Guest post: Conservatives have better Theory of Mind
Originally a Facebook post by an anonymous thoughts-haver.
Something about the way Matthew 6:5-6 (the bit about going into your closet to pray) is being shared around in the wake of the school prayer ruling has been bothering me, and I finally kind of figured out what it is. First, though, a disclaimer: I am an atheist who has read the whole bible more than once. I took some comparative religion classes in college, but I have never been a Christian and anything I say is coming from a theoretical understanding, not practical.
So, here’s a thing. The term “prayer” does not mean one simple thing. It doesn’t mean the same thing in all contexts, and it doesn’t mean the same thing to all people. When I see a football coach midfield praising Jesus for the game they just played, it’s easy for me, a nonbeliever, to say “what a hypocrite, praying in public like Matthew says not to do”. But that coach might not even think of it as praying, because to him prayer is the thing he only does in private. What he’s doing in public is witnessing, which is something his holy text calls for him to do. Mark 16:15: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” Matthew 28:19: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost”
There is no conflict in his mind between the admonition to pray in private and his making a spectacle of himself in public if what he’s doing in public isn’t praying. And if you call him on it, you are only reinforcing his belief that he is doing the right thing. Matthew 5:10-12: “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”
Does that make what he’s doing any less coercive and less of a violation of the separation of church and state? Not by any sane standard (which is to say, to anyone who isn’t in the majority on the Supreme Court right now). But it does point to a problem that I think the left has right now, which is that it thinks using tactics which would work against it are going to work against the right.
I skimmed a study recently, and I wish I could find it now. What I remember it saying, though is this: conservatives are better at modelling the thought processes of liberals than vice versa. When given a list of questions to answer twice, once as yourself and once as you imagine a person on the opposite side of the political spectrum would answer, conservatives were better at answering how they thought liberals would than the other way around. They’re better at coming up with tactics which work in the real world, because they’re better at thinking about what would work on them if they were on the other side. They can look at our arguments and say “I understand what makes you think that, but here’s why I think you’re wrong”, while we’re looking at their arguments and saying “you think that because you’re bad”.
To call someone a hypocrite, you need to understand how their actions are in conflict with their beliefs. If you don’t know what their beliefs are, how are you supposed to do that? You can only be right accidentally, and that’s no way to be.
Excellent observations.
I was thinking recently that liberals try to make arguments that they hope are indirect ways of getting support from conservatives, and they choose candidates in part because they think those candidates might appeal to conservatives. These strategies have not worked well, and the observations in this post suggest why.
In that vein is “The Righteous Mind”… Read the book convinced that Haidt’s observations were correct but also damning. Though that said I think he was wrong about the general “this is why conservatives win elections” bit. They win elections because of structural factors more than anything else.
Daniel Dennett’s Dictum was that no discussion should take place until both sides could describe the other side’s position so well that the other side wanted permission to use it. While that may be a bit too high a bar, aiming in that direction at least helps avoid Straw Men. It also helps people become better persuaders.
Years ago I would have been surprised that, in general, conservatives understood liberal arguments better than the other way around. I don’t find it surprising now — though I suspect the fraction of true Trump Loyalists are probably bad enough to make up for it.
While I could be persuaded by the study mentioned, I’m not sure I’m ready to buy the notion that conservatives are really that much better at thinking through progressive positions. My main hesitation is this: We’re winning the arguments. Poll after poll shows either a majority (ranging from fairly narrow to very strong) of Americans agree with progressive positions.
The closest conservatives seem to come to winning an argument is when it’s about a not-actually-the-issue dispute. So instead of trying to convince liberals that they should buy conservative positions, they encourage lax thinking about the ‘arc of history’, allowing those whose existence isn’t in immediate peril to slack off. They toss out witticisms about “Turd Sandwich vs. Giant Douche” in order to suppress interest in politics entirely. They con the Dems, repeatedly, into failing to actually mobilize support with decisive action, even though every historical lesson shows that the more people vote, the more Democrats win. And, of course, they’ve managed to subborn voting rights across the country via gerrymandering and other, more grotesque tactics.
What we’re losing isn’t the argument, the contest in the marketplace of ideas; it’s the street-fight, which doesn’t care about such things as theory of mind, or understanding your opponents’ position, but only about total annihilation of your opponent.
Aristotele may not have actually said this, but he should have: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” I.e. even if you reject an idea, you should still be able to represent it fairly, work with it, imagine what the world would look like if you did accept it etc.
Along the same lines I fully agree with what others have said regarding objections like “If you don’t like abortion, just don’t have one yourself and don’t concern yourself with what others are doing”. This seems to indicate a shocking lack of theory of mind. To a pro-lifer the argument is roughly equivalent to saying “If you don’t like murder, just don’t murder people yourself and don’t concern yourself with what others are doing.” Would you be persuaded by something like that?
(That having been said, being able to entertain a thought, representing it fairly, imagining what the world would look like if you did accept it etc. does not imply that we can’t blame people for thinking that way. As I keep saying, my main problem with, say, religious extremists is not that they’re doing the wrong thing as they see it; it’s the part about leaving the most important questions in life up to blind faith – as they have to do to be seeing it that way – in the first place)
Which reminds me of a story of a revival meeting at which particpants were called upon to give witness. After a number of testimonies, each one in turn praised by the preacher leading the whole shebang, one bloke got up and he said: “Before I found Jesus, I was in sin up to my neck. I was drunk most of the daytime, and I slept with a different woman every night…”
At that point, he was interrupted by the preacher, who said: “Just hold it right there, brother… You’re not witnessing! You’re just bragging!”
