Many political decisions – how much governments should subsidize health care, at what age fetuses should be considered people, how to treat refugees, etc. – are inextricably tied to hard moral questions. Political views thus often reflect values about which people hold deep moral convictions, which influence people’s identities and relationships (Iyengar et al., Reference Iyengar, Lelkes, Levendusky, Malhotra and Westwood2019) and fuel passion and polarization in modern politics (Skitka et al., Reference Skitka, Morgan, Wisneski, Forgas, Fiedler and Crano2015). Political prejudice is growing in many countries across the world (Gidron et al., Reference Gidron, Adams and Horne2020), with political groups’ policy attitudes becoming increasingly homogenous (Pew Research Center, 2014). Conflict has grown beyond quarrels over individual issues to clashes over which group is morally superior (Finkel et al., Reference Finkel, Bail, Cikara, Ditto, Iyengar, Klar, Mason, McGrath, Nyhan, Rand, Skitka, Tucker, Van Bavel, Wang and Druckman2020).
In America, these growing political divides are deeper than elsewhere (Boxell et al., Reference Boxell, Gentzkow and Shapiro2024; but see Gidron et al., Reference Gidron, Adams and Horne2020). Congressional gridlock has doubled in the last 65 years, leaving governments unable to pass legislation (Ingraham, Reference Ingraham2014). In the past two decades alone, Americans have increasingly curated their world to exclude political opponents, as they seek out media sources that affirm their views (Rodriguez et al., Reference Rodriguez, Moskowitz, Salem and Ditto2017) and move to places replete with allies (Motyl et al., Reference Motyl, Iyer, Oishi, Trawalter and Nosek2014). Trust in the community and social institutions is declining (Jones, Reference Jones2015). Like most empirical work examining morality in politics, we concentrate here on the American political context. This context provides an informative case study for what happens when politics and morality become intensely entwined, and many of the political psychological processes we describe have been replicated elsewhere (McCoy et al., Reference McCoy, Rahman and Somer2018; Viciana et al., Reference Viciana, Hannikainen and Gaitán Torres2019).
After outlining how and why moral and political beliefs go hand in hand, we describe how morality motivates political behaviors that promote one’s favored agenda, inspiring people to use all available means to advance their causes. We then consider a paradox: While driving people to advance their political causes, moral motivations inhibit the especially pragmatic action of engaging with political opponents. Finally, we consider potential ways out of this paradox.
22.1 Moral and Political Beliefs Are Bound Together
There are many pathways to adopting conservative (i.e., right-wing, traditional) or liberal (i.e., left-wing, progressive) stances on economic and sociocultural issues. Some people endorse opposing ideologies on these two classes of issues (Everett, Reference Everett2013) – one can be economically conservative but socioculturally liberal (e.g., libertarians) or vice versa – but most people endorse the same ideology across both dimensions. People’s political beliefs can come from their genetics (Hatemi et al., Reference Hatemi, Medland, Klemmensen, Oskarsson, Littvay, Dawes, Verhulst, Mcdermott, Nørgaard, Klofstad, Christensen, Johannesson, Magnusson, Eaves and Martin2014), developmental factors (Feinberg, Wehling, et al., Reference Feinberg, Wehling, Chung, Saslow and Paulin2020), or material self-interest (Feldman, Reference Feldman1982). But perhaps most often people adopt ideologies that fit their psychological dispositions (e.g., Hibbing et al., Reference Hibbing, Smith and Alford2014). For instance, conservatism attracts people who crave structure and predictability (Jost, Reference Jost2017) and are wary of negativity and threats (Crawford, Reference Crawford2017; Hibbing et al., Reference Hibbing, Smith and Alford2014; but see Brandt et al., Reference Brandt, Turner-Zwinkels, Karapirinler, Van Leeuwen, Bender, van Osch and Adams2021); liberalism attracts those with greater empathic concern (Robbins & Shields, Reference Robbins and Shields2014).
One of the psychological characteristics most strongly linked to ideology is moral conviction (Skitka et al., Reference Skitka, Morgan, Wisneski, Forgas, Fiedler and Crano2015). Many people see sociocultural political issues (e.g., abortion, drug-related crimes) as pertaining to key moral concepts like human rights. But even economic issues – which on their face may seem purely pragmatic (e.g., governmental spending, infrastructure) – can become moralized when citizens, elites, or media tie them to harmful consequences, to moral emotions like disgust, or to broader moral principles (for a review, see Rhee et al., Reference Rhee, Schein and Bastian2019). For example, it was widespread awareness of the harmful consequences of second-hand smoke that turned public smoking bans into a moral imperative (Rozin, Reference Rozin1999).
