Why Conservatives Hate Liberals and Liberals Hate Conservatives Part 2: The Cause

In my last post I discussed a bit about how conservatives and liberals are made. While it was a bit long winded, I felt it was a very important place to begin in order to have a fuller understanding of this next part where I will talk about the cause of the hate between liberals and conservatives. There is no one singular reason why a conservative hates liberals or why a liberal hates conservatives, people just don't work that way. So instead of trying to give one easy answer I am going to look at a number of factors.

Before I begin to get to in depth in this I want something clearly understood. Most people who claim to be either conservative or liberal are just people who care enough about their country to have and express an opinion. While sometimes they are wrong, this isn't because their entire political philosophy is bad. In fact most of the time there is a bit of right in even the most extreme argument. This series of posts is not about making one side seem better than the other. It is about trying to get us to look past the anger and start coming up with constructive dialogue and solving very immediate problems.

Before we can start solving problems we have to understand the cause of a problem. We know the problem is that we are not listening to each other, but I don't know if many people have ever thought of the why beyond "they just won't listen to reason". The fact is, there are many reasons we aren't listening to each other and I am going to discuss some of those now. I hope that if you are reading this you hear what I have to say an give it some serious thought. If not, then I hope somewhere someone says something that gives you pause.

Cognitive Dissonance

I realize it may seem like this is a big fancy term, but in reality all cognitive dissonance means is you are being confronted with information that is different than something you already believe. If there is one single thing that causes us not to listen to each other, cognitive dissonance is probably the biggest culprit. To show you how this works I am going to write a list of several things people believe. I want you to pay attention to how each one of the following statements makes you feel and remember that for later.

Evolution is a fact - People evolved from apes

The world is only 12,000 years old.

White people are immigrants to the United States

Trickle down economics work

Socialism is a good thing

Gay people are sexually deviant

Belief in god is stupid

Climate change is being caused by people's activities

Extreme Islam is no different than extreme right wing Christianity

Ronald Reagan was one of the best presidents ever

How did each of those statements  make you feel? What was your thought when you read each one? Did you feel a bit of anger rise at all? Did you nod your head in agreement to any of those statements? Did you feel like your point of view was not being given fair weight? Did you feel like your belief had been justified in some way?

My guess is you felt a bit of all of that and more when you read through the list. The reason you felt all those things is because it is a pretty broad cross section of many different belief systems that are part of our national narrative right now. Some people believe one thing and other people believe something completely different. This is because everyone of us has our own belief structure. when our belief structure is challenged it makes us feel uncomfortable and even angry. This feeling is cognitive dissonance and it affects us a lot when we discuss things such as politics and religion.

The Cycle of Cognitive Dissonance

Because we hold our political values as extremely important, when we run into any information that is contrary to what we know it makes us feel threatened. When we feel threatened it is our instinctual reaction to feel safe again. When it comes to political argument we tend to have a fairly predictable reaction as follows.

I have a belief and state that belief

Someone says that belief is wrong

I don't like the way that feels so I tell them they are wrong

They don't like the way that feels so they tell me I am wrong again

I feel even more threatened and get more passionate about defending my opinion

They feel more threatened and get more passionate about defending their opinion

If you want proof of how this works, go to face book or any other forum where there is political debate and watch how quickly normally rational people fall into anger and name calling. This is a real thing an this is a big part of why we wind up in shouting matches instead of having meaningful discussions on issues we care about. Yet, while cognitive dissonance is a big part of it, it's not the only part of it. Next we will talk about confirmation bias.

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias is defined as the tendency to search for, interpret, or recall information in a way that confirms one's beliefs. This means that when we are looking for information and already have a belief (or bias) we tent to look for things that confirm that bias either in our own memories or in other sources such as media outlets. Not only do we look for things that confirm our pre-held bias, we also tend to ignore any information that may tell us our bias is wrong. While people hate admitting to it, everyone engages in confirmation bias on some level.

How Confirmation Bias Works

Confirmation bias does not mean you are actually wrong it just means you look to confirm your pre-held notions and belief. The problem is that if you deny the fact you engage in confirmation bias, you will never be able to look at any information that either isn't completely new to you or in contradiction of that bias. I am going to use the argument over union state vs. right to work states I see on Facebook fairly often to give an example of how this works.

The basic argument between union vs. right to work is as follows:

Pro union people state that unions are a benefit because they lead to higher wages, better conditions for workers, and help act as a voice against corporate greed. In fact they have proof that union states have higher wages and they are right.

On the other side right to work people claim that unions cause unemployment, stifle innovation, and force business owners to do things against their interest. Just like the union folks they have proof of this and they are right as well.

This means that when people are arguing their points, there is actually factual information to back their claim up. However, because both sides are operating out of confirmation bias, we seldom actually see the full story. Not only do we not see the whole story, but because confirmation bias tends to operate on simple principles of right and wrong, we tend to believe the other side is lying about their information. Even when a union or right to work supporter provides factual evidence, our confirmation bias won't allow us to see it as anything but a lie.

