Partisan polarization and the need for civic respect | CAS Inquire

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10/10/2022 Added

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Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, political science, gives the CAS Inquire talk on Oct. 4, 2022 for the theme "Searching for common ground in a polarized world".

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[00:00:05.038]Good evening. I am Dr.
[00:00:06.573]Taylor Livingston and I'm
[00:00:07.841]the director of the College of Arts and Sciences Inquire Program.
[00:00:12.212]Thank you all for coming tonight in person and via Zoom
[00:00:16.349]to the second installment of this year's Inquire series lecture
[00:00:20.186]Searching for Common Ground in a Polarized World.
[00:00:24.324]The Inquire program structured around these lectures
[00:00:27.093]allows students, faculty and staff, as well as the wider public,
[00:00:31.197]the opportunity to investigate how we as individuals and a society
[00:00:36.403]understand the concept of civil discourse.
[00:00:40.340]Additionally, it creates an opportunity to learn about the fascinating
[00:00:43.943]research faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences are conducting
[00:00:48.515]and enable students to see the various disciplinary
[00:00:51.184]approaches to the study of a topic.
[00:00:54.554]It also allows and for students
[00:00:57.057]to see the necessity of multi trans and interdisciplinary insights
[00:01:02.228]to truly understand human thoughts, beliefs and actions.
[00:01:06.332]And specifically tonight, being civil and respectful in the midst of the midterms.
[00:01:12.672]Tonight's lecture,
[00:01:13.706]Partisan Polarization and the Need for Civic Respect by all is by Dr.
[00:01:18.044]Elizabeth Theiss-Morse.
[00:01:19.813]Willa Cather, professor and political science, argues
[00:01:23.049]we find common ground by moving beyond being Nebraska nice to being
[00:01:27.921]willing and open to engage with those with differing political opinions.
[00:01:32.792]Dr. Theiss Morse is a celebrated scholar and educator who has won numerous awards
[00:01:38.731]for her books on American politics and electoral behavior,
[00:01:42.602]including her work Who Count as American the Boundaries of National Identity,
[00:01:47.407]which won the Robert Lane Award for Best Book on
[00:01:50.076]Political Psychology and Congress as Public Enemy.
[00:01:53.880]Winner of the Fenno Prize for Best Book on Legislative Politics.
[00:01:58.351]After her lecture, Dr.
[00:01:59.686]Theiss-Morse will take questions from the audience.
[00:02:02.522]If you're in person, just raise your hand and someone will bring you a mic.
[00:02:06.759]If you're via Zoom,
[00:02:07.727]you can enter them in the Q&A and I will ask them on your behalf.
[00:02:11.898]So without further ado, please join me in welcoming Dr. Theiss Morse.
[00:02:25.745]So first of all, thank you all for being here.
[00:02:28.948]I really appreciate it.
[00:02:30.049]I also really want to thank Professor Taylor Livingston
[00:02:33.553]for all of the work she does for CAS Inquire.
[00:02:36.589]I also want to thank Associate Dean June Griffin, who she came
[00:02:41.194]when I was up in the dean's office several years ago.
[00:02:44.230]She came into my office with this idea for for what to do with this,
[00:02:48.334]you know, getting our students together, getting students together to talk about
[00:02:53.406]really interesting issues from lots of different perspectives.
[00:02:56.442]And I thought it was the most brilliant idea in the world.
[00:02:59.679]So I'm thrilled today
[00:03:01.481]to have the chance to actually be part of this amazing series.
[00:03:05.385]And I also want to thank Dean Mark Button for his
[00:03:10.290]his support of this program and all of that.
[00:03:13.660]I'm going to have a few jabs at him later on in the talks.
[00:03:16.829]But for now, I'll be respectful. So.
[00:03:19.032]So the project that I am working on, theoretically, yeah.
[00:03:27.340]So the project that I am going to be talking about
[00:03:31.311]today is based on a book
[00:03:34.113]that I have been working on with a friend of mine, political theorist
[00:03:38.952]at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill named Jeff Spinner.
[00:03:43.590]It's been a really interesting experience to work with a political theorist
[00:03:48.328]because we I'm a political psychologist, so we come at the topic
[00:03:51.497]from very different directions.
[00:03:53.266]And it's really been fun to get his perspective on how these things work.
[00:03:58.271]So the book that we have worked on is called Respect and Loathing
[00:04:04.244]in American Democracy, and it's currently under review at a university press.
[00:04:10.049]So we're keeping our fingers crossed.
[00:04:12.151]I am going to talk today about civic respect, so the respect side of that.
[00:04:17.457]But before we get into that, I want to talk a little bit about the loathing side.
[00:04:23.263]And so I'm going to get into the loathing side
[00:04:25.898]before getting into the respect side, because I think it's important to keep
[00:04:30.136]in context how we think about each other in our political system.
[00:04:35.041]So partizan polarization in the United States,
[00:04:38.378]as you are all very well aware, is just awful.
[00:04:42.382]I mean, we are so far apart politically
[00:04:45.418]and it's it's just it's just a mess.
[00:04:49.889]So one thing that political scientists have been interested in
[00:04:54.894]is whether this is really just an elite level phenomenon
[00:05:00.066]or is this something that exists in the mass public?
[00:05:02.669]And there's a group of political scientists
[00:05:04.470]who basically say, you know, it's really about elected officials.
[00:05:08.041]And elected officials are the ones who are really misbehaving in a way.
[00:05:12.512]They're the ones who are who are polarized and the general public is not.
[00:05:16.282]So I want to pull out a little bit of part.
[00:05:19.118]So some political
[00:05:21.287]scientists, Poul and Rosenthal, are the two big names in this area.
[00:05:25.892]They have been collecting data and looking back in time.
[00:05:29.329]And what they have done is basically measure
[00:05:32.365]how much members of Congress vote together as a party
[00:05:37.570]and then how much they vote against the other party.
[00:05:42.175]Okay. So oops. Sorry.
[00:05:44.577]I don't know why that did that.
[00:05:54.087]So there we go. Okay.
[00:05:56.122]So they they look at this difference
[00:05:59.792]between party means and this axis.
[00:06:03.563]The x axis goes from 1880 all the way to 2021. Okay.
[00:06:10.536]What I want you to pay attention to here is that if we look at members of Congress
[00:06:15.174]and how polarized that they are, how close they vote together.
[00:06:19.011]You can see that they are more polarized
[00:06:22.682]than they have ever been since these data
[00:06:26.052]were originally collected in 1880. Okay.
[00:06:29.422]So going back to 1880, this is right
[00:06:32.892]after the Civil War, shortly after the Civil War.
[00:06:36.562]And members of Congress are more more polarized
[00:06:39.832]now than they were shortly after the Civil War.
[00:06:44.203]I think it is very clear
[00:06:46.339]that we can conclude that Congress is a mess.
[00:06:50.309]And it is. I mean, there is no doubt
[00:06:52.812]Congress is a mess. So.
[00:06:58.551]The next question, though, is what about the mass public?
[00:07:04.991]We accept that the political elites are polarized.
[00:07:08.494]What about the mass public?
[00:07:10.930]And there's some disagreement.
[00:07:12.565]Political scientists don't all agree on everything all the time.
[00:07:15.334]And so political science, some political scientists have said,
[00:07:18.938]if you look at people's issue stance, they're actually not that far apart
[00:07:24.610]. Most Americans.
[00:07:27.180]Don't care about a lot of issues.
[00:07:30.383]When oftentimes they're relatively moderate on issues
[00:07:34.854]and so they just don't care that much or they are moderate.
[00:07:38.925]And it does then that they're not that polarized. Okay.
[00:07:42.528]But other political scientists said you're looking in the wrong place
[00:07:45.932]if you're looking at issue stands and just focusing on issue stands.
[00:07:49.802]You're really missing the polarization that's happening in the American public.
[00:07:55.041]The polarization among us
[00:07:58.511]is our identity with a political party that we strongly identify
[00:08:03.049]as Democrats or Republicans, and that we hate the other side.
[00:08:08.721]We hate the other party.
[00:08:10.456]So what they have done, this is Druckman and Levy.
[00:08:18.331]They told me I shouldn't be walking around with this, but I am anyway.
[00:08:22.301]So what they have done is looked at a feeling thermometer
[00:08:26.806]where they basically ask people how warm or cold you feel towards some other group.
[00:08:31.677]Okay, so how hot or cold do you feel towards Democrats?
[00:08:36.148]How hot or cold do you feel toward Republicans in this case?
[00:08:40.253]And the higher the number, the warmer you're feeling. So you like them more.
[00:08:43.623]Right. You feel better about them. You feel good about them.
[00:08:46.058]The lower the number, the more you dislike them, the more you hate them. All right.
[00:08:50.496]So what we see here, this blue line, and this goes from 1980 up until current
[00:08:55.968]times, this blue line is how much we how we feel about the other party.
[00:09:01.841]And you can see that this line has dropped dramatically since 1982.
[00:09:08.481]Current times to 2020.
[00:09:11.450]Okay. So what we see is that people increasingly hate the other party.
[00:09:17.557]And these feelings especially started dropping in about 2008
[00:09:22.228]when Barack Obama was elected to today.
[00:09:25.431]When we're down at about 25 degrees for opposing parties
[00:09:29.502]and both parties hate each other. Okay.
[00:09:33.439]I think it's important to note, though,
[00:09:35.675]that it's not that we are feeling better about our own party.
