The Truth about Political Psychology

~ Laura

There’s an interesting little skirmish between Megan McArdle at Bloomberg and Katy Waldman at Slate about political ideology and psychology.

The subtitle of Waldman’s article is “Conservative beliefs make a lot more sense when you’re not paying attention.” Catnip for some, poison stew for others.

Waldman points to a study that found that when people don’t want to think too hard, like when they’re drunk, they tend to make more conservative statements.

In a study by Scott Eidelman, Christian Crandall, and others, volunteers were placed in situations that, by forcing them to multitask or to answer questions under time pressure, required them to fall back on intellectual shortcuts. They were then polled about issues such as free trade, private property, and social welfare. Time after time, participants were more likely to espouse conservative ideals when they turned off their deliberative mental circuits. In the most wondrous setup, the researchers measured the political leanings of a group of bar patrons against their blood alcohol levels, predicting that as the beer flowed, so too would the Republican talking points. They were correct, it turns out. Drunkenness is a tax on cognitive capacity; when we’re taxed too much, we really do veer right.

So, McArdle mocks this paper rather nicely,

They stood outside a New England bar, grabbed patrons and asked them to complete a 10-question political survey of rather elderly vintage. (Sample questions: “Production and trade should be free of government interference” and “Ultimately, private property should be abolished”). Then they asked them to blow into a Breathalyzer so that they could measure their blood-alcohol levels. The problems with this should be obvious: How did these people answer before they started drinking? We have no idea! Moreover, here is a word that doesn’t appear anywhere in their analysis: “inhibition.” Alcohol lowers social inhibition. If you’re in an area where conservatism is relatively frowned upon — like, oh, say, I dunno, New England — drinking might make you more willing to give honest answers. Or it might make you more willing to mess with the researchers by giving wrong answers. Or this study might be the next best thing to completely useless.

How did this paper get through the review process?

Published by Laura

36 thoughts on “The Truth about Political Psychology”

  1. Inhibitions is exactly the answer I was thinking of.

    It’s just like in the old Soviet Union, the answers you’d get to sensitive political questions would probably be different depending on whether your interlocutor was drunk or sober and had his self-preservation instincts in gear. Sober, he’d give you the party line. Drunk, he’d tell you exactly what he actually thought.

    It would be very interesting to repeat the experiment elsewhere in the US.

    It would even be interesting to try similar experiments on journalists drunk and sober. “What do you really think of Obama’s presidency?” would be a good one to start with.

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    1. I ran this situation by my husband without offering my theory, and he immediately mentioned loosening of inhibitions and in vino veritas.

      That’s one of the reasons I don’t drink–I need all the inhibitions I can get.

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  2. The paper (which is available: http://2012election.procon.org/sourcefiles/low-effort-thought-promotes-political-conservatism-2012.pdf) is perfectly reasonable. The alcohol study is only one of several that try to address the same point: That is [they] “argue that low-effort thinking promotes political conservatism, not that conservatives rely on low-effort thought. One study involves alcohol, but another involves rapid response times, and another increasing “cognitive load” (i.e. making the subjects do something else difficult) while answering questions about political conservative ideology. Their conclusion is “initial and uncorrected
    responses lean conservative.”

    To address the “mocking” complaints — the authors don’t discuss explicitly the alternative interpretation of disinhibition (with alcohol, or cognitive load, etc.) resulting in “more honest” answers, but I think they might argue that this may be comparable to stating that people relying on “low-effort thought” might also be willing to say that they would steal. Whether that is the more “honest’ response, or whether, in fact, if relying on more complex cognitive functioning, people would both say they would not, and would not steal would require further study.

    In this study, I guess, the follow up I’d want to see is how the individuals actually vote or some other measure of their decision making (and not just survey answers) made with full use of their cognition. There’s some oblique data in the paper that says that people act as their full cognition would suggest, but it’s oblique and is requiring some interpretation on my part.

    (BTW, I’m responding to the original study and not the Slate article, which I haven’t read carefully).

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    1. From the questions:

      ““Production and trade should be free of government interference” and “Ultimately, private property should be abolished”).”

      I’m not sure what the full list of questions looked like, but these are not questions that an intelligent person is going to have to think through. If you have any political views at all, you will have thought about the questions long ago and come to some conclusions about them. It’s not really a thinking or problem-solving exercise.

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  3. PS: The conservative ideologies they are testing seem to be ideology in favor of personal responsibility, social hierarchy, and status quo, not political decision making.

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  4. Anecdotally, I have changed the mind of one each conservative and liberal on the questions of the Hobby Lobby decision (the conservative: asked him what other medical treatments could be reasonably and religiously prohibited coverage by employer-provided medical insurance) and the 2nd amendment (the liberal: asked her was she making herself responsible for my defense by requiring that I not enter her home while carrying a concealed handgun, despite my having a concealed handgun permit). (I’m not suggesting either of those arguments would work on all people who think those ways, but they did in these instances.)

