The Moral Psychology of Political Polarization | Jonathan Haidt

[00:00:00][Music] [Music] well it's it's a great pleasure to be here in Poland uh for many reasons I've only been here for two days but it's been just it's been so interesting for me on many levels it's been very interesting for me uh as an American I've been reading about polish history uh and just appreciating the many ways that our countryes each helped each other to gain independence and have supported each other have had many common enemies and have never been opposed in any way um okay it's also been uh extremely interesting for me um personally because when people uh would ask me what my ancestry is what's my ethnic group I always said I'm Russian Jewish all four of my ancestors came from well three came from Russia and bellus one was born my father's father was born in Kila in Poland but you know three of them were from Russia and B so I said I'm Russian Jewish well I went to the Poland Museum yesterday uh I I learned all about the the very long history of Jews in Poland and I discovered that Russia has nothing to do with it other than brutally moving my ancestors hundreds of miles east at some point so from now on um whenever anyone asks me now I know the real answer I am Polish Jewish all of my ancestors are from Poland the Border were drawn differently at different times but my ancestry is Polish um it has also been fascinating for me uh professionally studying morality and politics because my God are your politics complicated um it's not a normal Left Right spectrum because of your amazing history especially this gigantic monstrous pillar of Communism right in the middle of your history which is seems to be warping or changing your current politics so it's been very interesting to look at that um originally I was going to talk about capitalism today that's my next book is moral psychology and capitalism business economics but in my conversations with journalists and and with students it's become clear that a central concern in Poland today is the fact that you're you feel as though you're coming apart politically as though you're not United as a country as though you don't really understand what's happen happening and you're frustrated and boy does that sound familiar to me as an American that's very much our situation so I thought what I would do is I took I I I I'm often asked to speak in the United States on political polarization because it's a huge problem it has completely paralyzed us we are unable to make public policy anymore to a large extent uh and so we're trying to figure what's going on and so I thought what I would I would do is uh tell you the general Story the psych ology of this how does this happen uh in the United States and then applying it to Poland where I have data or where I where I can see the clear connections and then we'll have plenty of time for conversation afterwards to talk through what lessons moral psychology might have for Poland today the book is not just about politics actually morality should understanding morality should help you in all of your relationships um but I think a common interest today especially this day after election day uh is in politics so I thought I'd focus on that so uh I'll cover five four topics what is happening why it is happening in terms of history and politics why it is happening in terms of moral psychology and then finally what can be done so uh in the United States we have this increasingly large divide between that's the symbol of the Democrats and the Republicans um to show some data on it this is the degree of polarization in the two houses of our Congress the House of Representatives and the Senate going back to the 1940s the level of polarization on the Left Right Dimension was very very low but it's been going up and up and up in the 50s 60s 7s and especially in the 9s it's reached historically high levels now if we bring the graph all the way back to the to 1880 in the years after America had a a horrible Civil War um America was very polarized in the wake of this gigantic war that killed half a million people in a much smaller country um and then some things change and we got very low uh polarization and then it's they changed again and now we're back and so this is terrible but it is not historically unprecedented so we need to understand how does this happen and how does it change um you can see what's happening to us here let me explain what this is uh this is a a Pew there's a company called Pew which surveys Americans frequently and if you look at how far apart Americans are by gender if you just look at men versus women on a set of issues abortion or gun control or prayer in schools and you take the absolute value of the difference what you see is that men and women were about four points apart back in 1987 not much men and women have very similar political attitudes and over time from 1987 through 2012 you know 4% to 6% so it's been pretty steady no change by religion still not very divided Rich versus poor a little more divided but it's been constant over time education even by race we're very divided by race yet even still black and white in America are about 12 points apart so that's moderate but it's been steady over time we're not getting more polarized by any of those factors but if you split Us by political party that's this yellow line we were 10 points apart in the 1980s and then in the late 90s it starts going up and up and up and here's what's happened since 2002 so America is now extremely divided if you look at if you compare Democrat to Republican this is very new it's only about 12 to 15 years old um Rel related to this polarization is a very big drop in our confidence in government our trust in government so this is confidence in our Supreme Court in the dark green line in our Congress and in the president and what you see was very high in 1991 right after we fought our first war with Iraq um but in the 1990s it's moderate it's it's it's not good but it's not terrible and it's actually going up a little bit in the 1990s during the presidency of Bill Clinton uh but then uh especially after George W bush not that it was his fault per se but it around 1998 to 2002 things really started going down everywhere 7% of Americans have some level of trust in the US Congress in other words nobody just about I think 7% is just the Congress people and their families actually um so this is a terrible situation it's very hard to have a democracy when nobody trusts the government um so is this happening in Poland too so I went online last night because there are now many International surveys that are done about trust in government across many countries and here's what I found in one recent survey this is uh uh called the Adelman trust barometer uh in 2013 they just they looked at about 35 countries or so so uh actually surprisingly in China well Singapore is not a surprise that Singapore has very high trust in government but actually China India uh so these are some countries that have very high they express very high levels of trust in their government the US is sort of in the middle Poland is not doing very well it's uh I think this is I'm not sure if it's 48% I think it's 48% of across several different kinds of trust that Polish people have so you're in the lower third but that was in 2013 uh then they did it again in 2014 and now Poland is at the very very bottom so uh the what I'm detecting in my conversations is that Polish people think things are getting worse trust is declining political animosity is increasing and so the data at least bears that out and this is a big problem for democracy it's a big problem for the kind of compromise that is necessary to make good policy uh just more specifically from that study what they found is if you break it down this is now uh trust in government specifically Poland was at uh 30% of polls said they had some degree a moderate or high degree of trust in government back in 2013 you're now down to 19% which is the lowest it's it's ever been or at least since communism I imagine so