How to have better political conversations

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. They increasingly wall
themselves off in these ideological silos, consuming different news, talking only to
like-minded others 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 animosity on both 0:57
sides. Liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, more and more they
just don't like one another. You see it in many different ways. They don't want to
befriend one another. They don't want to date one another. If they do, if they find out,
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

You know, in my lab, the students that I work with, we're talking about some sort 1:30
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? So what kind of movie are we in with political polarization?
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

(Laughter) 2:02

Right? You know the kind. There's people wandering around in packs, not 2:03
thinking for themselves, seized by this mob mentality trying to spread their disease
and destroy society. 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? 2:41
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. 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
So what are we going to do? What can we do to chip away at polarization in 3:11
everyday life? What could we do to connect with and communicate with our political
counterparts? 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

So one of the most robust findings in the history of political psychology is this 3:46
pattern identified by Jon Haidt and Jesse Graham, psychologists, that liberals and
conservatives tend to endorse different values to different degrees. So for example, we
find that liberals tend to endorse values like equality and fairness and care and
protection from harm more than conservatives do. And conservatives tend to endorse
values like loyalty, patriotism, respect for authority and moral purity more than
liberals do. And Matt and I were thinking that maybe this moral divide might be
helpful for understanding how it is that liberals and conservatives talk to one another
.and why they so often seem to talk past one another when they do

So we conducted a study where we recruited liberals to a study where they were 4:38
supposed to write a persuasive essay that would be compelling to a conservative in
support of same-sex marriage. And what we found was that liberals tended to make
arguments in terms of the liberal moral values of equality and fairness. So they said
things like, "Everyone should have the right to love whoever they choose," and,
"They" -- they being gay Americans -- "deserve the same equal rights as other
Americans." Overall, we found that 69 percent of liberals invoked one of the more
liberal moral values in constructing their essay, and only nine percent invoked one of
the more conservative moral values, even though they were supposed to be trying to
persuade conservatives. 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

Now, you can see right away why we're in trouble here. Right? People's moral 5:48
values, they're their most deeply held beliefs. People are willing to fight and die for
their values. 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? 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 6:17
reframing, and we've studied it in a series of experiments. In one of these
experiments, we recruited liberals and conservatives to a study where they read one of
three essays before having their environmental attitudes surveyed. And the first of
these essays was a relatively conventional pro-environmental essay that invoked the
liberal values of care and protection from harm. It said things like, "In many
important ways we are causing real harm to the places we live in," 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." "We should regard the pollution of the places we live in
to be disgusting." And, "Reducing pollution can help us preserve what is pure and
beautiful about the places we live." And then we had a third group that were assigned
to read just a nonpolitical essay. It was just a comparison group so we could get a
.baseline

And what we found when we surveyed people about their environmental 7:33
attitudes afterwards, we found that liberals, it didn't 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. That's just a
.related environmental issue. 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 8:16
want to move conservatives 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 8:53
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) 9:11

It's incredibly intuitive. And even though it is, it's something we really struggle 9:12
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, "Empathy and
respect, empathy and respect." 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. 9:48
.Maybe it's not a zombie apocalypse movie. Maybe instead it's a buddy cop movie

(Laughter) 10:01

.Just roll with it, just go with it please 10:03

(Laughter) 10:05

You know the kind: there's a white cop and a black cop, or maybe a messy cop 10:07
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) 10:39

torn apart but about to come back together. It sounds good, but if we want it to 10:41
.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. Let's do it despite 10:53
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 makes
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

.Thank you 11:53