Moralized political beliefs feel much stronger and more urgent than mere opinions, and liberals and conservatives generally moralize their political beliefs to similar degrees (Skitka et al., Reference Skitka, Morgan, Wisneski, Forgas, Fiedler and Crano2015). But the specific issues they feel conviction about differ: Liberals more strongly moralize issues like climate change and the environment; conservatives, issues like abortion and physician-assisted suicide. Liberals and conservatives also differ in who they think deserves more protection when it comes to questions about abortion and immigration, in who they hold responsible for poverty, and in whether they prioritize the nation or humanity as a whole (Koleva et al., Reference Koleva, Graham, Iyer, Ditto and Haidt2012; Skitka & Tetlock, Reference Skitka and Tetlock1993). Existing theories disagree about the origins of these differences.
22.1.1 Moral Foundations Theory: Morality Causes Political Views
Moral foundations theory (MFT; Graham et al., Reference Graham, Haidt, Koleva, Motyl, Iyer, Wojcik and Ditto2013), today’s predominant account of the relationship between moral and political views, posits that biological, cultural, and developmental differences determine what people count as morally relevant, and in turn shape their political identities.
According to MFT, people evolved modular intuitions, such that they can feel moral concern in five different domains: 1) care/harm, 2) fairness/cheating, 3) loyalty/betrayal, 4) authority/subversion, and 5) purity/degradation (liberty/oppression may be a sixth domain; Graham et al., Reference Graham, Haidt, Koleva, Motyl, Iyer, Wojcik and Ditto2013). These intuitions are activated to different degrees in different people, in part depending on biological predispositions to feel specific moral emotions more intensely (Inbar et al., Reference Inbar, Pizarro, Iyer and Haidt2012); for instance, disgust is specifically tied to judgments of purity (Tracy et al., Reference Tracy, Steckler and Heltzel2019). These intuitions are also activated differently depending on things like sensitivity to threats and sociocultural factors (Graham et al., Reference Graham, Haidt and Nosek2009, Reference Graham, Haidt, Koleva, Motyl, Iyer, Wojcik and Ditto2013). Thus, a child biologically more sensitive to disgust is more likely to moralize purity; one raised by vegans who taught compassion for animals is more likely to moralize care.
By the MFT account, people adopt political beliefs that appeal to their most activated moral foundations. In some people, the care and fairness foundations (called the individualizing foundations, because they concern individual rights and freedoms) are much more strongly activated than the others. These people are drawn to liberal policies like protecting the welfare of all people, regardless of their identity. In others, the purity, loyalty, and authority foundations (called the binding foundations because they unite people into larger, cohesive groups) are activated almost as strongly as the individualizing ones. These people are drawn to conservative policies that prioritize the strength and welfare of their in-group. Returning to the earlier example, the disgust-sensitive child likely has more conservative attitudes about sexuality (Inbar et al., Reference Inbar, Pizarro, Iyer and Haidt2012), while the vegans’ child likely has attitudes about factory farming more characteristic of liberals.
Supporting this account, liberals and conservatives reliably differ in their endorsement of the binding foundations. Across hundreds of thousands of people from around the world (Graham et al., Reference Graham, Haidt and Nosek2009, Reference Graham, Nosek, Haidt, Iyer, Koleva and Ditto2011), conservatives ascribed greater moral relevance than liberals did to considerations such as “whether or not someone did something to betray his or her group,” “whether or not someone showed a lack of respect for authority,” and “whether or not someone did something disgusting,” compared to liberals. Likewise, conservatives demanded more money to consider behaving in disloyal, impure, and subversive ways (Graham et al., Reference Graham, Haidt and Nosek2009); for example, they demanded $10,000 to blaspheme their parents, while liberals would do it for only $600. And conservatives reference loyalty, authority, and purity more when describing peak experiences and turning points in their lives (McAdams et al., Reference McAdams, Albaugh, Farber, Daniels, Logan and Olson2008). In these studies, liberals also endorse the individualizing foundations somewhat more than conservatives, though these differences are generally smaller.
These robust differences help explain liberals’ and conservatives’ diverging policy attitudes. Across two studies totaling nearly 25,000 participants (Koleva et al., Reference Koleva, Graham, Iyer, Ditto and Haidt2012), people’s moral foundation profile predicted their stance on all political issues surveyed. For example, the more people endorsed the care foundation, the more they opposed the death penalty; likewise, those endorsing the purity foundation disapproved more of impure sexual acts (e.g., casual sex, pornography), same-sex relationships, and impure genetic practices (e.g., cloning).
