Why do we study the psychology of libertarians?
We recently submitted a paper for publication about libertarian morality, along with co-authors Spassena Koleva, Jesse Graham, Pete Ditto, and Jonathan Haidt. The paper leverages our broad set of measures to tell a story about libertarians, which converges with previously reported findings about liberals and conservatives. Specifically, all ideological groups demonstrate the same patterns whereby preferences, emotions and dispositions lead to an attraction to corresponding values and ideological narratives. For example, liberals have greater feelings of empathy and are therefore more likely to moralize harm and be attracted to an ideology which prioritizes this moralization. Libertarians moralize liberty, both economic liberty, similar to conservatives, and lifestyle liberty, similar to liberals.
Libertarians believe in the importance of individual liberty, a belief that may be related to lower levels of agreeableness and higher scores on a measure of psychological reactance (e.g. “regulations trigger a sense of resistance in me”). They moralize concerns about harm less than liberals, in part because they have lower levels of empathy . They moralize principles concerning being a group member (obeying authority and being loyal) less than conservatives in part because they have less attachment to the groups around them.
If you want to read more about what the paper, says, you can click here or download the paper here, but right now, I’d like to focus on why we wrote the paper, as I have previously written about how people are attracted to why you write things as much as what you write.
Of course, some part of paper writing is driven by curiosity and the practical desire to publish. But in writing this paper, I have undergone my own personal intellectual journey, and I’m hopeful that others may have a similar experience. A lot of my impression of libertarianism was previously shaped by images of the Tea Party (who aren’t necessarily libertarians after all) and I thought of libertarians as uncaring, from my liberal perspective, in that they typically don't support progressive taxes and social programs. The original title of the paper was “the Search for Libertarian Morality”, implying that libertarians are potentially amoral, and in retrospect showing my own ideological bias.
But as I read more about libertarian philosophy and looked more carefully at the data, I found that libertarians do indeed have a coherent moral code, that simply differs from my own. Like my liberal leanings, which have some relation to my dispositions and preferences, libertarians also moralize their preferences and dispositions, in ways that mirror my own processes. For example, liberals and libertarians both score high on desire for new experiences and stimulation, which may be a common reason why both groups tend to emphasize individual choice over group solidarity, compared to conservatives, as cohesive groups can limit choice. Libertarians may be less moved by emotions such as disgust and empathy, which may lead them to moralize certain situations less than others. But who am I to say that my moral compass is any better or worse than theirs, given my view that at some level, the basis for my liberal moral compass is driven by subjective sentiment. I previously wrote about the dangers of liberal moral absolutism, and villainizing libertarians for not sharing my particular vision of morality would be a step down that road.
Why do we seek to publicize this paper? In a time when partisanship dominates, policy suffers, and people on both sides of the aisle villainize the other side, it is our hope that with greater understanding comes greater acceptance. We may not all agree about the relative merits of empathy, disgust, or reactance as moral emotions…but we all have some level of all of these emotions and can respect principles born out of these. Even liberals can find things so disgusting that they are seen as wrong, and conservatives actually give a lot of money to the poor. In attributing moral disagreements to dispositions, largely out of our control, perhaps we can learn to see others as different and attracted to other positive moral principles, rather than amoral and oblivious to the moral principles that are important to us.
- Ravi Iyer
Is belief in the Protestant Work Ethic related to attitudes toward rich and poor?
Recently, a call went out to people who study social psychology to examine the relationships between belief in the protestant work ethic (e.g. "I feel uneasy when there is little work for me to do.") and measures of prejudice or political attitudes regarding poverty or HIV/AIDS. Researchers from Stony Brook University wanted to aggregate the results from datasets around the world. Since we do have endorsement of the protestant work ethic in our yourmorals.org dataset, I wanted to contribute to their effort and below are some correlations with potentially interesting constructs. Hopefully this will help those researchers.
Correlation of Protestant Work Ethic with....