Fair point re ‘witnessing’ vs ‘praying’–but like Freemage I’d have to see this study before I believed it as it contradicts my own experience and observations. I’ve never heard a ‘conservative’ correctly articulate and explain a ‘liberal’ argument (in scare quotes because e.g. with the gender issue left-right labelling can be deceptive), and as Freemage mentions most people actually agree with the ‘liberal’ (commonsense) position when it’s expressed clearly and accurately. To the extent that conservatives are ‘winning’, I believe it’s because they employ more sophisticated advertising/ persuasion skills, and they have access to these skills because they (by definition, really) wield vastly more money and power. They also, by the standards of many ‘liberals’, ‘play dirty’–they’re more interested in winning than in being right (and are, by and large, more interested in their own advantage than in being right).
Re. who’s worst of “conservatives” and “liberals” (whatever those labels mean in this particular context), I certainly agree that there are no levels under trumpists (hardly “conservatives” in the traditional sense admittedly), but that doesn’t mean any of the major tribes has much to be proud of on this point. As both trumpism and the trans craze have shown, popular support often (I’m tempted to say usually) has very little to do with the strength of the actual arguments themselves. The case for strong action on climate change is as solid as it gets, but popular support is to an excellent first approximation non-existent.
As I said in a rambling comment here recently, I think that ‘progressive’ thinking is often a downhill (by which I mean easy) journey; progressive ideas are easy to understand in analogy to good ideas from the past, even if the ideas (and the analogies) turn out to be bad themselves. LGB rights are easy to understand by analogy to the civil rights movement…. a good analogy. T rights are easy to understand by analogy to the LGB rights movement…. even though that’s a bad analogy. This is not necessarily true of conservative ideas, which I think often need more work. It’s hard to go from “remember that rich guy the king gave all that land to and they literally lorded it over everyone and worked them to death?” to “Let’s do more of that”
I think it’s also likely that everyone can see the appeal of ‘progressive’ ideas, even if they don’t agree with them. There’s a strong ideological component; at the heart is generally the concept of doing the most good for the most people and even the most selfish and evil of people can understand that motivation. On the other hand, more selfish ideas require some motivation to buy into. They might be harder to grasp and articulate because they require a premise that’s hard for many people to buy into in the first place. Perhaps we’re worse at articulating more conservative ideas because we balk at that premise to begin with and end up arguing with that, rather than with the idea itself.
And finally, perhaps those of us who feel we’re progressive are just plain more idealistic. Perhaps we’re more inclined to overlook flaws in a proposition because the outcome, if we can achieve it, seems like such a universal good. Perhaps we’re unpractised in arguing certain positions because of that; we expect everyone to accept the idealistic position as good and true despite the flaws.
I don’t know whether this adds up to a theory of mind or not. I’m inclined to think not.
I think that the study I was thinking of is this one, which does not in fact say what I thought it did: https://perceptiongap.us/media/zaslaroc/perception-gap-report-1-0-3.pdf
If that’s the study I’m remembering, I blame inaccurate reporting on it, combined with my own quick skimming and bad memory. It does have some interesting things to say, though. For example, it suggests that higher education correlates to worse accuracy or deeper entrenchment in polarized thought, which is interesting to me, anyway.
I’m glad you like your pseudonym!
Thanks, Thought-Haver!
I’m perhaps being a bit too simplistic, but I think this follows from:
The result of logic-based thinking is easier to predict than the result of fantasy-based thinking.
I agree with Freemage (#4) and guest (#8). I’ve never actually met someone on the political right who could honestly, fairly, fully, and accurately describe any liberal, progressive, or leftist position. I say that as someone who was raised by conservatives and lived a good portion of his life in right-wing and fundy states (South Carolina and North Carolina). I’ve also spent a fair amount of time watching right-wing media: Fox News, Wall Street Journal, Reason Magazine, etc.
Research shows that liberals watch more diverse media than conservatives. Very few conservatives even know what leftist news looks like, much less ever seek it out. They assume the corporate media has a liberal bias when the reality is most Americans are to the left of the media elite. Even most conservatives, on specific issues, are often much further to the left than gets portrayed on corporate media. This could be why there is often much confusion about ‘conservatism’, an almost empty and meaningless category.
As far as which side understands better, it would be hard to cherry pick and massage the data to convince yourself that conservatives have greater mind reading skills. In liberals as compared to conservatives, on average larger and more active is the left posterior insula that processes emotions, particularly visceral emotional cues from the body. If conservatives understand the left so well, why is it that conservatives don’t understand most Americans are on the left. Even Fox News polling shows this fact and yet they refuse to report it.
https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2021/04/07/american-leftist-supermajority/
https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2020/11/29/polarization-between-the-majority-and-minority/
https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2020/11/08/fox-news-americans-are-the-left-wing-enemy-threatening-america/
https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2014/01/15/wirthlin-effect-symbolic-conservatism/
https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/political-elites-disconnected-from-general-public/