What do liberals and conservatives believe

How do out-of-the-ordinary positions affect later voting? Haas suspects that engaging more with such information might make voters more likely to punish candidates for it later. Motivated reasoning, in which people work hard to justify their opinions or decisions, even in the face of conflicting evidence, has been a popular topic in political neuroscience because there is a lot of it going around.

While partisanship plays a role, motivated reasoning goes deeper than that. Just as most of us like to think we are good-hearted human beings, people generally prefer to believe that the society they live in is desirable, fair and legitimate. Nam and her colleagues set out to understand which brain areas govern the affective processes that underlie system justification. They found that the volume of gray matter in the amygdala is linked to the tendency to perceive the social system as legitimate and desirable.

In short, we derive our identities from both our individual characteristics, such as being a parent, and our group memberships, such as being a New Yorker or an American. These affiliations serve multiple social goals: they feed our need to belong and desire for closure and predictability, and they endorse our moral values. And our brain represents them much as it does other forms of social identity.

Among other things, partisan identity clouds memory. In a study , liberals were more likely to misremember George W. Bush remaining on vacation in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and conservatives were more likely to falsely recall seeing Barack Obama shaking hands with the president of Iran. Partisan identity also shapes our perceptions.

If the objective was liberal opposing the military barring openly gay people from service , the conservatives were more likely to want the cops. The opposite was true when participants thought it was a conservative protest opposing an abortion clinic. The more strongly we identify with a party, the more likely we are to double down on our support for it. That tendency is exacerbated by rampant political misinformation and, too often, identity wins out over accuracy.

If we understand what is at work cognitively, we might be able to intervene and try to ease some of the negative effects of partisanship. The tension between accuracy and identity probably involves a brain region called the orbitofrontal cortex, which computes the value of goals and beliefs and is strongly connected to memory, executive function and attention. If identity helps determine the value of different beliefs, it can also distort them, Van Bavel says.

Appreciating that political affiliation fulfills an evolutionary need to belong suggests we should create alternative means of belonging—depoliticizing the novel coronavirus by calling on us to come together as Americans, for instance. And incentivizing the need to be accurate could increase the importance accorded that goal: paying money for accurate responses or holding people accountable for incorrect ones have been shown to be effective.

It will be nearly impossible to lessen the partisan influences before the November 3 election because the volume of political information will only increase, reminding us of our political identities daily. But here is some good news: a large study at Harvard University found that participants consistently overestimated the level of out-group negativity toward their in-group.

The exception to this is found in Australia, where the mainstream conservative party is called the Liberal Party and the mainstream non-conservative party is called the Labour Party. Political liberals believe that parties motivated by self-interest are willing to behave in ways that are harmful to society unless government is prepared — and empowered — to constrain them. They believe regulation is necessitated when individuals, corporations, and industries demonstrate a willingness to pursue financial gain at an intolerable cost to society—and grow too powerful to be constrained by other social institutions.

Liberals believe in systematic protections against hazardous workplaces, unsafe consumer products, and environmental pollution. They remain wary of the corruption — and historic abuses, particularly the oppression of political minorities — that have taken place in the absence of oversight for state and local authorities.

They believe the public welfare is promoted by cultivating a widely-tolerant and -permissive society. Political conservatives believe commercial regulation does more harm than good — unnecessarily usurping political freedoms, potentially stifling transformative innovations, and typically leading to further regulatory interference. They endorse the contraction of governmental involvement in non-commercial aspects of society as well, calling upon the private sector to assume their activities.

Conservatives call for the devolution of powers to the states, and believe locally-tailored solutions are more appropriate to local circumstances. They promulgate individual responsibility, and believe a strong society is made up of citizens who can stand on their own. Conservatives believe in the importance of stability, and promote law and order to protect private property.

Liberals believe in universal access to health care ; they believe personal health should be in no way dependent upon one's financial resources, and support government intervention to sever that link. Political conservatives prefer no government sponsorship of health care; they prefer all industries to be private, favor deregulation of commerce, and advocate a reduced role for government in all aspects of society.

They believe government should be in no way involved in one's healthcare purchasing decisions. He outlines the psychological differences in the following TED talk:. Haidt has also written a book, The Righteous Mind , based on his studies conducted over several years on liberal and conservative subjects.

Nicholas Kristof, an avowed liberal, offered an unbiased review of the book and cited some interesting findings such as:. Liberals should not be confused with libertarians. Libertarians believe that the role of the government should be extremely limited, especially in the economic sphere. They believe that governments are prone to corruption and inefficiencies and that the private sector in a free market can achieve better outcomes than government bureaucracies, because they make better decisions on resource allocation.