[00:09:39.178]So the green line is what we feel about our own party,
[00:09:42.782]and that's just stayed flat or even gone down just a little bit.
[00:09:46.819]It's not like we love our own party.
[00:09:48.955]We're more and more in love with our own party
[00:09:51.223]and more and more hate the other party.
[00:09:53.192]It's really that we hate the other party.
[00:09:55.828]And this is what political scientists refer to as affective polarization.
[00:10:02.368]This is our feeling, our affect and how we feel about the other party.
[00:10:07.306]And we have just become deeply polarized.
[00:10:10.509]This orange line is affective
[00:10:13.879]polarization, and it's just the difference between those two measures.
[00:10:17.850]And we just it just shows that this isn't going up
[00:10:20.720]pretty dramatically in recent times.
[00:10:24.490]So why basically, why should we care?
[00:10:31.397]Why do we care if we have become so affectively polarized
[00:10:36.936]in the American public?
[00:10:38.070]And I do want to say we have
[00:10:40.339]I mean, this is this is a major thing that's happening among people.
[00:10:45.111]The effects are really pronounced.
[00:10:48.247]So one effect is that people are much less.
[00:10:53.853]Okay. With having their child marry somebody from the other party.
[00:10:59.659]It used to be that people didn't want their child
[00:11:02.628]to marry somebody from a different race or a different religion.
[00:11:06.699]And now what we have seen is that people increasingly
[00:11:10.603]don't want their child to marry somebody from the other party.
[00:11:15.174]So back in the 1960s, about 5% of Americans said they would be unhappy
[00:11:21.013]if their child married somebody from the other party.
[00:11:24.350]Today, it's just under 40%.
[00:11:26.886]Would be unhappy if their child married somebody from the other party.
[00:11:31.290]Okay. So we are making social choices
[00:11:35.461]based on partizanship and we don't like the other party.
[00:11:39.765]The other way that this is manifesting itself is through discrimination.
[00:11:45.104]So again, we often think of discrimination
[00:11:47.206]in terms of things like race or gender or religion.
[00:11:52.178]But what we're seeing nowadays is something different.
[00:11:55.147]So to political scientist Shanto and Garth Garland, Sean Westwood
[00:12:00.119]did this fascinating experiment
[00:12:02.354]where they had they gave people two resumes and they said,
[00:12:06.659]tell us which of these two candidates you would hire for a job?
[00:12:10.463]Which of these two candidates would you hire?
[00:12:12.832]And the the resumes were either
[00:12:16.469]the two candidates were equally qualified.
[00:12:19.939]Or one candidate was better qualified than the other candidate. Okay.
[00:12:26.078]And then they they included in the resume
[00:12:29.782]and some of the some people were randomly assigned to this.
[00:12:32.551]They were they included in the resume a line that said.
[00:12:37.623]I was you know, I was a member at lists that they were
[00:12:39.825]a member of the Young Democrats when they were in college
[00:12:43.095]or they lists that they were a member of young Republicans in college.
[00:12:47.600]And these are the results.
[00:12:51.270]So when the candidates are equally qualified. Okay.
[00:12:55.441]And this is probability of of choosing the Republicans. Okay.
[00:12:59.645]So when the candidates are equally qualified, Republicans pick the Republican
[00:13:05.751]candidate for the job and Democrats pick the Democratic candidate for the job.
[00:13:11.590]Now, this one is one.
[00:13:13.025]The Republican is more qualified.
[00:13:15.795]And this one, this one, the Democrat is more qualified.
[00:13:19.598]It doesn't matter.
[00:13:21.467]You couldn't be more qualified and it has no impact.
[00:13:25.738]Right. You're still getting the same
[00:13:28.340]partizan bias in who gets selected.
[00:13:32.278]The qualifications of the candidates are irrelevant.
[00:13:36.615]Okay, so I under and Westwood also included race as one of their conditions.
[00:13:41.987]And I'm not going to include that here, but to show you the results here.
[00:13:45.291]But the effects of race were much smaller.
[00:13:49.428]It's just so much smaller than the effects of partizanship.
[00:13:53.432]And they argue in their article that it is really partizanship
[00:13:57.169]this polarization that is driving this discrimination in a major way.
[00:14:02.208]So if you're on the job market, just be careful what you put on your resumé
[00:14:06.545]because it has consequences as their research shows.
[00:14:10.416]So discrimination is bad, okay? Hatred is bad.
[00:14:14.153]Discrimination is bad.
[00:14:16.522]But there's also been a bunch of work on how affective polarization increases
[00:14:20.826]our tendency to dehumanize people from the opposing party. We, we, we.
[00:14:26.098]We are more likely to think that opposing partizans are less human
[00:14:32.705]than people in our party, which leads to all sorts of concerns .
[00:14:37.009]I mean, people mistreat those.
[00:14:41.413]They dehumanize horribly.
[00:14:44.316]And people are also much more likely nowadays to say that.
[00:14:50.723]To achieve your political goals.
[00:14:53.492]It's okay to use political violence.
[00:14:57.663]It's okay to use political violence to achieve your political goals.
[00:15:03.736]And this is related to affective polarization.
[00:15:06.505]The more you hate the out party, the more likely you are to think
[00:15:10.809]violence is an okay solution. Okay.
[00:15:14.113]So all of this stuff is, I would say, quite scary.
[00:15:20.552]It's not something that I think that we we are okay about.
[00:15:24.890]But I think we have to start thinking about what to do about this.
[00:15:31.697]How do how do we live in a world
[00:15:35.000]where people hate each other so much?
[00:15:38.137]So I am going to talk about.
[00:15:43.042]The importance of
[00:15:44.209]respect in democracy and how this all plays out.
[00:15:49.148]Just and I asked the question that we asked was.
[00:15:54.720]In this polarized environment.
[00:15:58.357]Can we respect opposing parties?
[00:16:02.594]Are we able to respect opposing Partizans
[00:16:05.698]in this very, very, very polarized environment?
[00:16:10.469]And I think the question that probably comes to mind is why
[00:16:13.939]the heck should we respect those jerks?
[00:16:17.643]And I hear this all the time when I talk about my work on respect.
[00:16:20.946]Everybody says to me, why would I respect whatever the other party is? Right.
[00:16:27.519]And I think this is actually a really good question.
[00:16:30.656]It's an important question to ask,
[00:16:34.460]and it's one that I have struggled with.
[00:16:37.329]So I have done work in my past on political tolerance.
[00:16:44.303]And political tolerance is
[00:16:45.804]the giving of basic civil liberties rights to those we hate.
[00:16:49.641]Like if there's a group that we really hate,
[00:16:52.111]we give them their basic right to freedom of speech,
[00:16:55.581]freedom of assembly, due process. Right.
[00:16:58.684]So if I really, really hate the Ku Klux Klan, for example,
[00:17:02.388]I still believe that they have a right to free speech.
[00:17:07.259]They still have a right to freedom of assembly.
[00:17:10.229]That is tolerance.
[00:17:12.164]And I understand that in a liberal, democratic political system
[00:17:15.701]like we have in the United States, tolerance is incredibly important.
[00:17:21.540]I fully understand that.
[00:17:24.543]But when my coauthor, Jeff, came to me
[00:17:26.712]and said, Beth, we really need to start looking at respect.
[00:17:30.649]My immediate thought was, why?
[00:17:31.884]Why do I understand tolerance?
[00:17:35.387]I think we have to give people their basic civil liberties rights.
[00:17:38.690]But why do we have to respect them?
[00:17:40.459]I'm not convinced.
[00:17:42.194]And he told me basically that political theorists
[00:17:45.497]think it's important and and they've looked at it a lot.
[00:17:48.667]And he assumed that I would immediately figure out why respect is important.
[00:17:56.175]But I have to say.
[00:17:58.877]But political theorist Dean Button
[00:18:03.715]should not always make the assumptions
[00:18:05.684]that they do because I didn't get it.
[00:18:09.521]So it took me a long time.
[00:18:10.923]I had to think and think and think and work through, read, talk to Geoff
[00:18:15.828]constantly about why this was an important thing to think about.
[00:18:20.332]And this is what I've come up with
[00:18:21.967]with the help of Jeff, because I did not do this on my own. So.
[00:18:28.907]Political theorists.
[00:18:31.844]Basically make this argument.
[00:18:35.280]They say that. They say
[00:18:42.421]that respect is fundamental.
[00:18:46.058]To democratic political systems.
[00:18:49.528]Because democracy rests
[00:18:52.431]on the idea of political equality.
[00:18:55.934]Okay. Democratic political systems rest on the idea
[00:19:01.306]that we are political equals.
[00:19:05.110]And if you believe that we are political equals,
[00:19:10.115]you have to think of the idea
[00:19:12.117]that we all are equal agents.
[00:19:16.522]With a voice in political decisions,
[00:19:19.591]with a voice in political outcome.
[00:19:23.662]And if we are if we are all equal moral
[00:19:26.932]agents, then it's incredibly important
[00:19:31.370]to respect our fellow citizens.
[00:19:35.774]To acknowledge that agency.
[00:19:39.278]And if we if we don't do that,
[00:19:41.580]we are looking at them, at those we we oppose.
[00:19:45.450]We are looking at them with disdain. With contempt.
[00:19:51.223]We are considering them less than worthy.
[00:19:56.161]And we are we are holding the position
[00:20:00.132]that their voice is less important than other voices.
[00:20:03.835]In other words, we are not giving them their political equality
[00:20:08.240]to have political equality.
[00:20:11.009]You need to respect.
