Bi-Weekly "Metapolitics" Discussion in Fishtown

Since several of our members indicated they'd be out of town for Easter, I moved this discussion from April 16th to April 23rd. I also moved our start time up an hour to 12 noon so that hopefully the crowd is fairly sparse and the noise levels are low, allowing us to discuss things without shouting.

Our new discussion venue is Frankford Hall in Fishtown, which is near the corner of Frankford & Girard Streets. Luckily, this is a very accessible location. SEPTA's Girard Station is just a block or so away at Front & Girard, and there's also usually spaces available for street parking in the surrounding neighborhood. If you can't find a spot on the street, there's a paid parking lot called "Park America" nearby at 1320 N. Front Street.

Frankford Hall has a limited brunch menu with some delicious specials, including egg sandwiches with German sausage & Gruyere and pancakes with blueberry compote, and with any brunch item you can get a 1/2 liter Bloody Bavarian or Radler for $3.00.

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PUTTING MORAL PSYCHOLOGY TO WORK ON THE PROBLEM OF POLITICAL POLARIZATION

This meetup will revisit a theoretical tool for understanding political polarization we used a lot last year - Jonathan's Haidt's "Moral Foundations Theory" (MFT). Originally, I'd planned to look at two critiques of MFT from alternative theories of morality -- the "Schwartz Values Survey" (SVS) and "Dyadic Morality" (DM). However, the topic is a bit dry & wonkish, so I've decided to skip it, for now at least. Haidt's MFT model seems to be the most dominant method in social psychology for measuring differences in moral values, at least currently, and there's a lot more research available that uses MFT. MFT, along with the Five Factor Model (FFM) for personality traits and the World Values Survey (WVS) for international comparisons, appear to be the best tools for analyzing the differences in morality that underlie the political polarization we're experiencing today.

At the start of our discussion, we'll briefly look at 2 articles that present research into the way moral values break down along partisan lines in America. There's quite a bit of evidence now that "moral diversity" is not merely a type of cultural diversity but is also partly explained by "neurodiversity" - i.e. psychological differences that are ultimately based on genetically determined differences in brain function. Next, we'll look at some recent attempts to use moral psychology to explain "moral empathy", i.e. the ability to understand someone else's moral views, even if you don't agree with them, as well as a related concept from the economist Bryan Caplan known as the "Ideological Turing Test". Third, we'll look at the current debate over whether or not we should use "moral reframing" to develop arguments that would be more persuasive to people with different moral foundations. Lastly, we'll examine allegations that the Trump campaign used "psychographic" profiling software to identity & persuade voters who were susceptible to his message.

As before, I've compiled a list of videos & articles that I'd like you to check out prior to our discussion. I've tried as much as possible to use short videos in lieu of some of the longer, denser articles we've used in the past which can hopefully require less time for you to digest and also make these complex topics more accessible. If you're pressed for time, just read one article or watch one video from each section, which will still give you a general sense of what we'll talk about. Because the articles in the first section are long, I've included some notes that summarize their major points. Feel free to skip reading the first 2 articles unless you really want to dive deep into the research.

MORAL DIVERSITY & POLITICAL POLARIZATION:

1. Emily Ekins & Jonathan Haidt, "Donald Trump Supporters Think About Morality Differently Than Other Voters. Here's How..." (long article)
   http://www.vox.com/2016/2/5/10918164/donald-trump-morality

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In Nov. 2015, Ekins used a questionnaire based on Haidt's MFT to assess the supporters of 11 of the leading presidential candidates, and some of the results are as you'd expect while a few are surprising:

• In terms of the Care foundation, associated with support for welfare policies, the progressive Bernie fans scored highest, followed by Hillary's center-leftish supporters, and then Mike Huckabee's Christian conservatives. Jeb Bush's supporters appear neutral on this.

