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.
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Psychology
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.
In prepping for this series on social justice, I came across a great meta-analysis on the research and theory of "relative deprivation", which the authors define as "the judgment that one is worse off compared to some standard accompanied by feelings of anger and resentment" (Smith, Pettigrew et al, 2011, p 203)
So how does this all connect with the psychology of social justice? Mainly to show that there is no "natural" response to status differences and inequality. Whether we respond with resentment, depression, fear, stress, envy, anger, indignation, admiration, aesthetic pleasure, or even happiness at another's good fortune...all depends.
Mastery is that feeling of riding the wave, of knowing what adjustments to make as it tries to throw you off. You may still lose your balance. The wave may win. But you're not overwhelmed; you’re focused and you keep trying.
The inspiration for this post was reading John Jost”s Précis for A Theory of System Justification. According to Jost, system justification is a general tendency to defend, bolster, and justify aspects of the societal status quo, leading some people to deny or excuse societal problems that need to be fixed.
1. A coded message communicated through words or phrases commonly understood by a particular group of people, but not by others. Merriam-Webster.com … 10. An ”intriguing tool of hermeneutics in which you can accuse anyone of saying anything even if they didn't say it because you can always hear the dogwhistle if you yourself are a canine with hypersonic hearing.” Steven Pinker, quoted in “Steven Pinker Beats Cancel Culture Attack”