In the wake of 2020's contentious U.S. elections, people on both sides of the aisle are asking themselves, "how could that have happened?" We wonder how our fellow Americans could see things so differently, and many people have expressed feelings of hurt or betrayal about those disagreements. In the worst examples, people demonize their fellow Americans, claim the other side is winning through dishonest means, or toss around labels like "racist" or "communist" that create more animosity than clarity. (It's always more productive to talk about someone's behavior and its impact than about their character). It's interesting that both sides arrived at November 3rd expecting a landslide victory, and both sides were denied the satisfaction. In that way the 2020 election shows what we really are: a people deeply divided, who have a hard time even listening to each other's perspectives, who much too often want it to be "my way or the highway" even though we disagree about the directions. As President-elect Biden reminded us while his victory was still in doubt, "democracy is sometimes messy." Another longtime senator, John McCain, said the same in his last great speech: "our arcane rules and customs are deliberately intended to require broad cooperation." So why is compromise so hard in contemporary politics?
Kahneman (2011) argues that extreme thinking comes from over-reliance on the Intuitive mind and failure to engage the Narrative system. This idea underpins much of modern society, including cognitive-behavioral therapy ("let's think rationally about this"), medical decision-making ("here are your treatment options, with the risks and benefits of each"), and public health efforts ("these are the benefits of wearing masks in a pandemic"). Accordingly, both sides in contemporary political debate often assume that their opponents simply need to hear a more compelling argument, and that if argument fails their opponents must be unreasonable people who should be bludgeoned into submission. But an interesting idea from Plato and Aristotle is that both our positive and our negative impulses come from inside the Intuitive system. Plato used the metaphor of "two horses" in the mind, one that pulls toward worldly things and the other that tends toward divine ones; both horses are driven by emotion, with reason or the soul as a third force, the charioteer, that regulates the horses to keep them moving in the same direction. Plato's two-horses metaphor makes the contest not one between reason and unreason, but one between two different and equally emotion-based viewpoints.
I have written previously about psychologist Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. I heard Dr. Haidt give a keynote address at an American Psychological Association conference in August 2016, when he asked a cavernous room full of professionals how many of us planned to vote for Donald Trump as President. The audience of liberal, educated, relatively well-off professional psychologists gave a nervous chuckle. Donald Trump? Was he kidding? It can be hard to remember now, but at that point Trump was still regarded as something of a joke candidate in the national media. In August of 2016, we in the audience couldn't believe that any psychologist fit to address our assembly would be seriously asking this question. At last, nine people stood up from an audience of over 1,000. Dr. Haidt praised them for their honesty and in fact their bravery in going against the popular tide. He also predicted (in a way that proved prescient) that national polls were being skewed the same way, with a group of silent Trump supporters who were likely to vote for the man but wouldn't say so to anyone they didn't trust. In fact, he said, there were probably more Trump voters there with us in the room. It's likely that he was correct.
The problem with our society of psychologists, Haidt said, is that we are WEIRD -- Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic. We come mainly from urban rather than rural areas, we mostly have doctoral degrees, we have plenty of money compared to the rest of the world, and we believe strongly in enlightenment ideals -- liberte, fraternite, egalite as the French say it, or in the classically liberal words of the Pledge of Allegiance, "with liberty and justice for all." Those of us on the political Left, said Haidt, were much more likely to make moral decisions based on only three major themes: Care for those less fortunate than ourselves, and liberty or freedom from oppression, with a modest dose of fairness thrown in to punish those who would cheat the system (unless what they "really" need is re-education and support). An ethics of caring is seen in typically liberal positions like support for universal health care or environmental regulations, and an ethics of freedom is seen in liberal support for the rights of people to live as they prefer regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. Dr. Haidt was right about us psychologists and our values. As the 2016 election results demonstrated, he also was right about our in-group blindness.