Liberals, on the other hand, favor more government involvement because they believe there are several areas where the private sector -- especially if left unregulated -- needs checks and balances to ensure consumer protection. The primary focus of libertarians is the maximization of liberty for all citizens, regardless of race , class, or socio-economic position.

On fiscal issues such as taxes and government regulation, libertarian positions are similar to conservatives. On foreign policy, liberals and conservatives in America have generally had attitudes; but libertarians prefer to not be interventionists or empire-builders. Share this comparison:. If you read this far, you should follow us:. Diffen LLC, n. Granted they are describing the two extremes, these are very narrow views. Honestly though, I believe very few people hold these singular views so completely.

I personally fall somewhere in between. Sure, I may share ideals with conservatives, even passionately. But that does not mean I am not prone to my liberal perspective. It is just too hard to limit any individual to such stringent restrictions. That being said, the media is trying very hard to pull us into their struggle for viewership ratings.

But in our modern world, some research suggests this kind of aversion toward "impure" pathogens may also impact how people see other people who aren't like them, including social "out-groups" like immigrants or foreigners.

A study at Northwestern University found that when conservative and liberal college students were given word problems to solve, both groups managed to arrive at some correct answers through gradual, analytical analysis. But when feeling stuck on a problem, liberals were much more likely to draw upon a sudden burst of insight — an 'aha' moment, like a lightbulb turning on in the brain.

This didn't mean that the liberals were any smarter than the conservatives. Rather, it showed that their brains had a tendency to reorganize their thoughts in more flexible ways, while the conservatives tended to take a more step-by-step approach. The researchers suggested this finding may indicate that liberals and conservatives prefer solving problems in different ways. Lead study author Carola Salvi said the results were consistent with what scientists already knew about the brains of people with different political leanings.

In , researchers at the University of Nebraska tested whether conservatives and liberals physically see the world in different ways. They found that when it comes to matching the gaze of other people, the two groups differ. The scientists measured this by having individual study participants watch a certain point on a computer screen and wait for a ball to show up in the frame. Then they added a distracting human face on the screen before the ball appeared. The face's eyes would look around.

The scientists watched their participants to see if they followed the wandering gaze. The researchers found that the liberal participants tended to follow the direction of the eyes on the screen. Conservatives, on the other hand, weren't as swayed by their pixelated peers, and kept waiting for the ball. A review of decades of research on conservative people suggested that their social views can help satisfy "psychological needs" to make sense of the world and manage uncertainty and fear.

Studies from the s showed that conservatives preferred more simple paintings, familiar music, and unambiguous texts and poems, while liberals enjoyed more cubist and abstract art. Although that research dates back to a drastically different political climate, the findings hold up in more recent studies from , and In , Time magazine conducted an online survey and found that conservative readers tended to say they'd rather visit Times Square than the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The finding fits with other research that indicates conservatives tend to avoid uncertainty and dislike ambiguity more than their liberal counterparts. A study of US high school students found that conservative students at that time were more likely to describe themselves as "responsible," "organized," "successful," and "ambitious," while liberal students might describe themselves as "loving," "tender," or "mellow.

Surveys suggest that today's adults aren't much different than those 80s kids. A Pew Research Center study from showed that liberals were more likely than social conservatives to describe themselves as compassionate, trusting, upbeat, and optimistic, while conservatives were more likely to say they were people of honor, duty, religion, and proud to be American.

The self-reports go along with research from that suggested liberals' top moral concerns tend to be about compassion and fairness, while conservatives are more concerned with loyalty, tradition, respect for authority, and purity. One study found that conservative students were often better at focusing their attention on a cognitive task called the Stroop color and word test. The common psychological study tool asks participants to quickly name the correct color of a word that's written on a different color background.

In the study, conservative students seemed to correctly answer the color questions faster than their liberal peers. The researchers think that's because the conservatives were more likely to believe in the concept of self-control. But the conservatives didn't always out-perform the liberals. When they were told that their free will might undermine their own self-control, they performed worse than their liberal peers. New research finds that conservatives tend to express compassion to smaller social circles than liberals.

For example, conservative voters were found to be more likely to agree with statements like: "I often have tender, concerned feelings for my family members who are less fortunate than me. Liberals, on the other hand, were more likely to feel that same level of compassion for people around the world, and even to non-human and imaginary subjects like animals and aliens.

Researchers at the University of Southern California conducted a study in hinging on the theory that conservatives tend to be more satisfied in life than liberals. The study complied data on thousands of people in 16 different countries around the world over four decades, and found that conservatives, overall, reported feeling greater meaning and purpose in life.

The study also found greater satisfaction in life was related more closely to social conservatism, rather than economically conservative views.