very very few polls express any trust in the in the government um trust in business is a little bit higher uh it's higher in almost every nation almost every nation they trust business more than they trust government uh in Poland it was 56% expressing some some trust then it now last year was down to 49% so uh so this is a problem this is a big problem for your country um as it is for my country so that's an overview of what's happening okay now why why does this sort of thing happen um so most of the story must must be told by historians and political scientists not by psychologists so first I'll tell you a few of the overarching facts and then we'll zoom in on the role that psychology plays so in America the story is very complicated there are 10 different factors at least that explain why it's happening now I'm not going to go through them all I just want you get a sense of the kinds of sociological and historical factors that matter so in the United States we had a period of party realignment our two parties used to have a lot of overlap on the Left Right Spectrum but they've become very much separated now that it's liberal versus conservative and as that happens people with one temperament or another move into those parties so that now the people in the two parties dress differently eat differently read different books they're very different people and that makes it easier for them to dislike each other uh so we've got this Mass sorting going on um I'll just show you one of the most important effects of that when you really get a separation of different kinds of people is that they can dislike each other much much more so these are ratings that go back to 1976 President Jimmy Carter's time on a0 to 100 scale how much do you like the Supreme Court or Italian people or African-Americans there these are the sorts of survey questions that get asked every two years in America and what you find is when you ask about um if you ask Democrats how much they like the Democratic party you find they like it about 75 and that's been true for the last 30 years they give very high ratings to their own party here's Republicans rating the Republican Party very high not a surprise but what about the other party how much do Democrats like the Republican Party 50 is neutral no feelings so it used to be they slightly dislike them but not too bad and it goes down a little bit but even under President Bill Clinton Democrats slightly dislike the Republicans and Republicans the red lines slightly dislike the Democrats on average that's not bad but what's happened since then it's plunged now they really dislike each other and this means we have gone from being opponents across the parties to being enemies and that is very dangerous so uh so that's that's the result of those one other factor and I think this might be relevant in Poland this increasing dislike another factor that might be relevant in Poland is the changing of the generations because there is some interesting research showing that events that happen to you between around age 16 and 24 that period get burned into you for life that's a very open Period politically and people are very passionate at those young ages and the the big historical events that happen shape you for life so what happened in America was we had a whole generation that was shaped by World War II as the whole planet did and when they came to political power they were very good at coming together and working together we call them the greatest Generation so people who remember World War II were so this is Ronald Reagan and then the leading Democrat of the time tip O'Neal who ran the Congress the Democratic Congress they were both Irish they both loved to drink they would fight and argue during the day and in the afternoon they would get together they'd have a drink they'd talk they could work together um we get our first baby boomer President Bill Clinton born after World War II now and this is n Gingrich the head of the Republicans they didn't like each other personally and they didn't work together terribly well but there were enough older people in Washington the institution still worked Republicans and Democrats still talk to each other so they were able to forge a working relationship even though they didn't like each other they could work together and they did on some big issues but now that the greatest generation is gone nobody alive in America nobody active in politics remembers World War II those people are all in their 80s now now we get Barack Obama uh and John Boehner the leader of the Republicans they really dislike each other and they cannot work together so now we're in big trouble our party simply cannot work together um uh an example of this is this uh interesting episode that happened this is John Wayne very conservative very much a republican in 1961 after John F Kennedy was elected president he was asked uh what he thought about the election of this Democrat John Kennedy and he said I may not have voted for him but he's my president and I hope he does a good job a few years ago after Barack Obama was elected president this man is Rush Limbaugh he's one of the leading right-wing talk show figures he has a radio show and he is a he gets conservatives very angry uh so his name is Rush Limba he was asked after Obama was elected um if he would contribute a hundred words 100w essay or little statement about his hopes for the Obama presidency they asked a lot of people uh on the right and the left to contribute these ideas and he refused he said no I won't do it and then on his radio show he talked about this and he said I don't need a 100 words I need only four I hope he fails now this is a time when America is facing catastrophy economic catastrophe from the Meltdown of our financial institutions and he says I hope he fails this is hyper partisanship partisanship is okay partisanship is part of democracy of course you want different political parties arguing that's good that's normal but when it becomes uh uh when it gets to very high levels and especially when group identity gets stuck at one level that's where it becomes toxic there's a a wonderful Arab proverb not proverb a little saying it says me against my brother me and my brother against our cousin me my brother and cousin against the stranger so that's normal human tribalism we're very good at working together to fight someone else and then when that comes apart then we can fight each other we're very good at that hyperarid entity is everything so no matter what threats your country faces all you care about is hurting the other side obviously this is a disaster for your country but this is where we are in the United States uh so I'm curious as to whether um you think today's leaders are or just normal partisan actually let's take a vote um so uh so the question is are raise your hand if you think your leaders are hyper partisan as I've described please raise your hand okay and raise your hand if you think no it's just normal partisanship they can work together when they need to raise your hand nobody okay so this is very bad for democracy you can't get good policy when they can't work together um so that's all I'll say about that one there's so many other things that happen uh obviously one that's relevant for you is the end of the Cold War the loss of a common enemy so of course when solidarity was fighting the Communists all polls could unite behind solidarity and the church um one interesting one increasing immigration and racial diversity that's rising in America and almost all of Europe that makes it harder to agree you don't have that in Poland which is so interesting and unusual so that should be one thing that works to your advantage um but you find other things to fight about uh of course okay so that's all I'll say about the history most of what I want to tell you is about moral psychology and that's the subject of my book The Righteous Mind so let's look into how the moral psychology interacts with all those historical and sociological features that I told you about and let's try to apply