America’s political divide is psychological, not ideological cover art

America’s political divide is psychological, not ideological

America’s political divide is psychological, not ideological

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 Episode SummaryPolitics in the United States and everywhere else has always been about policy—which party wants to do this, which party wants to do that. But in the 21st century, a new dimension has been added: true and false.That reality has become a serious problem for left-of-center political parties, because they have traditionally oriented themselves around an affinity for science and reason.As a result, right-wing parties with policies that are inherently anti-populist—policies that take money from the middle class and the poor and give it to the rich—are nonetheless able to get the votes of many lower- and middle-income people. Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán, and a host of other right-wing authoritarian leaders are proof that this is indeed the case.We’re going to talk about these questions in today’s episode with Eric Oliver, a political science professor at the University of Chicago. He argues that American politics has become divided along epistemic and psychological grounds between “intuitionists” who think with their guts and “rationalists” who prefer science and logic.Originally the divide between the two epistemologies cut across political partisanship, but since he came along, Trump seems to have attracted the support of former Democratic intuitionists like Robert Kennedy Jr., a trend that Oliver and his co-author Thomas J. Wood all but predicted in their 2018 book, Enchanted America: How Intuition and Reason Divide Our Politics.You can also check out his podcast, 9 Questions, which will soon be distributed additionally via the Flux podcast network.The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full page.Theory of Change and Flux are entirely community-supported. We need your help to keep going. Please become a paying subscriber and get unlimited access.Related Content—Tulsi Gabbard and the art of ‘post-left’ grifting—Despite its lofty language, Marianne Williamson’s self-help politics leads nowhere—Covid contrarians got much more wrong than public health officials, don’t let them forget it—Originally, staunch libertarians saw themselves as centrists—not any more—Why political extremism often derives from personal insecurity—The Christian right was a theological rebellion against modernity before it was a political force—The forgotten history of how William F. Buckley tried to steal away the John Birch Society’s supportersAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction02:19 — The intuitionist and rationalist spectrum07:04 — Intuitionism was originally cross-ideological, but Trump consolidated it11:47 — Intuitionism in everyday life15:24 — How to measure intuitionism vs. rationalism17:42 — Where Moral Foundations Theory falls short28:21 — How views about everyday scenarios can correlate with political opinions33:40 — Democrats' epistemic disadvantage countering Trumpian intuitionism38:52 — Case study: Lucy's contradictory beliefs43:16 — Conspiracy theories existed long before the internet46:05 — Conservatism vs. reactionism57:03 — Democrats are perceived as the status quo party01:00:44 — How intuitionism fueled conspiracy theories during the Covid-19 pandemicAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: The book here we're talking about today is not a newly released one, but on the other hand, I think that what you guys put into it and your general thesis and research, it really did accurately describe the phenomenon of Trumpism and the enduring popularity of it.J. ERIC OLIVER: This didn't start as a book on Trump. It actually started as a book on conspiracy theories. So, um, a few years earlier I had started doing research on conspiracy theories. I had some room on a survey and I put some items on, 'cause I had a long interest in conspiracy theories and came back with these very large percentages of Americans who were endorsing conspiracy theories.And this is in the early mid two thousands that. These data were coming in. And my co-author, Tom Wood, was a graduate student with me at the time. And I said, wow, we're getting back these crazy numbers. Let's see what's going on here. 'cause is this measurement error or is this really something that's kind of floating beneath the radar, at least a political science. And so we started doing more research into why people believe in conspiracy theories and to the extent that they do. And the two things that kept. Popping up again and again we're kind of what we would call magical thinking, so having a lot of paranormal and supernatural beliefs as being a very big predictor of whether or not people believed in conspiracy theories.So if you believe in UFOs or ESP or even general sense that there is a God who will respond to your prayers, ...
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