In case you haven’t noticed, we live in a politically polarized country, with people on both sides framing the upcoming election as a decision with apocalyptic implications. But, as hard as it may be to believe right now, there will, in all likelihood, be life after Nov. 5. So, once the electoral dust settles, how will we interact with the people in our lives that we disagree with?
James Casey, a researcher who has a Ph.D. from the University of Queensland in Australia, joined The Show to talk about how he thinks it’s possible that our human identities are in danger of being overshadowed by our political ones.
Full conversation
JAMES CASEY: I was thinking about how, I know some people who are really passionate about politics. That doesn't describe me myself, I'm a bit more, I have political beliefs, but I don't hold them very strongly. And I sort of admire the people who do hold their beliefs really strongly, because they're able to actually fight for changes. But, at the same time, I wondered if there's something about the, the passion to fight for those beliefs that actually stops you from feeling empathy for people who don't share your own beliefs.
SAM DINGMAN: Right. So, there are some prevailing notions about politically liberal people and politically conservative people and their relationships to empathy. How would you characterize those prevailing notions that you were aware of, prior to the beginning of your research?
CASEY: Well, you're probably aware of the phrase “bleeding heart lefties” or “bleeding heart liberals”.
DINGMAN: I am.
CASEY: And so that the research tends to back this up. We know that if we ask liberals and conservatives, how much they value empathy, then liberals will say that they value it much more than conservatives do. And, in studies where we look at empathy for particular kinds of people, generally, liberals have shown more empathy for those kinds of people than conservatives have.
DINGMAN: And so knowing that, tell me about the methodology that you used, if, if I was to participate in this study, what would my experience have been?
CASEY: So these studies were all conducted online. So, you would be going through a survey and part of that survey would be, I would ask you about a person that you're just finding out some new information about. And so, the information we give you about this person typically called Jack. So Jack is an American man in his early thirties, he works as an assistant manager in a retail store and he has a wife and a young child.
Now we then move on to tell you something unfortunate happened to Jack. An example would be that he sprained his ankle and it's quite painful to walk on, he's walking on crutches. And we ask you how much empathy do you feel towards Jack? And so that's the situation for about a third of the participants. And then a third of the participants have this extra information that Jack is also a republican, or the final third see that Jack is a democrat supporter.
And so the question for me as a researcher is, “how does this additional information about Jack's political beliefs affect how much empathy compared to if you don't know that political information”.
DINGMAN: So you begin the various studies and you begin to find, “in comparisons across participant politics, liberals showed less empathy for out group targets, which is to say conservatives than conservatives showed for out group targets, which is to say liberals”. So this was a surprising result, was it not?
CASEY: Yes, absolutely. It contrasts with that idea of the “bleeding heart lefties” and it also contrasts with all of the academic research that I'd been looking at prior to these studies.
DINGMAN: And it seemed like one of the key factors in the empathy difference in your findings, between liberals and conservatives, was this idea of “perceived harm”, right?
CASEY: Yeah, I asked people, how much do you think this person's political group causes harm to the American people in general, to groups that you value in particular and to just individuals that you know, because we assume that that transfers to our moral judgments of the individuals who support that party, whether or not those individuals have any control at all over what the party does.
DINGMAN: That's really interesting. I mean, one of the things that's fascinating to me about this is kind of the old saw in politics, generally, is this idea that, “well, if, if we could all just see each other as individuals, we wouldn't have so much division and so much rancor and so much misunderstanding”. But here you, you present this person and you say, like, “look, they've got a, a different political belief than you, but they got a sprained ankle and it's really tough for them to walk around. Isn't that rough?” That's exactly the kind of interaction that politicians love to stand behind podiums and tell us we should all aspire to, and yet you and your research suggests that it, it might not be all that effective.
CASEY: Well, I guess the good news from, from my studies is that it's not as though people were looking at Jack, even when he had opposing political beliefs to the participant, even when we're looking at the opponent, it's not that we have no empathy for them and it's not that we think they're completely evil. It's that we're just less sure of what to do in that situation.
DINGMAN: Yeah. Well, at the end of the study, you speculate a bit about why your findings differ from previous studies, and you suggest that one factor might be a change in what you call “group norms”. Tell us what you mean by that.
CASEY: So, “group norms” are rules of behavior within groups, unspoken rules. So, it's possible that conservatives have, over time, developed an in group rule that they should be a little more tolerant and a little more compassionate, even of liberals. And it's possible that the reverse has happened among liberals, that liberals have started to develop this rule that you should be really strict and critical of your opponents and, and not as tolerant.
DINGMAN: Right. So, we began our conversation by having you explain that you were interested in this, in part because it was an invitation to yourself to understand the conviction with which people hold their political beliefs and, and how it informs the way that they engage with, with others. How did doing this research and conducting these studies affect your own relationship to that? Where, where are you now having gone through this process?
CASEY: It was a little humbling to come through this process. So I, I started originally feeling like, “if only people were a little more calm, if only they could dial it back a little bit, then we'd, we'd be able to get along and have respect for each other”. But, on the other end of this research, I think that I was naively ignoring that there are things that political parties do that are absolutely harmful to specific people on the other side.
And so, it's very naive to expect people who have been harmed to show empathy and restraint and tolerance for the people who are associated with the party who is harming them. So I, I guess I have a little more, more of a nuanced expectation.
DINGMAN: Perhaps a little bit more empathy?
CASEY: Yeah. Yeah, I think I understand their perspective a bit better now.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been updated to reflect that James Casey holds a Ph.D.
