I ran the same survey at yourmorals.org, and the results are similar to the original study, with some important differences (see graph below).  Importantly, the % of people who chose a world of relative income was smaller than in the original study, where 50% of participants chose relative position.  Perhaps people at Harvard are simply more competitive?  Mean scores are quite variable in different non-representative samples, so I wouldn't put much stock in them, but perhaps more interesting is that the relationship between variables replicates.  Our results converge with the idea that some goods are more positional than others.  Specifically, the same things that people thought were more appropriate to think of in relative terms in the original study (praise and attractiveness) were thought to be relative in our sample, with vacation time being the least relative good.  The graph below shows questions in rough decreasing order of concern about relative position.

Our data suggests that some people think of things as more relative than others.  Cronbach's alpha for the items in the graph was .80, meaning that answers positively correlate and it is reasonable to think of answers to these diverse questions as all representing some general underlying preference for relative or absolute position.

Interestingly, it appears that conservatives care more about relative position compared to both liberals and libertarians.  Perhaps this converges with the idea that conservatives have a more competitive orientation, leading to positive beliefs about competitive markets and competitive sports, both of which are found in our data as well.

The current data is based on 5,795 participants (3,559 liberals, 632 conservatives, 569 libertarians, and 1,035 others) who took this survey.  This means that aside from political orientation, we could look at other factors that are associated with preference for relative or absolute goods.  For example, concern for positional goods is negatively correlated with Big 5-Agreeableness (r=-.13, p<.001), Openness to Experience (r=-.09, p<.001), and positively correlated with Neuroticism (r=.07, p<.001).  These are very modest correlations made significant by the sample size that took both measures (3,844).  If other people have ideas for personality variables that may explain why some people prefer relative vs. absolute goods, please leave a comment with your ideas.

- Ravi Iyer

To test this idea, I thought I'd look at the data from the Good Self Scale from yourmorals.org.  In it, participants are asked how important it is to have various traits, and one of them happens to be "funny".  If you look at the below graph, you'll see that liberals do indeed place a tiny bit more value on being funny, compared to others (p<.01 comparing liberals to non-liberals).

It is important to note that this does not mean that liberals are indeed funnier, but rather that they place a value on being funny.  The results seem plausible given that the rest of the results conform to previous research (e.g. conservatives care about loyalty more and care about being more responsible).  Some observations:

• All groups are above the midpoint (2.5) of the scale for all traits, except for libertarians and their valuation of being generous, outgoing, and sympathetic.  Instead, libertarians score high on being intellectual and logical.
• Moderates actually score highest in terms of valuing fairness and honesty.  A very interesting finding.
• Liberals, in addition to wanting to be funny, also want to be creative, kind, sympathetic, and almost as intellectual as libertarians.
• Conservatives value being responsible, loyal, and honest (comparable to moderates for honesty).

In all, these are fair descriptions of these ideological groups, and given that the other relationships are reasonable, I would conclude that it's also reasonable to say that liberals likely do place more value on being funny than other ideological groups.  Whether they succeed or not is another question.

- Ravi Iyer

By the time we can vote, we have developed coherent narratives that help us make sense of our emotions, beliefs, and opinions.  In psychology, we often study individual variables and their impact on attitudes, but the real world is more complex and there are a whole host of attitudes, opinions, and dispositions that may have an impact on your opinion about unions.  As such, I thought it might be interesting to look at the whole picture of what our yourmorals data shows as the correlates of warm or cold feelings toward unions.

The below chart (click on it to enlarge) is sorted from measures/beliefs that are most associated with warm feelings toward unions to measures/beliefs that are negatively associated with warm feelings toward unions.  Warm/cold feelings were assessed using a feeling thermometer scale from 1-7.  Our sample is not representative, so any conclusion that you may draw would be based on the idea that the psychological associations in our overly educated, liberal leaning, internet user sample would hold for other groups.  To help isolate psychological variables, I ran the analysis on only those who self-identified in our sample as liberal, effectively holding that variable somewhat constant (I say somewhat because within this sample, some people were more liberal than others).

