It wasn't until later in the summer, after many more hours spent reading campaign news that never seemed to change, that I decided not to write that column. Another liberal column in an Ivy League daily would have done little to change anyone's mind. In this media-blanketed year, we're instantly able to judge an article as liberal or conservative. If we have strong leanings in either direction, we'll agree or disagree with the writer before even finishing the piece. Under these circumstances, my planned column would have at best sparked a debate on the online comment board and at worst been read by only a few like-minded students.
Recent research suggests that the origins of these impulsive for-or-against reactions may lie deep within the moral consciousness. University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt studies the different moral reasoning behind liberal and conservative thought, as well as the psychological reasons why people lean one way or the other. In a recent article, "What Makes People Vote Republican?," Haidt lists five foundations to sum up practical morality. Both liberals and conservatives value the first two foundations: fairness and prevention of harm. Only conservatives, however, value the other three to a comparable extent: loyalty to one's group, respect for authority and respect for purity. Liberals do not believe that prescriptive moral guidelines should follow from the latter three foundations.
So liberals and conservatives don't just disagree about individual political arguments: They disagree about what the scope of legislated morality should be in the first place. Under Haidt's theory, liberals think that legislation should only cover issues of fairness and prevention of harm. Conservatives think that legislation should also cover moral issues arising from the other three foundations.
Haidt uses the debate over flag burning as an example. To a conservative, burning a flag might violate the sentiment of loyalty to one's nation and should therefore be illegal. But a liberal might just see a piece of cloth being burned, determine that no person is being violated and deem it morally permissible. The conservative would see the liberal as disrespectful, while the liberal might see his counterpart's protection of a symbol as irrational.
As the blogosphere grows and the cable TV networks multiply, individuals increasingly have access to news sources that fit their political and social niches. We can avoid interaction with reporting that doesn't lean in the same direction as we do. Naturally, this is terrible for fostering mutual understanding between individuals with contrasting political views. It becomes easier to forget that there are people whose moral foundations are different from ours. Blogs are especially effective at demonizing the Others, portraying them as morally contemptible or socially backwards.
Research by Shanto Iyengar of Stanford University and Richard Morin of The Washington Post hints at just how entrenched our preference for certain news sources has become. The pair found that not only do individuals prefer political coverage from news sources with similar leanings to their own - for example, conservatives prefer Sean Hannity while liberals prefer Keith Olbermann - individuals also prefer getting their nonpolical news, like travel updates and sports scores, from the sources that agree with them politically. Evidently, viewers can't even trust unfamiliar news sources to provide purely factual information.
This deep-seated mistrust may be a consequence of a lack of mutual understanding. To foster bipartisan respect, those with strong political leanings should make an effort to understand the reasoning behind the other side's beliefs. I don't mean that liberals should pretend for an hour that they support the war in Iraq and that conservatives should try out being pro-choice. I mean that each side should begin with the others' fundamental moral principles and see how their conclusions follow. It also helps to read a variety of news sources from their point of view every now and then, to try thinking along their lines.
Understanding the other side's logic won't make fundamental differences disappear, but in my experience it leads to increased respect and trust. This campaign, and the past week especially, has been saturated with calls for bipartisanship. Perhaps through a mutual effort to think like someone on the other side, it would actually come about.
Michael Medeiros is an astrophysics major from Bethesda, Md. He can be reached at mmedeiro@princeton.edu.
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