Winning Progressive

(By NCrissie B)

Over the past couple of posts, I have been looking at Chris Mooney’s The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science – and Reality. First, I considered some of the false beliefs held by Republicans, and whether Democrats are equally committed to false beliefs.  Next, I explored the research on why the two parties are not mirror-images, each stubbornly clinging to opposing false beliefs. In this post, I conclude with a brief interview with Mooney, and his proposals for bridging the partisan gap.

Chris Mooney is a senior correspondent for The American Prospect and a contributing editor for Science Progress. In 2009, he was a visiting associate at Princeton University’s Center for Collaborative History. In 2009–10, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Chris Mooney is traveling this week and was unable to join our discussion in the comments. However, he graciously agreed to answer several questions by email:

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How much did researching and writing the book require you to “change your mind,” and how difficult was that process for you?

There have actually been several mind changing moments for me here. And in each case, the process is somewhat difficult, but I feel that you have to follow the evidence over time because, well, you respect science too much not to.

First, and like many journalists and many liberals, I was initially resistant to the fundamental idea that liberals and conservatives are just different people. For instance, if you read my Mother Jones article about motivated reasoning that preceded the book, I basically argue there that both sides are biased, end of story, no reason to go any further.

However, the more I read the research being produced by people like NYU’s John Jost and his colleagues, the more I became convinced that they had compiled a body of evidence too compelling to ignore. The evidence came from multiple researchers and disciplines, and it supported the idea of liberal-conservative differences in interlocking ways. This is what we expect to see in serious science, of the sort that points to reliable conclusions. So that was one mind-changer.

The second one is that I initially thought that in terms of how they process information, the key difference between liberals and conservatives would indeed be a difference in a specific mechanism called motivated reasoning. And that’s what the study at the end of the book is designed to test.

Note: Mooney helped Dr. Everett Young design and conduct a study at Louisiana State University to test whether conservatives are more likely to engage in motivated reasoning on any issue – political or non-political – and their initial data do not support that hypothesis. While conservative subjects were more likely to resist new information that related to political issues, there was no statistical difference between conservatives’ and liberals’ resistance to new information on non-political issues such as a favorite athlete, musician, or university. However, Mooney and Young found a difference they had not predicted: conservative subjects spent much less time reading the new information they were presented, regardless of the issue.

But the study didn’t really show this – though it contained some fascinating hints. So as of now, I cannot say that motivated reasoning is the key source of the difference that we’re seeing, between left and right, in terms of how they respond to inconvenient realities.

And in fact, it turns out that isn’t really necessary to postulate that the left and right, on average, differ in a tendency towards motivated reasoning in order account for the results we’re seeing. There are many ways in which they do differ, such as personality and openness to new information (with conservatives less open), or tribal and in-group commitment (with conservatives more group-oriented), that could produce a “reality gap” between left and right of the sort that we actually see in the world today.

So that was another mind changer.

You offer research showing that Republicans find it harder to “change their minds,” at least in terms of new information that challenges conservative orthodoxy and identity. Have progressives’ and conservatives’ responses to your book been consistent with that hypothesis?

Oh yes, absolutely. Note that in the new study reported in the book, we found that conservatives were spending a lot less time reading the essay materials we gave them – and indeed, the conservatives who are angriest about my book show little evidence of having read it.

So, yes: The conservative response to the book, perhaps epitomized by Jonah Goldberg of the National Review, but also Andrew Ferguson of the Weekly Standard, smacks of closed-mindedness. The irony is here is sort of staggering. These people are willing to dismiss an entire scientific field – and it just happens to be an entire field which suggests that they’re willing to dismiss entire fields.

In The Republican Brain you focus on the importance of respectful conversations that identify and build on shared values – what we at BPI call Fred Whispering – and on using evocative and true stories rather than reams of facts. What advice would you offer for advocating progressive ideas to conservatives?

In general what we find is that it is possible, to an extent, to get conservatives to change their views in controlled psychology experiments, depending on how you frame information for them. The real word is not a controlled experiment, though, so whether this actually works very often there is another matter. But based on the experiments, these are the sorts of things you want to do if you want to open a conservative mind about ideas like global warming.

First, have an exchange in person. Interpersonal exchanges always work better and force people to listen to one another, rather than demonize one another.