it to Poland so this is the uh cover the original hard cover of the book it shows kind of rip a tear in the UK they had a very different art department and so they came up with this cover which I quite like um um in the US for the paperback I suggested something like angels and demons and they found a really some beautiful images which really get at the demonization that we'll talk about in a moment and then uh here in in in Poland they come up with this uh this really evocative and clear and very descriptive very nice uh design so again it conveys intuitively what the book is about so there are three principles of moral psychology um and if you understand these three principles you can apply them to almost any puzzling social situation anytime people are divided by morality or uh or religion or politics if you apply these three principles I think you'll see some things uh that you might not have seen before so the first principle is about uh intuition comes first strategic reasoning second and we'll get to the other two principles in a moment so there's a long idea in philosophy actually in every culture uh that the mind is divided into Parts my first book was called the happiness hypothesis it was about 10 an ient ideas uh that the found east and west uh and this whether or not they're true and so the first idea the most important idea in Psychology is that the mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict but what's the nature of what's the relationship between those parts in the western tradition Plato gave us the metaphor that the mind is divided like uh like a charioteer trying to control two unruly horses so reason is the charioteer and the horses are the passions and the charioteers oblig or duty is to control the passions and then a man can live reasonably um and most philosophers who philosophers tend to be very rational logical people they mostly think this way but most people aren't like that in fact very few people can work this way there's a counter tradition in Philosophy from David Hume which I think is correct Hume was a superb psychologist Plato was not Hume said reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and Obey them and you can see an example of this General process here uh this is my daughter Franchesca and a few months ago I made her a smoothie you know fruit and ice and ices and it's delicious in the blender and so I gave her some and then I realized I was kind of thirsty and I wanted to try it and so I said Franchesca can I have a sip and she said no she said you might get my germs now we share food all the time if I'm eating something sweet she'll come over and try to eat it from my mouth practically we share germs all the time but this little four-year-old's brain was able to automatically say I want my smoothie I don't want to share it with Dad dad's asking me to share it quick come up with a reason germs okay post Hawk reasoning it's there by Age 4 at Age 2 and three she didn't do this it really only came in around age four as they get more theory of Mind as they get more understanding of how other minds work um now to switch to the psychological research uh the simple formulation from Tom gilovich is when we want to believe something we ask can I believe it we're looking for permission to believe something we don't weigh the evidence we say I want to believe X can I find a reason why X might be true I look for it if I find it I stop thinking I'm done I have permission but if you don't want to believe something you ask must I believe it am I forced to believe it or can I find a single reason to doubt proposition X and if I can find a reason I stop thinking I'm done so let's see how this works in an experiment in one study uh subjects come into the lab they're psychology students uh raise your hand if you're studying psychology how many here are in Psychology okay a lot of you so I don't know if you do the same thing here in Poland but when you take a psychology course you have to do some experiments along with it so the students come into the lab and they're given uh what looks like a scientific paper published in a scientific journal that shows uh a relationship between caffeine consumption and breast cancer and they're told to read this article and comment on the methods you're learning how to do scientific experiments is this a valid study who do you think finds lots of flaws with that study who finds problems with it people who drink coffee people who drink coffee everybody who drinks coffee both sexes probably women you got it women who drink coffee find so many flaws in the study the sample size isn't big enough the measurements weren't good because they're asking must I believe it and they're desperately trying to find some reason to doubt it and they always do it's very easy to doubt just about anything so women who drink coffee find lots of flaws in the study everybody else says oh okay whatever here's another example in one study subjects are they come in they they see a screen in front of them and lots of images flash up on the screen and they're told you'll get five cents every time you correctly uh note a letter so if you see a letter on the screen press a button We'll add up your correct guesses you get five cents for each one let's say and so what's that what did I just put up so so a b but let's try it again I'm going to give you a nickel every time you correctly spot a number what's that okay so people are not crazy nobody says that's nine or or q but as long as there's ambiguity we see what we want to see in every moral political debate there's ambiguity in every matter of social policy there's ambiguity so if half the people are asking can can I believe it can I believe this policy is good they say they all say yes I can believe it the other half is asking must I believe it must I believe this policy is good no they don't have to believe it and this is why it's almost impossible to convince people with scientific evidence if they care about it if it activates their partisan identity you can't convince them with scientific evidence or very rarely it's very hard to do um so uh that's all I'll say about that first principle intuitions come first strategic reasoning second now let's move on to this one there's more to morality than harm and fairness so uh when I was in graduate school I was really impressed by two things I was reading anthropology and boy was it clear that morality varies around the world you can't deny that and I was reading Evolution and boy was it clear that we're products of evolution and there's a human nature now how do you reconcile that and the theory that I came up with drawing especially on Richard Scher and and other people so uh was this that that there are at least six moral foundations there are six to really think of them as like taste buds of the moral sense um these are things that you see these are issues that you see all over the world so care fairness Liberty loyalty Authority and sanctity you find these issues all over the world when you read uh anthropologists reports of small Societies in the South Pacific uh or any other Society you find evidence of of all of these concerns so that's what evolution gave us but societ build a culture they build a moral Matrix on top of those foundations using them to different degrees and constructing them out of local materials as well so here's how it works so the First Foundation is care versus harm where mammals what does it mean to be a mammal it means you bear your young live so the female brain in all mammal species female brains are specialized for nurturance and Care in most mammal species the male brain is not but humans long ago developed a Cooperative breeding strategy males do contribute not as much as women uh and men are not as compassionate as women but the male brain is also changed uh and specialized for care and men fall in love with their children men can be very good parents um this Foundation is very very widely used on the left at least in the United States and in other countries we've looked that the left tends to be focused