“…conservatives start gut and stay gut; liberals go from gut to head.”
— Robert Sapolsky, professor of biology, neurology, and neurological sciences at Stanford University, author of Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst.
“We need our brains, we need our guts. More precisely, we need deliberate thinking, but also sometimes we need to trust our intuition.”
— Interview with Gerd Gigerenzer, director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, author of Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious
Political opinions and voting behavior are partly a matter of gut feelings: moral and causal intuitions about the role of government, specific policies, and which candidates one can trust. Gut feelings are shaped by life experiences, so if you want to understand people’s politics you have to know something about their lives*. For instance, consider the following political groups, based on a 2017 Pew Research survey of over 5,000 Americans:
Core Conservatives are deeply skeptical of the social safety net and favor lower tax rates on corporations and high-income individuals. Core Conservatives offer fairly positive views of immigration and are relatively upbeat about national conditions.
Country First Conservatives are most likely to describe immigrants as a burden on the country and to say that too much openness threatens American identity. Like Core Conservatives, they prefer a smaller government with fewer services, and most think that government is wasteful and inefficient.
Solid Liberals back a robust role for government and are strong advocates of the social safety net. Large majorities view the current economic system as unfair and see economic inequality as a major problem. Most say more needs to be done to address racial discrimination and obstacles to women’s achievement. *
What kind of life experiences might have informed these political attitudes? The following chart provides a few clues:
What I see here is that the two conservative groups have done rather well, despite their limited education (on average). It makes perfect sense to me that they believe most people can get ahead if they work hard - because, for the most part, that’s how it worked out for them. I assume most of these conservatives weren’t born in privilege, given that over two-thirds lack a college degree. They thus have no need to “justify” the system: they simply believe in it upon the evidence of their own lives. Given their life experiences, is that unreasonable?
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* That expressed political beliefs can be manipulated in surveys and laboratory experiments is sometimes taken as proof that such beliefs - especially conservative ones - are shallow and unthinking, determined more by psychology ( e.g., moral foundations, self-serving bias, system justification, group identity) than serious reflection. I’ve seen very little research, however, on the extent to which political beliefs may actually be reasonable given personal experience. Note that “reasonable” doesn’t necessarily mean right.
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References:
Gigerenzer, G. (2008) Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious .New York, NY: Penguin Press
Pew Research Center, “Political Typology Reveals Deep Fissures on the Right and Left” October 2017
Sapolsky, R.M. (2017) Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. New York, NY: Penguin Press