Despite the mountain of research MFT has generated, its detractors note that MFT’s most popular measure conflates the moral foundations with well-known liberal and conservative differences (e.g., pride for one’s country’s history; Kugler et al., Reference Kugler, Jost and Noorbaloochi2014) and thus may have misidentified the true core differences in morality that cause political disagreements. Moreover, MFT’s proponents have rarely measured experimental effects of morality on political views, thus leaving open the possibility that they have misidentified the direction of causality (Bakker et al., Reference Bakker, Lelkes and Malka2021; Hatemi et al., Reference Hatemi, Crabtree and Smith2019). In light of these criticisms, we consider two alternative accounts that suggest morality affects political ideology, as well as a third set of ideas that suggests political views may shape morality, rather than the reverse.
22.1.2 Two Alternative Accounts of How Morality Fuels Political Beliefs
Among the theories that challenge MFT’s account of moral differences without disputing that these likely cause political disagreements, two notable ones are the model of moral motives (MMM; Janoff-Bulman & Carnes, Reference Janoff-Bulman and Carnes2013) and the affective harm account (AHA; Gray et al., Reference Gray, MacCormack, Henry, Banks, Schein, Armstrong-Carter, Abrams and Muscatell2022). While these models differ in important ways, both propose novel frameworks to understand human moral concerns and, in doing so, argue against MFT’s view that liberals and conservatives are morally mismatched.
Instead of the five moral foundations proposed by MFT, MMM suggests there are six moral concerns that can be mapped along two dimensions. The first dimension distinguishes approach from avoidance moral motives: prescriptive calls to provide help versus proscriptive calls forbidding harm. The second dimension distinguishes different contexts to which these motives apply: the self, the other, or the collective. Crossing these dimensions produces three approach-based goals oriented toward helping the self (industriousness), others (helping/fairness), and the collective (social justice), and three avoidance-based goals oriented toward protecting the self (moderation), others (not harming), and the collective (social order).
MMM presents both a new framework for organizing the moral realm and a challenge to MFT’s claim that only conservatives moralize group concerns. MMM argues that conservatives specifically have stronger avoidance group-level concerns: They are proscriptively driven to protect threats to social order within their group by enforcing homogeneity and strict norm adherence. In contrast, liberals have stronger approach group-level concerns: They are prescriptively driven to promote social justice across groups via encouraging interdependence and shared responsibility. Supporting this hypothesis, across two studies, liberal participants more strongly endorsed the importance of providing for communal welfare whereas conservative participants more strongly endorsed social conformity and order. But liberals and conservatives did not differ in their endorsements of interpersonal (as opposed to group-level) concerns, like going out of one’s way to help others or not taking advantage of others (Janoff-Bulman & Carnes, Reference Janoff-Bulman and Carnes2016).
A second alternative account to MFT, the AHA (Gray et al., Reference Gray, MacCormack, Henry, Banks, Schein, Armstrong-Carter, Abrams and Muscatell2022; also see its theoretical ancestor, the theory of dyadic morality; Schein & Gray, Reference Schein and Gray2017), argues that political disagreement arises solely from divergent perceptions of harm. Like MMM, this account challenges MFT’s five distinct moral concerns, suggesting that harm is the fundamental perception involved in all moral judgments: People judge an act as morally wrong when they perceive that an intentional agent has harmed a vulnerable patient (i.e., an entity capable of suffering). To explain MFT’s five-dimensional findings while positing an evolved aversion only to harm – not to injustice, impurity, disloyalty, or disrespect of authority – AHA argues that culture and personal experiences lead groups and individuals to differ in who or what they perceive to be an intentional agent or vulnerable patient. Through this lens, the fundamental moral concerns specified by MFT (or even MMM) are merely descriptive labels that people use to categorize different types of harm in different types of dyads.
Thus, the fundamental conflict between MFT and the AHA hinges on whether people can have intuitive moral judgments in situations where there is no explicit harm nor a harmed victim. While MFT points to moral judgments in scenarios that are ostensibly harm-free (e.g., a person cooking and eating their pet after it dies), AHA argues that such scenarios still involve perceived harm, in this case perhaps to the soul of the pet or its owner. Turning to a political example, when conservatives say it is immoral to do something disloyal like burn one’s country’s flag, AHA assumes they must infer a vulnerable patient who suffers as a result (perhaps their country) and that they endorse the binding moral value of loyalty because of that perceived harm. Supporting this account, both liberals’ and conservatives’ judgments of an action’s (im)morality most closely track their perceptions of how harmful (as opposed to impure, disloyal, unfair, or disobedient) the act is (Schein & Gray, Reference Schein and Gray2015). Likewise, support for anti-GMO policies tracks perceptions of how harmful GMOs are better than how impure they are (Gray & Schein, Reference Gray and Schein2016).
