Hidden Brain - Moral Combat

Episode Date: October 20, 2020

Most of us have a clear sense of right and wrong. But what happens when we view politics through a moral lens? This week, we talk with psychologist Linda Skitka about how moral certainty can produce moral blinders — and endanger democracy.

This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta. Most of us think of moral convictions as a good thing. We have national parks and drunk driving laws because people in the past had moral convictions and acted on them. These threads of moral conviction are deeply sewn into the fabric of our nation, shaping policy and culture across generations. This social security measure gives at least some protection to 30 millions of our citizens who will reap direct benefits through unemployment compensating. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace,

if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, open this gate, tear down this wall. But new research suggests these moral convictions can be a double-edged sword in the context of a democracy. When we are convinced something is morally correct, it becomes difficult for us to hear views that clash with ours, difficult to have conversations with people who disagree with us, and difficult to make compromises. and difficult to make compromises. This week on Hidden Brain, we bring you the latest in our series featuring counterintuitive ideas

about the state of the world in 2020. As an election campaign rages around us, we ask, can our moral convictions keep us from actually achieving our moral convictions. There are many things about this year's US presidential election that feel unprecedented, but this pandemic year campaign is also part of a long through-line of hotly contested

political struggles. There have been many times in recent decades where people have felt that the stakes of a political or policy battle were high and that the outcome could affect our nation's trajectory in profound ways. Researchers have tried to understand how American voters come to their views on contentious issues. They find that many Americans seem to see political questions not just in terms of policy, but as a test of their moral principles. In other words, we're not just talking about the environment or immigration or guns. We're debating right from wrong. environment or immigration or guns. We're debating right from wrong. Psychologist Linda Skitka has studied the effects of moral conviction in politics and its effects on democracy. Linda Skitka, welcome to Hidden Brain.

Thank you. I'm happy to be here. What are some issues today, Linda, where you think people have more than just strong views where they actually have very strong moral convictions? What are some issues today Linda where you think people have more than just strong views where they actually have very strong moral convictions? People can have moral convictions about almost anything but some issues on average are higher and more conviction than others. Things like same-sex marriage, immigration, It's all feeling debatable being children deserve a mom and a dad. Say it down, say it, Glenn! Immigrants, I'll walk up here! Say it down, say it!

It's a really debatable thing. Children deserve a mom and a dad. It's only right. That's just the way it is. You can't change nature. I firmly believe in equal rights for all people. It's as simple as that. Gun control, police violence, all host of issues.

I don't want the government taking my rights, my liberty, my God, give it right to protect myself. They say that tougher gun laws do not decrease gun violence. We call B.S! They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call B.S! Black Lives Matter! Black Lives Matter!

Blue Lives Matter! Blue Lives Matter! Black men, Black men, Black men, Black men, Black men, Black men, Black men, Black men. Now on the surface having strong policy views about something and having moral convictions about something can superficially seem similar, but you and others have identified several hallmarks of moral conviction. I think of these almost like a litmus test. When you see one or more of these, it's a clue that you're dealing not just with policy disagreements, but something deeper. In one of your studies, you looked at people's reactions to this Supreme Court judgment.

Take a listen to this piece of tape. Today, the Supreme Court upheld Oregon's law permitting physician-assisted suicide. The six to three rulings said that the Bush administration had, in effect, criminalized the practice without the authorization of Congress. Linda, what was this case about? The case was about Oregon's death with Dignity Act. Oregon had legalized physician-assisted suicide some years ago. The Bush administration challenged it on the grounds that it violated the Federal Control

Substance Act. And, of course, the question of whether people have the right to end their lives, presumably that's something that would elicit very strong moral convictions. At the time that the court heard the case about 50% of Americans were completely against it and 50% of Americans were supportive of it. So when you conducted a study in it, you asked volunteers about their views about the verdict, walk me through what you did and what you found. We contacted a nationally representative sample of adults in the United States,

and after the court calendar was announced, but before the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case, we surveyed these people and asked them to what degree their feelings about physician-assisted suicide were moral convictions, the degree to which they were experienced as religious convictions, as well as their standing perceptions of the Supreme Court, on the degree to which they've perceived the court as legitimate, trustworthy, and procedurally fair. What Linda and her colleagues were trying to tease out was the effect that moral convictions might have on people's views about Supreme Court decisions. Would people with strong moral convictions see the court decisions as more legitimate or less?