[00:20:13.378]Okay. Without respect.
[00:20:16.915]It's impossible to have political equality.
[00:20:20.319]So we argue, then, that
[00:20:23.021]respect is fundamental to democratic citizenship in the sense
[00:20:27.926]that we we are all equal moral agents in our political system.
[00:20:32.698]So we we built on this idea.
[00:20:37.569]Political theorists have really focused mostly on
[00:20:42.140]issues of race, on gender,
[00:20:45.510]on LGBTQ plus community.
[00:20:48.614]They've looked at different
[00:20:49.448]groups in society and said, we need to respect these groups.
[00:20:52.451]But Jeff and I said, let's
[00:20:53.819]let's put this in the realm of the real conflict of today,
[00:20:57.756]which is partizan polarization and see if we can talk about
[00:21:01.393]respect of those who disagree with us politically. Okay.
[00:21:05.764]And I think this is an important area to put this in to talk about respect,
[00:21:11.136]because the idea that we disagree on
[00:21:14.840]politics should not make the people we disagree with less than equal.
[00:21:19.678]It should not make them less moral agents right than we are,
[00:21:24.082]that it should not make them unworthy, in a sense. So.
[00:21:30.289]Political theories
[00:21:31.290]have talked a lot about respect, but they haven't defined it terribly well.
[00:21:36.428]So Jeff and I decided, okay, we're going to tackle this.
[00:21:38.630]We're going to come up with these different ideas about what respect is.
[00:21:41.867]And we came up with two different ideas about what respective.
[00:21:45.737]So recognition, respect
[00:21:49.041]is fundamental, we say to democracy.
[00:21:52.744]It means accepting that everyone has intrinsic moral worth,
[00:21:57.416]that we are all agents in our political system
[00:22:00.552]and we have worth as fellow human beings,
[00:22:06.291]we all have equal moral worth and that this is fundamental to democracy.
[00:22:12.698]We argue that this is universal.
[00:22:15.300]You should not deny somebody recognition, respect
[00:22:18.870]because of something they've done or because of something they've said.
[00:22:22.741]Everybody should have recognition. Respect.
[00:22:28.146]Okay. So this is important.
[00:22:31.283]Recognition, respect is important.
[00:22:32.818]We found, for example, that Democrats tend
[00:22:36.655]to have a richer understanding of equality
[00:22:40.625]and they tend to have a greater belief in the idea of equal respect.
[00:22:46.832]And they have a harder time giving respect
[00:22:50.302]to Republicans than occurs vice versa.
[00:22:54.005]And we refer to this as the liberal respect paradox.
[00:22:57.042]And we we spend a bunch of our book talking about this
[00:22:59.611]liberal respect paradox and trying to figure out what's going up.
[00:23:02.848]But I'm not going to talk about that today.
[00:23:04.883]So. Well, I want to talk about instead of civic, civic respect.
[00:23:09.287]So civic respect has three components in our definition of what civic respect is.
[00:23:14.760]Civic respect means listening and engaging with people with whom you disagree.
[00:23:19.364]It's just this idea that we should be listening to
[00:23:22.033]and engaging with people with whom we disagree.
[00:23:25.070]A month ago, Professor Julia Schlick and her her
[00:23:28.774]CAS employer talk talked about this need to talk to people you disagree with.
[00:23:32.778]You need to be willing to listen to them. And she was right.
[00:23:35.781]Okay. So we're saying this is part of what civic respect is.
[00:23:39.584]It also means not politically stereotyping opponents.
[00:23:43.755]You should not assume that all Democrats are X and all Republicans are Y. Okay.
[00:23:49.861]And the last is accepting pluralism.
[00:23:53.331]And pluralism is the notion that there are very diverse
[00:23:56.768]political views in our political system.
[00:23:59.337]And we need to accept
[00:24:00.472]that these differences in views exist and we need to, you know, support that.
[00:24:05.143]So that's the three components of respect and what we mean by.
[00:24:12.083]So I will talk about the multifaceted nature of civic respect
[00:24:16.121]and which means basically that I'm going to talk
[00:24:18.056]about each of these three components and I'm going to show you
[00:24:21.092]a lot of research that we have done on this topic.
[00:24:24.596]So while Jeff is a political theorist and he is off there
[00:24:27.833]thinking big thoughts all the time, I am into data.
[00:24:31.336]I absolutely love data.
[00:24:34.039]I cannot get enough data. So we did
[00:24:38.343]three surveys in 2018, 2019 and 2020.
[00:24:43.482]We did 27 focus groups,
[00:24:46.651]which is way too many, and we did two experiments.
[00:24:51.656]And so we have all these data.
[00:24:53.792]We also included respect questions in a 2021 survey
[00:24:57.662]to make sure that we weren't just getting a Trump as president effect
[00:25:01.500]and we are not getting just Trump as president.
[00:25:04.169]The fact that I could talk about that later if you have questions,
[00:25:06.905]but basically we have a whole lot of data and that is what I'm going
[00:25:10.175]to talk about next.
[00:25:12.911]So. The first aspect of
[00:25:17.382]civic respect is this idea of listening to and engaging with other people.
[00:25:21.987]And our argument is that you can do this either interpersonally
[00:25:25.390]or you can do it impersonally, okay?
[00:25:28.093]You can either talk to people face to face,
[00:25:30.829]or you can read a blog from the other side, from the opposing side.
[00:25:36.301]You can listen to a podcast from somebody on the opposing side.
[00:25:41.740]You can even listen to the news that the opposing side listens to
[00:25:46.244]and get a sense of what they think.
[00:25:49.180]So that's interpersonal and impersonal.
[00:25:52.951]In our focus groups, we had a lot of focus group participants.
[00:25:59.925]Talk about the fact that the divisions
[00:26:02.761]between the two parties have harmed their relationships.
[00:26:07.265]They have talked about how
[00:26:10.168]friends they have had
[00:26:11.770]for their whole life just cut them off.
[00:26:15.574]They talk about family members.
[00:26:18.777]Hanging up the phone on them or them hanging up the phone
[00:26:22.714]on their family members, just angry as all get out about their stance on certain
[00:26:27.786]political issues or because of their vote for certain candidates for office.
[00:26:33.491]And we heard this over and over and over again.
[00:26:36.328]So when we're talking about families and friends and coworkers
[00:26:40.265]and the like, you know, people who you interact with daily,
[00:26:43.368]this has had a negative impact.
[00:26:45.270]But we could say that the focus groups are just
[00:26:48.940]you know, they're they're small groups of people.
[00:26:51.343]They might not be representative of society.
[00:26:53.945]So we did surveys.
[00:26:56.381]We wanted to figure out, does this actually carry out in surveys
[00:27:00.085]that we have done?
[00:27:01.086]And an argument could be made that the focus groups are wrong,
[00:27:05.190]that people who say they're going to do a focus group somehow are different,
[00:27:08.460]and that people really do try to transcend
[00:27:11.529]political differences because these are close relationships.
[00:27:15.834]These are friends and family.
[00:27:17.202]These are people you love, right? So maybe
[00:27:21.473]we've missed something.
[00:27:22.841]So we, of course, ask questions.
[00:27:25.210]We started just by trying to figure out how diverse people, social networks are.
[00:27:30.081]You know, do people
[00:27:31.316]have people who disagree with them politically in their social networks?
[00:27:35.887]And we we we basically asked the questions up there on top, what's your best guess
[00:27:40.525]of how many people voted for the opposing party candidate in the last election?
[00:27:45.597]And what you can see is that so this blue column, which is the tallest one
[00:27:50.435]for both Clinton voters and Trump voters, that's the largest one.
[00:27:54.939]And that's where people say, well,
[00:27:56.074]I have very few or no people who would have voted for the other side.
[00:27:59.411]So these people live in very homogeneous groups, but everybody else has, you know,
[00:28:05.150]at least some people who they disagree with politically in their
[00:28:09.654]in their group of of of family and friends and coworkers.
[00:28:14.492]In this case, we then ask them, okay,
[00:28:18.530]did the election of Donald Trump hurt any of your relationships?
[00:28:24.669]And about a third of respondents said, yes, that it hurt their relationships.
[00:28:29.441]And then we asked those people, what did you personally do?
[00:28:33.611]So what did you do?
[00:28:35.180]And we asked if they argued with start talking to BLOCK on social media
[00:28:39.751]or ended relationships with people
[00:28:43.421]because of what happened in the election.
[00:28:47.992]Okay. So these numbers, you can say, oh, that doesn't look bad.
[00:28:52.397]You know, we're not talking about a whole lot of people.
[00:28:55.166]This is this is the whole sample then.
[00:28:57.102]So once I basically took the whole sample to see what this looked like.
[00:29:01.106]So for I just want to point out that Clinton voters
[00:29:04.943]there were just under 66 million Americans who voted for Clinton and
[00:29:09.581]there were just under 63 million Americans
[00:29:12.650]who voted for Donald Trump. Okay.
[00:29:15.954]So when we are talking about
[00:29:19.023]26% of Clinton voters saying that they argued
[00:29:23.595]with somebody because of the person's vote for Donald Trump.
[00:29:28.099]We're talking about a lot of people.
[00:29:29.968]We're talking about, you know, what, 16% or 60 million people. Right.
[00:29:36.040]If we go down to end relationships, these are people who ended relationships
[00:29:41.780]with family or friends, ended relationships with family members
[00:29:46.584]or friends because of their vote in the 2016 election.