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    1. Your anecdote could potentially illustrate that In both cases, a visceral response might be replaced with a more reasoned opinion. It’d be interesting to try to do the experiment that way — to measure people’s visceral reactions and then give them information and more time, and see if liberal/conservative opinions became more/less liberal or conservative.

      The second argument certainly wouldn’t have changed my mind, I do have a visceral response against guns, but I also have plenty of reasoned arguments why I would think no one would be safer in my home if there was a gun present.

      The experimenters didn’t do the experiment that would closely parallel the anecdote. But they did compare liberal/conservative attitudes for the effect of cognitive load (i.e. take a thinking position and make them more instinctual). They found a result compatible with my own reaction — cognitive load increased conservative attitudes and decreased liberal attitudes.

      (Now, I’m sloppily talking about the experiments as though they were done on the same person (i.e. the same individual answers questions w/wo cognitive load). But, this is a between group comparison (some of the people were given the distracting task, while the others weren’t).

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    2. With all due respect, that’s a moronic argument about guns. That argument and similar ones are largely responsible for moving me toward support of greater gun control. Plus, people letting nine-year-olds try the automatic weapons free handed.

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      1. I’m still trying to figure out what happened.
        Kai wanted to visit Friend. Kai wanted to visit Friend while carrying a gun. Friend said, “No gun!” Kai said “Do you want to be responsible for my defense?” [I assume the rest of that sentence is “…defense if I don’t carry my gun?”]
        Friend was “persuaded” about [? I am not sure what friend was persuaded about. That Kai is absolutely militant about carrying a gun and Friend will never change Kai’s mind?]

        My response would have been “Yes! I will be responsible for your defense. Leave your gun at home and I will defend you with … this spoon!” [<–Doctor Who reference]

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      2. Seriously. The only thing that would have convinced me of is that Kai is not a friend who respects my wishes about my home. If Kai doesn’t want to visit my home unarmed, visiting my home will be unnecessary. If Kai is important enough to me, I’ll make an effort to meet elsewhere more frequently; I’m not sure Kai would remain important enough to me, though, if this is the response I got to barring handguns in my home.

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  5. Bar patrons? Who the heck goes to bars? I’d expect the patrons to skew conservative before walking in, even in New England. Or perhaps especially in New England. It’s not a random sample of people; I’d expect it not to have an even mix of class backgrounds.

    To balance it out, they’d have to lie in wait outside a country club clubhouse, in the evening. But watch out for the potted old ladies!

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    1. I go to lots of bars. Or one bar lots of times. It’s pretty mixed as far as clientele. Grad students, service workers, some programer types, etc.

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      1. Every bar? College bars have a different clientele than bars near offices, than bars near loading docks,etc. In our area, most bars are part of restaurants. One bar at some distance was part of a strip club.

        Out here in the ‘burbs, I hear about a couple of persistent drunks, who’re driven home by others on a regular basis. People drink, but it’s more likely to be in private, or small gatherings.

        Whereas the bar across the street from our apartment in the city had a consistent crowd.

        Is it the alcohol’s effect? How about comparing them to liquor store customers? For fun, compare them to men leaving lingerie stores or gun stores.

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  6. The bar patrons identified themselves as centrist (a liberal/conservative scale from 1 to 5, m=2.45).

    Now I’m wondering, though, how the authors did the study in a local New England bar, when they are in Arkansas, Wisconsin, and Kansas. Did they move after the study was done? One ofthem got their PhD at University of Maine, maybe he did the study? Or, like my brief foray into asking random bar-exiters in our nation’s capital about the brain and soul (I can’t remember the specific question) did the survey arise after a conference dinner?

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    1. The experiments on undergraduates (rather than bar patron) appear to have been done at the University of Maine.

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  7. “How did these people answer before they started drinking? We have no idea!”

    True that there are no within subject comparisons, but, the argument is that the correlation with blood alcohol level (measured with a breathalyzer) shows a comparable result (unless you think that BAC level would be correlated with their answers before they drank, which would be a kind of fun study to do — to ask the questions before they went into the bar and then measure their BACs when they exited).

    I’m kind of surprised that people agreed to do the experiment on exiting the bar (without getting paid).

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  8. I wonder if people would be more or less likely to respond to the survey before or after they entered the bar? That would be interesting to know, too.

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  9. Ideology is a short cut to thinking. Nobody likes to think through grey areas. Not liberals, conservatives, independents. Thinking is hard. It’s much easier if you identity with a group of people and then accept the menu of political opinions.

    Conservatives in this country have several crutches to fall back upon. They have the conservative menu, which is reinforced in multiple places — FOX news, blogs, places of worship.

    Liberals have their own crutches, too.

    We all self segregate into our comfort zones, which tell us that our ideas are correct and the other side is evil and stupid. During the Furguson thing, I checked out the Facebook page that was set up to support the cops. The comments were so different from the things that I was reading elsewhere. Because I self-segregate into more liberal areas of internet and more liberal real life communitiies.

    I think that we have to begin with the assumption that people who have different political opinions are not stupid. They aren’t evil. We have to get out of our comfort zones.

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    1. I think that we have to begin with the assumption that people who have different political opinions are not stupid. They aren’t evil. We have to get out of our comfort zones.