Attitudes Toward Homosexuals (r=-.36, N=303, p<.001)
Attitudes Toward Muslims (r=-.11, N=305, p<.05)
Attitudes Toward Poor People (r=-.193, N=306, p=.001)
Social Dominance Orientation ("Inferior groups should stay in their place", r=.336, N=331, p<.001)
I'm not sure if these are exactly the types or relationships that the researchers are interested in, but they seem related. The relationships seem pretty clear...that the protestant work ethic is related to negative attitudes toward outgroups (muslims, homosexuals, "inferior groups" and poor people). However, the relationship between conservativism and the protestant work ethic is large enough (r=.416, N=1009, p<.001), that it's possible that the only reason these variables are related is because they are all correlated with conservativism.
Sure enough, if we control for political orientation, the relationships become statistically insignificant for attitudes toward homosexuals (beta=-.085, N=229, p=.143) and Muslims (p=.459). Attitudes toward poor people (beta = -.159, N=231, p<.05) and social dominance orientation (beta = .138, N=262, p<.05) remain significantly related to belief in the protestant work ethic, even controlling for ideology.
The below diagram shows this in graph form, where attitudes toward poor people are negatively related to endorsement of the protestant work ethic amongst both liberals and conservatives.
...and people who endorse the protestant work ethic also like rich people (see below).
At some level, this relationship is fairly obvious, but as a liberal, it's something worth internalizing, since liberals sometimes make negative attributions about conservative attitudes toward the poor (despite the fact that conservative churches often do great humanitarian work). Specifically, conservatives may not dislike poor people mindlessly. Rather, their opinions about rich and poor people may be related to worthy moral concerns, specifically a belief in the importance of hard work, and they may feel that wealth is indicative of hard work. Results are consistent with work by Skitka and Tetlock, showing that conservatives are strongly influenced by the responsibility shown by those who want assistance.
How can liberals use this knowledge? Perhaps rather than playing the race/fairness angle, if liberals can show that most Hispanic immigrants are actually very hard working (e.g. see Ted Conover's book, Coyotes - they do jobs which most of us would never do) much conservative antipathy towards various groups might dissipate. Indeed, while much of the media makes it seem that Americans support efforts by people in Arizona to expel illegal immigrants, there are also findings like this CNN poll:
Eighty-one percent of people questioned in the poll say they support creating a program that would allow illegal immigrants already living in the U.S. for a number of years to stay here and apply to legally remain in this country permanently if they had a job and paid back taxes, with 19 percent opposed to such a plan.
- Ravi Iyer
The Present Hedonism Time Perspective of Motley Crue Members, Liberals, and Libertarians
I recently read the story of Motley Crue's wild ride in the 80s-90s, most of which blends together into a mess of outrageous behavior, impulsiveness, and hedonism. They drank a lot, did a lot of drugs, and had a lot of sex. I was fascinated by it (enough to keep reading), but also disgusted as well. In the course of the book, they assaulted innocent commuters, killed someone by drunk driving, vandalized hotel rooms, and otherwise demonstrated no respect for anyone other than themselves.
It was hard to be sympathetic, but the closest I can come is to think of them as having a radically different time perspective than most people. As Zimbardo says in the below video, addiction is related to a present hedonistic time perspective, and the members of Motley Crue certainly reaped what they sowed in terms of addiction.
The natural question that occurred to me was to determine the time perspective differences among liberals, conservatives, and libertarians. Unfortunately, I don't have specific time perspective data, but I do have scores on the Hedonism dimension (e.g. how important is "Enjoying Life"?) of the Schwartz Values Scale in the chart below, which equates to Zimbardo's Present-Hedonistic perspective.
Unsurprisingly, liberals and libertarians score the highest on hedonism scores. Obviously, Motley Crue went overboard, but I don't think hedonism is necessarily good or bad. Zimbardo's work doesn't say that any particular time perspective is superior, but rather that individuals should attempt to find a balanced time perspective.
