Empathic Conservatives and Moralizing Liberals: Political Intergroup Empathy Varies by Political Ideology and Is Explained by Moral Judgment

[nanana]

[think before following links] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01461672231198001

[nanana]

I found this to be counterintuitive thus interesting. However, it does fit with my empirical experience. There are vast differences within the cohorts but in this current era liberals seem to be more likely to get mad when people don’t take their simple worldviews at face value, and conservatives are more likely to think of liberals as well-meaning but naive, and maybe a bit loose with other people’s money. However, these qualities I mentioned can manifest in both conservatives and liberals, with a cohort of conservatives having simple dogmatic views, and many liberals having the ability to live in a complex real world where slogans don’t always work. I like the point that a higher % of Democrats think the Republicans have done harm than % Republicans who think the Democrats have done harm.  I have some additions: 1) I hypothesize that a higher % of liberals think people are fundamentally good and thus find it harder to deal with people who may fail this standard in their eyes, whereas conservatives may have a higher percentage of people who see human nature as flawed so expect less perfection; 3) in my experience SLIGHTLY more liberals than conservatives take their party leaders’ speeches at face value and don’t research whether the actions match; 4) more liberals seem to take media at face value and be less aware of how propagandized they are than conservatives (who are equally propagandized but have had more recent upsets with the propaganda stream); 5) liberals seem to measure their empathic muscle by finding the person least like them and turning them into a symbolic test of empathy, whereas conservatives seem to measure their empathic muscle against the majority, their families, etc.  Do others find this study counterintuitive? Any other hypotheses? Do you find the study convincing?

Edited Wednesday at 02:02 PM by nanana
Corrected some bad autocorrects

[viking8x6]

This is a fascinating study; thanks for posting it!

 

[TT2025]

I scanned the study briefly and for me, It works as expected (on the conservative-liberal line). In historical and also contemporary perspective conservatives tend to be oppressive in nature. Liberals in their essence tend not to..

So if you are liberal you should be expected to be oppressed by the conservative folk in broader terms. So less sympathy to oppressing group is, I would say, natural.

I can be wrong but I can't remember any dictatorship which was or is liberal in nature. All of them are 'conservative' (rigid structures and believes, usually allies to religious fundamentalists).

Sorry but I myself can profess more empathy to teacher wanting to teach theory of evolution than some kind of fundamentalist zealot...

[nanana]

15 hours ago, TT2025 said:

conservatives tend to be oppressive in nature

@TT2025 I respectfully disagree that this applies to conservatism in general, think it is maybe true for social and religious conservatives but not as much for economic and libertarian conservatives. I would also say that as a non-liberal in a very liberal city and with many liberal friends, I  find them very likely to make very oppressively uncurious assumptions that everyone agrees with them because they are of course right about everything.  I  am not completely sure how you are using the term "oppressive," so you may not agree that this kind of environment is oppressive.  There were many liberal regimes in the Middle East that imposed a more western liberal morality (women's rights, etc.) on a much more conservative population that I think could count as dictatorships, e.g., Algeria, Afghanistan, etc.  I think it is highly human not to have a universal stream of empathy, but liberals are frequently characterized as leaning towards universal values and conservatives are frequently characterized as having more immediate values.  (It is very hard to generalize about these topics since the cohorts are SO big and build off of local histories and issues.)

[SomewhereonNeptune]

4 hours ago, nanana said:

@TT2025 I respectfully disagree that this applies to conservatism in general, think it is maybe true for social and religious conservatives but not as much for economic and libertarian conservatives...I think it is highly human not to have a universal stream of empathy, but liberals are frequently characterized as leaning towards universal values and conservatives are frequently characterized as having more immediate values.  (It is very hard to generalize about these topics since the cohorts are SO big and build off of local histories and issues.)