After doing this initial survey, they waited for the Supreme Court ruling to come down. The High Court refused to hear the challenges to Oregon's law. That was effectively a legal go-ahead for the state to try its right to die law. And then we contacted the exact same people again to find out what predicted their perceptions that the Supreme Court decision was an outcome that was fair and that it was a decision that they would accept as binding,

as well as their subsequent perceptions of trust, procedural fairness, and legitimacy of the court. Linda found that lots of people accepted the ruling of the Supreme Court, even if they disagreed with it. Lots of people accept those with strong moral convictions. They saw the Supreme Court as more legitimate, more trustworthy, and more procedurally fair if they agreed with the decision, and saw the Supreme Court as less trustworthy, less procedurally fair and

less legitimate if they disagreed with it. So this seems to be one of the defining hallmarks of moral convictions. And in some ways when we hear an authority figure come down on something, our reaction is not to say, is it possible there was something wrong with my moral conviction? Our reaction is to say, is there something wrong with the institution? Are there other examples like this, Linda, in public life? Several examples of this.

We have found the exact same pattern of results when looking at pre-imposed reactions to the US Supreme Court's decision in a variety of the same sex marriage decisions that were made in the recent years. We see it in reaction to lower court decisions as well. For example, turned out that participants thought vigilante justice was equally fair

if they had a moral conviction that a defendant was guilty, for example, as a court decision to use the death penalty. And we find this again and again, that when people have morally convicted policy preferences, they don't care how those policy preferences or outcomes are achieved. They just care that they are achieved. And so if it takes lying or cheating to achieve that outcome, that's fine.

Huh, I'm thinking how this plays out even on a national scale. You see this in all kinds of different ways. When former president Barack Obama nominatedama nominated mary garland to the u.s. supreme court for instance the senate basically said we can take up this nomination because there's a presidential election under way this year the american people should have a say in who this next supreme court justice is

senate majority leader michael mcconald made the argument that an election year was not a good time to consider a Supreme Court justice. The next justice could fundamentally alter the direction of the Supreme Court and have a profound impact on our country. So of course, of course, the American people should have a say in the Court's direction. And of course, McConnell's views from 2015 have come up repeatedly in recent weeks

as Republicans are racing to push through a Senate vote on the seat held by Ruth Badeginsburg. Today it is my honor to nominate one of our nation's most brilliant and gifted legal minds to the Supreme Court, Judge Amy Coney Barrett. legal minds to the supreme court judge amie kony barren there was clear precedent behind the predictable outcome that came out of

twenty sixteen and there's even more overwhelming precedent behind the fact that this senate will vote on this nomination this year and so again what what it suggests is you know the friday from the point of your democrats you might sort of say much mcconald is a bad person leader mcconald is basically decided the rules don't apply to republicans even their own rules it's just broot political force

but perhaps the better way to think about it is a mitch mcconald has such strong moral convictions about who should be on the supreme court that how that happens the means in some ways are less important than the ends, that the ends justify the means. Exactly, that's a great example. I'm wondering, Linda, when you look at these two examples, you know, the distrust of authority that we sometimes see and the tendency towards vigilante justice, do you think the speaks at all to a phenomenon that other people have commented on, which is that in the last 20 or 30 years, there's been a decline in trust in institutions writ large in the country.

There's been a decline in trust in Congress, in the presidency, in courts, in the media, in schools, in academia, and universities. Across the board, there's generally been a decline in trust, in institutions, in authority, and expertise. Do you think the two things are related? I think they well could be. That we're a period of intense polarization, where although actually the policy concerns of most Democrats and Republicans overlap,

their distaste of each other is extreme, and they don't believe that they have common concerns anymore. And this is a ripe environment for people to start seeing things on their side and on other sides is objectively wrong. When we are morally convinced about something, we don't usually need evidence to support our conclusions. We know how we feel. We can feel it. This might be one reason an increase in the intensity of our moral convictions might be linked to a decrease in our interest in scientific evidence. It's also linked to a disregard for experts.

A scientist might tell you something important about a topic you know nothing about. Why do you need her expertise when it comes to something where you feel like an expert yourself? When people have a really strong moral conviction, the moral convictions have two characteristics. People believe their conviction is objectively correct and as objectively correct is the fact about the world. So if I'm pro-life on abortion, I see the idea is abortion as being wrong, as equally obvious as 2 plus 2 equals 4. Okay, and so given that I know the 2 plus 2 equals 4, or that abortion is wrong, I don't need an authority to explain it to me.

And in fact, if the authority does try to explain it to me in a different light, I'm going to start to question the authority because can't they see, quote, what the obvious facts are on the ground? But remember, this is a psychological perception. I am perceiving this to be fact-like when it's really a matter of my subjective state of mind and when I'm attaching moral significance to. Mm-hmm.