I would love to hear what others see in these patterns, but my initial impressions are:

• A lot of what is associated with being liberal is associated with being pro-union.  It is likely a mistake to try and figure out which comes first as people certainly adhere to their party positions, but people also certainly gravitate toward their parties due to psychological variables.  It is all tied together and research supports both relationships.  As such, it may make sense that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's decision to not only try and reduce pay, but effectively try to end all union representation for public workers, meets with such vehement opposition.
• Other oriented connections appear even more related to feelings about unions beyond what one might expect from simple liberal partisanship.  For example, identification with country is actually negatively associated with liberalism, but is positively associated with feelings toward unions.  All measures of connection to others seem to have positive relationships.  The Big 5 personality dimension of agreeableness (e.g. being trusting) has an almost equal relationship as the dimension of openness to experience, which is usually the dominant predictor of liberalism among Big 5 dimensions.
• Dispositional emotional reactivity appears to be a predictor of how liberals feel about unions.  Liberals who are empathizers (on Baron-Cohen's measure) who care about the less fortunate, feel emotional when perceiving beauty, and are also slightly more prone to depression tend to be those who feel warm toward unions.
• In contrast, rationality, a liberal hallmark, is not related to feeling toward unions.  Belief in scientific causation is strongly associated with liberalism, but not related to feelings toward unions among liberals.  Experiential thinking appears slightly positively correlated with positive feelings toward unions among liberals even as it is negatively correlated with liberalism in our wider dataset.  Rational thinking is not correlated with feelings toward unions, even as it generally is associated with being liberal.

Overall, the impression I get from the pattern is that it is the bleeding heart liberals, as opposed to the more rational, scientific liberals, who likely feel more connected to the ongoing protests in Wisconsin.  But I welcome alternative ideas/interpretations as well as ideas about how these results might not hold in other populations, as the interaction would likely prove instructive.

- Ravi Iyer

Is this true?  One way to examine this is to compare the table from the previous post with the below chart of moral psychology differences between women and men.  Below are the same constructs, sorted by effect size, with constructs at the top being more associated with men and constructs toward the bottom being more associated with women.  I did the same thing for just liberal women/men and just conservative women/men and found the same result, so I feel fairly confident that these differences between men and women are somewhat robust.

The conclusion?  First, in comparing the previous liberal-conservative differences to the differences here, it is pretty clear that male-female differences are far lower in magnitude than liberal-conservative differences.  The effect sizes are much smaller, meaning that scores of women and men overlap much more than scores of liberals and conservatives.  It is clear that male-female differences cannot account for a great deal of the variance in political attitudes.

Second, there are many constructs associated with being female that are indicative of liberalism (valuing universalism, empathizing) as well as traits indicative of conservativism (higher disgust scores, belief in a just world, and being collectivistic).  Similarly, there are male traits associated with liberalism (individualism, utilitarianism) and conservativism (attitudes toward war, belief in proportionality).

It is still possible that the Democratic party is emphasizing certain traits, like empathy, that are driving away 'masculine' voters, at the margins.  Perhaps overly individualistic and utilitarian individuals are actually identifying as libertarian, an overwhelmingly male group, that is characterized by rational and utilitarian  psychological traits.

From a moral psychology perspective, the results are promising for the social intuitionist model that posits that emotional reactivity is the basis for much moral reasoning.  The clearest pattern in the data is that women seem more emotionally reactive and men report being more rational.  Both have their benefits as at either end of that spectrum are manic-depressives and psychopaths.  But this data converges well with previous research indicating that women are, in some instances, more morally and socially conscious.  Perhaps this is evidence for a social intuitionist basis of those previous findings.