      But it’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.

      Thinking is hard, and I try to teach it in my advanced comp classes and my students resist. I usually ask them to take an issue where they think the other side is unreasonable or unchangeable, and then analyze the arguments by breaking them down into their parts, using the Toulmin method. It’s helpful to see what the assumptions that underlie an argument are. The sticking point is when those assumptions are based on inaccurate data.

      And that’s where the accusations of stupidity come from, and I get the impression that that is what this study by cognitive psychologists is getting at. If you believe something to be true despite all evidence to the contrary, am I supposed to respect that? Consider it a sign of intelligence? Or am I allowed to think you are being ruled by your emotions?

      And are we allowed to say that having your deciding what is true based on your emotions is “stupid”?

      To me, the big challenge of the late 20th and early 21st century, in terms of political disagreements, is not ideological. It’s a question of arguing over what is true. We can’t agree on the facts.

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  11. Poltical differences can’t be always solved by boiling down an argument to provable facts. Sometimes political differences come from differing values. One group may place more value on equity, another group on liberty. In those instances, nobody is stupid.

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    1. No, but they can help separate the wheat from the chaff.
      Here’s an example: libertarians who oppose taxes vs. liberals who support taxes. Now, this disagreement is ideological and based on differing values. I do not mind having this argument with libertarians, even if I do not share their values.

      But arguing with someone over whether Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim communist? Head meet desk. And then when you try to argue with someone over what *should* be ideological but really is about someone else’s fear of Obama/blacks/Muslims all rolled together into a giant ball of whatthefuck…. I’m sorry, but the word “stupid” comes to mind.

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  12. There’s a big difference between “conservativism” and stupid statements made by Bill O’Reilly (or whoever says Obama not a citizen stuff). These studies were not examining specific ideas that are indeed right or wrong. They were looking at broad value-based ideas about government and politics. ex. “Production and trade should be free of government interference.” and “Ultimately, private property should be abolished.” I would love to see the full survey, but they didn’t include in the paper, which is weird. The authors said they took their questions from a survey of 10 questions that were developed by other researchers in 1951 and 1975. This current paper was written in 2012. Come on, people. Let’s at least use a political ideology scale that was written in the past ten years. I wonder if they included a Cold War sort of question, too.

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      3. I’ve just finished reading Boys in the Boat with my son, which is about the U Washington 8 man crew boat in 1936, but with side trips to Nazi Germany and the world reaction to the Nazis, and the propaganda machine to support the Nazi regime. Reading out loud the words about what was happening, the fairly successful control perceptions, and the toddler-like sticking fingers in ones ears and humming in the hopes that it will all go away is an eerie repeat of what we’re hearing now.

        Hearing that Finland was being obstructionist about new sanctions (and, yes, I know we can talk about other points of view). Usually at moments like this my reptilian brain becomes jingoistic and thinks that we need to tell the Europeans that we’re not going to save their buts again.

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  13. The study doesn’t say that conservatives are stupid; it says that there is more agreement with conservative political ideas in conditions where people engage in less cognitive based thinking and more on instinctual thinking (those are my words, colored by my tendency to see those types of thinking as being associated with different brain structures). They also do not report any difference in the likelihood of agreeing with conservative sentiments in high load conditions based on identification as liberal or conservative. In the Slate article, the author points out that sometimes instinctual thinking is the more beneficial way to react (for example, in flight/fight conditions). She actually stresses this point, that to interpret the study as “conservatives are stupid” would be to engage in exactly the kind of instinctual biased thinking she was talking about.

    I thought of a “conservative” theory, one that we don’t know they tested (they might have, it would be mixed up in the averaging), where instinctual thought seems to result in the less conservative response — the question about whether shopkeepers can charge more for flowers on Valentine’s day. It’s often cited as an example of low-level thinking with a socialist bent — many people supposedly answer that it’s wrong, or that the government should prohibit it, but on reflection, it’s a fundamental tenet of a market economy, and, one we presumably accept, since we don’t have price controls on roses.

    I like these kinds of experiments, but, I think they can become excuses for sloppy thinking.

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  14. Yes, the study doesn’t said that conservative beliefs are stupid. The subtitle of the Slate article sort of does — “Conservative beliefs make a lot more sense when you’re not paying attention.” Of course, she probably didn’t write the title. It was probably written by someone who cared more about SEO than accurately representing the content of the article. Because that’s what happens.

    I’m not sure how I feel about terminology like “low level thinking.” It’s not how political scientists usually talk about political opinion. They do talk about informed opinions. But this isn’t really my area, so I don’t want to overstep here.

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    1. I’m being sloppy — because there shouldn’t be a value judgement between the different kinds of thinking, and “low level” implies one. Instinctual/cognitive is better, but there is no perfect word to use,. Using reference to brain structures wouldn’t be better, because the structure/function relationship is only guesses, and, in any case, no brain system works in isolation unless the brain is working atypically.

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    2. I used to know quite a bit about this area. “Low level thinking” doesn’t sound that different from “cognitive complexity”, which used to be a thing.

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