[00:29:52.590]This is a large percentage of people.
[00:29:55.527]I have the numbers here somewhere, but now I can't find it.
[00:29:58.229]So it's a large it's a large number of people who did this.
[00:30:01.399]It's millions of Americans.
[00:30:04.836]Who ended relationships.
[00:30:07.472]So what I would argue in
[00:30:09.741]this case is that. The.
[00:30:15.146]We are allowing our polarization
[00:30:17.315]to get in the way of a lot of stuff that matters to us.
[00:30:21.186]And we are not giving people civic respect.
[00:30:23.822]When we when we just cut them off. Okay.
[00:30:27.458]But it could be that we were just being really too hard on people.
[00:30:31.462]We were we were asking too much of them.
[00:30:33.765]Maybe it is easier to have conversations
[00:30:37.535]to listen to and engage with people who we don't know.
[00:30:41.005]You know, it's more it's more distant.
[00:30:42.907]You know, we don't care as much about them.
[00:30:45.276]So maybe we can just say, okay, well, whatever, you know,
[00:30:48.947]whatever they believe, we don't have to agree with them.
[00:30:51.950]We can also do this.
[00:30:53.017]And personally, as I said, we can read blogs, listen to podcasts.
[00:30:57.222]We don't have to engage with people one on one.
[00:31:00.692]So we did an experiment.
[00:31:07.365]What we did is we had people,
[00:31:09.100]we randomly assigned people to read about an issue.
[00:31:13.504]They had to read statements about an issue.
[00:31:16.608]The control group got statements about the health benefits of hiking.
[00:31:22.146]Okay, which is kind of fun to write.
[00:31:23.948]But the other two conditions that we the other two issues that we dealt with
[00:31:28.386]was a liberal issue, social justice issues and a conservative issue.
[00:31:32.690]Set of issues, what we call national solidarity issues.
[00:31:35.793]So we had some of the both of those and then people either got pro
[00:31:39.197]or con statements on these issues.
[00:31:42.500]All right. So you're reading something, you see it, you get these issues.
[00:31:47.272]And then after that, after they read these statements, they were asked
[00:31:51.442]if they agreed or disagreed with the position taken in the statements.
[00:31:56.915]Following that question.
[00:31:58.683]They were they were told. Okay.
[00:32:01.352]So some people are interested in finding out more about this issue.
[00:32:07.592]And then half of the people were randomly assigned to get the prompt.
[00:32:11.696]So we have some articles that you can read at the end of the survey.
[00:32:17.502]Would you be interested in reading these articles on this point of view?
[00:32:21.906]Other people were told.
[00:32:23.441]We have a panel of people who are eager to talk with you
[00:32:27.545]about this particular side of the issue.
[00:32:30.348]Would you be interested in talking to a person after the survey is done? Okay.
[00:32:36.220]So this is a measure of whether they actually are willing
[00:32:39.090]to engage behaviorally in interpersonal
[00:32:44.128]or impersonal civic respect.
[00:32:47.665]And these are our results.
[00:32:50.468]So first of all, I think it's important to note that people
[00:32:53.905]are less willing to talk with somebody than they are to read about a topic.
[00:32:59.978]Obviously, talking to a stranger, a lot of us don't want to do that.
[00:33:03.181]And so it's easier for us to just focus on, you know, well, I'll read something.
[00:33:08.586]I'm not necessarily that keen on talking to somebody.
[00:33:11.089]So hiking, everybody agreed with it.
[00:33:12.991]Nobody was against the health benefits of hiking.
[00:33:15.560]And so everybody agreed with this.
[00:33:18.696]For the people who agreed with the two sets of political issues.
[00:33:22.600]So they got one or the other, but then those who agreed with it,
[00:33:25.603]you can see the number drops a bit for each of these
[00:33:28.373]for both interpersonal and impersonal respect.
[00:33:32.610]The interesting thing is that these are people who agreed.
[00:33:36.681]What a lot of people don't really like politics.
[00:33:39.050]So the idea of talking to somebody or reading more about a topic,
[00:33:42.954]dealing with politics, it's not that interesting.
[00:33:46.657]So what about people who disagreed with the stance
[00:33:49.460]taken on the issue that was presented to them?
[00:33:56.100]We hypothesized that people
[00:33:58.936]would be more willing to read an article than to talk to somebody.
[00:34:03.741]And we also expected the numbers to drop quite a bit.
[00:34:08.146]We didn't expect that.
[00:34:12.550]Less than a quarter of people were willing to read more about
[00:34:17.955]or talk to somebody about an issue they disagreed with.
[00:34:23.294]So I think we can say that for the listening and engagement
[00:34:28.032]part of civic respect, people just don't have a lot of civic respect.
[00:34:32.170]They just aren't willing to engage with other people's ideas.
[00:34:39.177]So that's a major part of the puzzle, and I think it's an important one.
[00:34:44.715]We also looked at Partizan stereotyping, which, as I said before,
[00:34:47.819]is this idea that we just assume,
[00:34:51.122]you know, we tend to see other people
[00:34:54.325]as being more extreme, more different.
[00:34:57.662]They're all the same, you know, the opposing parties, all this.
[00:35:01.032]So this is what we looked at here.
[00:35:03.534]Our argument was that people tend to live in political bubbles.
[00:35:07.772]We tend to talk with people. We already showed this. All right.
[00:35:10.508]We tend to talk to people who agree with us.
[00:35:13.211]We tend to pay attention to news media that we agree with.
[00:35:17.815]And so we aren't we were kept in these political bubbles.
[00:35:20.952]And what that does is it actually allows us to stereotype the other side.
[00:35:27.492]So I think it is fair to say
[00:35:30.294]that not all Democrats are socialists and anti patriot.
[00:35:36.100]And I think it is fair to say that not all Republicans are racist
[00:35:42.573]and sexist and anti-democratic.
[00:35:47.178]I think it's fair to say that.
[00:35:48.980]So when we stereotype people,
[00:35:53.151]we put them into these boxes, and because we don't interact
[00:35:56.454]with them enough, we tend to think that they are all the same.
[00:36:00.358]So we did this. We looked at this
[00:36:02.093]in various ways to figure out how do people think about each other.
[00:36:06.230]First of all, I'm going to talk about social justice issues
[00:36:09.000]and then I'll talk about national solidarity issues.
[00:36:11.602]But we asked people where they personally stand
[00:36:15.573]on these different issues and Democrats personal support
[00:36:20.344]for these more social justice issues, combating climate change,
[00:36:23.881]ensuring equal access to voting and prioritizing social justice.
[00:36:27.985]Democrats are more supportive of these than Republicans.
[00:36:31.756]No surprise there.
[00:36:34.792]But we also asked people,
[00:36:37.061]where do you think people in the other party stand on these issues?
[00:36:41.432]So for Democrats, we ask them, where do you think Republicans stand?
[00:36:44.602]And for Republicans, we asked them,
[00:36:46.237]so where do you think Democrats stand on these issues?
[00:36:49.073]And for Republicans, they generally thought so.
[00:36:53.511]These Hatch lines are what Republicans think about Democrats.
[00:36:57.982]So Republicans think that Democrats
[00:37:01.319]are supportive of these issues, not as much as they actually are,
[00:37:05.223]but that they are supportive of these issues. Okay.
[00:37:09.860]We also ask Democrats about Republicans
[00:37:12.063]and this is where they thought Republicans are on these issues.
[00:37:17.635]This is very low.
[00:37:18.703]I mean, so the scale.
[00:37:20.304]Point five is where you basically neither agree or disagree.
[00:37:24.208]So .25 is very low.
[00:37:26.577]It's really that they disagree or strongly disagree with these issues.
[00:37:29.880]So Democrats think that Republicans are really opposed to these issues.
[00:37:35.853]But they aren't,
[00:37:37.221]you know, most Republicans are just kind of in the middle,
[00:37:40.891]you know, so, you know, but there's first of all,
[00:37:45.263]they tend to be more in the middle on average.
[00:37:47.932]But even looking at people at individual Republicans,
[00:37:51.569]there's wide variance on where they stand on these issues.
[00:37:55.139]So Republicans in the audience might say, yeah,
[00:37:57.975]those Democrats are just like a Democrat to do this. Right.
[00:38:01.746]But to be honest with you, they do the same thing.
[00:38:04.181]So when you look at the conservative issues, again,
[00:38:06.984]Republicans score higher than Democrats on these conservative issues.
[00:38:10.321]We did loving one country, defending religious freedom and gun rights.
[00:38:14.558]And the Republicans were more supportive of these personally.
[00:38:19.130]But then we have the same kind of effect going on. Right.
[00:38:22.867]They, under Republicans, underestimate Democratic support for these different
[00:38:27.038]things, whereas Democrats get closer to what the truth is.
[00:38:31.642]All right. So the stereotyping that we do
[00:38:35.646]means that we are assuming that people hold certain political views.
[00:38:42.453]When they might not.
[00:38:44.755]And that's what I think you have to be aware of, is
[00:38:47.191]we just can't know without talking to people and finding out.
[00:38:51.095]So we also asked them some bipolar adjectives.
[00:38:54.031]We asked them if they thought that from a scale going
[00:38:57.435]from condescending to not condescending from racist and not racist.
[00:39:02.006]We asked people all sorts of bipolar adjectives.
[00:39:04.942]And the blue line is what Republicans think Clinton voters are.
[00:39:08.512]And the red patch lines are what Democrats think Trump voters are.