And I feel like I can see examples of this all the time, you know, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been involved in briefing the country on coronavirus, you know, has sometimes been criticized by supporters of President Donald Trump as being an agent of the deep state. And in some ways, I feel like that's the same idea, right? His expertise is being questioned because his expertise is challenging people's moral convictions about what's right and what's wrong. I think that's exactly the case.

And we've seen it repeatedly in research where people do question and distrust authorities to get it right when they have moral convictions, strong moral convictions about outcomes. Another example of that was asking people before a Supreme Court decision whether they trusted the Supreme Court to get the decision right, even before the Supreme Court heard anything in the case. If you have strong moral convictions about the issue, you not only rated that you just trusted the court to get it right, you did it very fast and automatically. You would give that response much more quickly than somebody who didn't have a moral conviction about the case. So it's interesting. We're not looking at authority figures or experts in order to inform us, we're almost evaluating

them to say, do they measure up or match our moral convictions? Correct. Again, there's many other occasions where we don't have moral convictions and we're going to have to use expertise and aspects of procedural fairness as a proxy, but when we do have moral convictions, that all goes out the window. You mentioned this a moment ago, but I think it's worth dwelling on for a second, where you said that people's moral convictions feel like saying 2 plus 2 equals 4. Talk about this idea that moral convictions have this intuitive power that makes them feel as if, of course, they must be true, they're self-evidently true.

Most of us probably share a moral conviction that murder is wrong, and now imagine that somebody challenges you and says, you know what? Murder's not really wrong. You probably look at them and like, are you nuts? It's so obvious. Yeah. Of course, murder's wrong.

And that's why people experience their moral convictions about other issues as well. You know, not everyone may have a moral conviction about abortion or gun control, for example. And people who don't have moral convictions about them are more likely to be open to argument, to trust procedures to get the issue right, but when you do have moral conviction about them, it's just so obvious to you that the only correct outcome is your position that any

procedure or court case or anything else like that that doesn't yield it has to be wrong. Moral convictions involves subjective states of mind. We all recognize this, we understand, this is why you can be morally offended by something that I find unobjectionable and that I can be offended by something that you think is just fine. But the paradox is that when we are in the grip of moral conviction,

we forget that we are experiencing something subjective. Our convictions feel objectively true, like saying 2 plus 2 equals 4. This is an illusion, but it's a powerful one, and it leads us to a powerful conclusion. I feel that what I experience is morally correct cannot just be true for me. It has to be true for you.

I think one aspect of it is that people psychologically experience their moral convictions, just like the table in front of you is an objective reality. We believe that our moral convictions have that same quality. That anybody looking at the table should recognize as a table, anybody looking at your moral conviction should recognize that as a moral conviction. So we think that these are real,

objectively true features of the world. And that may be related to our sense of needing to believe ourselves as being moral ourselves and that we're good. And so we draw lines in the sand in order to convince ourselves that we're actually a people of moral character. And therefore we really cling to these because to attack them is also to attack us as moral agents. You know another example would be as wrong for anybody to enter the United States illegally. We are the entire of people this respecting coming over by the thousand. And they just want to destroy this country.

And the fact of matters is that God gives you something whether it's a family or a country. You're supposed to take care of it. That's your responsibility. To the extent that you have that position, taking any steps to protect against it would seem reasonable. And some people have a moral conviction that there should be legal routes to immigration, particularly for people who have already been in the United States for a long time in paying taxes. I want my family together!

I want my family together! For them, blocking that and deporting people who have lived in the United States for 20 years is just objectively wrong. So obviously objectively wrong to them, that again making arguments about it seems to be, again, just saying, okay, murder is fine. And I think people are willing to have one conversation about this with people who disagree with them, because they understand the facts of what's right or wrong about this issue, that surely they will get the other person to agree with them about it. It's when that actually we can't get other people to agree with us about that one thing.

