Can a divided America heal?

Chris Anderson: So, Jon, this feels scary.

Jonathan Haidt: Yeah.

CA: It feels like the world is in a place
that we haven't seen for a long time.

People don't just disagree
in the way that we're familiar with --

on the left-right political divide.

There are much deeper differences afoot.

What on earth is going on
and how did we get here?

Jonathan Haidt: This is different.

There's a much more
apocalyptic sort of feeling.

Survey research by Pew Research shows

that the degree to which we feel
that the other side is not just --

we don't just dislike them,

we strongly dislike them,

and we think that they are
a threat to the nation.

Those numbers have been going up and up,
and are over 50 percent now on both sides.

People are scared because it feels
like this is different than before.

It's much more intense.

Whenever I look
at any sort of social puzzle,

I always just apply the three
basic principles of moral psychology,

and I think they'll help us here.

So the first thing that you
have to always keep in mind

when you're thinking about politics

is that we're tribal.

We evolved for tribalism.

One of the simplest and greatest
insights into human social nature

is the bedouin proverb:

me against my brother,

me and my brother against our cousin,

me and my brother and cousins
against the stranger.

And so that tribalism
allowed us to create large societies

and to come together
in order to compete with others.

That brought us out of the jungle
and out of small groups,

but it means that we
have eternal conflict.

And the question you have to look at

is what aspects of our society
are making that more bitter,

and what are calming them down.

CA: That's a very dark proverb.

You're saying that that's actually

baked into most people's
mental wiring at some level.

JH: Oh yeah, absolutely.

This is just a basic aspect
of human social cognition.

But we can also live
together really peacefully,

and we've invented all kinds
of fun ways of, like, playing war.

I mean, sports, politics --

these are all ways that we get
to exercise this tribal nature

without actually hurting anyone.

We're actually also very good at trade
and exploration and meeting new people.

So you have to see our tribalism
as something that goes up or down.

It's not like we're doomed
to always be fighting each other,

but we'll never have world peace.

CA: The size of that tribe
can shrink or expand.

JH: Right.

CA: The size of what we consider us,

and what we consider other or them

can change.

And some people believe

that that process
could continue indefinitely.

JH: That's right.

CA: And that we were indeed expanding
the sense of tribe for a while.

JH: So this is, I think,

where we're getting at what's possibly
the new left-right distinction.

I mean, the left-right
as we've all inherited it,

comes out of the, you know,
labor versus capital distinction,

and the working class, Marx --

but I think what we're seeing
now increasingly

is a divide in all the Western democracies

between the people
who want to stop at nation,

the people who are more parochial --

I don't mean that in a bad way --

people who have much more
of a sense of being rooted,

they care about their town,
their community and their nation.

And then those who are antiparochial

and who --

whenever I get confused, I just think
of the John Lennon song "Imagine."

"Imagine there's no countries.

Nothing to kill or die for."

And so these are the people
who want more global governance,

they don't like nation states,

they don't like borders.

You see this all over Europe as well.

There's a great metaphor guy --

actually his name is Shakespeare --

writing ten years ago in Britain.

He had a metaphor:

"Are we drawbridge-uppers
or drawbridge-downers?"

And Britain is divided
52-48 on that point.

And America is divided on that point, too.

CA: And so those of us
who grew up with The Beatles

and that sort of hippie philosophy

of dreaming of a more connected world --

and it felt so idealistic --

and how could anyone
think badly about that?

What you're saying is that actually

millions of people today
feel that that isn't just silly,

it's actually dangerous and wrong,
and they're scared of it.

JH: I think the big issue,
especially in Europe,

but it's also here,

is the issue of immigration.

And I think this is where
we have to look very carefully

at the social science
about diversity and immigration.

Once something becomes politicized,

once it becomes something
that the left loves, and the right --

then even the social scientists
can't think straight about it.

Now, diversity is good in a lot of ways.

It clearly creates more innovation,

the American economy
has grown enormously from it.

Diversity and immigration
do a lot of good things,

but what the globalists,
I think, don't see,

what they don't want to see,

is that ethnic diversity
cuts social capital and trust.

There's a very important
study by Robert Putnam,

the author of "Bowling Alone,"

looking at social capital databases.

And basically, the more people
feel that they are the same,

the more they trust each other,

the more they can have
a redistributionist welfare state.

