-
So you probably have the sense,
-
as most people do,
-
that polarization is getting worse
in our country,
-
that the divide between
the left and the right
-
is as bad as it's been in really
any of our lifetimes.
-
But you might also reasonably wonder
-
if research backs up your intuition.
-
And in a nutshell,
the answer is sadly yes.
-
In study after study, we find
-
that liberals and conservatives
have grown further apart.
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They increasingly wall themselves off
in these ideological silos,
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consuming different news,
-
talking only to likeminded others,
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and more and more choosing to live
in different parts of the country.
-
And I think that most alarming
of all of it is seeing this rising
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animosity on both sides.
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Liberals and conservatives,
-
Democrats and Republicans,
-
more and more they just
don't like one another.
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You see it in many different ways.
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They don't want to befriend one another.
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They don't want to date one another.
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If they do, if they find out,
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they find each other less attractive,
-
and they more and more don't want
their children to marry someone
-
who supports the other party,
-
a particularly shocking statistic.
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You know, in my lab,
the students that I work with,
-
we're talking about some
sort of social pattern,
-
I'm a movie buff,
-
and so I'm often like,
-
what kind of movie are we in here
with this pattern?
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So what kind of movie are we in
with political polarization?
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Well, it could be a disaster movie.
-
It certainly seems like a disaster.
-
Could be a war movie.
-
Also fits.
-
But what I keep thinking is that
we're in a zombie apocalypse movie.
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(Laughter)
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Right? You know the kind.
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There's people wandering around in packs,
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not thinking for themselves,
-
seized by this mob mentality
trying to spread their disease
-
and destroy society.
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And you probably think, as I do,
-
that you're the good guy
in the zombie apocalypse movie,
-
and all this hate and polarization,
it's being propagated by the other people,
-
because we're Brad Pitt, right?
-
Free-thinking, righteous,
-
just trying to hold on
to what we hold dear,
-
you know, not foot soldiers
in the army of the undead.
-
Not that.
-
Never that.
-
But here's the thing:
-
what movie do you suppose
they think they're in?
-
Right?
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Well, they absolutely think
that they're the good guys
-
in the zombie apocalypse movie. Right?
-
And you'd better believe that they think
that they're Brad Pitt
-
and that we, we are the zombies.
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And who's to say that they're wrong?
-
I think that the truth is
that we're all a part of this.
-
And the good side of that is that we
can be a part of the solution.
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So what are we going to do?
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What can we do to chip away
at polarization in everyday life?
-
What could we do to connect with
and communicate with
-
our political counterparts?
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Well, these were exactly the questions
that I and my colleague Matt Feinberg
-
became fascinated with a few years ago,
and we started doing research
-
on this topic.
-
And one of the first things
that we discovered
-
that I think is really helpful
for understanding polarization
-
is to understand that the political divide
in our country is undergirded
-
by a deeper moral divide.
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So one of the most robust findings
in the history of political psychology
-
is this pattern identified
by John Hyatt and Jesse Graham,
-
psychologists,
-
that liberals and conservatives
tend to endorse different values
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to different degrees.
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So for example, we find that liberals
tend to endorse values like equality
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and fairness and care
and protection from harm
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more than conservatives do,
-
and conservatives tend to endorse
values like loyalty, patriotism,
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respect for authority, and moral purity
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more than liberals do.
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And Matt and I were thinking
that maybe this moral divide
-
might be helpful for understanding
how it is that liberals and conservatives
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talk to one another and why they so often
seem to talk past one another
-
when they do.
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So we conducted a study
-
where we recruited liberals to a study
-
where they were supposed to write
a persuasive essay that would be
-
compelling to a conservative
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in support of same-sex marriage.
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And what we found was that liberals
tended to make the arguments
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in terms of the liberal moral values
of equality and fairness.
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So they said things like
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"everyone should have the right
to love whoever they choose,"
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and "they" -- they being gay Americans --
"deserve the same equal rights
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as other Americans."
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Overall, we found that
69 percent of liberals
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invoked one of the more liberal
moral values in constructing their essay,
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and only nine percent invoked
one of the more conservative moral values,
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even though they were supposed to be
trying to persuade conservatives.
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And when we studied conservatives
and had them make persuasive arguments
-
in support of making English
the official language of the US,
-
a classically conservative
political position,
-
we found that they weren't
much better at this.
-
59 percent of them made arguments
in terms of one of the more
-
conservative moral values,
-
and just eight percent invoked
a liberal moral value,
-
even though they were supposed
to be targeting liberals for persuasion.
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Now, you can see right away
why we're in trouble here. Right?
-
People's moral values,
-
they're their most deeply held beliefs.
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People are willing to fight
and die for their values.
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Why are they going to give that up
just to agree with you
-
on something that they don't particularly
want to agree with you on anyway?