In the same way, I would argue that the country needs a balanced time perspective, balancing respect for the past, enjoying the present, and considering the future. Conservatives policies might leave us constantly growing our economy and military, so that we can ensure our future security, but perhaps at the expense of the current welfare of many, especially those individuals who are less productive or less fortunate. Liberal policies might ensure that all individuals have basic needs met and that society cares about the happiness of it's citizens, but at the cost of preparing for the future. A balance of these concerns seems most prudent and perhaps appreciating the benefits of different time perspectives, as Zimbardo states at the end of his video, will allow us to make fewer negative attributions of those on the other side of the aisle....and maybe even of people as hedonistic as the members of Motley Crue.
- Ravi Iyer
The Psychology of the JournoList “Scandal”: Mirror Image Stereotypes
As a regular reader of political blogs, I could not help but notice that a number of my favorite sites were writing about the same thing, specifically, their participation in a discussion group called JournoList, which included numerous media members such as Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight and Politico writer Ben Smith, both of whom I read with some regularity. These posts were prompted by the publication of numerous emails from this largely liberal group by a conservative blog, the Daily Caller, which recently ran this story (one of many on this topic):
On Journolist, there was rarely such thing as an honorable political disagreement between the left and right, though there were many disagreements on the left. In the view of many who’ve posted to the list-serv, conservatives aren’t simply wrong, they are evil. And while journalists are trained never to presume motive, Journolist members tend to assume that the other side is acting out of the darkest and most dishonorable motives.
Reading other people's private emails evokes an embodied moral reaction in me. Maybe it's motivated reasoning as a liberal myself, but I would hope that I'd find it similarly distasteful for a business to make money by posting the private emails of conservatives. Still, I think that the above paragraph is likely correct for some (not all) members of the list, along the lines of this wonderful post by Peter Ditto of UC-Irvine, concerning the ways that liberals and conservatives mirror each other in their negative attributions. In it, he notes that a "mirror image pattern, two opposing sides in an ideological struggle having virtually identical stereotypes of each other, is a common characteristic in intergroup relations." The idea is that when you find these mirror image perceptions, they are often more a function of partisanship and group conflict than reality.
It's not hard to find quotes from conservatives that mirror the above observation of journolist members. Consider this article entitled "Why does Obama hate America so badly?" My guess is that Democrats don't hate the economy and Republicans don't hate poor people, yet these mirror image negative attributions of malicious intent exist.
Here is the same story in graph form, using our yourmorals.org data, where liberals and conservatives rate both republicans and democrats on "warmth"...
and on "competence"....
Hardly surprising, but liberals think Republicans are cold and incompetent, while conservatives think Democrats are cold and incompetent. (strangely, we generally think that we ourselves are both more warm and more competent than the average member of either party..:))
I'm sure that cherry picking any person's email archive would lead to embarrassing material, but I would agree with Andrew Sullivan's take on JournoList:
The far right is right on this: this collusion is corruption. It is no less corrupt than the comically propagandistic Fox News and the lock-step orthodoxy on the partisan right in journalism - but it is nonetheless corrupt.......
.....I'm glad Journo-list is over. It should never have been begun. I know many of its members are good and decent and fair-minded writers. But socialized groupthink is not the answer to what's wrong with the media. It's what's already wrong with the media.
These mirror image negative perceptions are an inevitable part of intergroup conflict, so rather than morally judging the individuals involved for behavior that is likely quite common, I prefer to take this as a cautionary tale for all who want better policy. On both sides of the aisle, we should be seeking to recognize and reduce these biases, not amplify them through ideologically homogeneous discussions, such as what appeared to occur on JournoList.
- Ravi Iyer
Intrinsic, not Extrinsic Motivation Leads to Greater Reward – 2 Theories
Presented in the context of bringing together consilience from outside of psychology, a friend of mine sent me the below TED video, by Simon Sinek, which I believe has a lot in common with what much of psychology is discovering, specifically that intrinsic gut-level motivations are much more powerful than extrinsic rational motivations. In some ways, much of moral psychology is just using the scientific method to argue what Hume knew all along, that "reason is a slave of the passions"....and passion results from intrinsic, not extrinsic motivation.
