The liberals in our sample strongly endorse the compassion statement and strongly reject the failure statement. For example, how strongly do you agree or disagree with these two statements:ġ) “Compassion is the most important virtue”Ģ) “The world would be a better place if we let unsuccessful people fail and suffer the consequences.” We find very consistent differences between right and left in a few values that can help us understand today’s deadlock over economic policies. I run a research site at where we have surveyed more than 350,000 people about their personality traits and moral values. Even when 90% of the research points the other way, just a single study supporting your side will seem utterly compelling, and you’ll find reasons to reject the junk science peddled by the other side. When faced with complicated or ambiguous evidence, human reasoning is notoriously bad at asking “what is the truth?” Rather, we start with a conclusion that we hope is true, and then we ask: “Can I find any evidence to support this conclusion?” The answer is almost always yes. The main reason Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on basic economic facts is that people-including politicians and economists-seek out the facts required by their values. Just look at today’s most contentious political issues: Will raising the minimum wage increase unemployment, or will it stimulate the economy and raise employment? Is stimulus the most effective response to a recession, or is austerity? Or what about this week’s hot topic: will cutting off unemployment benefits spur people to find jobs, or will it plunge them into homelessness and hunger? Republicans and Democrats believe different things-about history, the Constitution, science, and above all economics. Unfortunately, as the parties developed more divergent values and lifestyles, they also developed divergent facts. In 1950, the American Political Science Association called for just such a comparatively sharp polarization, so that Americans could be presented with clearer policy choices from two very different perspectives. Having well-sorted parties could be a good thing. Nowadays you can make predictions about people’s values and votes from just a few seemingly unrelated things, such as whether they find novel cuisines appealing or how messy their desks are. The Democratic party is now the liberal party, dominant in places with a population density greater than about 800 people per square mile, and the Republican Party is the conservative party, dominant in lower density areas.
There was so much diversity within each party-plenty of conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans-that stereotyping was harder, and cross-party alliances were much easier.īut since the 1980s, the two parties have become ever more perfectly sorted. Follow our quiz: Can TIME Predict Your Politicsįifty years ago, if you knew whether someone was a Republican or a Democrat, you didn’t necessarily know a lot about that person’s moral values party affiliation told you even less about someone’s preferences in restaurants or movies.
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