Second, frame the science in a way that supports this conservative’s core values. So show that climate science is consistent with religious values, free market values, entrepreneurial values.

Third – and this is where liberals inevitably fall short – it would help to, er, be a credible conservative messenger. A religious leader, for instance, or an industry leader. But liberals have far too few of those in their ranks.

Clearly, speaking as an authority that conservatives respect will help change their minds.

You also call on progressives to be ‘more conservative,’ not in policy but becoming better organized and self-disciplined. Do you worry that may prove as difficult as convincing conservatives to be more open to science and/or that practicing greater organization and self-discipline might nudge progressives’ policy ideas toward greater conservatism?

Not really. I think this is unnatural to progressives, just as circling the wagons to defend the team or tribe is natural to conservatives. But the big difference is that by definition, progressives are open to change and trying out new things. That’s the mark of who they are. So they should, by definition, be more adaptable. They should be better able to come up with different strategies when the ones they’re using aren’t working.

I think progressive movements have, for too long, splintered into disloyal factions or rambled a disorganized fashion. In terms of disorganization, I think Occupy Wall Street epitomizes this problem.

But I know that progressives want to do better and are deeply intellectually interested in why they so often do not. To me, over time, that means they are going to embrace this knowledge, look in the mirror, and organize themselves better.

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Changing minds: ours and others’

I agree with Mooney that we progressives must become better organized and more self-disciplined in our advocacy. We discussed one example last week: why words like “marriage equality” matter in political dialogue. Too often we adopt the language of Conservative rather than rigorously speaking the language of Progressive. Ironically, in resisting pressure to “repeat the party line,” we often end up repeating the other party’s lines.

However, while the Occupy Movement have not (yet) shown the organization or discipline of the Tea Party – who found and supported Republican candidates for federal, state, and local elections in 2010 and 2012 – they did introduce the phrases “Top One Percent” and “99 Percent” into the Progressive language. Those have been stickier and more effective in pushing the issue of income inequality than President Obama’s and the Democratic Party’s “Wall Street/Main Street” frame.

I was delighted to see Mooney emphasize the face-to-face political conversations that we at BPI call Fred Whispering. It’s not enough to talk among ourselves, online or in progressive and Democratic offline groups. We must also talk with our friends, family, coworkers, and neighbors in our communities, and focus more on forming relationships than on ‘winning’ arguments. We can’t all be religious or industry leader Authorities, but we can often become another, equally convincing kind of Authority … trusted friends.

Finally, Mooney also reminds us to become better storytellers. As we discussed in January, stories are ‘stickier’ than facts and logic. And as Chip and Dan Heath emphasize in Made to Stick, stories better embed nuance and – more important – work as “flight simulators” that better prepare us to take action.

Research suggests conservatism may be the ‘default’ attitude, but history shows that progressives can overcome that if we work together, reach out to people we meet, and tell our stories.

(Crossposted from Blogistan Polytechnic Institute (BPICampus.com))

(By NCrissie B)

This week I’ve been looking at Chris Mooney’s The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science – and Reality. In the first post, I considered some of the false beliefs held by Republicans, and whether Democrats are equally committed to false beliefs. Today I explore the research on why the two parties are not mirror-images, each stubbornly clinging to opposing false beliefs. Tomorrow I’ll conclude with a brief interview with Mooney, and his proposals for bridging the partisan gap.

Chris Mooney is a senior correspondent for The American Prospect and a contributing editor for Science Progress. In 2009, he was a visiting associate at Princeton University’s Center for Collaborative History. In 2009–10, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“Both parties are (not!) the same.”

We often hear that “both parties are the same,” comprised of extremists who ignore inconvenient facts and stubbornly cling to false beliefs. Indeed the Americans Elect project was based on The Myth of the Missing Center, where both main parties are equally wrong and the truth lies somewhere between them. And as we saw yesterday, both Republicans and Democrats get facts wrong.

However, Mooney cites studies that show Republicans and Democrats get facts wrong for different reasons. As we saw in reviewing Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind, progressives respond most strongly to stories about Harm and Fairness, a bit less to stories about Liberty, and much less to stories about Loyalty, Authority, and Purity. Conservatives respond about equally to stories about all six moral foundations, though “extreme conservatives” respond slightly more to stories about Loyalty, Authority, or Purity than to stories about Harm, Fairness, or Liberty.