on victims on suffering on care and compassion these are photos I took at Occupy Wall Street a very left-wing demonstration all around the world but it started in in New York just after I moved to New York three years ago so compassion is our new currency it's very anti- capitalist they hate money they I mean the extremists of them they hate money they hate capitalism they hate industry so they say get rid of money let's have compassion we can buy food with compassion let's say free empathy I can't hurt another without hurting myself so these are the sorts of sentiments that you find in leftwing politics you never see signs like this at a tea party Rally or other right-wing political movement they just don't talk about compassion um the second Foundation is fairness you will never find a human society that doesn't care a lot about fairness everybody does but it can mean different things the key meaning I believe is proportionality or Equity or Karma the law of karma that is you should reap what you sow people should not take more than they deserve so on the left fairness often means equality not Equity but equality uh mixed with compassion so the 1% own 43% if you're on the left that inequality is automatically wrong but if you're on the right inequality might be actually quite Justified what if the 1% actually create more value they make better inventions of course they should get rich U Marching for the meek and weary hungry and homeless tax the wealthy fair and square everyone's in favor of fairness but on the left fairness means there should not be such inequality on the right however these are signs from a tea party rally the right-wing populist movement spread my work ethic not my wealth don't take my money to give to lazy people stop punishing success stop rewarding failure we have a graduated income tax rich people pay a higher percentage they think that's unfair stop rewarding failure stop giving money to people who failed you're rewarding failure or laziness that's the view on the far right uh if this is in the UK it's the same idea let cut benefits for those who refuse work you don't need to recognize that man to know that he's not labor party he's conservative that's uh David Cameron um the third Foundation is Liberty all Americans believe in Liberty that's our founding Creed uh we all think that we own liberty and the other side does not this is the flag of my former State Virginia I lived there for 16 years and it wasn't there's a very funny thing about the Virginia flag has a murder on it now why would you put a murder on your flag it's a very strange thing to do but what if I tell you that the flag was created in 1778 2 years after the American colonies revolted against their King the early Americans were English they were not americ they were English people living in the new world and they decided they wanted to rebel against their King and so they had to justify it and what they did was they Justified it with the m murder of Julius Caesar sick Seer tranis thus always to tyrants so this is a very deep psychological principle when we perceive that we're being oppressed we don't just want to kill the oppressor we have an urge to actually Unite with other people and then kill him so um this is an image from Occupy Wall Street it shows a fist with 99% and that little thing says says 1% the image is if the if if 99% of us could get together we could crush and kill the rich now there wasn't really any violence associated with Occupy Wall Street but the iconography was violent it was about killing the rich eating the rich so on the left uh you have the psychology of Liberty andess but it's corporations and the rich are the oppressors on the right in America right now it's the government that's the oppressor don't tread on me big government equals less Freedom uh so government is the bully that's who we want to rebel against so that so both sides value Liberty but they mean very different things by it um the now the next three foundations are are special foundations that bind groups together these are the three on which you really don't find much on the left so group loyalty some animals can work together uh but they're always siblings like wolves or bees and ants things like that only humans can work together in very large groups that are not siblings we're very good at Warfare we evolved for Warfare we evolved for Intergroup violent competition we've been doing that for probably hundreds of thousands of years we love it so much that we invent team sports it makes no sense to spend a lot of time and money watching groups of people kick a ball around that's just a stupid waste of time unless in your mind you love war and you love seeing groups competing against groups and in America as in Europe we love fake War so much we invented super fandom we get dressed up we do stupid things in the cold weather to show how much we love our soldiers our team our sports team this ethos this these ideas play a big role in right-wing morality not in not as much in leftwing Morality so uh for example at the Tea Party a right-wing rally lots of American flags lots of Patriots ISM U and conservatives say that Liberals are guilty of treason this is a a right-wing person treason liberal treachery from the Cold War to the war on terror so they're always accusing liberals the left of hating America of betraying the country well guess what you can find a lot of evidence of that not that most liberals dislike America but many do on the far left many do so this is an anarchist rally it's the farle no Gods no country no master so they're anarchists but look at this the troops the soldiers stop respecting them soldiers are bad military is bad country is bad America is an oppressor this is the iconography on the far left not most of the left just if that's too strong for you think about the John lenen song I assume you know you all know the song imagine it's I assume it's a famous song here too look at the words of it imagine there's no countries it isn't hard to do nothing to kill or die for and no religion too imagine all the people living life in peace so the left is Universalist the left is bothered by groups even patriotism is often a bad thing on the left the fifth Foundation is Authority versus subversion we're primates primates do hierarchy primates do rank it's part of being a primate we're very good at it showing deference and respect we bow we get small very similar around the world um to the way chimpanzees Do It um but on the uh on the um on the well on the left as you saw there's quite a lot of dis of no Masters there's a lot of resentment or anger against Authority uh but on the right you get things like here's a church in Charlottesville where I used to live God's in charge so shut up stop complaining listen to what God says follow the Bible the last Foundation is sanctity and degradation this is the idea you find it certainly in Catholicism in Judaism in Islam in Hinduism the idea that you should ever wash before praying the idea that water is part of religious ritual it doesn't make logical sense but many people around the world have the feeling that you should prepare your body before you approach God the body is really a temple and should be treated as a temple sometimes at least and so this is a medieval image the allegory of Chastity the Virgin Mary is locked up in basically a rock chastity belt and there are lions guarding the pure stream of her virginity flowing here uh from out there so it's a lot of iconography about purity and Chastity um so on the on the religious right and in the Catholic tradition there's a lot of talk about s about Chastity um and Purity on the left is a very different idea because feminism is such a such a big part of being on the left so this is an image from Madonna's album sex from the 1980s where she very explicitly rejects now of course she plays up that her Catholic identity Madonna is her name so that's one Madonna that's another Madonna um she plays up her Catholic identity but she specifically rejects this whole ethos this whole morality uh