Scandinavian countries are so wonderful

because they have this legacy
of being small, homogenous countries.

And that leads to a set
of progressive welfare state --

a set of progressive left-leaning values,

which says, "Drawbridge down!

The world is a great place.

People in Syria are suffering,

we must welcome them in."

And it's a beautiful thing.

But if --

and I was in Sweden this summer --

if the discourse in Sweden
is fairly politically correct,

and they can't talk about the downsides,

you end up bringing a lot of people in,

that's going to cut social capital,

it makes it hard to have a welfare state

and they might end up,

as we have in America,

with a racially divided --

visibly racially divided society.

So this is all very
uncomfortable to talk about.

But I think this is the thing --

especially in Europe and for us, too --

we need to be looking at.

CA: You're saying that people of reason,

people who would
consider themselves not racists,

but moral, upstanding people,

have a rationale that says,

"Look, humans are just too different."

We're in danger of overloading
our sense of what humans are capable of

by mixing in people who are too different.

JH: Yes, but I can make it
much more palatable

by saying it's not necessarily about race.

It's about culture.

And so there's wonderful work

by a political scientist
named Karen Stenner,

who shows that when people have a sense

that we are all united,
we're all the same,

there are many people who have
a predisposition to authoritarianism.

Those people aren't particularly racist

when they feel as through
there's not a threat

to our social and moral order.

But if you prime them experimentally

by thinking we're coming apart,

people are getting more different,

then they get more racist, homophobic,
they want to kick out the deviants.

So it's in part that you get
an authoritarian reaction.

The left, following through
the Lennonist line --

the John Lennon line --

does things that create
an authoritarian reaction.

So we're certainly seeing that
in America with the Alt-Right.

We saw it in Britain,

we've seen it all over Europe.

But the more positive part of that

is that I think the localists,
or the nationalists are actually right.

That if you emphasize
our cultural similarity,

then race doesn't
actually matter very much.

So an assimilationist
approach to immigration

removes a lot of these problems.

And if you value having
a generous welfare state,

you've got to emphasize
that we're all the same.

CA: OK, so rising immigration
and fears about that

are one of the causes
of the current divide.

What are other causes?

JH: The next principle of moral psychology

is that intuitions come first,
strategic reasoning second.

And you've probably heard
the term "motivated reasoning"

or "confirmation bias."

So there's some really interesting work

on how our high intelligence
and our verbal abilities

might have evolved
not to help us find out the truth,

but to help us manipulate each other,

defend our reputation.

We're really, really good
at justifying ourselves.

And when you bring
group interests into account,

so it's not just me,

it's like my team versus your team,

whereas if you're evaluating evidence
that your side is wrong,

we just can't accept that.

And so this is why you can't
win a political argument.

If you're debating something,

you can't persuade the person
with reasons and evidence

because that's not
the way reasoning works.

And so, now give us the Internet.

Give us Google.

You know, "I heard that Barack Obama
was born in Kenya,

let me Google that --

oh my God! 10 million hits! Look, he was!"

CA: So this has come as an unpleasant
surprise to a lot of people.

Social media has often been framed
by techno-optimists

as this great connecting force
that would bring people together.

And there have been some
unexpected counter effects to that.

JH: That's right, and that's why
I'm very enamored

of sort of ying-yang views
of human nature and left-right.

That each side is right
about certain things,

but then it goes blind to other things.

And so the left generally believes
that human nature is good,

bring people together,

knock down the walls and all will be well.

The right --

social conservatives, not libertarians --

social conservatives generally believe

people can be greedy
and sexual and selfish,

and we need regulation,
and we need restrictions.

So yeah, if you knock down
all the walls --

allow people to communicate
all over the world --

you get a lot of porn and a lot of racism.

CA: So help us understand.

These principles of human nature
have been with us forever.

What's changed that's deepened
this feeling of division?

JH: You have to see six to 10 different
threads all coming together.

I'll just list a couple of them.

So in America one of the big --

actually America and Europe --

one of the biggest ones is World War II.

There's interesting research
from Joe Henrich and others

that if your country was at war,

especially when you were young,

then we test you 30 years later
in a commons dilemma,

or a prisoner's dilemma,

you're more cooperative.

Because of our tribal nature, if you're --

you know, my parents were
teenagers during World War II

and they would go out
looking for scraps of aluminum

to help the war effort.

