Why the Left Can't Mentally Model the Right

In this episode, we delve into research papers exploring how political ideologies affect empathy and understanding between left-leaning and right-leaning individuals. We discuss the fascinating phenomenon where conservatives seem to display more empathy towards liberals than vice versa. Studies like 'Empathetic Conservatives and Moralizing Liberals' provide insights into this asymmetry. We also touch on dehumanization, cultural narratives, and real-world examples from gaming communities. Join us for an eye-opening discussion on political empathy and cultural dynamics.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today is going to be an episode where we're gonna go over a few research papers that explore lefty and righty brains. Again, really interestingly, but with a focus on a persistent phenomenon that has been found, which is that people on the right politically.

Have a much easier time modeling how people on the left think than people on the left able to model people on the right.

Simone Collins: That is so strange. That is so strange. Yeah. The people I grew up thinking as someone on the left, that we were the empathetic ones, that we understood everyone better and we knew what everyone we needed.

Malcolm Collins: How can we get this so wrong? Oh, it's not just that we're gonna go into other things. So like, just speaking of them not being empathetic, just to give a little sure thing away here. So there were four studies with nearly 4,800 participants in the UK and the us Okay. To look at how much empathy each side had for their political opponents.

Yeah. This was called empathetic [00:01:00] conservatives and moralizing liberals. Political intergroup empathy varies by political ideology and is explained by moral judgment.

So what it showed is that liberals have less empathy for conservatives than conservatives have of liberals. This actually

Simone Collins: makes a lot of sense too, because I remember being on the left, growing up. Having empathy for the entire world, but still seeing conservatives as this inhuman boogeyman. Yeah, so that actually checks out.

That's wild.

Malcolm Collins: Conservatives do not dehumanize lefties. But lefties do dehumanize conservatives. They do. They do. And, and this is, this is seen in the data, like this study was like, surprisingly, conservatives showed more empathy for liberals than liberals showed of conservatives. This asymmetry was found across studies and was statistically reliable.

Why is it surprising? Maybe it's surprising because of your own biases going into the study. And I love the way the study explained this away. It's like, well, this is actually justified because [00:02:00] lefties beliefs, conservatives want to kill them, and conservatives don't think lefties wanna kill them. And I was like, well, but conservatives don't want to kill them, so it's not, this is like saying the Nazis were were justified because blood libel.

They're like, yeah, well they did think the Jews were murdering their babies. And it's like, yeah, but the Jews weren't murdering their babies. That doesn't make their ideology justified. What? What are you talking about? Now I note here that there was a great study done on the nature of the dehumanization, which I think can help.

So, this was the study, political meta dehumanization in mental representations, divergent emphasis in the minds of liberals versus conservatives. And this study found that liberals and conservatives differed in how they dehumanize the other, at least in the framing of this static. Okay. So what this study found was that.

Conservatives tend to view liberals as immature, while liberals see conservatives as savage. Which is true. But one is like a pitying, like if you had more information. Yeah, yeah.

Simone Collins: You're just misinformed. You're [00:03:00] just, you're not exposed to the world as it's, I, I

Malcolm Collins: like that's dehumanization. It's not dehumanization.

That's just like. Actually the way it is. If, if I believe that, if they, if, if you actually empathize with someone and see them as human, you're going to think that the reason they hold these views is they just don't have access to as much information as you Yeah.

Simone Collins: That you must know something that they don't know and then that's why you view what you view.

Yes, yes. Which, which is framed as, that's how I remember viewing conservatives as. A leftist young lady.

Malcolm Collins: No, and I remember, Hey, I was a leftist at one point too, and I remember conservatives are the savages who live in the woods and are religious extremists and don't know any. Yes, scary

Simone Collins: Bible. Thumping.

Cultist. Monsters who don't care about other people at all and just want you to live like them. And

Malcolm Collins: yeah. So I wanna talk about like what creates this phenomenon. Yeah. And, and I should note the first study that I was mentioning that led to all of this I heard one guy, I. Point out this was short phyto, Taku [00:04:00] say that in one study it was actually that lefties were three x worse the rate of conservatives in terms of modeling them.

Oh my gosh, I blind that exact study, so I don't know where exactly he was getting that from, but it seems believable given what I've seen. And we recently, oh wait,

Simone Collins: no, no, no. This was What if all test Who said that? While we were driving. Oh yeah. It's one of our hits.

Malcolm Collins: You said that. Yeah. Not short fighter ta.

And, and this was a great video by would've called his, by the way, he's totally back. He's got some fun videos. The one that you missed that I thought was really good was on, and you should check it out was on the anti civilization, looking at how the steps. Kept producing people in groups that went out and destroyed all of this various civilizations of the world.

Whether it was the Chinese, whether it was the Europeans, whether it was the Indians. Wow. And this one region of the world, like in civ, like a, a sponsor reefers.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Just kept spotting the things that destroyed civilization. Yeah. Wait, the reefers, how do you know mass effect? '

Simone Collins: cause Well, in, in, in. In [00:05:00] Serenity, there were, oh, this is the different, oh, okay, okay.

Yeah, this is different universe, whatever.

Malcolm Collins: But anyway yes. Very interesting. And we might do a, a different video on that. I idea, because I think it's really interesting the idea of an anti civilization uhhuh. Although I'd go further and I'd say that their civilization is the anti Jews. They are the exact antithesis of Jewish history.

IE Oh, because they're,

Simone Collins: they're, well. If Jews represent order and process, if leaving

Malcolm Collins: urban centers, these, these

Simone Collins: represent anarchy in distribution. Yeah, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And having a vested interest in maintaining a stable status quo. Mm-hmm. These individuals mm-hmm. They are entropy, entropy incarnate. They lived almost entirely outside of cities, almost entirely with the benefit of the status quo being destroyed.

Simone Collins: Interesting. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: they're very, very interesting to go into. But that's for another episode. But anyway, so, yeah, he, he pointed that out and I don't think that Ru