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If that persuasive appeal that
you're making to your Republican uncle
-
means that he doesn't just have
to change his view,
-
he's got to change
his underlying values too,
-
that's not going to go very far.
-
So what would work better?
-
Well, we believe it's a technique
that we call moral reframing,
-
and we've studied it
in a series of experiments.
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In one of these experiments,
-
we recruited liberals and
conservatives to a study
-
where they read one of three essays
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before having their environmental
attitudes surveyed.
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And the first of these essays
-
was a relatively conventional
pro-environmental essay
-
that invoked the liberal values
of care and protection from harm.
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It said things like
"in many important ways
-
we are causing real harm
to the places we live in,"
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and "it is essential
that we take steps now
-
to prevent further destruction
from being done to our Earth."
-
Another group of participants
were assigned to read
-
a really different essay
-
that was designed to tap into
the conservative value
-
of moral purity.
-
It was a pro-environmental essay as well,
-
and it said things like
-
"keeping our forests, drinking water,
and skies pure is of vital importance."
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"We should regard the pollution of
the places we live in to be disgusting."
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And "reducing pollution
can help us preserve
-
what is pure and beautiful
about the places we live."
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And then we had
a third group of participants
-
that were assigned to read
just a non-political essay.
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It was just a comparison group
so we could get a baseline.
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And what we found
when we surveyed people
-
about their environmental
attitudes afterwards,
-
we found that liberals, it didn't
really matter what essay they read.
-
They tended to have highly
pro-environmental attitudes regardless.
-
Liberals are on board
for environmental protection.
-
Conservatives, however,
-
were significantly more supportive
of progressive environmental policies
-
and environmental protection
-
if they had read the moral purity essay
-
than if they read
one of the other two essays.
-
We even found that conservatives
who read the moral purity essay
-
were significantly more likely
to say that they believed
-
in global warming and were
concerned about global warming
-
even though this essay
didn't even mention global warming.
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That's just a related environmental issue.
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But that's how robust
this moral reframing effect was.
-
And we've studied this on a whole slew
of different political issues.
-
So if you want to move conservatives
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on issues like same-sex marriage
or national health insurance,
-
it helps to tie these liberal
political issues to conservative values
-
like patriotism and moral purity.
-
And we studied it the other way too.
-
If you want to move liberals
to the right on conservative policy issues
-
like military spending and making English
the official language of the US,
-
you're going to be more persuasive
-
if you tie those conservative
policy issues to liberal moral values
-
like equality and fairness.
-
All these studies have
the same clear message:
-
if you want to persuade
someone on some policy,
-
it's helpful to connect that policy
to their underlying moral values.
-
And when you say it like that
-
it seems really obvious. Right?
-
Like, why did we come here tonight?
-
Why -- ?
-
(Laughter)
-
It's incredibly intuitive.
-
And even though it is, it's something
we really struggle to do.
-
You know, it turns out that when
we go to persuade somebody
-
on a political issue,
-
we talk like we're speaking
into a mirror.
-
We don't persuade so much as
we rehearse our own reasons
-
for why we believe some sort
of political position.
-
We kept saying when we were designing
these reframed moral arguments,
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empathy and respect, empathy and respect.
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If you can tap into that,
-
you can connect,
-
and you might be able to persuade
somebody in this country.
-
So thinking again
-
about what movie we're in,
-
maybe I got carried away before.
-
Maybe it's not a zombie apocalypse movie.
-
Maybe instead it's a buddy cop movie.
-
(Laughter)
-
Just roll with it, just go with it please.
-
(Laughter)
-
You know the kind:
-
there's a white cop and a black cop,
-
or maybe a messy cop and an organized cop.
-
Whatever it is, they don't get along
-
because of this difference.
-
But in the end, when they have
to come together and they cooperate,
-
the solidarity that they feel,
-
it's greater because of that gulf
that they had to cross. Right?
-
And remember that in these movies,
-
it's usually worst in the second act
-
when our leads are further apart
than ever before.
-
And so maybe that's where
we are in this country,
-
late in the second act
of a buddy cop movie --
-
(Laughter) --
-
torn apart but about to come
back together.
-
It sounds good,
-
but if we want it to happen,
-
I think the responsibility
is going to start with us.
-
So this is my call to you:
-
let's put this country back together.
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Let's do it despite the politicians
-
and the media and Facebook and Twitter
-
and Congressional redistricting
and all of it, all the things
-
that divide us.
-
Let's do it because it's right.
-
And let's do it because this hate
-
and contempt that flows through
all of us every day make us ugly
-
and it corrupts us,
-
and it threatens the very
fabric of our society.
-
We owe it to one another and our country
-
to reach out and try to connect.
-
We can't afford to hate them any longer,
-
and we can't afford
to let them hate us either.
-
Empathy and respect.
-
Empathy and respect.
-
If you think about it, it's the very least
that we owe our fellow citizens.
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Thank you.
-
(Applause)