To many liberals, conservatives seem not just wrong but incomprehensible and often deluded, if not demented. Nicholas Kristof, in an interesting column in the March 22, 2012 New York Times, discusses a new book, The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt (a Uof VA psychology professor) that attempts to explain one political group to the other. 

According to Haidt, the three values that make up the liberal concept of morality are: caring for the weak, fairness, and liberty. Conservatives share these three values and add three others: loyalty, respect for authority, and sanctity. Conservatives respect liberal values but liberals do not reciprocate, a fact that may explain why Democrats are failing to win over more voters. The values of loyalty, respect for authority, and sanctity that bind conservatives together and are embodied in the flag, the church, and the military, make liberals, who do not revere them to the same degree, seem subversive and godless to conservatives.

Interestingly, growing research around differing political ideologies suggests that the roots run deep. “Adults who consider themselves liberals were said decades earlier by their nursery-school teachers to be curious, verbal novelty seekers but not very neat or obedient.” Other research indicates that conservatives react to repulsive images (like people eating worms) with more disgust than liberals. “Anything that prods us to think of disgust or cleanliness also seems to have at least a temporary effect on our politics. It pushes our sanctity buttons and makes us more conservative…At Cornell University, students answered questions in more conservative ways if they were simply near a hand sanitizer station.”

Kristof concludes that our politics can be shaped by myriad impulses that derive more from personality than anything intellectual or philosophical. Let’s hope that the right people read this book and figure out how to use its insights to dampen the rhetoric and get the debate back onto essentials.

topics: culture