Mooney and Haidt also agree that progressives and conservatives tend to evaluate Fairness differently, with the left more likely to favor equality and the right more likely to justify inequality in terms of unequal virtue or contribution. When an issue pushes our moral-emotional buttons, we are more likely to engage in motivated reasoning, constructing an argument to bolster intuitive emotional judgments rather than the Enlightenment model of weighing facts through dispassionate logic.

The studies Mooney cites also show Republicans and Democrats respond to new information differently. Progressives are more likely to change our beliefs when offered new evidence and highly-educated progressives are even more prone to do so. Conversely, the studies show conservatives more likely to defend their beliefs against new evidence and highly-educated conservatives are even more prone to do so. Mooney calls the latter “smart idiots” who use their intelligence and education to construct sophisticated arguments that dismiss contrary evidence and maintain false beliefs.

Drops in an OCEAN

If these studies are reliable, what explains the differences? The key, Mooney argues, may lie in the Big Five model. This proposes five broad personality traits – Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism – thus the acronym OCEAN. While there is no definitive model of human psychology, the Big Five model has been refined over several decades and researchers have devised several tests that reliably measure the five traits.

Mooney cites studies that show Democrats score higher than Republicans on Openness, which corresponds to an appreciation for and tendency toward innovation, creativity, curiosity, complexity, and ambiguity. Conversely, Republicans score higher than Democrats on Conscientiousness, which corresponds to an appreciation for and tendency toward efficiency, discipline, duty, loyalty, and stability. Indeed Openness/Conscientiousness scores correlate to political ideology and voting patterns more reliably than income or religiosity.

Personality is biological, but …

They do it because they were born that way.

That is the essence of conservative pundit Jonah Goldberg’s withering criticism of Mooney’s book. Other critics like Alex Berezow and Hank Campbell follow the same path, criticizing Mooney for claiming that “Republicans are genetically inferior.” In fact, Mooney makes no such claim. While there is evidence that personality traits are heritable, Mooney repeatedly emphasizes that “the brain is highly plastic” and that our personalities are strongly influenced by our family and cultural experiences. Still, Mooney is correct that our personalities are biological. As he writes:

We’ve inherited an Enlightenment tradition of thinking of beliefs as if they’re somehow disembodied, suspended above us in the ether, and all you have to do is float up the right bit of correct information and wrong beliefs will dispel, like bursting a soap bubble. Nothing could be further from the truth. Beliefs are physical. To attack them is like attacking one part of a person’s anatomy, almost like pricking his or her skin (or worse). And motivated reasoning might perhaps best be thought of as a defensive mechanism that is triggered by a direct attack upon a belief system, physically embodied in a brain.

Our beliefs, moral values, preferences, attitudes, and knowledge exist as networks of neurons in our brains. We reinforce those networks when we repeat familiar tasks, or repeat familiar arguments. We rewire those networks when we learn new tasks, or adapt to new information and new ideas. As cognitive scientist George Lakoff writes, to “change our minds” is to literally “change our brains.”

Mooney’s thesis is that more Open people are more comfortable with changing their minds, while less Open people find that more threatening. Conversely, more Conscientious people are more comfortable with stability, while less Conscientious people find that more stifling. Combine the two traits and it makes sense that Democrats would lean somewhat more toward science and Republicans would lean somewhat more toward tradition.

… Personality is also situational.

These general tendencies are not fixed at birth. We can change our minds through study and reflection, and our minds can change depending on the situation. Indeed, research suggests that conservatism may be our ‘default’ ideology:

A research team led by University of Arkansas psychologist Scott Eidelman argues that conservatism – which the researchers identify as “an emphasis on personal responsibility, acceptance of hierarchy, and a preference for the status quo” – may be our default ideology. If we don’t have the time or energy to give a matter sufficient thought, we tend to accept the conservative argument.

“When effortful, deliberate responding is disrupted or disengaged, thought processes become quick and efficient,” the researchers write in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. “These conditions promote conservative ideology.”

That study involved interviewing subjects on moral-political questions as they emerged from a bar. Subjects who were more intoxicated were more likely to give conservative answers, even if they self-identified as liberals and voted for Democrats. Dr. Eidelman and his colleagues emphasized this does not mean conservatism is either ‘natural’ or ‘stupid.’