Then we almost have to hate them because to not agree with you about that must mean that they're evil, especially after you've revealed to them and explained to them why you believe what you believe. Linda Skitka has an example from her own life about how moral convictions work, the intense emotions that accompany them, the disinterest in evidence, the distrust of authority figures who might challenge them. That's when we come back. Psychologist Linda Skitka studies something most of us take for granted. The moral convictions that often animate national debates. We've looked at how moral convictions cause us to disregard the opinions of experts to

question authority. When a court's conclusions line up with our moral convictions, we call the process fair. When they don't, we say the system is rigged. Another hallmark of moral convictions that Linda and others have identified has to do with the idea that we believe our moral convictions are true, not just for us and our circumstances, but for everyone, everywhere, maybe even at all times. We tend to believe that our moral convictions are universally true, so if we decide X is morally wrong, then X was morally wrong

50 or 100 years ago as well, and if X is morally wrong, for example, for those of us in the US, it's not only wrong in the US, it's wrong in other countries as well. Linda has an example of this that many listeners may find deeply unsettling. The subject of female genital cutting. There are many countries in the world where female genital cutting is a cultural norm that lesseners are very often haven't heard of this practice and when they do tend to react very emotionally and morally object to it. And so Western feminists, for example, have no problem saying that female circumcision

should be banned in countries they've never visited, with women they've never spoken to, no examination of what the cultural meaning of the practice might be for the people who practice it, or consideration that maybe as normative to them is male circumcision is to us. They are very quick and willing to say, no, this should be wrong not only for us in the United States, but for women everywhere. Linda had a similarly strong reaction herself when she first heard about the issue many years ago. But she did something that most of us don't do. She examined her own reaction with curiosity.

Now, if you want me to jump ahead at the story, I can tell you that Linda still has deep moral concerns about female genital cutting. But she also feels her journey on this issue reveals a great deal about how moral convictions work. I first learned about that something like female circumcision even existed in women's studies classes I took in college some 30 years ago and was pretty horrified that this

was a possibility. It was described as a heinous practice. It was also described in terms of female genital mutilation. It wasn't described as circumcision. So mutilation by definition is going to conjure up a lot more aggressive act than female circumcision might. It was emphasized that sometimes these practices happened in very unsteerial situations and sometimes with non-surgical tools such as with glass. So the description certainly was horrifying and I think was intended to moralize the topic.

And describe for me when you're sitting in that class, if you still recall it, what the emotion was that went through you when you heard about it. Oh gosh, a flood of adrenaline. This is a very intense visual reaction. And that wasn't until years later that that occurred to me as like, wow, that was my first really self-aware moral conviction. Linda realized this when she stumbled on an article about the topic.

She realized she had reached her conclusions without needing much by way of evidence. The strength of her feeling was evidence enough that what she was feeling had to be true. And it was also because I was exposed to the work of Richard Schroeder who had written a review piece, the medical literature and survey research on female circumcision that really challenged all my beliefs, that in surveys of women who have experienced the procedure, many of them laugh at the idea that Western feminists are concerned about it. Laugh at the idea that they might experience any diminished sexual pleasure.

His review also includes medical research that shows the extent of damage or any medical indications of problems with, say, sexual functioning or other problems that suggested those problems were minor to nonexistent. So this whole chapter was reviewing evidence to challenge my initial belief that this was morally wrong. I'm wondering if this is following from the idea that we talked about earlier that our moral convictions don't just seem to be our moral convictions.

They just seem to be truths that we adhere to, that everyone else should also adhere to. Then in other words, they are universal because they're self-evidently true. Exactly. It's going back to that two plus two equals four part because it is so self-evidently true. We don't need to ask the women for example and other cultures whether they they value a given cultural practice. So we already know the right answer and are sure that they are bound to agree with us. And again from a psychological perspective,

you're sort of looking at your own mind now, and you're saying, I had a strong moral conviction about this, and I've read this review article, and it's shaking my moral conviction a little bit. What did that tell you? I mean, I think most people are caught up in the question of, is this a right thing to do, or is this a wrong thing to do? And of course, that's an important question to discuss.

But from a psychological point of view, what you are getting at in some ways is you are gleaning some insights into how your own mind was working. What were those insights? Most of all that I had not done any independent research to back up my initial moral conviction on the topic. So I basically realized I was really uninformed when instead

it felt like I knew everything that was to know. And that the psychology of that feeling, I already knew everything I need to know was interesting, because it was really based, I think, more on a strong emotional reaction than anything really based on facts. So at this point, you hadn't yet sort of started the research agenda, but one of the things you would eventually find, of course, is that research agenda, but one of the things you would eventually find, of course, is that more convictions often have this quality to them, that we know that their things are right or things are wrong without necessarily having the evidence for it, that the evidence in some ways follows our convictions. It doesn't proceed it. Yes. And what we know about people is that we tend to seek out information that confirms

our beliefs more than we seek out information that will disconfirm them. And so, likely once the moral conviction is developed, you're going to be showing that same bias. You're going to be collecting information that's going to support that initial moral conviction that rather than challenge it. Which was true in my case. I only came across these counterarguments completely by accident. What's interesting here from a psychological point of view is how it is become to our conclusion.