this is an image from a car in my old town Charlottesville Virginia your body may be a temple but mine's an amusement park what's wrong with having fun with your body why are you so uptight you stupid conservatives um so and here's a sign I a photo I took at Occupy Wall Street nothing is sacred I don't know what it meant but you could never see such a sign at any conservative rally it could not happen but on the left it's just part of the ideology so to sum up here's where we are I run a research site at yourmorals.org and we've had about 400,000 people take some of our surveys I drew from SE a couple of surveys for this so uh uh 3,700 people in most of these items here if you go there you can take the moral foundations questionnaire and some other questionnaires and what we find is that when people when people come to the site and they register as being very liberal those people give very high ratings to all of our questions about care and compassion uh that it's you should never hurt animals um emotional harm there all sorts of questions about care and compassion they score very high on the left now on the right this is still above the midpoint but just barely so I mean they value it but not as much um uh different these are this is proportionality if I had done equality equality would slope down like that but proportionality questions uh slop slightly up Liberty questions on economic Liberty slop slightly up but but the point is that um on the left they value all three of those care fairness and Liberty but especially Care on the right however while they do value those they also value our questions about Authority loyalty and San the left rejects those they say no I don't endorse those this is not part of morality but on the right they actually give pretty similar answers to all of those so this is uh data this is about 80% United States uh data and then the rest is scattered around the world uh but there are two let's see is are Lily and toek are you guys here are they here today um uh Lily cost Cova and Tom you can read it yourself they psychology students here uh and they actually translated the moral foundations questionnaire into polish and just last night they sent me this beautiful data so this is data just from Poland and uh the colors are different but you'll see it's the exact same pattern the converging pattern you get care and uh well they don't have Liberty on the next but care and fairness you'll see so care and fairness are there highest on the left sloping down but still high so just like uh well they're slightly different questions but the point is that you get care and fairness you get care and fairness there and you get all of them there so this is loyalty Authority and sanctity sloping up but notice this which one is steepest which line is steepest it's this silvery line here it's hard to read sanctity the sanctity Foundation is actually in Poland the biggest differentiator of left and right and that fits with the fact that what everybody tells me it's all about the the culture War now in Poland a lot of is about the church church issues gender gay rights um um so it's a lot of these issues that only sense if you understand that some people in your country care a lot about sanctity and they apply that to the body other people don't care so much about it you see it right there there is the most important fact about the Polish culture War um so I just uh I've just have been learning a little bit about polish politics I found some reference to this party I don't even know how to how to say it this is a a translation from Google so it's not a very good translation but even without a good translation from their website um you know National radical Camp is a social movement that brings together young polls who are close to the values of God honor country family tradition exactly the same as the American culture War this is very much our religious conservatives it's the same idea across countries God and Country groups family respect tradition sacredness patriotic demonstrations these this party is very very patriotic so um I think the knowing these foundations these six foundations can really help you understand why poles disagree with each other over specific issues um okay we're fine on time uh so the last principle is that morality binds and blinds here's how it goes large scale cooperation is very very rare in the animal kingdom the best examples of it are the bees and the termites that's a gigantic termite Mound about 8 m tall so little tiny creatures can work work together only if they're siblings they're all sisters or sisters and brothers the only counter example to this the only species that can build large Creations uh is humans and so this is Babylon a reconstruction of ancient Babylon this is Teno Tian in Mexico and wherever you find ancient civilizations you always find temples always this was part of the human transition from hunter gatherers to civilization is through religion and temples this is part of our evolved nature we have this ability to make something sacred a god a sacred tree a sacred River a sacred ancestor a book make it sacred and then we circle around it and that unites us so these are Muslims at prayer in Mecca it couldn't be any clearer the symbolism and the psychology if you circle around a sacred object it unites you and it changes you a metaphor that I like to use is if you remember from high school physics if you move a wire through a magnetic field it generates electricity and the sociologist Emil durkheim talked about social electricity generated by rituals so these rituals generate electricity the capacity to do work social work it doesn't have to be a religion we make our flags sacred so in war time the flag we circle around the flag and that unites us and then we can go off and fight as a unit um but when you make something sacred and you generate this electricity you create a polarity our side becomes perfectly good all the positivity is on our side and the other side becomes perfectly evil everything about them is bad there's a word for this in history of religion it's called manism this was a doctrine that comes out of Persia or the Persian area um about how the universe is is a battle between the forces of darkness and the forces of light human beings are on the battlefield and we all must decide are you on the side of good or are you on the side of on the side of evil everybody must choose that way of thinking is called manakan thinking it's very normal it's part of our politics it's what happens when you hate the other side so you get demonization so just a few images from the United States you find these on the internet take whatever political leader you don't like search for it on the internet you'll find an image of that person as a as a devil and in fact that's an cter the the woman that I showed you before who's a conservative so what is happening I hope you see now that all these historical processes that promote divisions activate a psychology of tribalism that is very good at demonizing and this is what is happened in the United States and this is what seems to be happening in Poland I think you might be a little bit behind us but you seem to be following us down that down that Cliff so what can be done um the most important thing for is really systemic changes that's how you get big effects is changing the system uh so here are some specific suggestions it's really important for any country to to make reforms that will incre increase trust in government it's very hard to do and you can't have any party do it because political parties will always make changes that cement their power that lock in their advantages the only way to do it is to have politicians agree that um that the country is in trouble that the game is corrupt that the people hate us in government so we all should cooperate to improve the game the best way to do that is to appoint uh a panel of experts a panel that includes some political scientists some people from both sides uh let them make a set of recommendations and then the legislature can