We do not assert that conservatives fail to engage in effortful, deliberate thought,” they insist. “We find that when effortful thought is disengaged, the first step people take tends to be in a conservative direction.

Other studies have found that subjects are more likely to offer conservative responses if they are frightened, tired, unhappy, or standing near a hand-washing station or a smelly trash can. Another study found people more likely to offer progressive responses (and better able to solve complex problems) after watching a brief comedy clip.

In short, neither Mooney nor the scientists he cites argues that Republicans are “stupid,” or that “they are born that way.” Instead, the science suggests that our political beliefs reflect our personalities, that our personalities are partly heritable but strongly influenced by experience, and that our political beliefs are also subject to situational factors such as fatigue, mood, and even scents.

Given our growing understanding of how humans actually think, it’s hardly surprising that mere facts and logic are not enough to sway voters’ minds. In the next post, we’ll hear from Chris Mooney and discuss what how we can better advocate progressive, evidence-based ideas.

(Crossposted from Blogistan Polytechnic Institute (BPICampus.com))

(By NCrissie B)

This week I’ll be looking at Chris Mooney’s The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science – and Reality.  Today we consider some of the false beliefs held by Republicans, and whether Democrats are equally committed to false beliefs.  In the next post, we’ll explore the research on why the two parties are not mirror-images, each stubbornly clinging to opposing false beliefs.  Finally, we’ll conclude with a brief interview with Mooney, and his proposals for bridging the partisan gap.

Chris Mooney is a senior correspondent for The American Prospect and a contributing editor for Science Progress. In 2009, he was a visiting associate at Princeton University’s Center for Collaborative History. In 2009–10, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Mooney begins with an in depth review of the psychology of motivated reasoning and studies that show the persistence of motivated reasoning correlates to two of the Big Five personality traits: Openness (for which liberals typically score higher than conservatives) and Conscientiousness (for which conservatives typically score higher than liberals). We’ll discuss that more tomorrow, but I’ll start by reviewing Mooney’s argument on the comparative prevalence of false beliefs. I chose to start there for two reasons. First, it’s important to establish a problem exists before exploring possible causes and solutions. Second, Mooney laid much of that groundwork in a previous book – The Republican War on Science – and wrote The Republican Brain after and as part of reviewing research in psychology to better understand the ‘why’ of his previous book. So while I’m taking The Republican Brain book out-of-sequence, doing so follows Mooney’s own path of discovery.

Does the Problem Exist?

Mooney’s review of the research suggests that Republicans are, in fact, more likely to hold false beliefs. For example, a 2010 study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes interviewed voters on several factual issues:

• The Track of the Economy – 72% of Republicans (vs. 36% of Democrats) said most economists agreed the economy was getting worse in November 2010. In fact most economists agreed the economy had begun to recover.
• The Affordable Care Act and the Deficit – 73% of Republicans (vs. 31% of Democrats) said the consensus of economists was that that the ACA would increase the federal deficit. In fact the consensus of economists was that the ACA would decrease the deficit.
• The Stimulus and Tax Cuts – 67% of Republicans (vs. 42% of Democrats) said the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act did not include tax cuts. In fact tax cuts comprised 28% of the stimulus package.
• Scientific Consensus on Climate Change – 62% of Republicans (vs. 26% of Democrats) said most scientists have not agreed that climate change is occurring. In fact the scientific consensus supporting climate change is overwhelming.
• President Obama’s Citizenship – 64% of Republicans (vs. 17% of Democrats) said it was not clear that President Obama was born in the U.S. In fact the State of Hawaii had already certified that he was born in that state.
• Chamber of Commerce and Foreign Money – 57% of Democrats (vs. 9% of Republicans) believed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had used contributions from foreign sources to support GOP candidates. In fact the Chamber of Commerce did not use foreign contributions.
• Democrats and TARP – 56% of Democrats (vs. 14% of Republicans) believed that Democrats in Congress mostly did not support the Troubled Asset Relief Program proposal. In fact Democrats in Congress supported TARP.
• Troop Levels in Afghanistan – 51% of Democrats (vs. 39% of Republicans) believed President Obama had not increased troop levels in Afghanistan. In fact he had.

Voters in both parties were misinformed, but Republican voters were more misinformed. Of the ten questions in the PIPA survey, only 18% of Republicans (vs. 32% of Democrats) answered at least seven correctly.