So in some ways when you're raising this issue, my first reaction is why is Linda talking about this issue? I don't understand. This seems bizarre. This seems wrong to even be discussing this question. And that reaction, the reaction that I have, that even discussing the issue is problematic, in some ways is testament to how moral convictions work. Exactly. Talking about this topic, like right now talking about it and knowing that an audience might hear all of this, is worrisome. Because I know that it arouses really strong reactions in people,

but that's part of the psychology that I'm really interested in studying. That kind of depth of really strong reactions. and people, but that's part of the psychology that I'm really interested in studying. That kind of depth of really strong reactions. Independent of what's right or wrong, that psychological reaction is fascinating. So it's a great demonstration of what it means to have a moral conviction. It makes people very uncomfortable to bring it up. And that's probably a natural reaction to even perhaps attack me. It's like, are you suggesting it could ever possibly be right?

That's part of the psychology of moral conviction. And what do you think it is that basically when someone even asks the question, you know, should we actually be looking at this, how did this come about? I'm looking at this with curiosity. When it comes to our moral convictions, curiosity itself is sort of indicative of guilt in a way, right? In other words, if I'm basically I'm curious about why the Nazis did something, that almost makes me suspect in a way because you're sort of saying, well, why are you so interested in trying to figure out what the mechanisms of this isn't as obviously wrong?

Are you trying to find a justification for what happened? Exactly. That's exactly the psychology of this, that if you experience something with moral conviction, it feels ridiculous to ask, is this really wrong? Right? Of course, it's wrong. Two plus two equals four. Female circumcision is wrong.

You don't need to probe this. And by very virtue of questioning it makes me worried about your character. Mm. And of course, I think to be clear, the point that you're making Linda, the reason you're interested in this is not because you think that female circumcision or genital mutilation is the right thing to do or an appropriate thing to do. You might still have reservations about it. You're interested in sort of the psychology of how people come to the conclusions they

come to. Exactly. And the most interesting things I think to study from a psychological perspective are the things that people really feel intensely about. And these people certainly feel intensely about this. What are your personal views right now on male and female circumcision? I'm far, no expert really on the topic, but I have read a considerable amount on it. And after reflecting on the arguments pros and cons, I really land on the issue of consent. It's not where I started, by the way, but it is where I've landed.

That female and male circumcision are usually done on very young children, often without, well, never with their consent. And I think the issue that people are not given an opportunity to consent to intense body modification is ethically wrong? I'm wondering if one of the concerns about this area of research is the fear that in some ways when you study something scientifically and understand how it's put together psychologically, in some ways it diminishes the intensity

with which we feel about issues. It diminishes the strength of our positions. Perhaps even diminishes our convictions. If you actually know how the conviction comes together, if you understand the psychological mechanics of it, you understand, well, actually maybe this doesn't actually make that much sense, maybe it doesn't actually reflect my deepest values. And I'm wondering if this is one of the concerns that people might have about this body of research in general, which is it runs the risk of basically inviting more relativism, or basically saying everything is just a matter of your

personal view of what is right and what is wrong. Everything is negotiable, everything is up for grabs. There's nothing that's actually universally true. Yes, that is a decidedly a risk. But it's an empirical question to some degree, right? Is morality relative or is there an objective truth out there? And we don't really know unless we actually pry into the psychology of it. When we come back, what are the effects of our moral convictions in politics and on democracy. Compromise has become kind of a dirty word that their members of Congress, for example, compromise that is a failure of leadership and character. You're listening to Hidden Brain.

I'm Shankar Vedanta. Stay with us. At the University of Illinois at Chicago, psychologists Linda Skittka studies the nature and consequences of moral convictions. She finds these convictions both arise in the context of visceral emotions and arouse visceral emotions in us. When we are in the grip of such emotions, we are quite happy to disregard evidence, to discard the views of experts, and to question the legitimacy of institutions that don't agree with us. When you look out at the landscape of American politics, does any of this sound familiar? Linda also finds something even more disturbing. Moral convictions tend to prompt people to disregard the rules. You can see this on a large scale and you can measure it in laboratory experiments,

such as this one by Janice Nadler and Elizabeth Mullin. This was a very ingenious study. They brought people into the study and they exposed them to a legal decision that was either consistent or inconsistent with people's moral convictions and gave them a pencil to complete the questionnaire about their reactions to it. And on known to the participants, they had some kind of electronic monitoring gizmo on it. They allowed them to find out whether the pencil was returned or not. And people were more likely to steal the pencil if they had to answer a questionnaire about a court decision that they morally disagreed with. And what seems to explain it the most is people's emotional reactions to decisions that they morally disagree with.