[00:39:12.917]And again, you can see that
[00:39:16.120]50% right here is where you would be if you were just neutral.
[00:39:21.592]They're neither condescending nor not condescending.
[00:39:24.195]They're neither racist nor not racist.
[00:39:26.564]But almost on almost all of these measures, people are to the low end.
[00:39:31.969]So more negative.
[00:39:33.671]And Democrats tend to be more negative about Republicans than vice versa.
[00:39:39.543]But both sides think the other side is pretty bad.
[00:39:43.881]All of this political stereotyping has negative consequences
[00:39:48.519]for our ability to give respect to them.
[00:39:51.922]We are assuming that they are bad people and we move forward from that position.
[00:39:58.529]So then accepting pluralism. Pluralism
[00:40:04.702]is the idea that we live in a political system
[00:40:09.140]that has diverse political views.
[00:40:12.343]We have a two party system in the United States, so two major
[00:40:16.147]political parties.
[00:40:17.848]Both of them have a chance of winning in elections.
[00:40:22.019]They both have a lot of followers.
[00:40:24.488]It tends to be the case that liberals tend to vote
[00:40:27.858]Democratic and conservatives tend to vote Republican.
[00:40:31.829]And this is the natural way of the world.
[00:40:33.731]Right. My colleague Kevin Smith and his coauthor John Hibbing
[00:40:37.935]have argued that people are predisposed
[00:40:40.905]to be liberal or conservative and to end to disagree about political
[00:40:44.275]issues and about where society should how society should be set up and run.
[00:40:48.679]People disagree about these issues.
[00:40:53.050]So we decided to ask
[00:40:55.052]questions on people stand on the two party system.
[00:40:59.457]So where what do you think about the two party system?
[00:41:02.960]You know, do you do you agree with these various things?
[00:41:06.497]It's not surprising, I guess, that
[00:41:09.099]our partizanship kicks in and we want our party to win.
[00:41:12.903]So I'm not surprised that people think everyone
[00:41:15.773]if everybody voted for my party, we'd be better off.
[00:41:18.409]You know, it's a little weird, but, you know, we can we can agree with that.
[00:41:22.480]But the one that I think is pretty astonishing is this one right here.
[00:41:26.450]So about 50% of Democrats and Republicans.
[00:41:30.921]Can think of no good reason to vote for the other party.
[00:41:35.359]50% say that there is no good reason to vote for the other party.
[00:41:42.733]Now, if you accept pluralism, if you accept the idea
[00:41:46.971]that some people are going to be conservative on issues and some people
[00:41:50.307]are going to be liberal on issues, and that's that that's the way it is.
[00:41:54.445]You know, that's reality.
[00:41:55.880]And you can think of no good reason why somebody would vote for the other party.
[00:42:01.018]That's astonishing to me.
[00:42:04.121]When I saw that result, I was just astonished.
[00:42:06.891]So we also asked people again on these bipolar adjectives,
[00:42:12.229]if you think that people follow others without thinking
[00:42:16.567]or act and think independently, and then if you think
[00:42:21.505]people are misled by the media or are well informed by the media.
[00:42:26.310]And we found that overwhelmingly and this came through
[00:42:29.947]in the focus groups and it came through in our survey results.
[00:42:34.418]People just think the other side is just misled.
[00:42:38.656]They're misinformed.
[00:42:40.057]They just don't you know, they're they're watching the wrong news shows.
[00:42:43.928]This is a quote from one of the focus groups in North Carolina.
[00:42:47.531]You know, it's basically
[00:42:48.699]the idea that, you know, people just are not paying attention.
[00:42:52.469]They're stupid, they're ignorant.
[00:42:54.572]They just they're not understanding what's going on in the world.
[00:42:59.710]So I want you to think a bit.
[00:43:02.179]About what this means.
[00:43:04.815]What people are basically saying is that if people were well-informed,
[00:43:09.954]if people were not misled by the media, if people would just watch Fox
[00:43:14.825]instead of MSNBC or vice versa, if people would just be better informed.
[00:43:21.599]They would both like me. That's right.
[00:43:24.735]Because that's basically what you're saying is you're saying
[00:43:27.571]they would vote like me if they just were better informed,
[00:43:30.641]if they were not misled by these crazies who run their party.
[00:43:35.079]They would all agree with me and they would vote differently.
[00:43:38.682]And it's not going to happen. Right.
[00:43:40.651]So what can be done?
[00:43:43.087]What are the steps that can be taken?
[00:43:45.723]Before talking about this, what I think are possible solutions to the problem.
[00:43:51.128]I just want to say that Jeff and I set some boundaries on civic respect.
[00:43:55.299]I said earlier that recognition respect is universal,
[00:43:58.969]but we do not think civic respect is universal.
[00:44:02.473]In other words, we don't always have to give civic respect.
[00:44:06.143]So one way that I think that we do not have to give civic respect
[00:44:10.314]is if a person keeps talking about
[00:44:13.283]their stand on the same issue over and over and over again.
[00:44:16.420]At some point we can say, okay, I and I understand where you're coming from.
[00:44:20.024]I understand your position. So I already get it.
[00:44:22.693]So if your Uncle Joe is a climate change denier
[00:44:26.163]and you know that, and your Uncle Joe has told you that a million times,
[00:44:29.933]you can just say, Uncle Joe, I'm not going to talk about this with you anymore,
[00:44:33.804]so let's not talk about that.
[00:44:35.439]But I do want to say that if Uncle Joe,
[00:44:38.308]that we cannot assume that Uncle Joe
[00:44:40.678]has certain positions on other issues, we can't make that assumption.
[00:44:46.016]I think we need to talk to Uncle Joe and find that out.
[00:44:49.086]I also think that Uncle Joe can change his mind over time.
[00:44:53.023]Uncle Joe might not always be a climate change denier.
[00:44:55.959]Uncle Joe might say down the road, I'm going.
[00:44:59.363]I see now that climate change is an important issue.
[00:45:03.567]The second thing, the second
[00:45:05.135]boundary that we put on it is that we place civic respect
[00:45:09.206]in the context of a Democrat, liberal Democratic political system.
[00:45:13.877]It is about democracy and political equality.
[00:45:18.916]And we therefore say that you do not have to give civic respect
[00:45:22.519]to somebody who wants to undermine our democratic political system.
[00:45:28.058]If a person wants to get rid of our democracy
[00:45:31.261]and undermine our democracy, throw it out the window.
[00:45:34.865]We don't have to give them civic respect.
[00:45:36.834]Civic respect is within the confines
[00:45:39.703]of a democratic political system. Okay.
[00:45:44.308]So those are our two main things.
[00:45:46.910]That's a third thing that I'll just mention is that we argue that if civic
[00:45:51.348]if giving civic respect undermines recognition and respect.
[00:45:56.253]We should not give civic respect.
[00:45:57.921]It's more important to protect, protect
[00:46:00.090]recognition and respect than it is to protect civic respect.
[00:46:04.261]But having said that, I want to make an argument
[00:46:06.196]for why we should what we should do to try to increase civic respect.
[00:46:10.467]So, first of all, a major thing that is increasingly on the radar
[00:46:14.738]of political scientists is how do we decrease affective polarization?
[00:46:19.243]Because if we can decrease deaths and I argue if we can decrease
[00:46:22.312]affective polarization, I do think there is a possibility
[00:46:26.383]that people will be more willing to give civic respect.
[00:46:29.553]So the less you hate the other side, the more likely you are to give civic respect.
[00:46:35.259]So there are different things that have been argued about how civic
[00:46:38.996]respect, how effective polarization can be decreased.
[00:46:43.967]And I just want to talk about a few of those.
[00:46:46.637]One is if we give people correct information about opposing partizans.
[00:46:53.577]You can learn better where they actually stand on the issues
[00:46:57.080]and you might end up not hating them quite as much.
[00:47:00.684]So there have been some there's some research that suggests that that is true.
[00:47:04.388]A second solution is having a common in-group identity.
[00:47:08.725]So Matthew Levandowski has looked at getting people
[00:47:13.230]to think about themselves as Americans and not as Democrats and Republicans.
[00:47:19.203]And when you get people to think about themselves as Americans.
[00:47:22.806]Affective polarization decreases.
[00:47:25.676]The problem with that solution is that anti-immigrant attitudes increase.
[00:47:30.080]So we there's there's a there's a problem with that one. Right.
[00:47:33.717]So but that is a possibility.
[00:47:36.587]The third is that if you interact with opposing partizans,
[00:47:40.724]especially in nonpolitical settings, so if you interact with them
[00:47:44.394]in a nonpolitical way, it increases or decreases your affective polarization.
[00:47:50.601]So if you interact with other people, you talk about, you know,
[00:47:54.004]your family, your cooking, whatever it is that you know, that you enjoy,
[00:47:57.741]it tends to decrease affective polarization.
[00:48:02.012]This works best when you have a good moderator
[00:48:05.349]who's moderating the discussion, and it works best
[00:48:08.452]when there are rules in place to guide that discussion.
[00:48:12.856]And I think it's obvious that rarely
[00:48:15.092]when we are talking to Uncle Joe do we have a moderator.
[00:48:18.795]Nor do we have rules in place to guide that discussion.
[00:48:22.232]So I'm not convinced that that's a really good solution.
[00:48:25.569]Another set of solutions that would deal with our institutions
[00:48:28.405]and our our practices are political practices.
[00:48:31.541]There's some research that suggests that the way we do politics
[00:48:35.746]exacerbates affective polarization.
