

He's measured that in almost every country in the world

29:12

at this point. And almost always, it's

29:14

correlated with how conservative you are in almost

29:16

every country. Two things seem to be different about America.

29:19

One is that we're in a two party system here.

29:21

And so there's very much a psychology of us versus

29:24

them. If I don't agree with your

29:26

party politically, I'll vote for a leader

29:28

that I might not even trust or like or respect

29:31

or who's corrupt, just to stop your

29:33

party from getting power. Whereas

29:35

let's say like, I'm actually from Canada. Canada

29:37

has like, you know, five parties, one of which

29:39

is their main role is just to separate their province from the

29:41

rest of the country. That's a party in

29:44

Quebec, the French part of Canada. But even

29:46

in the rest of Canada, there's at least three major parties.

29:48

And so if your party that you supported

29:50

in last election is corrupt, but you really

29:52

hate that one on the other side of the aisle, there's still

29:55

a third party that you can vote for. And

29:57

so people engage in a lot of what's called strategic voting.

30:00

And so that dynamic gets

30:03

a little bit out of this us versus them psychology

30:05

where I always have to support someone even if I don't like what

30:07

they've done. And it makes people more more flexible.

30:10

And I think it's a system that maybe allows for more

30:12

accountability of bad actors and corrupt

30:14

politicians. And that's very common in Europe

30:16

and other countries that some of them have like 10 or 20

30:18

or 30 parties and they have to form coalitions

30:21

to rule. So that's the one big thing that's

30:23

different. And the second big thing that's different

30:26

in America is that 40 years

30:28

ago it wasn't polarized to the same degree. And

30:31

so people could switch parties or feel comfortable

30:33

in other party if they didn't fully align with them

30:35

ideologically. We're at the point

30:38

where very few people do that or

30:40

feel comfortable doing that. The crazy thing

30:42

is from a political science and evolutionary

30:44

perspective, some polarization

30:47

might be a good thing.

30:49

Societies to

30:51

survive across millennial time

30:54

need groups of people who

30:57

cooperate at home. They build

30:59

houses. They raise children. They

31:03

engage in all kinds of cooperative behavior.

31:06

And society also needs people

31:08

who defend those cooperators against

31:10

out groups, against animals,

31:13

against climate, against other people.

31:16

And those people often engage

31:19

in combat. And those people

31:21

are defenders of that society. And

31:24

I think of liberals and conservatives

31:27

in a kind of you can't survive as a society

31:29

unless you have both. If you get rid

31:32

of all the defenders, you're

31:34

going to be completely annihilated

31:36

by the out group. If you don't have

31:39

a self-defense, you're going to get

31:41

rolled over. You're going to get...

31:43

But by the same token, you have to have cooperators

31:45

and nobody is going to be growing the grain. Nobody

31:48

is going to be raising the children. Nobody is going to be building

31:50

the houses. Nobody is going to be housing the hospitals.

31:53

So you can't survive without both.

31:56

Van

32:00

Bevel has concluded that things really

32:02

aren't as bad as we're led to believe.

32:06

There is this real polarization, but it's exaggerated

32:08

so much on TV, on

32:11

news channels, and on social media

32:13

in particular that often

32:15

know what happens, especially in social medias. You'll

32:18

find the craziest person on the other

32:20

side and then act as if they're representative

32:22

of the whole group. And most

32:24

people actually on that party don't even agree

32:26

with those people. And so if you do

32:28

that, it creates a misperception in people's mind

32:30

of how different the other party is

32:33

from you. Yeah, TV news correspondents

32:35

are the worst. Thanks a lot, Jay.

32:41

But wait a minute. Is there

32:43

some study or research

32:46

that indicates what you just said? Yeah.

32:49

One of my favorite studies asks, if you're a Republican,

32:52

what percentage of Democrats are

32:55

lesbian, gay, or trans? And

32:59

I'll ask a Democrat a question. What percent of Republicans

33:01

make more than $200,000 a year? Most

33:05

people, if you ask Republicans that, they think like 30% to 40%

33:07

of Democrats are LGBTQ.

33:10

But it turns out it's more like 5%. And

33:12

so they have this exaggerated view that a

33:15

huge proportion of Democrats are lesbian,

33:17

gay, or trans. And if you ask Democrats

33:19

how many Republicans are rich, they say like 30%, 40% of them

33:21

make like $200,000 a year. Well,

33:24

of course, it's more like 1%, right? You

33:27

make $200,000 a year, you're in the top 1%. And

33:29

so we have these exaggerated kind of cartoon images

33:32

of the other party in our minds. And

33:34

so once you can correct those for people,

33:37

basically fact check them, and they're surprised. But

33:39

they're being feed-fed images of

33:42

the other party as kind of representatives of either

33:45

of this kind of caricature of their

33:47

party. So

33:49

now you know. Your genetics and

33:51

your brain have predisposed you to

33:54

believe what you believe. You can't

33:56

help it. That first 50%

33:58

or 60% of your political views are not

34:00

based on your careful consideration of the

34:02

issues. You were born

34:04

that way. And so what

34:07

are we supposed to do with this information? Take

34:10

it home, Jay. Once

34:12

you understand that a lot of our political preferences

34:14

are biological and driven

34:16

by our brain and our traits, it

34:19

changes how we think about approaching somebody who doesn't

34:21

agree with us politically, right? Instead of just arguing

34:24

and throwing facts at them, we

34:26

are probably not going to be as convincing as we hope

34:28

to be, because that's not what's driving

34:30

their political beliefs or much of it. And so

34:33

there's some utility in trying to understand more

34:35

where somebody's coming from and listening to them rather

34:38

than just kind of like, you know, debating them. Find

34:41

ways to talk to them that are going to resonate

34:43

with where they're coming from. That might be

34:45

more persuasive.