That it makes people so angry that it cuts off their normal self-monitoring to behave according to the norms. So a few years ago, Linda, several of the parents of kids who were killed in the New Town School shooting began receiving abuse on the internet. People told them that they had fake the deaths of their children in order to push a gun control agenda. I want you to listen to this news clip. The families of the murdered children became the targets of conspiracy theorists who decided that the massacre did not happen. The children were not real or that the parents had been paid to stage the attack. And not only did they share these false and hateful messages among

themselves, they began harassing families of the murdered children. I'm quite confident that the people who were doing this were acting out of a misplaced sense of moral conviction that killing of children is such a horrendous thing to contemplate. And when if that's inconsistent with something that you morally cherish, such as the right to bear weapons. You're going to have to do a whole bunch of psychological gymnastics in order to make the world make sense again. If you wanted here to this cherish, believe that guns are good,

you're going to have to come up with an explanation for how something horrible could happen. And in some ways, this is connected to what we were talking earlier, of course, which is that when we are filled with moral certitude, we believe that the ends in some ways justify the means, right? Correct. We have several examples of that.

The vigilante example that we brought up earlier, but numerous others. If you want to think about any basic revolution that has occurred, most people who drum up the courage to engage in overthrowing their government, for example, must have a very strong moral conviction about the justice of the cause. At a less dramatic level, Linda and others have found that moral convictions make it very difficult to find common ground.

If you have a visceral response to female circumcision or female genital mutilation, for example, can you imagine sitting across from someone who believes the practice is fine, would you want to sit close to such a person? Researchers know the answer to that question because they've actually measured how people behave in such situations. Yes, there's been several studies that have put people competing more on convictions in the same room. Most of these have actually used chair placement as an indication of preferred physical distance away from people who disagree with us. And so in one study that we did on this topic, we brought participants into the study and we told them that we were going to

randomly assign half of them to learn something about who they were about to meet and half of them would not. And in every case, the participants learned that the person that they were about to meet and half of them would not. And in every case, the participants learned that the person that they were about to meet was very strongly pro-choice on the issue of abortion. We then escorted them into another room where they were supposed to actually meet this person. And what they saw when they walked into that room was a backpack on a chair.

And the backpack had a little button on it that was pro-choice, but there was no actual other research participant. And the experimenter would go, oh my, where's the other participant? They must have wandered off to try to find the bathroom or something. You know this building, they'll never find their way back. And the building we were in, in fact, is built on a principle of rotating squares and it's very complicated, so it was a very plausible cover story.

The experimenter would encourage the volunteer to grab a seat from a row of chairs against the wall. Then, she stepped out of the room to ostensibly go find the other person. In reality, there was no one else. The point of the experiment was merely to see where volunteers would place their chairs. And what we found is that people placed their chairs closer to people if they happen to share the attitude on abortion and put the chair further away if they disagreed with them. And the distance away was much bigger than the distance close. In other words, people preferred more distance to those they morally disagre disagree with than they prefer being closer to people they morally agreed with. One of the things that I find very interesting is the research that shows that this this

distance that we experience in physical space also translates into social space in all kinds of ways. We really want to keep our distance not just physically but socially from people whose moral views conflict with our own. Talk a little bit about the range of different social spaces that people have looked at where we actually want to keep our distance from people with different moral convictions. There's a whole range of social relationships we don't want to have with people who morally disagree with us. We don't want them to teach our children. We don't want them to be teach our children. We don't want them to marry into our family. We don't want them to move into our neighborhoods. We don't want them to be the owner of a store we might frequent.

There are very few social roles, if any, that we want people who morally disagree with us to play in our lives. And why do you think that is? If one of my child's teachers has moral views that are different than mine, but the teacher is still a good teacher and my child likes the teacher and does well in class, what is it that I fear is going to happen by having that teacher teach my child? I think we're afraid that somehow this is going to rub off on the child, that they might be exposed to morally hateful views, whether that's true or not, we're worried about that carrying over. People disinselse from immoral things because they're worried that it might contaminate

them. That to even entertain having a conversation with someone who has a moral disagreement with you, for example, or who engages in immoral behavior, feels like you could catch it. And people are very resistant to getting contaminated with things that they consider to be immoral. Hmm. I want to pick up on this idea of contamination because it actually leads me to something else I was thinking about as I was reading your work. One of the things that happens in public debates that have to do with moral convictions is in fact this idea of contamination. So let's