[00:48:39.149]So the fact that we have single member districts,
[00:48:43.020]the fact that we have
[00:48:45.722]a minority based Senate,
[00:48:48.625]so the Senate is based on a minority level system rather than the majority.
[00:48:53.597]A majority views different different ways
[00:48:57.100]that our system is set up exacerbate affective polarization.
[00:49:01.171]And part of the reason for this is that politics becomes a zero sum game.
[00:49:06.310]And the more it's a zero sum game, the more you win.
[00:49:10.047]I lose, or vice versa, the more threatened we feel
[00:49:13.684]by the idea that the opposing party will win an election.
[00:49:17.654]We're afraid of what they're going to do because it's a win or lose situation.
[00:49:21.191]A zero sum game.
[00:49:23.126]So all of these things add to affective polarization.
[00:49:27.364]I'm not optimistic, I have to say, about these working.
[00:49:30.500]And so I'm a little concerned about how it plays out.
[00:49:33.070]We're not going to change our institutional structures any time soon.
[00:49:36.940]There is some suggestion that having ranked choice
[00:49:39.643]voting decreases affective polarization
[00:49:43.647]that one is in the works in some parts of the country.
[00:49:46.283]So potentially that could decrease affective polarization.
[00:49:50.387]But in general, I think it's these solutions are problems.
[00:49:53.724]Let me talk about two that I think could work.
[00:49:56.593]One deals with education.
[00:49:59.896]I always have my students in my capstone class.
[00:50:03.066]I ask them, how many of you discussed controversial
[00:50:06.169]political issues in your high school civics or government classes?
[00:50:09.873]And I always have a couple who raise their hands.
[00:50:12.042]But most of the students don't.
[00:50:14.077]And then we get into a discussion about why this is and what's going on.
[00:50:17.781]And basically, they say, no, our teachers were they they were hands off.
[00:50:21.251]They didn't want to deal with controversial issues.
[00:50:23.854]I think there's a good reason for that.
[00:50:25.655]I mean, teachers are afraid of getting in trouble.
[00:50:28.358]They're afraid of raising controversial issues
[00:50:30.961]and having to deal with the emotions that are so strong. They're afraid
[00:50:35.265]of parents going to superintendents and complaining about them.
[00:50:39.536]They're afraid of some kind of fallout from this. And I get that.
[00:50:44.808]But I also think that to really develop civic respect,
[00:50:48.011]we really we need to discuss controversial issues in schools.
[00:50:51.882]It is in schools starting in elementary school, actually,
[00:50:55.952]where we can teach people how to have these conversations.
[00:51:00.323]It's we can get people to do this in a way that is respectful.
[00:51:05.028]And I think it can increase respect if we are able to develop this
[00:51:09.332]through the system, if we allow everybody to have their say,
[00:51:12.502]we get to hear what other people think and we get to learn that the other
[00:51:16.106]side is not monolithic.
[00:51:18.608]And so doing that is a start.
[00:51:21.211]The other thing is that I think we need to Jeff
[00:51:23.980]and I make a very controversial argument as political scientist, which is that
[00:51:27.451]we just need to get people to pay less attention to politics.
[00:51:30.754]We need to have politics be less important than their lives.
[00:51:33.924]And I realize that's crazy.
[00:51:35.492]But there's a political theorist named Robert Tellis who basically argues
[00:51:39.863]that we give we put politics at too high of a level in our lives,
[00:51:46.336]and we need to scale that back and interact with people as civic friends.
[00:51:51.641]And his his big argument is that if we can get people to act as civic friends,
[00:51:57.881]we can start having more discussions and get along better together.
[00:52:02.185]I would also say that I am a proponent of Jonathan Rauch,
[00:52:06.389]his new work, recent work on fallible ism.
[00:52:09.960]And his argument is the more that we listen to the other side.
[00:52:14.498]No. His argument is that
[00:52:17.033]by having our bubbles, by living in our bubbles, we basically.
[00:52:22.205]Have no humility when it comes to politics.
[00:52:25.308]We think we are right 100% of the time.
[00:52:28.478]And these solutions, I think, are geared towards trying to get people
[00:52:32.115]to understand that they are fallible, that they might not always be right.
[00:52:36.286]And if we can get people to do that, then I think we can increase civic respect.
[00:52:40.957]So Jeff and I argue for the importance of civic respect.
[00:52:44.227]I do think it is very important and I am eager to hear what you have
[00:52:47.864]to say here. Use
[00:52:59.109]so much structure for your travel talk.
[00:53:02.812]If you have a question again, you're welcome to raise your hand
[00:53:05.982]while you think about your questions. I'll
[00:53:08.985]ask you some from Zoom.
[00:53:11.354]So first, you have a compliment that this was a wonderful topic.
[00:53:16.092]You're a wonderful scholar.
[00:53:18.228]But from next month's speaker, Dr.
[00:53:22.399]Graham says your analysis is based
[00:53:24.201]on basic assumptions about democracy and pluralism.
[00:53:27.804]And to what extent is respect possible between groups or individuals
[00:53:32.642]as long as significant power differences exist?
[00:53:36.046]If respect is based on the notion of equality
[00:53:38.715]as a political actors plus agents, but some groups
[00:53:43.119]or small groups of individuals overwhelmingly control
[00:53:46.489]or perceived to control political representation in institutions.
[00:53:51.294]Then how is anything more than tolerance even possible?
[00:53:55.899]So that's a very good question.
[00:53:58.101]I, I am a firm believer in the notion
[00:54:02.572]that democratic political systems rest on this notion of political equality.
[00:54:07.677]That means we need to make the system fair. I mean, so
[00:54:11.214]we need to make it so that people who legally can vote are able to vote.
[00:54:16.052]We need to make sure that people are given a voice in the political system.
[00:54:20.357]All of those things are part of what basic political equality means.
[00:54:26.229]So that means that since my argument is that democratic
[00:54:31.434]a democratic political system is foundational to this notion
[00:54:34.471]of civic respect,
[00:54:36.439]I think we have to we have to fight for political equality.
[00:54:41.144]It's still going to be the case that some people win and some people lose
[00:54:44.814]in a political and a democratic political system.
[00:54:47.651]There will be a majority vote in a minority vote.
[00:54:50.053]And some people are you know, the majority is going to win.
[00:54:53.790]What becomes unfair is when our system creates unfairness.
[00:54:58.428]So I am opposed to super partizan gerrymandering.
[00:55:03.867]I just think that's awful.
[00:55:05.302]I also think that if we had
[00:55:08.338]if we had more, if we had congressional races, House races
[00:55:13.910]where it was close, where the outcome was closer,
[00:55:17.714]then you would get better representation
[00:55:20.617]and you would get less gerrymandering and all sorts of stuff.
[00:55:23.753]So I agree that that this is
[00:55:26.956]an issue, but I disagree with the idea
[00:55:29.859]that because there are power structures in society
[00:55:32.262]that we can't respect each other.
[00:55:33.730]There are always going to be power structures in society.
[00:55:36.533]That's just human nature.
[00:55:37.734]I don't know how we get around power structures in society, but
[00:55:40.737]let's make the system politically equal and fair.
[00:55:45.308]And I think we can give respect to people within that framework.
[00:56:00.290]So earlier you brought up that it seems like liberals tend
[00:56:03.593]to personally disrespect Republicans a lot more than vice versa.
[00:56:07.597]Like you said, the liberal respect paradox.
[00:56:09.332]I just want you to go into that a little bit more.
[00:56:11.601]So we find that when we ask people about different understandings of equality,
[00:56:17.173]Democrats had a richer understanding of equality than than Republicans.
[00:56:22.045]Democrats tended to believe in equality in all sorts of different ways.
[00:56:25.915]The highest was equal respect actually in this list of things,
[00:56:30.253]but they also believe in a lot of other understandings of equality.
[00:56:34.591]Republicans tended to believe in equality
[00:56:37.660]of opportunity and equality under the law and equality before God.
[00:56:44.367]So those were the three
[00:56:45.268]that they mostly picked as their main understandings of equality.
[00:56:49.072]And Democrats believed in all of it, except for equality under God.
[00:56:53.676]Democrats believed in
[00:56:54.711]all sorts of different things equal, more or worse, equal and respect equal.
[00:56:58.815]You know, there were all sorts of understandings of.
[00:57:01.518]So they also then we asked them about there
[00:57:05.388]whether you could respect the other party as human beings that everybody
[00:57:10.660]had become more aware of, essentially, and Democrats were more likely to say yes.
[00:57:16.266]So they have this higher level of recognition, respect.
[00:57:21.438]Or they believe more that you ought to have recognition, respect
[00:57:23.873]when asked about the other party. Then they just couldn't give it.
[00:57:26.776]They were just more likely to say not.
[00:57:29.112]Yes, I believe all humans should be respected, but I just can't respect
[00:57:32.982]Republicans. Republicans
[00:57:35.018]were less likely to do that.
[00:57:36.186]One of the we looked we dug into this a lot.
[00:57:39.456]Part of the thing that we found
[00:57:40.790]is that younger Republicans seem to have more respect for Democrats.
[00:57:45.295]Older Republicans were equally disrespecting,
[00:57:48.531]but younger Republicans seem to be more open to the other side.
[00:57:52.869]So we call this the liberal respect paradox,
[00:57:54.871]and we try to figure out why it is and we look into how people moralize
[00:58:00.043]their beliefs or their stance on different issues.
[00:58:02.579]So moral assertion of beliefs really leads to a difficult
[00:58:06.015]you just have a hard time accepting people who don't agree with you.