Besides dovetailing with my research, I think there is a practical value to be taken from this video. I often find myself concentrating on what I am doing, sometimes forgetting why I do things. In a world where we all have too many paths to choose from, we sometimes choose the path that has the most urgency (extrinsic motivation) rather than the path that is the most meaningful (intrinsic motivation). In business, that might mean doing whatever generates a profit now, rather than what satisfies the business' core mission. In academia, that may mean writing a paper for publication sake (extrinsic reasons) rather than exploring ideas that may not just get published, but also may serve some larger purpose. If you are inclined to explore these theories/ideas further, I might read more about self-determination theory, which talks about how intrinsic, rather than extrinsic motivation, leads to better human functioning, in addition to the benefits described in the above talk.
- Ravi Iyer
Appreciating American Libertarians – Insight from Ted Conover’s Book, Rolling Nowhere
I just finished Ted Conover's book, Rolling Nowhere, which I definitely recommend to anyone interested in understanding the human condition. In fact, I'd recommend any/all of Conover's books, where he assumes roles as diverse as a prison guard, illegal immigrant, and in this book, a train jumping hobo. Personally, psychology is always more convincing when placed in a larger context, with conclusions reached from different angles (consilience) and I think there is as much to learn about the human condition from one of Conover's books as in an issue of a psychological journal. In Rolling Nowhere, Conover hops trains for a few months and joins a subculture of 'tramps' that live a wandering, lonely lifestyle on the margins of society.
This may be an odd thing to say, but as a liberal, Rolling Nowhere helped me to appreciate American libertarians better. There are surely lots of differences between liberals and libertarians, but there are similarities as well. The book helped me contextualize the relationships we've found between being libertarian, which implies a sacredness placed on the value of freedom, psychological reactance, and the desire for stimulation. These are traits where liberals tend to score higher than conservatives as well.
The below graphs, taken from our yourmorals.org data, show these characteristics, using the Schwartz Values Scale, comparing liberals, libertarians, and conservatives. Notice that while self-direction is valued highly in all groups, it is highest in libertarians, and the difference between self-direction and the next highest value, is greatest for libertarians. Liberals score higher in self-direction than conservatives.
In the above graph, libertarians also show a relatively high desire for stimulation (equal to liberals, higher than conservatives) and a relatively low value placed on tradition and conformity. This is consistent with the idea that libertarians are experience seekers, an idea further confirmed by the below graph of libertarian big five personality dimensions, where libertarians score relatively high (similar to liberals) on openness to experience.
Conover writes a fair amount about the motivation that made him (who seems to lean liberal) seek to experience life as a tramp:
I hit the rails to learn and because, as Lonny said, when you become afraid to die, you become afraid to live. Confronted by the prospect of entering a laid-out and set-up life largely devoid of the need to be resourceful, I had desired an activity with an unpredictable outcome. Risk-taking, in a way, seemed its own reward.
Notice how in the above graph, libertarians score relatively low in agreeableness (e.g. "likes to cooperate with others"). That converges with the below measure of psychological reactance (e.g. "I become angry when my freedom of choice is restricted").
As Conover writes -
To understand tramps...you have to understand the idea that people cannot always do what they are told. Maybe you are told to get a job, but there aren't any; maybe you return from a crazy war and are told to carry on as though nothing ever happened...Many tramps' careers on the road began when the tramp told society, "You can't fire me-- I quit!"
There may indeed be a lot of overlap between the tea party movement and traditional republicans. But that doesn't mean that there isn't something that liberals can't identify with in the American libertarian. Both groups share a desire to escape established structure (liberals score higher than conservatives on reactance) and seek new experiences (high openness to experience scores), and I bet Rolling Nowhere, with it's portrait of individuals who have escaped life's routines, living by their own resourcefulness, is the kind of book that would appeal to many members of both groups.
- Ravi Iyer
Psychological Causes of Violence in Sports Riots
Recently, the Los Angeles Lakers won game 7 against the Boston Celtics and there were riots in the streets of los angeles. Below is a video of some of the scene.