say, for example, I disagree with you about something and I disagree with you so strongly that I feel like you're an immoral person for believing what you believe because I believe so strongly in what I believe. Now let's say that someone else person see, you know, endorses your work in some way or is affiliated with your work in some way or is associated with you in some way, there's some part of my disdain for you that now rubs off on them. In other words, there's a guilt by association that follows that if I actually think that you're a bad person, someone who associates with you

should also be a bad person. I mean, the extreme example of this is, if you think about the Nazis, would you like someone who was friends with the Nazi, who wasn't actually a Nazi himself, but was just friends with the Nazi, and the answer would quite obviously be no. There's a long line of research evidence that indicates exactly that, although this is

probably true of things that are both morally loaded and not morally loaded, that if you intensely dislike someone and that other person likes someone, people will intensely dislike that third person as well. This has been studied in a form of balance theory that people like to keep a psychological balance that bad things are bad things and good things are good things and things that associate with bad things are bad and things that associate with good things are good. So you know you can make compromises where you feel that others have different views of perspectives.

You say tomato, I say tomato, but compromise on moral convictions feels entirely different. It feels immoral to say I'm going to compromise on my moral principles. We really think that attitudes come in at least three different flavors. That some attitudes are experienced as preferences. That for example, I might really like chocolate, but you prefer vanilla. That's okay. We understand that some attitudes were in that domain and you know, whatever floats your boat, right? Or don't yuck on my yum.

And the whole host of attitudes fall into that kind of domain where we're very, very tolerant. Other kinds of attitudes we experience more as normative or convention. For example, the right way to drive in the United States is to drive on the right-hand side of the street, but we understand that that's a coordination role. This is just how everybody does it. It's perfectly fine if people in other countries like the UK or Australia drive on the left-hand side of the street. Aditys in this domain are what people in my group believe or use to coordinate our behavior.

Some religious belief is in this domain. For example, in some religious communities, certain foods are prohibited. It's okay if other religious groups don't prohibit those foods. We understand that that's a scot of narrow boundary on it. More all convictions, on the other hand, are things that we perceive as universally and objectively true on the transcend group boundaries. They're very intolerant and very close to compromise. In addition to having stronger ties with emotion, then attitudes that are experienced as

preferences or conventions. So when people have strong moral convictions, you and others have found that the strength of these convictions predict that they will find a very difficult to develop procedures to resolve differences. Talk about this work that you've done about the challenges that moral convictions pose when it comes to actually finding compromise with others.

We have done some really interesting research in this area. For example, in one study we brought four people into our lab to have conversations. And they were directed to have conversations not about how to determine the outcome of something or what the outcome should be. For example, whether capital punishment should be banned or allowed. Instead, they were supposed to come to consensus about the procedures we should use to decide whether capital punishment should be banned or allowed. And the groups that came in were either added to have strong moral convictions about the issue as well. So again, here's a setup. Volunteers with similar and different views on a subject were asked to come up with a set of procedures to arrive at a consensus.

The goal wasn't to arrive at a consensus, just to set up the rules to get there. What Linda and her colleagues wanted to know is whether having moral convictions helped or hindered people as they tried to figure out how to work with one another. The researchers found that when people merely disagreed coming up with ground rules for the conversation was easy, but when they had strong moral convictions, arriving at even the basic ground rules was difficult. It was very tense. Third-party judges viewed videotapes of these conversations and rated them as more tense and defensive. And they had much greater difficulty coming up with a compromise solution to decide the issue. Interestingly enough, if the groups were high on moral conviction and all had the same opinion,

they also had a problem coming up with a procedure to resolve the issue. The morally convicted groups just couldn't come up with a procedure that they were confident enough would achieve the right outcome. And so therefore couldn't come to consensus about what that procedure might be. When you look at polarization in politics today, how much of it would you attribute to the growing number of issues in which Americans have strong moral convictions?

A decent amount. Compromises become kind of a dirty word in politics. That constituencies think their members of Congress, for example, compromise that is a failure of leadership and character. So yes, I do think that people feeling moral convictions about many of the key issues of the day is leading to challenges in achieving policy solutions that everybody can live with. So there's a profound paradox here in the story, Linda, as a country, the United States was

founded on moral principles. You know, set aside for a moment whether the country has always lived up to those principles, but when you read the Declaration of Independence, we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. We are hearing moral conviction. It's self-evident, it needs no proof, it's categorical, it brooks no doubt. In other words, we are a country in some ways that's founded on moral conviction, but we're also a country in some ways that's foundering as a result of very strong moral convictions. How do you think about that, not just as a researcher but as a citizen in terms of your work,

how do you unpack that irony, Linda? I get asked this a great deal at the time, and that is our moral convictions good or bad things. I would have to say I don't think I want to live in a world without moral convictions, good or bad things. I would have to say, I don't think I want to live in a world without moral convictions, even if sometimes they lead to things that would seem to be pretty negative. Largely because without moral convictions, I don't think you would have any desire to ever change anything.