[00:58:09.586]And we also look at the notion that people feel a sense of collective
[00:58:14.657]responsibility for dealing
[00:58:16.526]with these issues, that they more they hold so morally strong, you know.
[00:58:20.563]So anyway, that's the liberal respect that.
[00:58:25.902]As Ethan makes his way.
[00:58:26.803]I'm going to see if this will let me allow Dr.
[00:58:29.639]Schleck to ask a question.
[00:58:36.112]Hi. Can you hear me?
[00:58:38.915]Can you hear me? Yes. Excellent.
[00:58:42.986]Thank you so much for a really provocative talk
[00:58:46.623]and I particularly appreciate it,
[00:58:48.725]as I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear about your argument.
[00:58:53.062]The civic debate and should civic respect should be integrated into schooling
[00:58:57.700]and be a kind of expected part of what we do as educators on all levels,
[00:59:03.473]that, as you noted, that
[00:59:05.808]that's something that I feel very strongly about on the university level.
[00:59:08.811]And it was interesting to hear you extend that, make a good case for it
[00:59:12.782]on the K-12 level as well.
[00:59:15.618]But I had a response
[00:59:18.454]to your focus on civic respect
[00:59:22.125]that I feel like mimics your response to your colleague
[00:59:27.297]when you were committed to tolerance but had to be persuaded on respect.
[00:59:32.201]I when I listen to you, I feel like, yeah, I feel like
[00:59:38.641]that civic respect is perhaps
[00:59:40.610]even inadequate for what we need to reunite as a society.
[00:59:43.980]Like, I'm wondering if what is what is needed are questions
[00:59:47.450]about or a focus on a more solid a ristic approach. Right.
[00:59:51.454]That and this is entirely a layman's perspective on politics.
[00:59:55.458]So you can as an expert, you can correct me,
[00:59:57.760]but it seems to me that one way of thinking about people's
[01:00:00.897]engagement of politics is as a manifestation
[01:00:04.667]of how they're thinking about how their lives are going
[01:00:07.003]and how they think society is going at that point .
[01:00:10.073]And when things are going really wrong, it's a question that, you know,
[01:00:13.876]that's that's the question that they're answering
[01:00:15.912]by voting or by engaging in public political discussion,
[01:00:18.481]who will make things better for me and for my country?
[01:00:21.517]And it seems like we're in a moment right when things are going
[01:00:25.622]wrong and all kinds of very pronounced and obvious ways. Right.
[01:00:29.659]And that all of us are experiencing those, you know, we're experiencing
[01:00:34.163]a decrease in real wages and rises and prices and increased debt
[01:00:39.836]and increased lack of health, increased crazy weather
[01:00:43.306]or increased crumbling infrastructure .
[01:00:45.274]Right. Like there's a palpable sense of crisis about society.
[01:00:49.112]And the, you know, part of what people are seeking
[01:00:52.382]is, is an answer to those questions.
[01:00:55.385]And that one of the things that very partizan politics offer
[01:00:59.522]is, is solidarity for the answers you've come up with,
[01:01:03.793]you know, some sense of community that is otherwise being lost.
[01:01:08.564]And so I I'm wondering if you've done
[01:01:12.602]any polling or considered, you know, or thought through at all
[01:01:16.873]questions that begin with observable problems in society,
[01:01:20.276]a decrease, you know, all the things that I mentioned
[01:01:22.712]and then asking how people choose to solve those.
[01:01:26.549]Like if if starting from that position
[01:01:30.186]not only integrates respect
[01:01:32.121]but integrates a kind of solidarity, like, yeah, we're all going through this.
[01:01:35.491]You may have come up with a solution that's entirely different from mine,
[01:01:38.761]and I don't understand how you got there, but that could be then the question
[01:01:42.865]how do you how do you think this could
[01:01:44.634]possibly solve this problem that we're all facing? Right.
[01:01:47.970]Because then it acknowledges a kind of underlying struggle
[01:01:51.174]that we as a society are undergoing that gives us a ground work
[01:01:56.446]and a practical groundwork for then kind of coming to
[01:02:00.383]common solutions, because we can at least kind of speak
[01:02:04.821]from a common starting place and a framework ,
[01:02:08.658]right, that we're trying to solve these particular problems.
[01:02:11.027]And you've come up with a solution that's different.
[01:02:13.463]Tell me why you think this works.
[01:02:17.967]So I think that is a good idea. I hadn't.
[01:02:21.437]We did not have will.
[01:02:23.940]Like in our focus groups, we did not throw out a problem
[01:02:28.277]and ask for solutions to the problem.
[01:02:30.580]I do think that working together to find solutions is a good one
[01:02:34.283]and it could be tremendously useful in an educational setting.
[01:02:38.221]I think out in the real world it's hard.
[01:02:40.223]You know, as I said, people live in bubbles and so it's hard
[01:02:43.559]to get people who disagree with each other together to figure out those solutions.
[01:02:47.864]But I do think in the educational setting, that has real possibility.
[01:02:52.668]We did give people in our surveys and in our focus groups
[01:02:58.141]some real world situations and asked about their response to them
[01:03:03.679]to try to kind of poke them, I guess, to think about how their views
[01:03:10.153]might be a bit contradictory.
[01:03:12.922]We wanted people to accept that there are competing issues that go into a problem,
[01:03:18.694]and we wanted them to to grapple with those with those inconsistencies.
[01:03:24.233]And they had trouble.
[01:03:25.301]I mean, they just they they really struggled with it.
[01:03:30.873]But some people did have that view and they were able to come at it
[01:03:34.911]from from from different perspectives and try to bring that in.
[01:03:38.114]But I do think, Julie, I think that's a really good idea.
[01:03:40.750]It would be a good, good thing especially to use and I think
[01:03:43.719]an educational setting.
[01:03:48.991]Yeah. The question you hinted at,
[01:03:51.260]you know, some possible solutions to decrease the polarization.
[01:03:54.764]But I'm wondering what your thoughts are on
[01:03:56.098]what actually caused it in the first place.
[01:03:57.900]Is this just the Internet or what caused it?
[01:04:02.271]Yeah. Good question.
[01:04:03.873]So the hate, that sense of hatred,
[01:04:08.077]I think of the other side.
[01:04:12.048]Increases. So what
[01:04:14.050]what ended up happening is that the two political parties sorted. So.
[01:04:17.820]So basically it used to be that the Democratic Party
[01:04:21.991]included northern liberals and Southern conservatives.
[01:04:25.261]And the Republican Party included
[01:04:28.164]kind of northern kind of moderates to conservatives.
[01:04:33.002]And that was pretty much what the parties looked like.
[01:04:34.937]So within Congress, when you look at the polarization
[01:04:38.007]in Congress, you can see that as the party sorted,
[01:04:42.511]it gets more and more and more polarized.
[01:04:44.847]And I think in the general public, I think there are a lot of things that affect
[01:04:49.051]what we what we think about ourselves and about our of the opposing party.
[01:04:54.090]One of them is the media.
[01:04:55.424]I do think the media play a role in this.
[01:04:57.660]And the more that we hear in the media, a lot of.
[01:05:03.499]More biased reporting.
[01:05:05.201]You know, if you constantly hear the same tropes over and over and over again,
[01:05:09.605]I think we tend to accept them, especially in our media bubbles.
[01:05:13.542]I also think political leaders have become much more aggressively,
[01:05:19.615]you know, you're in my camp or you're not in my camp.
[01:05:22.251]And so I think political leadership plays a role in that. I think.
[01:05:27.390]There is more and more of this notion
[01:05:30.293]of identifying with the party than there used to be.
[01:05:32.762]People care more about identifying with the party.
[01:05:36.165]And it might be that we just hear about it a lot more.
[01:05:39.635]But the parties have also tried to sell themselves a lot more.
[01:05:42.738]It's funny, as the parties have become weaker.
[01:05:45.441]Our party system right now is really weak.
[01:05:48.110]As the parties become weaker, this affective polarization takes off.
[01:05:52.381]So the party seems to be more in control of who got to run on their party label.
[01:05:56.218]They got to you know, they were basically making a lot of decisions.
[01:06:00.122]Now it's a free for all.
[01:06:01.524]And we see that in this midterm election cycle that we've just
[01:06:05.194]that we're in right now. I mean, it's it's just a free for all.
[01:06:07.930]So the parties are themselves divided.
[01:06:11.200]But but the real hatred is for the other party.
[01:06:14.170]So anyway, I think all of those things contribute.
[01:06:20.376]This has been a really wonderful talk.
[01:06:22.111]So thank you very much.
[01:06:23.646]You ended with the conception of fallibility.
[01:06:26.782]And I wanted to just sort of talk a bit, ask you a bit about that,
[01:06:30.052]because one of the things that fallibility would suggest is that we come to honor
[01:06:35.091]and recognize the importance of verifiable facts.
[01:06:39.061]And if we take that also as a. Given.
[01:06:44.166]Is that a boundary condition for you, for civic respect as well?
[01:06:49.772]Insofar as someone is not willing to recognize verifiable facts
[01:06:53.676]to the greatest extent possible
[01:06:56.078]within a condition, a certain reasonableness of disagreement,
[01:06:58.781]is that to a boundary condition specific respect if one doesn't accept
[01:07:02.151]verifiable empirical fact.
[01:07:05.521]So we do not include it as a boundary condition.
[01:07:08.791]But I understand where you're coming from.
