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Psychology
One would think if people truly cared about achieving a valued social good - say, the elimination of poverty - they would also sweat over the details as to how to achieve this social good without jeopardizing other social goods. Which means they and their shared-values fellows would be having robust and thoughtful arguments on policy, no consensus expected.
But the fact the some types are strongly Democrat or Republican doesn’t mean that most Democrats or Republicans belong to those types. No type claims the majority of Democrats, Independents or Republicans. For example, less than half the Democrats in the NORC survey were Classical Liberals and less than half the Republicans were Mostly MAGAs.
Grouping people by types also runs the risk of seeing individuals as static, unchanging essences. People and patterns change. Within-group affinities and between-group differences may weaken over time, eventually rendering a whole typology obsolete. But the typologies keep coming, partly because humans love to categorize and partly because new typologies unsettle our certainties and assumptions and help us see the world with fresh eyes. Case in point: the Five Types of Americans, as developed by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago.
Sensing danger increases vigilance and vigilant behavior discourages criminals by reducing opportunities (easy victims) and increasing costs (time, effort) relative to payoff (money, status, sex). Here are some examples of what I’m talking about…
I’ve often seen “perception” contrasted with “reality” as if they were mutually exclusive: perception versus reality. But perceptions don’t erupt out of nothing. They have some foundation in the real world. In the case of perceived public safety, that foundation includes…
So people go along to get along and cultures ossify. But every once in a while, alternative perspectives break through and the whole thing crumples, sometimes very quickly. That may be happening now, in America.
Human behavior is the outcome of multicausal pathways. For example, in the theory of planned behavior, beliefs, intentions and perceived behavioral control are all parts of a causal chain that lead to a behavior, whether it’s cramming for an exam or stealing a car. The outcomes of behavior provide information relevant to beliefs, intentions and perceived behavioral control and so are part of the causal chain. Intervening at any point in the chain may change the behavior.
Several surveys have documented that most families in the U.S. and many other countries prefer living in single-family homes, detached or attached (e.g., townhouses). What’s the attraction? Here’s one explanation:
“Challenges surrounding building fewer large homes or more multifamily homes mostly relate to policy and societal norms.” - Berrill & Wilson (2022) Decarbonization pathways for the residential sector in the United States
“News organizations increasingly use the terms “climate emergency” and “climate crisis” to convey the urgency of climate change; yet, little is known about how this terminology affects news audiences...[The results of our study] showed no effect of terminology on climate change engagement; however, “climate emergency” reduced perceived news credibility and newsworthiness compared to “climate change.” …No interactions with political ideology were found.” - Feldman & Hart (2021) Upping the ante? The effects of “emergency” and “crisis” framing in climate change news.
Grandiosity refers to a sense of specialness and self-importance that might lead you to:
boast about real or exaggerated accomplishments
consider yourself more talented or intelligent than others
dismiss or try to one-up the achievements of others
believe you’re above rules or ordinary limits
fail to recognize that your actions could harm others
lash out in anger when someone criticizes you or points out a flaw in your plans
— from “What is Grandiosity?”, PsychCentral
Gray and Pruitt maintain that perception of harm is central to all moral judgments. Or as they put it, “harmless wrongs do not exist”. They also argue that “moral disagreement across politics is in part grounded in different assumptions of vulnerability”. For example…
Why does this matter? Because longitudinal studies have found that students who performed worse in PISA at age 15 are less likely to attain higher levels of education by the age of 25, and are more likely to be out of the labor market entirely, ie, not in education, employment or training. For many, a lifetime of economic hardship and reliance on public services follows.
“False consciousness [is] the notion that people are so misled about reality that they act against their own interests. What was once the preserve of Marxists, flummoxed that workers refused to lose their capitalist chains, is now the fall-back position for the modern [left], which worries that voters cannot accurately comprehend the world in which they live.” - Are voters as clueless as Labour’s intelligentsia thinks? The Economist, November 30, 2024.
These survey results reveal broad support for a get-tough approach to crime before 2000. Then, as the crime rate dropped, American attitudes softened - until crime rates rose again, a trend the following chart documents…
Over 80% of the Democrats and Democrat leaners agreed on 12 of the 24 issue statements. Republicans and Republican leaners did not reach 80% agreement on any statement and strongly disagreed with just one statement (that abortion should be legal in any circumstance). What that tells me is ...
“Sense of agency refers to the feeling of control over actions and their consequences.” - James W Moore, What Is the Sense of Agency and Why Does it Matter?
Surveys often ask about people’s beliefs. But what are the respondents giving them - factual or symbolic beliefs?
I’m going to assume that just about all political allies have been portrayed as perpetrators of wrongdoing and/or victims of injustice, no matter their ideological leanings. This would include LGBTQ+ groups, labor unions, environmentalists, Blacks, Whites, poor people, young people, Hispanics, student activists, old people, business people, farmers, rural folk, pro-life groups, pro-choice groups, evangelicals, mainstream Protestants, Catholics, moderates, Asian Americans, men, women, and plenty of others.
“People use ‘tags,’ ‘markers,’ or ‘identities’ to assort with likeminded individuals, and they alter their appearance to signal commitment to a particular group over alternative groups.” - David Pinsof, David Sears and Martie Haselton, Strange Bedfellows: The Alliance Theory of Political Belief Systems
Use of egalitarian rhetoric may reflect allegiance to a particular set of groups, as opposed to an impartial moral preference that cuts across group identities. If this is the case, then many widely used measures of egalitarianism may be confounded with political and social allegiances.