34:46

If people could become aware

34:48

of their awareness,

34:50

and I know I'm going to sound like a meditation teacher

34:52

here for a moment, but if you can

34:54

be aware of your awareness

34:56

and aware that it's

34:58

not the truth,

35:00

like to know that it's part of the truth,

35:03

but

35:03

that it's transient, it changes,

35:06

there may be a different truth tomorrow

35:08

from yesterday, and it may be a different truth than

35:11

someone else has, and you don't

35:13

get so attached to your truth,

35:16

it gives you a lot more room for compromise

35:18

and agreement.

35:20

Because I know then that you

35:22

believe what you believe sincerely, not

35:24

because you're a bad person, but

35:26

because that's your reality.

35:28

That's where I think you can make some

35:30

progress. And remember, this is not just

35:32

a hunch. This is based on actual

35:34

research. I was just part

35:36

of this huge study, it was run out of Stanford, and

35:39

they created a tournament,

35:41

a worldwide competition to figure out what could reduce

35:43

polarization in the US, a partisan animosity,

35:45

you know, this hatred for other groups, as well as

35:47

get people to support democracy. And

35:50

so they got submissions from all

35:52

these scientists around the world in different fields, 52 groups

35:55

submitted proposals to them of an intervention

35:57

that would reduce polarization. So

36:00

a little messaging, like a five minute little messaging,

36:03

they picked the top 25 and my

36:06

lab submitted one and then they took these 25

36:08

interventions and they

36:10

ran 32,000 Americans from all different

36:12

ages, ethnicities, genders, backgrounds

36:15

and income classes and

36:18

gave them these 25 interventions and found

36:20

out what works. And then they also followed up these

36:22

people two weeks later to see if it doesn't stick around.

36:25

One of them was based on a Heineken beer commercial. That was actually

36:27

the best intervention if you've seen it. Have

36:29

you seen that one, David? The hiding? Oh,

36:31

well you got to go online and watch it. I did.

36:34

It's really wonderful. It's called Worlds Apart.

36:37

They bring in these random strangers. We

36:39

meet them individually and it's clear

36:41

that they have radically different political views.

36:45

Feminism today is my hatred.

36:47

It's actually crystal and healthy

36:50

but they're our own voice. I don't

36:52

believe that climate change exists. But

36:54

they don't meet each other before the experiment

36:56

begins. Two of these people at a time

36:59

are sent into a big sort of warehouse

37:01

and given a sheet of printed instructions. They

37:04

work together to build what looks like it's

37:06

going to be a big piece of IKEA

37:08

furniture.

37:09

You're

37:12

right, mate. A bit better than a lock. Perfect.

37:16

Oh, yeah. There you go. Mate,

37:19

definitely just built a bar. Yeah.

37:22

And indeed, they have built a bar.

37:24

They had fun and they got to know each

37:26

other a little. You got this really, um,

37:29

got a glow. Your aura is pretty

37:31

cool. At this point, they watch a

37:33

video. It is, of course, the

37:36

pre-interview where the participants had

37:38

talked about their political views.

37:40

So transgender, it is very odd.

37:43

We're not set up to

37:44

understand or see things like that. They've suddenly

37:46

figured out that they've been paired with their polar

37:49

opposites. And now they're

37:51

asked, would you like to leave or

37:54

stay and have a beer to discuss your differences?

37:57

And it was, you know, the commercial, who knows how

37:59

well. they edited it, but everybody looked

38:01

at the other person they had built a relationship with, had

38:04

worked together, and it was all the elements

38:06

of what psychology calls contact theory. Working

38:09

together with somebody and doing something

38:11

together with when you're at equal status actually

38:14

builds a connection with somebody and you become, start

38:16

to humanize them. And people were willing to

38:18

stay and have the beer. That was the end of the beer commercial.

38:20

But they showed that to people and it dramatically reduced partisan

38:23

animosity and it lasted two

38:25

weeks later. In the Stanford competition, the

38:28

one based on the Heineken ad was the grand

38:31

prize winner. Ours was the third best intervention

38:34

and we talked about how each part leaders from each

38:36

party supported democracy, all

38:38

these other things I told you about these exaggerated stereotypes

38:41

and caricatures we have of the other party and we

38:44

presented that and ours worked nearly

38:46

as well as a beer commercial and in my

38:48

view this is the best studies ever been run on this topic. These

38:50

things persisted for multiple weeks and they also

38:53

increased support for democracy and democratic

38:55

institutions. So I thought it was just

38:57

something really promising and

39:00

it seems like there's lots of pathways to get to

39:02

somebody in a way that opens their mind and reduces

39:04

their hostility towards you. Wow,

39:07

that is cool. I mean that is that

39:10

is a droplet of hope in this ocean

39:13

of hate. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. I mean

39:15

how you scale that to society, I don't know.

39:17

Yeah, but it's something, it's a start,

39:19

right?

39:28

You've just listened to another episode of Unsung

39:31

Science with David Poge. Don't forget

39:33

that the entire library of shows along

39:35

with written transcripts await at

39:38

unsungscience.com This

39:40

podcast is a joint venture of Simon & Schuster

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