This scene is not unique to Los Angeles. In fact, riots appear to occur with regularity when sports teams win. There were riots in Boston when the Celtics won in 2008 and riots in Los Angeles when the Lakers won in 2009 too. This seems to counter the common sense idea that people should be happy when they win, such that they are more generous with others. Happy people tend to be generous people (though the causal relationship might run in the reverse direction), not rioters. Shouldn't the people in the losing cities be the ones who rampage out of frustration? Yet there is an astonishing correlation between rioting and winning in the Lakers-Celtics series and in sports rioting more generally.
A colleague of mine dug up this study (Bernhardt et al, 1998) to explain it to me and I think it's worth sharing. It's been replicated by others as well. Unfortunately, the article itself is protected by the wall of the academic journal system, but the basic pattern of results is illustrated below.
Fans of Winners Experience Testosterone Increases
Basically, fans of the winning team gain testosterone, which has been linked to aggressive behavior. Fans of losing teams lose testosterone, which makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. Winners are encouraged to compete more...losers cut their losses.
Does this same effect extend to politics? My gut tells me no, as politics is less primal and the results develop over months, not hours. In fact, most of the time, we know who will win before an election and so what the winners feel is relief (an idea somewhat validated by this study). This article (fully visible by the public, since it was commendably published in an open access journal) illustrates that for some individuals, there was indeed no testosterone increase among winners, but the same decrease among losers, in the 2008 presidential election.
Another interesting resource, for those interested in the consilience of multiple views on the subject, is Bill Buford's book, Among the Thugs, where he lives among chronic sports rioters, fans of English football. His explanation dovetails nicely with Bernhardt et al's research (quote thanks to this source):
I had not expected the violence to be so pleasureable....This is, if you like, the answer to the hundred-dollar question: why do young males riot every Saturday? They do it for the same reason that another generation drank too much, or smoked dope, or took hallucinogenic drugs, or behaved badly or rebelliously. Violence is their antisocial kick, their mind-altering experience, an adrenaline-induced euphoria that might be all the more powerful because it is generated by the body itself, with, I was convinced, many of the same addictive qualities that characterize synthetically produced drugs.
For more information, here is another parallel view and a link to a more general overview of the causes of violence in sports riots (unfortunately, again, full text inaccessible without a university login...hrm!...I hope someday to be in a position to publish only in open access journals).
- Ravi Iyer
On the Morality of Torture & Utilitarianism
I personally do not believe in torture, but I have to admit that when I think of it, my mind prototypically thinks of the potential harm that might befall an innocent person caught by an unscrupulous policeman who is all too sure of his moral superiority. What would I do if I knew with 100% certainty that torture of a known murderer/rapist would save countless lives, including the lives of many people I knew and loved?
Is support for torture restricted to the evil among us (e.g. liberals who think that Dick Cheney = Darth Vader)? When individuals say that they are torturing an evil few in order to save many innocents (an argument based in Utilitarianism), are they lying about their noble goals? A recent paper in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology suggests that individuals may not be honest about their utilitarian motives. From the abstract:
The use of harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects is typically justified on utilitarian grounds. The present research suggests, however, that those who support such techniques are fuelled by retributive motives.
This is a very well done experimental study, which illustrates an important point about other potential motives for torture, specifically a desire for retribution or vengeance. However, it may be nitpicking or splitting hairs, but I might instead have written "those who support such techniques may also be fuelled by retributive motives." Indeed, in the study itself, there is an increase in support for severe interrogation techniques when there is a greater likelihood that the suspect is withholding information that may save lives, especially among Republicans, the group most likely to be "those who support such techniques." The fact that retributive motives exist, does not necessarily mean that utilitarian motives do not. One could probably design a study that shows the opposite, where utilitarian motives dominate, given the total control one has in a lab environment.
Our yourmorals.org data suggests that utilitarian motives are indeed important in predicting attitudes toward torture. There are a number of measures that tap utilitarian thinking, but the most convincing to me are the classic moral dilemmas that ask people if they are willing to take some action (e.g. flipping a switch) to save 5 innocent people at the cost of 1 innocent life. They are convincing because they are generally free of any political content or judgment about the worth or guilt of individuals. Below is a graph relating responses to these dilemmas to attitudes toward torture. Higher scores on the Y axis indicate more willingness to sacrifice 1 life for 5. Higher scores on the X axis indicate willingness to support torture in more situations.
