You’re Remarkably Correct so Very Very Often.

The weird, wacky way our political arguments are win-win for our subconscious minds, and annoying for our conscious ones.

I’ve been working on political communication on a full-time basis for awhile- I’m touring the south and the midwest at the moment, interviewing Democrats and Republicans for regional clarity. My work is primarily on the psychological and neurological backdrop to the differences between the parties, and the ways a small set of underlying factors create many more subject-specific differences.

So you can probably imagine how excited I was to get these two New York Times blogs from a friend, “What the Right Gets Right”, and “What the Left Gets Right”, a compilation of opinions by partisan political scientists and pundits about the opposition party. (that latter link has stories above it, so you’ll need to scroll down to see it)

All but two of the points of difference made to each other by the experts have been articulated to me in similar form by interviewees multiple times, and no important points were missed. I think their explanations of party strengths and weaknesses are very well-worded, and I’m especially qualified to say so, because I have screwed up saying the same things and gotten lambasted. Wording is critical with beliefs about abstract subjects. The reader comments reflect that wording sensitivity: by my informal count, about a third were solely a rant caused by wording. This is, amazingly, a very low percentage for this kind of conversation: these experts did really well explaining the weaknesses and strengths of their opposition. The only stereotype that’s poorly written to the point of being incorrect relates to conservative attitudes about helping the poor. Conservative attitudes toward the poor are more nuanced than represented, and caring. The right have more of a ‘stuff happens’ attitude to problems in general: this more general trait plays into their work ethic and action orientation, and also informs their approach on care of the poor. Remember, these are the people that give more to non-religious charities than the left on a percentage-of-income basis, at every income level. And the Republican no-drama approach to their actions affects their image adversely: ‘Look at ‘em, there’s nothing going on over there- there’s no drama, no noise. Told ya they weren’t doing anything.’ Really understanding their abiding faith in charitable giving provides an entry into their attitude toward the poor.

It thrilled me to see so many comments, a significant minority, where it is difficult to tell the political preference of the writer. That’s very rare in real life- usually seen only in conversations with people who have about one political thought every month or so. If you think about it, our political preferences don’t really have to come up a great deal in a conversation if we’re dealing with specifics well, and being generous about points that may be against yours. Fine if they do in passing, but we don’t have to turn and grind everything that looks like it might be a dull tool, sparks flying everywhere- we can be thoughtful, courteous, and explain both sides of an issue. We don’t have to just try to bludgeon people with our ‘greatest hits’ points about how bad or good a party is.

Why You’re so Incredibly Correct so Very Very Often

When the politically active discuss politics, we are typically not doing it to learn something, but to reinforce our beliefs- both to feel sure, and to get motivation to act on our beliefs. The most important communication technique to reinforce beliefs is simple and powerful: explain only the strengths of our argument, avoiding the strengths of the opponent’s and the weaknesses of our own. You probably do this about all kinds of things in your personal relationships as well. It sounds so simple and natural: maybe a bit immature, but part of the game. Actually, there are two insidious, manipulative ways this little trick helps us:

1. The silence is more important than what we say. Especially subconsciously. This is not baseball: it’s not just our turn to be up, or time to slink back to the dugout. By ignoring roughly half the picture on purpose, we recruit a key bias, called the Conjunction Fallacy to help us out. This bias makes items not discussed as clearly or as long less real to us than items discussed at length. Not discussing the cons to our argument at all makes them subconsciously non-existent for us, providing lots of reinforcement.

2. We want our opponent to talk about the weaknesses of our argument, not ourselves. If they will talk about them, rather than having to take them seriously, we are able to recruit a host of powerful biases to discount the points and reinforce our beliefs. If you watch an argument of this kind, you can often see the listener lean into the conversation as if they were leaning in to a baseball pitch, ready to knock it out of the park. But that’s not a ball coming towards him: it’s the right’s attitudes toward the poor, or the left’s attitude about aid to Israel. It’s something we’ve been disagreeing on and screwing up on for a long time. Something complicated, that we’ve dumbed-down for our own purposes.

It helps to appreciate how scary those counter-arguments are subconsciously: we do not want to face them without our biases to help us because, down under, we associate the strengths of our beliefs in an illogical way with our self-worth. Bad politics equals useless dumb-dumb. With these two layers of biases running at full swing in both people, everyone gets reinforcement. Now, what are the odds progress will be made in actual insight? Phew. Somebody better have a miracle of a point, as in howitzer size or larger.

In other words, we depend on our opponents to help us hide truth from ourself, using the biases we’ve come to depend on. We even tacitly agree to do the same thing for our adversary- which, if you think about it, has a strange sort of courtesy to it. That’s because there is subconscious collusion going on: we are agreeing to take on these roles for one another, so we can both feel triumphant and more convinced at the end. A kind of subconscious “Win-Win” negotiation. May as well have shaken hands on it. It’s especially odd because our conscious minds are usually totally irritated (unless we’re particularly competitive), because we just had an illogical argument up above all that deep-sea psychic current. Subconsciously, though, we raked in big winnings.

You should be able to recognize that this process is what legislative dialogue in America consists of: telling my strengths and attacking their weaknesses, and then I yield the floor- it’s the next guy’s turn at bat. No wonder there is so much apathy about politics. By not getting involved, we avoid the inanity we subconsciously sense of a system that has, at its heart, a bankrupt form of communication (actual deal-making is done in committee and behind closed doors where listening skills can be used, away from the need to propel marketing and reinforcement needs). Only telling about the argument strong points is exactly like brushing just the front of your teeth and smiling big for mommy, so you can trot over for a few last minutes of TV before bed. It also has a similar consequences in the long run.

We are so busy reinforcing and persuading in discussions that we can’t use dialogue to learn. The irony is that we should consciously spend at least as much time on our argument’s weaknesses as its strengths, particularly when we’re with people who have more expertise on opposing views, to improve the odds of getting things right. Because we really need to turn around and swim upstream in life, through two dozen or so biases, to be impartial. As a general rule, if you’re not injecting at least one decent, sincere point that works against your overall opinion, you’re not conversing- you’re doing someting else.

We’d be much better off if we only did the opposite of our subconscious impulse to reinforce: tell my opponent’s strengths, attack my argument weaknesses. Hmm- when’s the last time you did that- a past life? Yep. Back when you was Queen Cleopatra.