I mean, everybody pulled together.

And so then these people go on,

they rise up through business
and government,

they take leadership positions.

They're really good
at compromise and cooperation.

They all retire by the '90s.

So we're left with baby boomers
by the end of the '90s.

And their youth was spent fighting
each other within each country;

1968 and afterwards.

So the loss of the
World War II generation,

the greatest generation,

is huge.

So that's one.

Another in America is the
purification of the two parties.

There used to be liberal Republicans
and conservative Democrats.

So America had a mid-20th century
that was really bipartisan.

But because of a variety of factors
that started things moving

by the 90's we had purified
liberal party and conservative party.

And so now the people
in either party really are different.

And now we really don't want
our children to marry them,

which in the '60s didn't matter very much.

So the purification of the parties.

Third is the Internet.

And as I said,

it's just the most amazing stimulant
for post hoc reasoning and demonization.

CA: The tone of what's happening
on the Internet now is quite troubling.

I just did a quick search
on Twitter about the election

and saw two tweets next to each other.

One against a picture
of a sort of racist graffiti.

"This is disgusting,

Ugliness in this country,
brought to us by #Trump."

And then the next one is:

"Crooked Hillary
dedication page. Disgusting!"

So this idea of disgust
is troubling to me.

Because you can have an argument
or a disagreement about something,

you can get angry at someone.

Disgust, I've heard you say,
takes things to a much deeper level.

JH: That's right. Disgust is different.

Anger, you know --

I have kids,

they fight 10 times a day
and they love each other 30 times a day.

You just go back and forth.

You get angry, you're not angry.

You're angry, you're not angry.

But disgust is different.

Disgust paints the person
as being subhuman, monstrous,

deformed --

morally deformed.

Disgust is like indelible ink.

There's research from John Gottman
on marital therapy.

If you look at the faces,

if one of the couple
shows disgust or contempt,

that's a predictor that they're
going to get divorced soon.

Whereas if they show anger
that actually doesn't predict anything.

Because if you deal with anger well
it actually is good.

So this election is different.

Donald Trump personally
uses the word "disgust" a lot.

He's very germ-sensitive,
so disgust does matter a lot --

more for him,

that is something unique to him,

but as we demonize each other more,

and again, through
the Manichaean worldview,

the idea that the world
is a battle between good and evil,

as this has been ramping up,

we're more likely not just to say
they're wrong or I don't like them,

but we say they're evil, they're satanic,

they're disgusting, they're revolting.

And then we want nothing to do with them.

And that's why I think we see --

we're seeing it, for example, on campus.

Now we're seeing more
the urge to keep people off campus,

silence them, keep them away.

I'm afraid that this whole
generation of young people,

if their introduction to politics
involves a lot of disgust,

they're not going to want
to be involved in politics

as they get older.

CA: So how do we deal with that?

Disgust. How do you defuse disgust?

JH: You can't do it with reasons.

I think --

I studied disgust for many years

and I think about emotions a lot,

and I think that the opposite
of disgust is actually love.

Love is all about like --

disgust is closing off --

borders.

Love is about dissolving walls.

And so personal relationships I think

are probably the most
powerful means we have.

You can be disgusted by a group of people,

but then you meet a particular person

and you genuinely discover
that they're lovely.

And then gradually that chips away
or changes your category as well.

The tragedy is that Americans used to be
much more mixed up in the their towns

by left-right or politics,

and now that it's become
this great moral divide,

there's a lot of evidence

that we're moving to be near people
who are like us politically.

It's harder to find somebody
who's on the other side.

So they're over there,

they're far away.

It's harder to get to know them.

CA: What would you say to someone,

or say to Americans,

people generally,

about what should we
understand about each other

that might help us rethink for a minute

this disgust instinct.

JH: Yes,

a really important
thing to keep in mind --

there's research by political
scientist Alan Abramowitz

showing that American democracy
is increasingly governed

by what's called negative partisanship.

That means you think like, "OK
there's a candidate,

you like the candidate,

you vote for the candidate."

But with the rise of negative advertising,

and social media

and all sorts of other trends,

increasingly the way elections are done

is that each side tries to make
the other side so horrible,

so awful,

that you'll vote for my guy by default.