[01:07:11.193]I do think that.
[01:07:14.030]There is. To get back to my Uncle Joe example.
[01:07:19.201]I think that if Uncle Joe is a climate denier and
[01:07:23.506]there's all this factual scientific evidence
[01:07:26.742]that climate change is caused by human behavior, right?
[01:07:29.812]I mean, it just to me that's irrefutable.
[01:07:33.082]Know there's too much science.
[01:07:34.283]I mean it anyway.
[01:07:37.820]I still think we should give civic respect to Uncle Joe
[01:07:40.923]until he keeps insisting that his non factual stance is, is.
[01:07:46.362]And then you can say, okay, stop.
[01:07:47.930]So I do think that that condition of saying you're not going to keep
[01:07:50.933]talking to somebody over and over and over again,
[01:07:54.170]partly that that idea that they are ignoring fact
[01:07:58.541]makes it so that you can say, okay, I understand your position.
[01:08:02.144]Okay, fine, that's enough.
[01:08:04.747]So it is in a roundabout way
[01:08:06.682]part of the boundary commission, but simply factual, you know,
[01:08:10.252]factual evidentiary basis, if not from the boundary commission.
[01:08:14.190]I think you still need to find out what people think.
[01:08:19.462]How do you maintain civic respect for someone when they're when you feel
[01:08:24.500]that their political beliefs disrespect you or like some aspect of your identity?
[01:08:30.539]Like, if I feel like I'm part of the LGBTQ community
[01:08:33.943]and someone who I'm talking to is very against that politically,
[01:08:37.713]or if I'm a member of the police force and someone holds the belief
[01:08:42.184]that everyone on the police force is, you know, racist and overly
[01:08:46.956]physically controlling and all that, how do you maintain
[01:08:51.160]respect for someone when you feel like they're attacking you personally? Yeah.
[01:08:55.064]So remember that civic respect
[01:08:56.899]is just the idea that you listen to and engage with them.
[01:09:00.703]You know, again, not forever, but you know, you find out where they're
[01:09:03.606]coming from. You try to understand them and that you don't stereotype
[01:09:08.210]everybody just because of one person in a group or several people in a group.
[01:09:12.348]And that you believe in pluralism, you accept that people
[01:09:15.317]are going to disagree with you.
[01:09:17.153]I think that civic respect and I think we can do that.
[01:09:19.955]I mean, that I think we can do that.
[01:09:22.825]You might be asking more about recognition. Respect.
[01:09:25.461]Can I actually respect you as a human being because you hold
[01:09:29.298]these really abominable views, in my opinion. Right.
[01:09:32.868]And our argument is that we have to give recognition, respect.
[01:09:37.439]We just have to.
[01:09:38.641]And it's just a condition
[01:09:40.476]that no matter what somebody has said or done, it's not earned.
[01:09:43.779]It's it is just that we should respect people as fellow human beings.
[01:09:48.150]So I understand where you're coming from.
[01:09:50.986]And I, you know,
[01:09:53.556]we are put to a difficult test very often with civic respect.
[01:09:58.027]But I think what we're asking people to do.
[01:10:01.897]It's actually not that not that awful.
[01:10:06.001]So especially if we can do it impersonally.
[01:10:08.837]If I can find out why do people say, you know, why does this group think this?
[01:10:12.408]Okay, now I understand. Now I don't have to read more about that.
[01:10:15.144]I understand where they're coming from.
[01:10:16.779]And then I'm going to put that aside. Right.
[01:10:19.315]But giving that initial civic respect to figure out where they're coming from,
[01:10:22.818]which I think is important.
[01:10:26.655]Great talk. My question
[01:10:28.724]I want to kind of follow up a little bit of what Mark was saying.
[01:10:32.228]And I think even as a biologist,
[01:10:36.699]you're using climate change as an example of Uncle Joe and why, you know.
[01:10:44.473]Of what's a fact and what's not.
[01:10:46.709]Yeah, it's there's a lot more nuance there then than that then.
[01:10:50.379]It's hard to explain and there's a lot of data analyzed.
[01:10:54.850]How would you answer that if Uncle Joe was saying the election was stolen?
[01:11:00.556]I think those variable viable facts, at least from my point of view,
[01:11:04.360]are much more verifiable than the facts about climate change.
[01:11:10.032]So, I mean, it kind of gets to the point of what
[01:11:13.068]what's an extreme that's too extreme.
[01:11:16.538]Because I think that there's a lot more nuance in Republican versus Democrat
[01:11:21.010]and that there's also these cold
[01:11:22.444]there's ends where those people become out of bounds from.
[01:11:26.315]From deserving civic respect.
[01:11:30.152]And so if they're going to. And how do you deal with that? So
[01:11:34.857]I think there's a question in there somewhere.
[01:11:37.726]So I. I will come back to what I said about civic respect
[01:11:45.401]being within the realm of a democratic, liberal, democratic political system.
[01:11:50.172]And I think somebody, when there is no evidence whatsoever
[01:11:55.177]to say that the election is fraudulent, the election outcome is fraudulent.
[01:12:00.416]What the person is doing is undermining.
[01:12:05.321]The Democrats democracy there.
[01:12:07.823]They are trying to undermine democracy by saying that we can accept the outcome
[01:12:11.960]of the election when it was a free and fair election. Right.
[01:12:15.664]So so that becomes that question about democracy.
[01:12:19.468]I also, though, think.
[01:12:22.104]That if we give people civic respect.
[01:12:24.807]I don't know that my coauthor would agree with me on.
[01:12:28.177]But I've heard I've talked to quite
[01:12:31.246]a few Republicans who who say that there was fraud
[01:12:34.783]and that that this election, you know, Biden didn't win it.
[01:12:39.488]And listening to them, they
[01:12:43.492]they are afraid that our the Democrats are undermining our democracy.
[01:12:48.864]So I, I don't think it's I mean, they're wrong on this issue.
[01:12:52.901]On this particular issue. They're wrong.
[01:12:54.770]But I do think that hearing it out
[01:12:57.473]and hearing where they're coming from is important for us to do.
[01:13:01.577]On the other hand, as I said, civic respect.
[01:13:04.613]This is this in a democratic system.
[01:13:06.515]I really do believe that
[01:13:07.516]we don't have to listen to somebody who wants to undermine our democracy.
[01:13:11.420]And I think election denial is an undermining of democracy
[01:13:15.657]unless you have proof that there is some extensive fraud
[01:13:19.628]that has gone on and so forth, and nobody has found it.
[01:13:27.002]No, no, no, no, no.
[01:13:28.837]I won't agree with that.
[01:13:30.839]I do think a lot of the polling results that show acceptance of the election
[01:13:36.044]fraud argument, I think a lot of it is just polarization and action.
[01:13:40.849]I think it's Republicans saying it's my team, you're attacking my team.
[01:13:44.987]And so I'm going to say this, even though I actually don't think that
[01:13:48.023]there was actually election fraud, but I am with my team.
[01:13:51.260]And so I think it's a problem.
[01:13:53.128]It's a survey problem.
[01:13:55.297]It's like that last question on an applied.
[01:13:58.867]How do we find common ground?
[01:14:00.002]So Corgan asks, How should a teacher bring up controversial
[01:14:04.373]political issues with students respectfully without getting in trouble?
[01:14:08.177]The school systems need to change in order to accommodate this change,
[01:14:12.114]or should the teachers change how they teach? Or both?
[01:14:15.951]So we political scientists
[01:14:18.420]sit around at lunch on occasion and we talk about the fact
[01:14:21.590]that we actually talk about controversial, controversial
[01:14:25.027]issues in our classes all the time.
[01:14:27.596]This is what we do.
[01:14:28.964]You know, this is our job.
[01:14:30.899]And I think that we have learned
[01:14:34.269]to handle it pretty well because we remain analytical.
[01:14:37.339]We don't take sides.
[01:14:38.774]We we try to talk about the data.
[01:14:41.276]You know, as Mark was saying, you know, you try to show evidence on one side
[01:14:45.180]or the other and be fair on it
[01:14:47.783]so that you can bring in some pro data and some anti data.
[01:14:52.087]I mean, I think that we we try to do this all the time.
[01:14:55.624]I don't think it's the problem is I if you feel really strongly about an issue
[01:15:00.329]and you have the viewpoint that your side is right
[01:15:04.666]and the other side is wrong, that can really undermine that kind of discussion.
[01:15:09.404]But if you really want to hear what people say,
[01:15:12.341]I've got students in my classes, say something where I was like,
[01:15:16.011]Oh my God, I can't believe you said it out loud.
[01:15:19.014]But my face is interesting point.
[01:15:23.285]So, you know, and then other students will jump in and say, well,
[01:15:26.622]I disagree and blah.
[01:15:27.623]And so it really gets to be a
[01:15:29.391]I think a fun it makes it a fun discussion, in my opinion.
[01:15:32.294]But political scientists are a weird lot. So.
[01:15:38.033]Again so much. Dr.
[01:15:39.835]Face. First, another round of applause.
[01:15:47.943]For giving us some things
[01:15:50.279]to think about as we enter November.
[01:15:54.917]Hopefully you will join us next month for
[01:15:59.321]How Do We Talk to Uncle Joe about climate change with Dr.
[01:16:03.292]Regina Werum, who will talk about human and environment interactions.
[01:16:07.329]And I hope to see you there. Thank you so much for attending.
[01:16:10.132]I hope you have a great night.

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Partisan polarization and the need for civic respect | CAS Inquire

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