- Ravi Iyer

Individual researchers have individual answers to this question.  David Pizarro might focus on the emotion of disgust. At YourMorals, we've focused on moral opinions.  Others might focus on approach-avoidance or on basic physiological differences between liberals and conservatives.  Jon Jost does a wonderful job summarizing the importance of ideology in helping organize our beliefs to satisfy motivational needs, and then focuses on two organizing principles, resistance to change and acceptance of inequality.  All of this research is well done and true, but I think we all suffer (my group included) from an over reliance on our particular perspective.  I believe that Jost is correct in pointing out how ideology allows us to make sense of conflicting beliefs, and I would extend that more explicitly to our feelings, intuitions, and goals.  Having conflicting beliefs or feelings (e.g. I believe in abortion, but it disgusts me) leads to unpleasant dissonance, and ideology represents a narrative that we can use to resolve this dissonance, as relayed by Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann.

From that perspective, there is no one answer to what causes some white men to grativate toward the Republican party and not others.  Rather, it might be useful to look at the bigger picture.

To do this, I created the below table of effect sizes (the mean difference between liberals and conservatives, divided by the standard deviation), using only US white male respondents, sorted from those characteristics that are most characteristic of liberals to those that are more characteristic of conservatives.  We have better data on liberal-conservative identification than party identification, so we have to use this as a proxy, but we will have analyses in the future concerning party identification specifically.

There is too much here to really address in one post.  I did the same thing for women and the pattern is very similar, so it doesn't appear there are many gender interactions, though maybe someone will point something out.  My main reaction is that it confirms my initial idea that all researchers are finding very real differences, but that no line of research has a monopoly on explaining differences.  There is replication and support for a number of lines of research on ideological differences.  Rather, ideology is a network of ideas, beliefs, and dispositions that encompasses all these findings.

Finding out what made white male liberals vote for McCain might be an even more interesting question, and perhaps I'll do that analysis next as we do have some of that data.  I did this previously to examine supporters of Obama vs. Clinton within the Democratic party and feel that examining within party psychological (as opposed to demographic) differences is a vast untapped area for political psychologists.  Indeed, if I had to point out one interesting thing in the above graph, it would be the relatively small effect sizes of demographics like age compared to personality variables like neuroticism.  It might make just as much sense for Obama to target the "empathic" vote as it does to target the "youth" vote.

- Ravi Iyer

Still, even as this distinction has been pointed out in Barry Schwartz's original book and in subsequent papers, I am not aware of anyone who has attempted to measure maximizing in specific domains (please comment/email me if you know of such research, as I'm guessing that it's out there).  Here is a quote from a recent paper:

Although content-free items have several advantages, specific examples may be needed to measure domain specific maximizing tendency, i.e., individual maximizing tendency within particular domains such as consumer purchase. Future research needs to address whether there are systematic variations between individuals’ global maximizing tendency and their propensity for maximizing within given decision making domains, based on for example the degree of involvement.

To answer this question, I modified the original maximizer-satisficer scale and gave the resulting questionnaire to both a sample at yourmorals.org and to a sample of USC students.  Below are the reliability coefficients, which won't mean a lot to many people who read this, but are useful in determining if it really is possible to measure domain specific maximizing, simply by taking the original scale's questions and tweaking them to be specific to a domain (e.g. instead of "I never settle for 2nd best", change the question to "In picking a place to live, one should never settle for 2nd best").  More interesting are the domain specific correlations with the satisfaction with life scale, a measure of "happiness".

The reliabilities are fair, meaning that the domain specific scales measure the constructs decently, but not extremely well.  Better measures usually have reliabilities around .8.  Still, the domain specific measures are comparable to the original scale's reliabilities and the test-retest reliability (asking people the same question a month later) also is similar.  I think the fair reliabilities are a result of the fact that maximizing (Nenkov et. al) has since been shown to have multiple dimensions: the search for alternatives, having high standards, and having difficulty making decisions (see this paper).