And so as we more and more vote
against the other side

and not for our side,

you have to keep in mind

that if people are on the left,

they think well, "I used to think
that Republicans were bad,

but now Donald Trump proves it.

And now every Republican

I can paint with all the things
that I think about Trump."

And that's not necessarily true.

They're generally not very happy
with their candidate.

This is the most negative partisanship
election in American history.

So you have to first separate your
feelings about the candidate

from your feelings about the people
who are given a choice,

and then you have to realize

that because we all live
in a separate moral world --

the metaphor I use in the book
is that we're all trapped in "The Matrix,"

or each moral community is a matrix,

a consensual hallucination.

And so if you're within the blue matrix,

everything's completely compelling
that the other side,

they're troglodytes, they're racists,
they're the worst people in the world,

and you have all
the facts to back that up.

But somebody in the next house from yours
is living in a different moral matrix.

They live in a different video game,

and they see a completely
different set of facts.

And each one sees different
threats to the country.

And what I've found
from being in the middle,

and from trying to understand both sides,

is both sides are right.

There are a lot of threats to this country

and each side is constitutionally
incapable of seeing them all.

CA: So are you almost saying

that we almost need a new type of empathy?

Empathy is traditionally framed as
"Oh I feel your pain,

I can put myself in your shoes,"

and we apply it to the poor,
the needy, the suffering.

We don't usually apply it
to people who we feel as other,

or we're disgusted by.

What would it look like
to build that type of empathy?

JH: So I think --

empathy is a very very
hot topic in psychology,

and it's a very popular word
on the left in particular,

empathy's a good thing.

And empathy for the preferred
classes of victims.

So it's important to empathize

with the groups that we on the left
think are so important.

That's easy to do because
you get points for that.

But empathy really should get you points
if you do it when it's hard to do.

And I think,

we had a long 50-year period
of dealing with our race problems

and legal discrimination,

and that was our top
priority for a long time

and it still is important,

but I think this year,

I'm hoping it will make people see

that we have an existential
threat on our hands.

Our left-right divide,

I believe,

is by far the most important
divide we face.

We still have issues about race
and gender and LGBT,

but this is the urgent need
of the next 50 years,

and things aren't going
to get better on their own.

So we're going to need to do
a lot of institutional reforms,

and we could talk about that,

but that's like a whole long,
wonky converstation.

But I think it starts with people
realizing that this is a turning point.

And yes, we need a new kind of empathy.

We need to realize:

this is what our country needs,

and this is what you need.

Raise your hand if you want
to spend the next four years

as angry and worried
as you've been for the last year.

Raise your hand.

So if you want to escape from this,

read Buddha, read Jesus,
read Marcus Aurelius,

I mean they have all kinds of great advice
for how to drop the fear,

reframe things,

stop seeing other people as your enemy.

So there's a lot of guidance and ancient
wisdom for this kind of empathy.

CA: Here's my last question.

Personally, what can
people do to help heal?

JH: Yeah, it's very hard to just decide
to overcome your deepest prejudices.

And there's research showing

that political prejudices are deeper
and stronger that race prejudices

in the country now.

So I think you have to make an effort.

That's the main thing.

Make an effort to actually
meet somebody --

everybody has a cousin,

a brother-in-law,

somebody who's on the other side.

So after this election,

wait a week or two because it's probably
going to feel awful for one of you,

but wait a couple weeks

and then reach out and say
that you want to talk.

And before you do it,

read Dale Carnegie, "How to Win
Friends and Influence People --"

(Laughter)

I'm totally serious.

You'll learn techniques
if you start by acknowledging,

if you start by saying,

"You know we don't agree on a lot,

but one thing I really
respect about you, Uncle Bob,

or about you conservatives is ... "

And you can find something.

If you start with some
appreciation it's like magic.

This is one of the main
things I've learned,

that I've taken to my human relationships.

I still make lots of stupid mistakes,

but I'm incredibly good
at apologizing now,

and at acknowledging what
somebody was right about.

And if you do that then
the conversation goes really well,

and it's actually really fun.

CA: Jon, it's absolutely fascinating
speaking with you.

It's really does feel like
the ground that we're on

is a ground populated by deep questions
of morality and human nature.

Your wisdom couldn't be more relevant.

Thank you so much for sharing
this time with us.

(Applause)

JH: Thank you.