The Real Difference Between Liberals And Conservatives

According to Jonathan Haidt, there’s one key personality trait (more than any other) that predicts who becomes liberal and and who becomes conservative. In this lecture, Haidt draws on the latest from developmental and moral psychology and makes a very persuasive argument why “openness to experience” – that craving for novelty, diversity, variety, travel and new ideas – tells us a lot about our political affiliations. Whether you’re currently on the fence about where to cast your vote this year, or you’ve been certain from day one, I urge you to take the 20 minutes to watch this lecture, because it’s got some pretty sweet mind-grenade moments, and it may just change the way that you think about your own morality, and change the way you engage others with differing opinions. Here’s one of my favorite quotes:

“You can’t just go charging in saying “I’m wrong and you’re right”…because everybody thinks that they’re right. A lot of the problems that we have to solve are problems that require us to change other people. And if you want to change other people, a much better way to do it is to first understand who we are, understand our moral psychology, understand that we all think that we’re right, and then step out…even if it’s just for a moment…and try to see it as a struggle that’s playing out in which everybody does think that they’re right and everybody has some reasons (even if you disagree with them) for doing what they’re doing…and if you can do that, that’s the essential move to cultivate moral humility, and get yourself out of this self-righteousness which is the normal human condition”

spinwatcher

Steffan, Your blog is great! I definitely agree with Haidt's statement above: “everybody has some reasons (even if you disagree with them) for doing what they’re doing…and if you can do that, that’s the essential move to cultivate moral humility, and get yourself out of this self-righteousness which is the normal human condition.”

But I have to disagree (that's ok, right?) with his foundational premise that liberals crave novelty, diversity, variety, travel and new ideas; and conservatives essentially crave stability even to the point of hindering or limiting others (and I realize I'm roughly paraphrasing).

My basis for disagreement, or course, comes from my experience. I grew up a liberal in liberal Southern California, including a graphic arts education at UCLA during an extremely liberal social time. I then transitioned to a contrastingly conservative community. In addition, I have a neurological condition that has resulted over time in my development of strong analytical capabilities and test results of a true right/left brain balance.

This said, and having friendships and associations with both liberals and conservatives, I have observed that so-called conservatives as often as not, have highly inquisitive and creative minds and are open to travel and exploration. They do tend to order their lives to conform with disciplines they derive from their pursuit of knowledge. Liberals, on the other hand, have a different approach to how they pursue and order knowledge, very often relying more on a sense of social connectivity in their interpretation of the world. In an extremely broad sense (for purposes of illustration), my observations are that liberals as a group are more right brained, and conservatives more left brained.

And yet, that is not conclusive, because outward appearances of these two classifications (thus what is generally perceived) is a result of the difference in the display of emotions and social interrelationships. Meaning simply that people make judgments first on how others behave–which can be very misleading, because parental upbringing, neurological conditions, crisis, social mores, and more, can cause a person who in reality has a liberal belief system, to appear conservative (and vice versa). There are many liberal Democratic statesman/women who have conservative lifestyles, and just as many conservative Republicans who have so-called liberal lifestyles.

So, basically, I agree with only a few of Haidt's characterizations in the video, but I agree wholeheartedly with the quote at the outset of this comment. As for me, maybe because, somehow I've come to terms with both sides of my brain :), I believe that conflicts of opinion with the goal of reasoning together is absolutely essential for a person or society to achieve knowledge and sanity. The key here is the moral or social humility referred to above, along with a sense of freedom so ideas, no matter how dumb or brilliant, can be expressed, bantered about, reflected and shaped. This is how a child learns best, in a loving, nurturing environment. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could offer this same kindness to one another?
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http://blog.steffanantonas.com Steffan

Totally OK to disagree (That's what sparks good discussion ;-)). I agree with you that Haidt makes a few sweeping statements, but data is about averages, and he's collected a lot of data. You have to admit that a data set of over 30,000 across many different countries and demographics that all shows the same rends is hard to ignore.

I've given this some thought and I think that we're looking at the content of this lecture a bit differently – Haidt isn't trying to say that conservatives aren't open to new experiences and travel etc. That would be a bit absurd, right? What he's saying that, in the context of the 5 moral foundations, liberals and conservatives see 3 of the 5 (Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect and Purity/Sanctity) through very
different filters/lenses, and that that difference changes how they see key social issues and how they approach those problems. Openness to experience seems to be the key personality trait, according to Haidt, that seems to be what causes that shift. Also, we shouldn't think about liberal and conservative as strictly “democrat” and “republican”…there's a lot of shades of gray and plenty of people who just consider themselves independent thinkers. There are also many libertarians out there (people who are socially liberal, but vote republican because they are fiscally conservative) Does that make sense? Just trying to shed some light on this. So I guess the first question really is…when you say your friends are “conservative” what does that mean to you?

I like that you challenged Haidt so boldly and with good reasoning based in experience. It makes for really good discussion.
Barry Welford

I'm glad you gave this video some prominence, Steffan. I happened to see it a week ago and was really struck by his ideas. The TED process is a great fund of such ideas. I must admit this one challenged some of my ideas and I eventually agreed with his thesis.

http://blog.steffanantonas.com Steffan

@Barry – I agree with you completely. I follow the TED blog regularly
because it is such a fund of game-changing, dogma-challenging ideas. This
video in particular stuck out to me. Thanks for the comment.
http://www.locjan.com Locjan

you can get anything on Youtube of course :)
Steffan thanks for sharing this

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http://www.locjan.com Locjan

you can get anything on Youtube of course :)
Steffan thanks for sharing this
http://blog.steffanantonas.com Steffan Antonas

@Spin

I’ve given this some thought and I think that we’re looking at the content of this lecture a bit differently – Haidt isn’t trying to say that conservatives aren’t open to new experiences and travel etc. That would be a bit absurd, right? What he’s saying that, in the
context of the 5 moral foundations, liberals and conservatives see 3 of the
5 (Ingroup/Loyalty, Authoriy/Respect and Purity/Sanctity) through very
different filters/lenses, and that that difference changes how they see key
social issues and how they approach those problems. Openness to experience
seems to be the key personality trait, according to Haidt, that seems to be what
causes that shift. Also….we cant think about liberal and conservative as
“democrat” and “republican”…because there are many liberatarians out there
(people who are socially liberal, but vote republican because they are
fiscally conservative) Does that make sense? Just trying to shed some light
on this. So I guess the first question really is…when you say your friends
are “conservative” what does that mean to you?

Steffan Antonas

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