pass them all as a package yes or no um so that's one suggestion uh uh and just this might not be the issue but for example one thing that I think would be very wise for any country to do is give a big raise to all of the politicians and then arrest them if they take a penny don't let them don't let them receive any money or gifts or anything else because it's a vital public obligation that they be not just free from corruption but perceived to be free from corruption um you must increase the rule of law and respect for the judicial system uh so obviously these are especially problems in the postcommunist countries because for decades and decades as I've heard several of you say everything was lies everything from the journalists was a lie everything from the government was a lie so you have a tradition you have reason you have a historical memory of being distrustful um and of course also communism bred uh a culture of lawbreaking because nobody respected the laws so it's very hard to do uh so whatever it takes whatever you can do to increase respect for the law and respect for the judicial system so often there there are judicial reforms that could be made as well as part of that package so those are two things that are very very important um a third is for politicians to model the behavior of being opponents not enemies I don't know anything about your leaders in Poland I don't know if this is possible do they hate each other or do you think they could ever appear together and say while we disagree I at least acknowledge that he loves Poland and has its best interest at heart do you think they could could they do that or is that ridiculous to even imagine no you don't think so okay well maybe when you guys grow up and become a uh you know become the leaders of the of the country uh maybe you'll be able to do it but anything you can do that models that kind of respectful disagreement is good for democracy um and lastly another suggestion is if you if you can get people to realize that this is a National Emergency um you might be able to get some reforms of education so that this is taught openly in the schools um the the academic establishment tends to be on the left so it might be hard uh uh and all parents are upset about teachers indoctrinating their their children but if you if you can educate for democracy part of that should be teaching respect for the long traditions of left and right in not just Poland but all over all over the West there's a long philosophical tradition there are really good ideas on both sides philosophical ideas so there are things that you can do to change the system but they're hard um before you wait for that to happen because those systemic changes could take a long time there are some things that you can do as individuals that everyone can do as an individual uh I I don't know if you know this quote from it's a famous it's certainly famous in the English language the fault dear Brutus is not in our stars but in ourselves we all tend to blame others we tend to find reasons why it's not our fault but often it is partly or largely our own individual fault another way to say this um is of course the the most one of the most famous lines from from the B from the New Testament from The Sermon on the Mount how can you say to your brother let me take the speck out of your eye when all the time there is a plank in your own eye this is one of the great truths this is one of the chapters in my book the happiness hypothesis every culture has recognized this Proverbs from Nigeria and Japan say almost the same thing this is part of human nature we are so good at finding what's wrong with everyone else and we are so blind about our own faults so um oh here and here's a wonderful here's a really beautiful way that it's been put uh Buddhists in particular have been particularly wise about about this uh this is from an 8th Century uh zen master in China if you want the truth to stand clear before you never be for or against the struggle between for and against is the mind's worst disease that's another way of saying morality binds and blinds as soon as you buy into an ideology and a team you give up your ability to think for yourself you give up your ability to be critical about yourself and your side you buy into manquin thinking that that misunderstands the motives and the words of the other side so my hope is that if you learn some moral psychology uh you'll be able to see this more in yourself and we can all at least pledge to do a few things um the most basic is to Simply commit to civility that doesn't mean agreeing with everyone that doesn't even necessarily mean being nice and friendly and polite the key meaning is the ability to disagree with others while respecting their sincerity and decency so just don't demonize and you'll catch your friends when you hear your friends saying those stupid conservatives or those you know those immoral liberals whatever it is when you hear your friends doing it gently stop them say you it might be kind of embarrassing to do this but you know you're basically saying this is polluting our democracy okay maybe you can't just put it in quite those terms but that's really what it is it's okay it's good to disagree that's fine it's the demonization that's what is dangerous for a democracy um spread the idea that this is a National Emergency things are getting worse in Poland just as they are in America and you all love your country you want your country to work well you want your children to grow up in a better country um take action everybody who cares about Poland uh should work together on reforms uh again it's easier said than done but this is a long-term project this is a way of thinking that over the years might help you to improve your democracy um and the best way to do this the best way to actually understand the other side is through relationships it's very very difficult to Simply encounter arguments and say oh what a logical argument but if you have friends or family in a different political party on the other side you have have some affection for them perhaps that at least makes it possible for you to listen to them because as I've said intuition comes first strategic reasoning second so if you can cultivate positive intuitions positive feelings if you can approach someone somebody in your family let's say who is in the on the other side politically and start by acknowledging something that they are right about saying something good about their policies or their party or whatever it is that disarms them that suddenly makes them oh you're not doing the usual thing where you attack me and I attack you that validates that you think they're not crazy you think maybe they're even right about some things and then that triggers an urge to reciprocate and they will now be more open-minded to you not all the time but often this will happen and when it does it's really thrilling it's actually really fun to have conversations with people on the other side if you're trying to understand each other um so I urge you to try that as an experiment um and uh so I'll I'll end the way I end the book with this wonderful cartoon uh a boy talking to his father the father says your mother and I are separating because I want what's best for the country and your mother doesn't so thank [Applause] [Music] you so okay questions I think we have uh two microphones whe two or one at any rate um questions or comments okay here's another one hold so thank you very much for especially for bringing John lenon back a little bit right actually I think you could that all you need is love right there will be a continuation of this certain extent I very much liked what you said but on the other hand you want to put in practice I don't know something which is very vague okay very I mean all the Notions all the categories which we are using here and try to measure them in I'm not a psychologist that's why I'm very skeptical about these schemata and and and drawings but how can you how can you how can you measure care right these the these concepts are vague