I'd hope our UK brethren here could weigh in on this, using the examples of Tory, Labour and Liberals. The labels of conservative and liberal are relative. Maybe even Canadians offering their views. Do we even have UK or Canadian conservatives here? Anyone from Alberta? 😉

Edited Thursday at 08:57 PM by SomewhereonNeptune

[TT2025]

5 hours ago, nanana said:

@TT2025 I respectfully disagree that this applies to conservatism in general, think it is maybe true for social and religious conservatives but not as much for economic and libertarian conservatives. I would also say that as a non-liberal in a very liberal city and with many liberal friends, I  find them very likely to make very oppressively uncurious assumptions that everyone agrees with them because they are of course right about everything.  I  am not completely sure how you are using the term "oppressive," so you may not agree that this kind of environment is oppressive.  There were many liberal regimes in the Middle East that imposed a more western liberal morality (women's rights, etc.) on a much more conservative population that I think could count as dictatorships, e.g., Algeria, Afghanistan, etc.  I think it is highly human not to have a universal stream of empathy, but liberals are frequently characterized as leaning towards universal values and conservatives are frequently characterized as having more immediate values.  (It is very hard to generalize about these topics since the cohorts are SO big and build off of local histories and issues.)

Sure, I could elaborate. By the term 'oppressive' in the context I meant setting 'needless' rules which forbade someone or coerce someone to act differently that he would otherwise would. The problem is NEEDLESS. We could all agree that we need some set of rules of engagement with each other, liberals tend to set these rules in a way to create more manoeuvring space for different individuals. Eg. anti gay laws were always heavy on the conservatives agenda...

You mentioned some examples, but I would add one special one: Iran, when Shah ruled there, it was a 'liberal' dictatorship, I suppose, but there is a difference between allowing women to study uni (not forcing them), or not demanding a dress code, and what they have now. A really conservative dictatorship of ayatollahs.

The fun story about Turkey (don't know if it is true): When progressives wanted get away with headscarfs on women they didn't forbade them, but made it compulsory for  prostitutes to wear them 🙂 

Don't know what the economic and libertarian conservatives are. In my limited understanding libertarian and conservative are antagonistic in essence. (Not trying to go in a fight there.)

[funpozbottom]

Here are a few thoughts. I skimmed through the article and notice a couple points that could indicate sloppy methodology. These are common minor omissions that probably wouldn't alter the results, but are example of common faults that can be found in studies like these. I also think that the study failed to go far enough to establish meaningful conclusions.

 

Disclaimer – I did not read every word of the article so I may have missed the inclusion of these points. If that occurred, that's on me. So on to my critique.

 

For a study to achieve successful results, and to be interpreted properly, all relevant terms need to be clearly defined. The two terms most relevant to this study are “Empathy” and “Moral Judgment”. You may have a personal impression of what these terms mean, but for the study to be properly interpreted, you need to know how the author defines the terms. They do in fact define “empathy in an italicized sentence that begins: “Here we define empathy as . . .” On the other hand, there is a discussion around , but no clear definition of “Moral Judgment”. If you are going to assign a difference in results to a term, that term really needs to be defined – even if you think it's obvious.

 

Second point is, there is no link to a sample questionnaire. The description of the studies include a mention of the type of questions asked, however no example of a full question and no links to sample questionnaires were given. This is important – especially in studies where results may be different than expected – to show there was no inherent bias to the questionnaire.

 

Third. No control group to check for online bias. All participants were selected from paid online websites. Three of the studies used the same site. Previous studies have show that people who are constantly online with social media, and who use the internet as their sole or primary source of news, have a different world view from those who are not constantly on the internet and who get news primarily from other sources. It would have been very easy for the authors to set up a survey at their university or canvas a local town to acquire random live results to use as a control. Without the inclusion of control groups, the results of a study cannot be said to reflect the views of the general population. At best it can only be said that the results apply to the participants.

 

Another point on solely using online sources; while each study found a trend, three of the four failed to reach results that were statistically significant. (The point of doing the fourth study was to try to achieve a statistically significant result.) More studies are using online sources for data collection because it can be cheaper and faster to find participants, however data is not always as accurate, per previous paragraph. Collecting data through multiple avenues may have given a clearer result.

 

Fourth issue is incomplete demographics. While a total percentage of race, gender, and political leaning of participants is given, there is no comparison or breakdown of results by race or gender. Also, there is no mention of the age range of the participants.

 

Finally, I don't think the study went far enough. The authors are assuming the differences found are the results of “Moral Judgement.” Why not ask a question to see if participants are aware of their own biases? I also think the authors should have included a section to the questionnaire that asked participants their views of members of their own political party vs. the other party, and what issues are of concern to the participant. Remember that these studies were conducted in that post-pandemic period between 2021 and 2023. I think more should have been done to examine whether and how world events and how they are portrayed in the media contribute to differences in results.