The Fact Checkers

Although Mooney criticized PolitiFact’s conclusion on a claim by Jon Stewart, he concedes that PolitiFact and FactCheck are generally rigorous and reliable. A review by the University of Minnesota’s Smart Politics blog found Republicans drew “False” or “Pants on Fire” ratings in 39% of the statements reviewed, vs. only 12% for Democrats, and statements by Democrats were rated “Half-True,” “Mostly True,” or “True” 75% of the time vs. only 47% for Republicans. Although the Smart Politics writers suggest this reflects selection bias among which statements to review, Mooney argues a simpler explanation: Republicans are more likely make false statements.

That explanation was supported by Mooney’s own review of The Washington Post‘s Fact-Checker, which uses “Pinocchios” to grade false or misleading statements. He and a colleague reviewed the Post‘s Fact-Checker stories over a four-year period, and found that statements by Republicans were given a total of 361 Pinocchios vs. 243 for statements by Democrats. The average rating for statements by Republicans was 2.46 vs. 2.09 for Democrats, a statistically significant difference. In assessing the number of Pinocchios given, he found:

• Four Pinocchios – Republicans 27, Democrats 11
• Three Pinocchios – Republicans 33, Democrats 24
• Two Pinocchios – Republicans 67, Democrats 46
• One Pinocchio – Republicans 20, Democrats 35

From this Mooney concludes:

What this suggests is that the Post was giving Democrats a lot of wrist-slaps for relatively minor sins, even as the most egregious falsehoods were clearly clustered at the Republican end of the distribution.

Again, the conservative response to such data is to suggest that Fact-Checker, like PolitiFact, is biased against Republicans. Again, Mooney suggests the simpler explanation: Republicans are simply more wrong, more often.

Science, Economics, and History

Mooney then presents other evidence of Republican orthodoxy in science, history, and economics which contradict prevailing data. For example, Republicans are less likely to accept scientific evidence on evolution, more likely to believe children raised in LGBT families suffer harm as compared to children raised by heterosexual couples, more likely to believe sexual orientation is a choice, and more likely to believe abstinence-only sex education produces fewer teen pregnancies.

In economics, Mooney quotes at length from an interview with Bruce Bartlett, a former Republican who worked for Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Bartlett was fired from the conservative National Center for Policy Analysis after writing How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy, and he uses words like “kooks” and “nuts” to describe Republicans’ belief that tax cuts always increase federal revenues and that defaulting on the federal debt would be harmless or even beneficial for the economy. Bartlett calls the latter “the most monumental insanity that I can even imagine.”

Mooney then addresses Republican historical revisionism, beginning with Sarah Palin’s infamous account of Paul Revere’s ride. He also discusses Mike Huckabee’s American history cartoons, Michele Bachmann’s claim that the Founding Fathers ended slavery, and the Wallbuilders headed by David Barton, a Dominionist group who argue the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation despite manifest historical evidence to the contrary.

What About the Fracking Democrats?

Mooney concludes by considering some false claims commonly believed by Democrats, such as that pumping chemicals into natural gas wells – hydraulic fracturing or fracking – pushes toxins into the water supply. In fact, Mooney set out to prove that in an article for Scientific American, and came up dry. While there is evidence of water contamination around fracking sites, the research so far suggests that contamination comes from other parts of the drilling process such as not properly cementing pipes and not properly storing chemicals at the drill sites. There is as yet no evidence that fracking causes the gas or the chemicals to leech up through a mile of rock into the water table. He also addresses false beliefs about the risks of nuclear power plants and the connection between immunization and autism, both of which are more often held by Democrats than by Republicans.

But in all three cases, Mooney points out two key distinctions. First, when presented with the scientific evidence, educated Democrats are more likely to change their minds and accept that fracking and nuclear power are not as risky as first believed, and that there is no reliable scientific correlation between immunization and autism. And second, while some Democrats do cling to one or more of these beliefs, elected Democrats who have reviewed the scientific evidence do not encourage or base policy on those false beliefs.

Conversely, educated Republicans are more likely to cling to false beliefs, and more likely to be confident they already have enough information and don’t need to consider new evidence. As we’ll see in the next post, the reason may lie in the different personality traits of Republicans and Democrats.

(Crossposted from Blogistan Polytechnic Institute (BPICampus.com))