Beyond reliabilities, I think the best argument for domain specific maximizing is the pragmatic reliability, meaning whether maximizing in different domains predicts different outcomes.  From the correlations above, you can see that maximizing in the material/physical domain (shopping, work, a place to live) has negative consequences for life satisfaction, while maximizing in the moral and political decision making domains does not (bold values are significant, click on the graph to zoom in).  This is consistent across both samples.  In addition, I asked the USC students how much they liked where they live, and the "place to live" subscale had the highest negative relationship (-.33, p<.001) to liking where they lived, followed by shopping (r=-.22) and work (r=-.22).  Maximizing in relationships, political decision making and moral decision making were unrelated.  At the very least, I think this is good evidence that maximizing is at least different in moral/political decision making versus in consumer decision making.  Incidentally, maximizing had a long history in moral philosophy, before it became popular in psychology to think of it in terms of consumption.

One issue with my original scale construction is that I did it before Nenkov's paper that deconstructed maximizing came out, so I did not evenly pick items across subscales.  To make sure that the findings above aren't just because of item selection, I ran some analyses for specific matched items that existed in all domain specific scales.

Again, bold values are significant and we see negative correlations only for alternative search questions only in the material domain.  This replicates Nenkov's finding in that having high standards does not relate to lower life satisfaction, but always searching for alternatives, no matter how satisfied one is, does relate to lower life satisfaction.  However, it appears that this is true only in the material domain (shopping, career, a place to live) and not in moral and political decision making.

Lastly, the case of maximizing in relationships is interesting.  The above data isn't conclusive, but it converges with another pattern I've seen when comparing USC students to our YourMorals.org sample.  Specifically, relationships appear to play a greater role in happiness in the general population rather than in our student samples.  Perhaps loneliness is a bigger issue in the real world than it is within the college campus environment.  Or perhaps paying attention to alternatives in relationships is less adaptive as you get older.

- Ravi Iyer

Correlation of Protestant Work Ethic with....

Attitudes Toward Homosexuals (r=-.36, N=303, p<.001)
Attitudes Toward Muslims (r=-.11, N=305, p<.05)
Attitudes Toward Poor People (r=-.193, N=306, p=.001)
Social Dominance Orientation ("Inferior groups should stay in their place", r=.336, N=331, p<.001)

I'm not sure if these are exactly the types or relationships that the researchers are interested in, but they seem related. The relationships seem pretty clear...that the protestant work ethic is related to negative attitudes toward outgroups (muslims, homosexuals, "inferior groups" and poor people).  However, the relationship between conservativism and the protestant work ethic is large enough (r=.416, N=1009, p<.001), that it's possible that the only reason these variables are related is because they are all correlated with conservativism.

Sure enough, if we control for political orientation, the relationships become statistically insignificant for attitudes toward homosexuals (beta=-.085, N=229, p=.143) and Muslims (p=.459).  Attitudes toward poor people (beta = -.159, N=231, p<.05) and social dominance orientation (beta = .138, N=262, p<.05) remain significantly related to belief in the protestant work ethic, even controlling for ideology.

The below diagram shows this in graph form, where attitudes toward poor people are negatively related to endorsement of the protestant work ethic amongst both liberals and conservatives.

...and people who endorse the protestant work ethic also like rich people (see below).

At some level, this relationship is fairly obvious, but as a liberal, it's something worth internalizing, since liberals sometimes make negative attributions about conservative attitudes toward the poor (despite the fact that conservative churches often do great humanitarian work). Specifically, conservatives may not dislike poor people mindlessly.  Rather, their opinions about rich and poor people may be related to worthy moral concerns, specifically a belief in the importance of hard work, and they may feel that wealth is indicative of hard work.  Results are consistent with work by Skitka and Tetlock, showing that conservatives are strongly influenced by the responsibility shown by those who want assistance.

