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Why the Left Can't Mentally Model the Right
In this episode, we delve into research papers exploring how political ideologies affect empathy and understanding between left-leaning and right-leaning individuals. We discuss the fascinating phenomenon where conservatives seem to display more empathy towards liberals than vice versa. Studies like 'Empathetic Conservatives and Moralizing Liberals' provide insights into this asymmetry. We also touch on dehumanization, cultural narratives, and real-world examples from gaming communities. Join us for an eye-opening discussion on political empathy and cultural dynamics.
[00:00:00]
Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today is going to be an episode where we're gonna go over a few research papers that explore lefty and righty brains. Again, really interestingly, but with a focus on a persistent phenomenon that has been found, which is that people on the right politically.
Have a much easier time modeling how people on the left think than people on the left able to model people on the right.
Simone Collins: That is so strange. That is so strange. Yeah. The people I grew up thinking as someone on the left, that we were the empathetic ones, that we understood everyone better and we knew what everyone we needed.
Malcolm Collins: How can we get this so wrong? Oh, it's not just that we're gonna go into other things. So like, just speaking of them not being empathetic, just to give a little sure thing away here. So there were four studies with nearly 4,800 participants in the UK and the us Okay. To look at how much empathy each side had for their political opponents.
Yeah. This was called empathetic [00:01:00] conservatives and moralizing liberals. Political intergroup empathy varies by political ideology and is explained by moral judgment.
So what it showed is that liberals have less empathy for conservatives than conservatives have of liberals. This actually
Simone Collins: makes a lot of sense too, because I remember being on the left, growing up. Having empathy for the entire world, but still seeing conservatives as this inhuman boogeyman. Yeah, so that actually checks out.
That's wild.
Malcolm Collins: Conservatives do not dehumanize lefties. But lefties do dehumanize conservatives. They do. They do. And, and this is, this is seen in the data, like this study was like, surprisingly, conservatives showed more empathy for liberals than liberals showed of conservatives. This asymmetry was found across studies and was statistically reliable.
Why is it surprising? Maybe it's surprising because of your own biases going into the study. And I love the way the study explained this away. It's like, well, this is actually justified because [00:02:00] lefties beliefs, conservatives want to kill them, and conservatives don't think lefties wanna kill them. And I was like, well, but conservatives don't want to kill them, so it's not, this is like saying the Nazis were were justified because blood libel.
They're like, yeah, well they did think the Jews were murdering their babies. And it's like, yeah, but the Jews weren't murdering their babies. That doesn't make their ideology justified. What? What are you talking about? Now I note here that there was a great study done on the nature of the dehumanization, which I think can help.
So, this was the study, political meta dehumanization in mental representations, divergent emphasis in the minds of liberals versus conservatives. And this study found that liberals and conservatives differed in how they dehumanize the other, at least in the framing of this static. Okay. So what this study found was that.
Conservatives tend to view liberals as immature, while liberals see conservatives as savage. Which is true. But one is like a pitying, like if you had more information. Yeah, yeah.
Simo
Published on 9 months ago