Concepts and it's good that they are vague because they they offer up a certain sphere of negotiation right and they open up a sphere of a kind of I I know levas would say of an encounter right as long as you can encounter something that you know what you are encountering or you are encountering someone from the position of knowing yourself fully of I would say yeah this is Jean luk nzi but this sovereign identity then communication is impossible right and what you I know perhaps this is the the effect of pragmatic tradition right I I I I don't know I find this this this a utopian practice not a utopian Theory I mean the the third part of your lecture go and talk right go and meet people right this can be done but provided that that Marx would say super structure you're identity is already somehow softened and that's why I think that's a lot of work to be done in terms of changing identity of I know of of redefining I know politics of friendship right all the all the things which which some postmodern theory is is is is doing and perhaps without without measuring it and I think that that lenon was a part of of that kind of dreamy dream gun perhaps coming back Generations so these are the comments and actually questions too very good okay so first uh as for how we measure it uh yes these terms are quite abstract as virtues always are um but uh we part of doing the science of this is you operationalize it in many different ways and if you get the same results in many operationalizations then you can be confident so we've done it with a variety of different kinds of questionnaires we get this result we've done it by asking people to make ratings of different groups what do you think of nurses Nursery School teachers Hunters uh soldiers so people whose occupations are linked to these foundations we get the same effect in those ratings we've looked at sermons given in Liberal and conservative uh Protestant churches and we count the words related to those foundations we get the same effects so these are the kinds of things people talk about now conservatives love their children they are nice to their dogs I'm not saying conservatives are lower on compassion but what I'm saying is when they think about the kind of society they want what kind of laws do we want they just don't talk about compassion that's not what we're trying to build and regulate with our laws they they have other concerns so uh so everybody has access to these taste buds these ideas but they use them to different degrees when they're trying to build a society now as for how you actually get people to talk is it utopian um yeah if I were to say everybody should simply go find a stranger on the other side and have a real heart-to-heart talk okay that's not very realistic but you have one great Advantage here which is that your dominant religion is Catholicism in America the dominant religion is is protestantism and protestantism has 70 different denominations and what's happened is the denominations are now splitting this way so the the the um uh the Episcopalian denomination a very important denomination they're splitting in two those who favor gay marriage and the ordination of women and those who don't so all of our religions are now basically uh purified on the right or the left the one exception is Catholics they're all stuck together they can't split so um it's true that the Catholic church is mostly on the right but surely there are liberal Catholics surely there are Catholics who consider themselves Catholics but feel more that they're on the left the Catholic Church would be a great place to start this because it if you have overarching identities if you have surrounding identities that you value the conditions are then good um I'm sure are there other Civic institutions are there other places in Poland where you have people on the right and the left working together towards common goals just tell me some there must be some you have the Boy Scouts I what do you have here it's what split do you have a liberal Boy Scouts and a conservative Boy Scouts I'm not sure but I know that are faction there are factions really you have City movements okay okay great that's right great so the point of this is not centrism I personally am sort of a Centrist but the the idea is you don't need a Centrist party you don't need a Centrist movement what you need is I would actually call it a sort of a national greatness movement I say that that title actually deliberately appeals to the right more because it's harder to get the right to to do this in America whenever you get groups working for bipartisan cooperation it's almost all people on the left and then one guy who's a little bit right of Center so you need to appeal more to the right to do this but you're doing it for the good of the country ultimately so if you can find any of these organizations and and have a movement not a not a Centrist movement but a what do you want to call it a vibrant democracy movement something like that I think there's a chance to do something like that other questions yes I actually have two um one is about um to what extent the well the factors or the um All Care forers loyalty the the six factors you have listed to what extent the they divide translate into different cultures I have seen your Ted Talk where you flush the similar slides for different cultures but my question is to what extent are you convinced that uh this survey um really gives you a true image one example I have is for example China I know leftist Chinese who are also very nationalistic it's a small group but it's um sort of contradicts perhaps it's this one fact that I find and then I have questions and the second question is about the role of the political system because both Poland and us we have very strongly majoritarian systems and in this system majoritarian system so we have just two two parties um and then nothing mostly MH and then in this system it actually pays off to polarize and it's very easy to build political capital in such a setup so talking about systemic change uh perhaps that's what what's your idea about pushing this forward okay very good uh so on the first question how does this translate across countries it's very difficult to do direct comparisons across countries on the means because there are translation issues first of all all of our data comes from people who took this survey in English so it's our our data is not representative of the country um but even still in any country people who identify themselves as being on the left fit the pattern that I showed here um I'm pretty sure I've looked at China certainly if you group we group together the East Asian countries South Asian countries Latin American countes we find the same converging pattern everywhere um so that's the first thing it's a very general thing about the left and right in my book I talk about the the origins of the psychology political attitudes are highly heritable based on certain traits such as openness to experience and compassion and conscientiousness so the left right divide is not an historical anomaly it's rooted in a universal psychology now facts of of History can really scramble things and so obviously in Poland you have this gigantic fact that you had this barbarity called communism imposed on you from outside and it is obviously on the left and your current left party is Tainted by association so I'm hearing over and over again that for people on the left there really isn't representation there really isn't a party and that will probably be true for another 10 or 20 years eventually you'll get far enough away from communism you can have normal left and right parties like other European countries but for now you don't China would be the same thing um it's not the traditional Left Right issues of Europe it's going to all be about communism and they've only won So eventually that's right so I think um when you have a free Society over many decades the parties tend to settle into something like the Left Right Dimension and eventually Poland will get there for now it's it's not