How can liberals use this knowledge? Perhaps rather than playing the race/fairness angle, if liberals can show that most Hispanic immigrants are actually very hard working (e.g. see Ted Conover's book, Coyotes - they do jobs which most of us would never do) much conservative antipathy towards various groups might dissipate.  Indeed, while much of the media makes it seem that Americans support efforts by people in Arizona to expel illegal immigrants, there are also findings like this CNN poll:

Eighty-one percent of people questioned in the poll say they support creating a program that would allow illegal immigrants already living in the U.S. for a number of years to stay here and apply to legally remain in this country permanently if they had a job and paid back taxes, with 19 percent opposed to such a plan.

- Ravi Iyer

On Journolist, there was rarely such thing as an honorable political disagreement between the left and right, though there were many disagreements on the left. In the view of many who’ve posted to the list-serv, conservatives aren’t simply wrong, they are evil. And while journalists are trained never to presume motive, Journolist members tend to assume that the other side is acting out of the darkest and most dishonorable motives.

Reading other people's private emails evokes an embodied moral reaction in me. Maybe it's motivated reasoning as a liberal myself, but I would hope that I'd find it similarly distasteful for a business to make money by posting the private emails of conservatives. Still, I think that the above paragraph is likely correct for some (not all) members of the list, along the lines of this wonderful post by Peter Ditto of UC-Irvine, concerning the ways that liberals and conservatives mirror each other in their negative attributions.  In it, he notes that a "mirror image pattern, two opposing sides in an ideological struggle having virtually identical stereotypes of each other, is a common characteristic in intergroup relations." The idea is that when you find these mirror image perceptions, they are often more a function of partisanship and group conflict than reality.

It's not hard to find quotes from conservatives that mirror the above observation of journolist members.  Consider this article entitled "Why does Obama hate America so badly?" My guess is that Democrats don't hate the economy and Republicans don't hate poor people, yet these mirror image negative attributions of malicious intent exist.

Here is the same story in graph form, using our yourmorals.org data, where liberals and conservatives rate both republicans and democrats on "warmth"...

and on "competence"....

Hardly surprising, but liberals think Republicans are cold and incompetent, while conservatives think Democrats are cold and incompetent.  (strangely, we generally think that we ourselves are both more warm and more competent than the average member of either party..:))

I'm sure that cherry picking any person's email archive would lead to embarrassing material, but I would agree with Andrew Sullivan's take on JournoList:

The far right is right on this: this collusion is corruption. It is no less corrupt than the comically propagandistic Fox News and the lock-step orthodoxy on the partisan right in journalism - but it is nonetheless corrupt.......

.....I'm glad Journo-list is over. It should never have been begun. I know many of its members are good and decent and fair-minded writers. But socialized groupthink is not the answer to what's wrong with the media. It's what's already wrong with the media.

These mirror image negative perceptions are an inevitable part of intergroup conflict, so rather than morally judging the individuals involved for behavior that is likely quite common, I prefer to take this as a cautionary tale for all who want better policy. On both sides of the aisle, we should be seeking to recognize and reduce these biases, not amplify them through ideologically homogeneous discussions, such as what appeared to occur on JournoList.

- Ravi Iyer

Is support for torture restricted to the evil among us (e.g. liberals who think that Dick Cheney = Darth Vader)? When individuals say that they are torturing an evil few in order to save many innocents (an argument based in Utilitarianism), are they lying about their noble goals? A recent paper in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology suggests that individuals may not be honest about their utilitarian motives. From the abstract:

The use of harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects is typically justified on utilitarian grounds. The present research suggests, however, that those who support such techniques are fuelled by retributive motives.

This is a very well done experimental study, which illustrates an important point about other potential motives for torture, specifically a desire for retribution or vengeance. However, it may be nitpicking or splitting hairs, but I might instead have written "those who support such techniques may also be fuelled by retributive motives." Indeed, in the study itself, there is an increase in support for severe interrogation techniques when there is a greater likelihood that the suspect is withholding information that may save lives, especially among Republicans, the group most likely to be "those who support such techniques." The fact that retributive motives exist, does not necessarily mean that utilitarian motives do not. One could probably design a study that shows the opposite, where utilitarian motives dominate, given the total control one has in a lab environment.