Much of America and most of the world, said Dr. Haidt, does not think in this WEIRD way. Instead, people rely on six moral foundations -- in addition to those named above, they include loyalty to one's group, respect for authority, and a sense of sanctity or holiness that should be protected from people's baser impulses. Some aspects of contemporary American conservatism flow more strongly from these moral foundations. The idea of sanctity comes through in debates about abortion or policies related to gender and sexual orientation; conservative positions rely on "gut feelings" that can't be addressed only through a rational appeal to liberty. In-group loyalty is evident in the Trump administration's "America First" policies and even (if the in-group is seen specifically as White Americans) in recent policies to prevent immigration or certain forms of diversity training. And respect for authority is seen in the typically conservative veneration of America's founding documents like the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Ironically, the actual content of these documents comes out of the European liberal tradition of the Enlightenment; yet the founding fathers also placed great value in group loyalty (a united front against the British), legitimate authority (government by consent of the governed), and sanctity (seen in the idea of "God-given rights," and a view in which equality comes from the idea that all people -- or at least all Christians -- were created in the image of God). Conservatives as a group are also more likely to articulate an ethics of fairness, in which people should get what they have earned, and are more willing to prioritize fairness over an ethics of caring in which society makes sure that everyone is cared for regardless of their personal choices. Another interesting perspective on political thinking comes from Terror Management Theory, in which the fear of death drives people to invest emotionally in systems or groups that are bigger than themselves. In this view, the well-documented phenomenon of people becoming more conservative as they age is because their awareness of death becomes greater over time. This awareness in turn drives them to be more engaged with conservative values like group affiliation, authority, and sanctity. In 2020, increased feelings of mortality due to the COVID-19 pandemic might have keyed up similar feelings that drove people toward conservatism if Terror Management Theory is correct.
Libertarians are an idiosyncratic group in Haidt's view -- they don't care about anything except an ethics of freedom, so concepts like sanctity and authority matter much less to them. In some ways this makes them the perfect heirs of the Enlightenment liberalism that animated America's founding fathers. (Jefferson, for example, had so little respect for authority or sanctity that he took a razor to his Bible and cut out all the passages that he couldn't rationally believe). But on the other hand they care so much about freedom that the ethics of caring doesn't matter much to them either. This makes them more likely to align politically with conservatives, even though their value system really isn't the same. Libertarian impulses are seen in many Republican administrations' tendencies toward de-regulation of business, lower taxes, and looser policies on gun ownership. Conservatives historically have favored more regulation of private moral behaviors, but in recent years Republicans' policy on those matters has been more likely to skew libertarian even if their rhetoric has not. America's founding fathers similarly made trade-offs between value systems in their support for human slavery, which helped them to maintain in-group cohesion against the British even though it violated their stated beliefs in liberty and the sanctity of all human beings.
If we can't resolve our fundamental differences through reason, and our stated positions actually come out of different emotionally laden value systems, how can we move forward as a country? Plato saw at least one of the horses as pulling in the correct direction, even if we disagree about which of the horses that is. Aristotle, similarly, said that people have an intuitive feeling about right and wrong actions, something that is innate (Intuitive system) and is only later confirmed by reason (Narrative system) as people learn the general principles derived from those first feelings about what makes something right or wrong. The Intuitive system, then, has both positive and negative impulses and considering different value systems might help us to make better decisions. To move forward, we need to specifically tap into the positive tendencies on each side.
If we assume Democratic control in Washington DC (still a possibility depending on the outcome of two special Senate elections in Georgia), it will still be control by a slim margin and there will need to be compromises. President Biden as a lifelong Catholic may be in a good position to reach out to conservative Christians based on shared values such as sanctity/holiness and respect for authority. Much of his popular support was driven by a promise to restore traditional norms for the Presidency that were broken during the Trump administration, which also will demonstrate respect for authority and can be done largely by example. And group loyalty is evident in his acceptance speech declaring that "we are all Americans," as well as his long-time Senate friendship with Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who reportedly once refused to negotiate with anyone in the Obama White House except Joe Biden.
If we on the other hand assume divided government due to continued Republican control of the Senate and a slim Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, a different set of value combinations will come into play. Republicans will need to give increased consideration to Democrats' ethics of caring, for instance in considering expansions of health care, environmental protections, or social safety nets. And they will need to consider Democratic voters' demands for greater liberty -- a value that is often lauded by conservatives but is not experienced by all members of society, as seen in the Black Lives Matter movement's adoption of George Floyd's last words as a slogan: "I can't breathe." The worst-case scenario would be for Republicans to do nothing but obstruct the Biden administration, an unfortunate tendency in recent years. But we might be at a point where our societal problems can't wait another four years, in which case compromises will be necessary.
Compromises don't make anyone truly happy. People who demanded drastic change in this election cycle are likely to be disappointed, as are those who wanted even more of the same. But compromise is the best way to ensure that everyone's values are respected, and that the greatest number of people will be happy with the result. It's also, as Biden and McCain each suggested, the tradition that has made America successful so far. And it seems to be true, as in one of Barack Obama's favorite quotes, that "the arc of history is long but it bends toward justice." Here's hoping that we keep moving down that road together.
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