like other European countries but it is like many of the other postcommunist societies so what I'm saying is there's some psychology that's Universal but the particular facts of History can really push things around quite a lot so that each country is unique on the question of system of uh governance models so the the biggest problem uh so there's two issues there's Rising polarization which is happening in the US and in many other countries not all it's happening in a lot of countries and then there's the question of whether that polarization is crippling in the United States our Revolution was against tyranny of the king and the British government and so our Founders wanted a system in which was very hard for the government to become tyrannical so we separated the powers we don't want a very strong executive we want other branches and other divisions to be able to check the power that made sense in 1788 um it doesn't make as much sense now and um our system cannot function with polarization our system can only lead to leg isation when one party controls the lower house the upper house and the presidency and that's why nothing gets done anymore we have gigantic problems and we just let them sit there and get worse we can't deal with them um and that's going to go on for a long time so we're in big trouble a parliamentary system can survive now you have a parliamentary system right you don't just have I mean you're not limited to yes yeah that's right so for now uh so that's bad and eventually you'll I'm sure not sure I I I would bet that in five or 10 years you'll have more than these two parties things will evolve the parties do change and a parliamentary system is much more flexible than our constitutional system so um you might look ahead to that um people on the left should probably be thinking what is the what will the next configuration look like um what is the story that we can tell on the left let's say uh uh that could lead to attracting a lot of people and that doesn't link the left to Communism So eventually it will change and you have the flexibility in a parliamentary system to do that the key is that your political system incentivizes leaders to go for the middle not the extremes and unfortunately in the American system our congressmen don't care about the election because they're going to win they each each district is just one party now pretty much all they care about is the primary election the first election within the party and so to win that you have to be extreme because only a few people vote in that so it's a ridiculous democracy that we have right now it's not working other questions other ideas for how to apply this to Poland of course journalists have been asking me and it's always so complicated especially the Polish situation that I I try to be vague I try to not give specific policy advice because I just don't know uh but any of you have ideas uh for how you could use moral psychology uh or to improve things or how you could reform the political system in Poland to make it more effective oh yes I have a question okay I can use that but not necessarily he uh my question would be um since we know that strategic reasoning about moral decisions is slow effortful requires attentional resources Etc and you showed a very nice timeline um that showed the split between the parties that showed this outgroup derogation in group bias would you happen to have any uh data that would show what happened with for example postformal reasoning in United States according with the same timeline I mean do we have this drop in postformal reasoning which kind of goes through bound coalitional boundaries right that's the kind of definitional uh postformal when you say po you mean like Jean P conventional postconventional reasoning um so I have no reason to think that Americans are getting stupider um less less effort maybe less effort well no so okay so this would be actually that suggests a very good experiment um so my view is that Colberg was wrong to focus on reasoning I don't think reasoning is that important um but what I would predict is that you can take very smart people who can do postconventional reasoning which is where you you reflect not just on what is right but on why on what justifies it on on how you could have a whole system you know so it's more complex Advanced reasoning um so it' be great to show that you get people who can reason in a postconventional way about certain things and then you take the same problem but you make it a political problem you link it to abortion or gay rights or gender and suddenly you would find I think that they get stupid that they they're not able to integrate information that is great idea thanks so yeah so do that somebody here do that experiment that would be a fun one to do show that people get stupid when you know in America there used to be these advertisements this is your brain and they'd show a frying pan and then theyd drop an egg into it this is your brain on drugs don't do drugs so you know we all make fun of it uh but it's it's a common joke now in America so you could have a set of studies this is your brain this is your brain on politics don't do politics something like that yes um my question is do you have any data or some research from countries where um Society was divided not only by polarizing but later started a war for example or some greater conflict uh I asked in contact in context of Ukraine because I'm actually from Ukraine and uh I I just want to predict which possibilities what can be yeah so the best way to um there's What's called the rally around the flag effect which is very well known and you can figure it out just from the title um human beings are very good at tribalism but we're also very good at individualism and nothing brings people together like a foreign attack so after the 911 attacks in the United States there was a surge of patriotism people supported even George Bush was not that popular before the attack but suddenly he was very popular uh people get more conservative they get more religious they get more focused on these group sorts of Virtues so a foreign attack is very good for that obviously Ukraine is has been attacked uh by Russia and of course some of the Russians in the East are in favor of it but for the Ukraine I don't know anything about Ukraine other than what I read in the newspaper but I would imagine there's been more support for the government and more patriotism among most of the country is that true okay so uh so that's very predictable um the other thing that we can say there's a actually publication by Joe Henrik a really leading cultural psychologist Joe Henrik h n r i c um he and a team of researchers they did a behavioral economics games in Georgia the country of Georgia and Sierra Leon and what they found is that you know these are games where you play you're playing a game you can contribute something or not you can be a free rider or not uh and what they found is that people who were between uh I think they found it was between like 12 and 20 or something like that there was a window which people who were in that age they teenagers during the war um those people even 10 15 years later those people are much more cooperative and so that's one of the studies I was referring to before when I talked about the greatest Generation those shaped by World War II so again events in your teen years just you know know 10-year-olds don't understand they don't think about politics but 14 15 year olds they're beginning to think about those things so in those early years of your political life a foreign attack can have permanent effects unfortunately things like global warming are not like a foreign attack they don't activate those are drawn out threats that are not they're not a person they're not so there are many other threats that don't activate this coming together reflex but foreign attack by an enemy does okay okay time for one last question and then we'll stop or we can just stop and I'll hang out if you have another question please come up and see me thanks very much