Our yourmorals.org data suggests that utilitarian motives are indeed important in predicting attitudes toward torture. There are a number of measures that tap utilitarian thinking, but the most convincing to me are the classic moral dilemmas that ask people if they are willing to take some action (e.g. flipping a switch) to save 5 innocent people at the cost of 1 innocent life. They are convincing because they are generally free of any political content or judgment about the worth or guilt of individuals.  Below is a graph relating responses to these dilemmas to attitudes toward torture.  Higher scores on the Y axis indicate more willingness to sacrifice 1 life for 5.  Higher scores on the X axis indicate willingness to support torture in more situations.

Torture and Utilitarian Moral Judgments are positively correlated

There is a fairly robust positive correlation between utilitarian judgments on these dilemmas and support for torture (the dip on the far right for liberals is likely due to there being such a small number of liberals who think torture is often justified).

If I look at other utilitarian measures such as moral idealism (using the Ethics Position Questionnaire - e.g. "The existence of potential harm to others is always wrong, irrespective of the benefits to be gained.", r=-.35) or moral maximizing (using an adapted version of Schwartz's maximizing-satisficing scale - e.g. "In choosing a moral action, one should never settle for a morallyimperfect action.", r=-.15), you find the same relationship. Controlling for political affiliation and beliefs about punishment and disposition toward vengeance, one still finds significant relationships between utilitarianism and support for torture.

My take home. Part of promoting civil politics is to take people at their word for their motives, rather than questioning them. There may indeed be some vengeful motive behind torture...but there are utilitarian motives as well and those of us who dislike torture might actually get further confronting torture on utilitarian grounds rather than attempting to question the motives of those who believe in torture.

- Ravi Iyer

Armando Galarraga, a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, was very close to pitching a perfect game. For non-baseball fans, its a very rare occurrence, comparable to other rare unpredictable events that take some amount of skill and luck, like bowling 300 or climbing Mount Everest and seeing the perfect sunset. Its something you can work hard for, but even the best of pitchers may not achieve the feat.

On the very last batter that Galarraga had to get out, a close play occurred at first base, and the umpire incorrectly ruled the batter safe. TV replays have confirmed that the batter was actually out, and the umpire agrees he made a mistake. Still, Galarraga has been deprived of his perfect game.

Perfect games happen and personally, I dont normally care that much. But the reaction of Galarraga will make me a fan of his for life. Does anyone remember Roberto Alomar spitting at an umpire because of a relatively inconsequential strike call? Some have called Galarraga the anti-Alomar for his forgiving reaction. Watch how Galarraga smiles after the play or watch his reaction in the below video, talking about it later.

Galarraga's remarkably calm and forgiving reaction has led to a series of articles talking about him, probably a lot more than if he had completed his perfect game. He plans to shake hands publicly with Jim Joyce, the umpire who missed the call, and present him with the lineup card in the next game, in a public show of forgiveness in front of thousands of fans who might otherwise be irate at Joyce the entire next game.

Personally, I learned something from Galaragga's reaction that I'll take with me the next time I am wronged. Its something subtle and true about the power of forgiveness...something that I always know, but often dont have the strength or awareness to practice. Galaragga is not just reducing the amount of animosity in the world, but he is also ensuring his own happiness.

Studies confirm the relationship between being a forgiving person and being a happier person (Maltby, Day, Barber, 2005). Below is a graph of our yourmorals.org data showing the relationship between forgiveness of others (using the Heartland Forgiveness Scale - "I continue to punish a person who has done something that I think is wrong.") and satisfaction with life ("The conditions of my life are excellent."). As in the Maltby et. al study, forgiving people are indeed happier.

It may not have been a perfect game....but it was as close to a perfect reaction as we generally see and I'm hopeful this story will be remembered far more than if an actual perfect game had occurred. It's a stark contrast to the ugliness we often see in most news and politics. As Galarraga put it himself, everything happens for a reason.

- Ravi Iyer