Rand Paul's libertarians scored the most anti-Care, followed by the supporters of Ted Cruz, then Marco Rubio, then Donald Trump. It's interesting that Trump's supporters scored only slightly anti-Care since they're usually portrayed as heartless authoritarians, but this may be due to Trump's talk about salvaging Social Security & Medicare and bringing manufacturing jobs back to help the working class. Judging by the scores for Rand Paul's libertarian-ish supporters, it appears that the Care foundation is probably more heavily linked to support for social welfare programs (which Paul is against) as opposed to criminal justice reform or less military intervention overseas (which Paul is for). The latter policies, although they involve a shift towards less government aggression & harm reduction, may be more reflected in the Liberty foundation rather than the Care/Harm foundation.

• In terms of the Fairness foundation, conceived of as the ethic of proportionality ("wealth as just desserts"), Bernie Sanders supporters were the most anti-proportionality, followed by Clinton's, but Jeb Bush centrist conservatives & Mike Huckabee's Christian conservative supporters were slightly anti-proportionality as well. I think this result, along with the somewhat pro-Care results for Huckabee's supporters, is good reminder that there's a social justice ethic that some Christian conservatives still adhere to which is a bit more oriented toward a distributive rather than proportional view of economics. .

On the other side, Ted Cruz's Tea Party conservatives scored the highest in the Proportionality foundation, followed by Marco Rubio's centrist conservatives, then Rand Paul's libertarians, then Trump's populists. Once again, Trump's supporters appear less extreme on this foundation than the supporters of several other GOP candidates, perhaps because they feel they've worked hard and deserve what they have but they also feel they've been left behind in our current economy.

• Bernie Sanders' supporters score fairly high on the Liberty foundation, higher than Ted Cruz's Tea Party conservatives but not quite as high as Rand Paul's libertarian followers. Of course, the people in these various factions probably differ quite a lot in their definitions of "liberty", but it shows they all have an anti-authoritarian & anti-establishment element in common. For all the talk of Trump channeling the Tea Party's anti-establishment furor, notice that his nativist populist supporters are no more pro-liberty than the moderate conservative supporters of Jeb Bush. However, Trump's supporters aren't actually anti-liberty, which suggests they may not be as authoritarian as some might imagine.

On the flip side, the most anti-liberty conservatives are the supporters of Mike Huckabee and Ben Carson, although Hillary Clinton's supporters score slightly anti-liberty as well. Of course, they probably don't conceive of themselves as "anti-liberty" but rather as more respectful of authority.

• Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul's supporters both score very low, negative actually, on the social conservative triad, i.e. the Loyalty, Authority & Sanctity foundations. Hillary's supporters are only somewhat anti-conservative, and Bush's supporters score as neutral.

Those who score highest on the conservative triad are Mike Huckabee's supporters, followed by Ted Cruz & Ben Carson who are roughly tied, then Trump who's supporters are slightly more conservative in this sense than Marco Rubio's. This is may be somewhat confusing if you think of the "conservative triad" as a barometer of military hawkishness (which would've presumably put Rubio or Bush at the top) or as a measure of right-wing authoritarianism (which would've presumably put Trump at the top), but it's probably more linked to traditional religious conservatism, which explains why Huckabee's supporters score at the top, followed by Cruz & Carson's supporters.

2. Will Wilkinson, "A Tale of Two Moralities, Part One: Regional Inequality and Moral Polarization" (long article)
   https://niskanencenter.org/blog/tale-two-moralities-part-one-regional-inequality-moral-polarization/

Wilkinson surveys a lot of data on the psychological, cultural & economic factors underlying America's increasing political polarization. He starts by surveying some of the research in personality psychology that indicates a correlation between political ideology and a couple of the "Big Five” dimensions of personality—Conscientiousness & Openness, in particular—and then connected that to evidence that people have self-segregated geographically by personality and ideology. The upshot is that liberals (low Conscientiousness, high Openness) and conservatives (high Conscientiousness, low Openness) have distinctive personalities, and that there’s reason to believe we’ve been sorting ourselves into communities of psychologically/ideologically similar people. To make matters worse, research indicates we tend to radicalize in the direction of our predispositions when we’re surrounded by people who already agree with us. In short, we’re moving into bubbles of people who resemble us and an echo chamber effect pushes our opinions to extremes.