As you can see confirmation bias is another big part of why people argue so often and seem to never change their minds. It's not because they are dumb or don't think about things, it's because we tend not to look at things that don't already conform to our particular bias. This creates many situations in which all sides of an argument have some facts to back up their claims but seldom leads to anyone actually agreeing with one another. While cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias are a big part of the cause, there are some other factors as well.

Other Factors

Cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias may play the biggest roles in our inability to see other points of view, but they are not the whole story. While I could (and just might) write an entire book on the cause of this problem, I also want to keep things somewhat easy for people to read right now. This means that while the following things deserve a great deal of attention, I will only briefly touch on them for now.

Out of the other factors that play a role in our current narrative, It is my feeling that three in particular play a bigger role than many of the others. These three factors are ego, peer pressure, and personal conviction. Before I begin on these I want to once again state I am not saying any of these are innately bad things, I am only saying they play a part in the gulf of misunderstanding between us all. All three of these things can be positive, but they can also be negative and I am going to focus on how they negatively influence us right now.

Ego

Ego is probably the kind of this triad and it makes sense. After all part of our personality requires us to have a sense of self. Our political belief's are a part of that self, so it follows that we would have at least some of our ego invested in our political thoughts. When you combine our ego with both cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias, the natural result of being presented with a differing opinion is feeling like we are being attacked. It's not always true, in fact quite often it's not true at all, but that doesn't mean we don't feel that way. When we feel attacked we are not going to be receptive to new information because we actually stop thinking when we feel threatened.

Peer Pressure

While Ego without a doubt plays a part, another factor that can't be ignored is the role of peer pressure. I remember one time I was on Facebook and I stated the guy on Duck Dynasty was well within his rights to say what he said in a magazine article. I didn't agree with that and made that clear in my post. However, while I was in no way defending the content of what he said I got attacked by several people who disagreed with me. When this happened I felt hurt and a little angry. How can people who I thought were open minded of things attack me for defending a persons right to free speech? While I hate to admit it I felt an urge to backtrack on what I had said and try to get those people attacking me to like me again.

I am normally someone that has little problem with argument and doesn't succumb to peer pressure, but in this case I can't deny it was there and it did effect what I said on Facebook for days after I made the post. If I felt that way and am someone who normally doesn't feel an urge to succumb to peer pressure, I can't imagine how it would feel to be someone who does to be in a similar situation. After a person experiences something like that it is completely understandable why they would hesitate to do it again.

This leads to people actually voicing agreement with positions they actually don't agree with. Not only that, but in order to keep their friends, they often become even louder voices for a particular point of view. It's easy to see how peer pressure affects political discussion, specially when politics is already an emotional topic for most people.

Personal Conviction
It might seem like personal conviction should top the list, but the fact is personal conviction is a combination of everything above. In fact one could say that the sum of our political ideology is our personal conviction, but it also plays a role in our current climate of anger. The reason for this comes down to the fact that there are just some things we as people are not willing to compromise on or accept a different point of view about. You can see personal conviction at work whenever you talk to anybody who is on the extreme of any political argument. While that is the easiest place to see it at work, conviction proliferates most of our political discussion in the country.

This isn't to say having personal conviction is a bad thing, in fact conviction has led to many wonderful things in our world, but conviction can also be dangerous. There was a guy in Germany who had a lot of conviction and his name was Adolph Hitler. Conversely there was a guy named Martin Luther King Jr. and he also had a lot of conviction. The big problem with conviction is that we often stand on it without ever giving any real thought to either the consequences or correctness of our conviction to begin with. When this force enters into political argument the chances of changing your mind become almost non existent. This is not always a good thing.

Putting it all Together

As you can see, the cause of the anger between liberals and conservatives is a complex web of belief's and ideals that are reinforced by several different things. The good news is that we can actually understand the cause and this means that if we as individuals take responsibility in the wider world, we can create a positive change. However, before that change can happen each and every one of us has to stop and admit to ourselves that things like cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, and more play a part in how we react to differing points of view. Once we do that, then we can start changing how we react on an individual basis.

If you have gotten this far I really want to thank you. I now this has been a lot of reading. I wish it didn't have to be, I wish I could get these concepts across in a short five hundred word essay and create the change I want to see, but the fact is that is not how this kind of thing works. While I wish I could say I was done and ready to move onto a new subject, the fact is that There is still a lot of ground to cover on this subject. If we are going to change the way things work in our world right now, we have to get away from the idea that it will be a quick fix. It won't be, it's going to take a lot of work. If you made it to the end of this post, congratulations, you are taking a step toward fixing the problem. However, while we have done some good work, the problem isn't getting fixed today, in fact it is only getting worst and that is what I will cover in the next post.