Or to fight for more just society. Or to fight for very much at all. And so if we ever hope to improve our lot, I think we need morally convicted others that are willing to become politically engaged, willing to volunteer, willing to fight for those causes in order to achieve anything better than what we currently have. How do you, how do you square the circle though? Because we've been discussing essentially this irony, which is, you know, I, I like you would not want to live in a world where people did not have

strong moral convictions. At the same time, I can see how, you know, when tens of millions of people have very strong moral convictions about dozens of issues, it can bring compromise to a halt and ultimately be self-defeating. Do you see your work sort of reflected in the world around you when you watch the news? Well, it's certainly in the news all the time right now because we are in a very polarized place in the United States and I think people are drawing lots of moral dividing lines. But on the other hand you also can see lots of people are really motivated to make the world better. The response recently to police violence for example, although complicated, nonetheless

has spurred people even in the context of the pandemic to shout for justice. It's interesting even given the cost of the pandemic it's very high to go out and make your voice heard at this moment. Many people know people nonetheless are. I can't talk to your parents. I can't talk to your grandparents. At some point you got to be the boy for the black people in your household and that's the start today. And with nine minutes, that officer, that is me on George Neck. You think they can. I mean I think what I find really interesting about your work is that looking at it from a psychological perspective allows us to get beyond the questions of, you know, our moral convictions good or our moral convictions bad, because in some ways, the same things that make them good are also potentially what make them bad, right?

In other words, the fact that people are willing to disregard the rules, disregard norms, fight against injustice, change systems, you know, potentially think that the end-justify the means are all the reasons that good things happen as a result of moral convictions. They're also a reason why bad things happen as a result of moral convictions. What's interesting is psychologically the things driving both these things sound like they might be the same phenomena. Exactly. They're sides of a double-edged sword. Blindly following authority in the rules isn't always a normatively good thing.

And if we over-conditioned people to be completely obedient, blindly obedient, destructive things can happen as well. So in those cases, we want people who have the moral conviction that can allow them to resist that kind of mellow and authority. On the other hand, it's hard to imagine a civil society functioning very long if we don't have some coordination roles and basic obedience to common norms of conduct. I mean, I'm wondering when you, when you look at your research and you look at the world, what happens if you have an election and at the end of the election, your side doesn't win and you believe your side really ought to win, not just that they ought to win because they were better politically but because they're better morally.

Do you think that might prompt me to support taking extra constitutional steps to keep power because my commitment is now to my cause? It's not really to the rules of my country. I think there's a risk of that. If there were enough people with that strong and moral conviction, but one hopes that maybe an overriding moral conviction is a belief in the fairness of our democratic processes and election procedures. And this is where I think arguing that our election procedures could be flawed is a particularly dangerous thing to do. We need basic commitment or belief in the idea that our electoral processes are higher

order, more good, that allows us to subsume our individual commitments to individual candidates. I, like many other people, are deeply interested in politics and have my own political points of view and certainly some of those rise to level moral conviction. However, I do think I can temper it by thinking them through in terms of what am I really committed to and I think an overriding moral commitment and I'm Psychologist Linda Skitka works at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Linda, thank you for joining me today on Hidden Brain. Thank you. We're willing to be beaten for democracy, and you must use democracy in the street.

It is wrong, deadly wrong, to deny any of your fellow Americans, the right to vote in this country. Let's go ahead! Go home! Roar me way! Let's go ahead! Go home! Roar me way!

Look, slide! Show me what the vaccine looks like! This is what the vaccine looks like! Show me what it looks like! Well, we're going to out-organize, outlast, and out-hype all the other corners. We are seeing those huge lines. A lot of people want to get out and vote early.

I mean, we're not even going to try to walk through this crowd anymore. Like we were earlier this morning. You could see they are now piling in as the lines just opened up. I feel very strongly about this election. And I could now wait to cast my vote another minute. Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Midrall Media is our exclusive advertising sales partner. Our audio production team includes Brigitte McCarthy, Laura Correll, Autumn Barnes and Andrew Chadwick.

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and here's a hint. It's not the one we're always talking about. What people were concerned about is essentially politics coming up in their day-to-day lives. They actually were not as concerned about the opposing partisanship component of it. See you next week.