Torture and Utilitarian Moral Judgments are positively correlated
There is a fairly robust positive correlation between utilitarian judgments on these dilemmas and support for torture (the dip on the far right for liberals is likely due to there being such a small number of liberals who think torture is often justified).
If I look at other utilitarian measures such as moral idealism (using the Ethics Position Questionnaire - e.g. "The existence of potential harm to others is always wrong, irrespective of the benefits to be gained.", r=-.35) or moral maximizing (using an adapted version of Schwartz's maximizing-satisficing scale - e.g. "In choosing a moral action, one should never settle for a morallyimperfect action.", r=-.15), you find the same relationship. Controlling for political affiliation and beliefs about punishment and disposition toward vengeance, one still finds significant relationships between utilitarianism and support for torture.
My take home. Part of promoting civil politics is to take people at their word for their motives, rather than questioning them. There may indeed be some vengeful motive behind torture...but there are utilitarian motives as well and those of us who dislike torture might actually get further confronting torture on utilitarian grounds rather than attempting to question the motives of those who believe in torture.
- Ravi Iyer
On Hyperpartisanship, Hypermoralism, and the Supernormal Stimuli of Modern Politics
Today's lead story from Politico, The Age of Rage, probably summarizes a lot of what people think is wrong with politics. Rather than make good policy, politicians and media are more concerned with scoring points for their political ideology (hyperpartisanship). However, as the Politico article points out, their actions are largely driven by the general populace. Politicians and media reflect what people respond to, which happens to be hyperpartisanship, rather than causing the incivility we see.
We reward politicians and news organizations, with our attention and our money, that engage in the very incivility that makes politics so ugly. This is true on both sides of the aisle.
At the recent meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology, Linda Skitka gave a talk which puts a lot of this in perspective for me. Her lab studies the dark side of moral conviction, which I call hypermoralism in the hope that the term catches on. Roy Baumeister studies a similar concept, idealistic evil. In Skitka's talk, she demonstrates in a Chinese sample that political intolerance (e.g. "people with different positions than your own about this issue should be allowed to have their phones tapped by the Chinese government") and social intolerance (e.g. "How willing would you be to have someone who did not share your views on this issue as a close personal friend?") were best predicted by moral conviction (e.g. "To what extent are your feelings about this issue or policy based on your fundamental beliefs about right and wrong?"). When controlling for moral conviction, all other variables (e.g. demographics, political position, attitude importance, and attitude strength) were all insignificant predictors of social and political intolerance. I look forward to seeing how this replicates on a US sample and how political intolerance is operationalized. Perhaps something along the lines of liberal consideration of censoring Fox news or conservative publication of what many would consider private discussion would make good operationalizations of political intolerance as they mirror what we see in reality, where considerations of privacy, context, and free speech are considered secondary to partisanship. Moral conviction may underlie the hyperpartisanship that Politico talks about.
Hyperpartisanship and hypermoralism may be another instance of the effects of what evolutionary psychologist Deirdre Barrett calls "Supernormal Stimuli". As the Wall Street Journal writes about her book:
In the case of hyperpartisanship and hypermoralism, our evolved moral senses, which allow human beings to cooperate, are now subject to the stimulus which is the 24 hour news cycle and the non-stop political campaign. Moral emotions are powerful forces, which are now activated routinely, rather than rarely.
If anybody has ideas on how to escape this cycle, I would love to hear them. Humanizing and getting to know the opposition, along the lines of intergroup contact theory, is an idea. Perhaps moral emotions can be activated against hyperpartisanship itself, rather than against individual ideologies. Or maybe with greater understanding, we can all learn to recognize supernormal moral stimuli and give them less power in our lives. Ideas welcome and I'm open to operationalizing particularly promising ideas as studies to be run on yourmorals.org.
- Ravi Iyer