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Wilkinson uses the World Values Survey's mapping of survival & self-expression values to explain how the shift towards self-expression values is largely caused by economic development. In general, people animated by survival values prefer security over liberty, are suspicious of outsiders, dislike homosexuality, don’t put much stock in politics, and tend not to be very happy. In contrast, those fueled by self-expressive values prefer liberty over security, are welcoming to outsiders, tolerant of homosexuality (or most any expression of the real, authentic, inner self), are more positive about politics and political participation, and tend to be fairly satisfied with life. He points out that a country's position on the WVS is correlated with its score on the Cato Institute's "Human Freedom Index". The US scores fairly low on this Index for a developed country, ranking 23rd, right behind the Baltic countries and further behind most of Western Europe.

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In terms of the material conditions that give rise to differences in values, Wilkinson looks at the uneven economic development within the US and suggests it's probably causing rural areas to hang onto survival values while urban areas move toward self-expression. Wilkinson looks at how many of these rural areas are experiencing not only higher unemployment and housing market problems but also a variety of social problems such as obesity, diabetes, drug & alcohol addiction. He argues that the material insecurity of rural white people is the source of a lot of the anger & resentment fueling political polarization in America.

Of course, there are many unemployed & working class people in the cities who also are experiencing many of the same problems as the rural poor, but Wilkinson argues that much of the urban poor is composed of immigrants & racial minorities who identify with the Democratic Party. Since the Democratic Party platform is more and more determined by wealthy, highly-educated urban professionals with extremely secular-rational and self-expressive values, this exerts pressure on poorer Democrats toward more liberal positions than their material circumstances would predict.

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Here's his conclusion:

"The idea that an increasing sense of material precariousness can lead to cultural retreat from liberalizing 'self-expression' values can help us understand why low-density white America turned out to support a populist leader with disturbingly illiberal tendencies. But this idea can also help us understand why our larger national culture seems to be growing apart in a way that has made it seem harder and harder to communicate constructively across the gap.

A shrinking number of counties is accounting for a rising proportion of America’s wealth. Partisan affiliation is breaking along this population/productivity divide in a way that suggests that America’s moral and political culture has been polarizing along this divide, as well. Given the specific counter-majoritarian mechanisms in the U.S. constitution, this is a recipe for political dominance of the less economically productive conservative white minority, who control most of the country’s territory, over the liberal multicultural majority who live in increasingly concentrated urban centers of wealth. To the extent that increasing economic security is liberalizing and stagnation and decline tend toward an illiberal, zero-sum survival mindset, this amounts to a recipe for the political imposition of relatively illiberal policy on increasingly liberal and increasingly economically powerful cities. This is not a stable situation, and bodes ill for the future of American freedom."

MORAL EMPATHY & THE IDEOLOGICAL TURING TEST: CURE FOR POLITICAL POLARIZATION OR A SLIPPERY SLOPE TO FRANKFURTIAN "BULLSH*T" & MORAL RELATIVISM?

3. Jonathan Haidt & Chris Anderson, "Can A Divided America Heal?" (video, 20:17 minutes)

https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_can_a_divided_america_heal

4. Noah Smith, "Against the Ideological Turing Test" (blog post)

http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/against-ideological-turing-test.html

MORAL REFRAMING: THE KEY TO POLITICAL PERSUASION OR A RECIPE FOR ALIENATING ONE'S BASE?

5. Olga Khazan, "A Better Way to Argue About Politics" (video, 3:21 minutes)

https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/520737/a-better-way-to-argue-about-politics/

6. Sam Kriss, "Can The Left Win By Talking Like The Right? Stop looking for silver bullets, people. Politics is hard." (short article)
   http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/one-weird-trick-to-stop-trump-liberals-214809

CAN PSYCHOGRAPHICS & TARGETED ADVERTISING CUSTOMIZE EMOTIONAL APPEALS & REFRAME MORAL DEBATES ENOUGH TO SHIFT ELECTIONS?

7. Alexander Nix, "The Power of Big Data and Psychographics" (video, 11:03 minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Dd5aVXLCc

8. Leonid Bershidsky, "No, Big Data Didn't Win The U.S. Election" (short article)
   https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-08/no-big-data-didn-t-win-the-u-s-election