Both MFT and its challengers continue to accrue evidence in support of their respective theories of human moral concerns and how these concerns fuel political disagreements. In responding to each other’s theoretical and empirical challenges, they have evolved over time. For instance, MFT researchers have expanded their moral pantheon to include the liberty foundation, creating new measures to capture concerns over freedom from oppression (Clifford et al., Reference Clifford, Iyengar, Cabeza and Sinnott-Armstrong2015). They find that liberals emphasize this foundation more than conservatives, which helps to account for liberals’ social justice motives highlighted by MMM. They also find that libertarians emphasize this foundation more than liberals or conservatives do (Iyer et al., Reference Iyer, Koleva, Graham, Ditto and Haidt2012), extending moral-political theorizing beyond liberal-conservative dichotomies. While sorting out their disagreements about how morality fuels political beliefs and divides, these accounts have largely overlooked the possibility that political beliefs fuel morality. We consider this possibility next.
22.1.3 Can Political Beliefs Instead Cause Moral Beliefs?
All three accounts we have discussed assume that moral values cause people to adopt particular political beliefs. This position is intuitively plausible: Most people’s introspective experience is that they carefully consult their moral values, and of course the relevant facts, and use those as the basis from which to choose their policy positions. Nevertheless, there is reason to entertain the opposite possibility: That people often know which side of an issue they want to support, and they recruit moral values (and facts) to justify this position. This pattern reflects motivated cognition, which often occurs when people defend their political views (Liu & Ditto, Reference Liu and Ditto2012).
At least some evidence suggests that liberals and conservatives selectively endorse moral values that justify their preferred political positions (Uhlmann et al., Reference Uhlmann, Pizarro, Tannenbaum and Ditto2009). This work examined preferences for moral consequentialism, or the principle of maximizing positive outcomes overall. Conservatives read about a military policy that would ensure the greater good at the cost of some civilian lives, but the researchers manipulated whether those lives would be Iraqi or American. These participants supported the policy more in the former condition and justified their position by more strongly endorsing consequentialist values. Liberal participants faced the prospect of sacrificing one individual’s life to save a hundred, but the researchers manipulated whether that one individual had a stereotypically Black or White American name. These participants preferred not to sacrifice the Black individual and justified their position by denouncing consequentialist values.
That set of studies suggests people’s moral values (in this case, their endorsement of consequentialism) can come from, rather than shape, their political preferences. Providing converging evidence, cross-lagged analyses in three separate panel studies revealed that political ideology better predicts people’s endorsement of the five moral foundations over time than the opposite (Hatemi et al., Reference Hatemi, Crabtree and Smith2019). These data suggest that people’s political allegiances change which moral values they adopt, rather than the other way around. That said, both processes likely coexist and each may dominate at different times.
22.2 How Morality Motivates (and Demotivates) Political Action
Moral concerns are not only related to the contents of political attitudes but they also motivate people to act on those attitudes. People’s behavior sometimes contradicts their attitudes: They love animals but eat cheeseburgers; loathe their in-laws but are friendly to them anyway. But this is less often the case for moralized political attitudes: Since they feel objectively true, universally applicable, and deeply emotional (Skitka et al., Reference Skitka, Hanson, Morgan and Wisneski2021), people are highly motivated to act on them, investing time and money to support their favored political causes. These efforts often take the form of constructive and democratic action, but strong moral beliefs can also inspire more destructive – even violent – behaviors.
Morality fuels all sorts of political action with one notable exception: It inhibits, rather than promotes, engagement with opposing political parties. Cross-party engagement – hearing opponents and persuading them to change their mind or to compromise – is often necessary or at least helpful for furthering one’s political aims, yet moral concerns can ironically reduce people’s motivation to participate in this helpful channel of political action. As we will see, this aversion to cross-party engagement often contradicts people’s explicit moral values, which raises questions about whether and how they reconcile this hypocrisy.
22.2.1 Moral Concerns Encourage People to Act in Support of Their Favored Policies
In pluralistic democratic societies where people disagree and successful policies require majority support, people can directly help their preferred policies’ chances both through individual efforts (e.g., voting, speaking out, signing petitions) and by successfully inspiring others to join in collective action. When people’s political beliefs are based on moral convictions, they are more likely to undertake these sorts of behaviors, in ways that can be more or less constructive.
22.2.1.1 Moral Concerns Can Encourage Democratic and Constructive Political Behavior
Moral convictions can motivate individual actions, such as speaking and acting in support of one’s preferred political causes. For instance, people who feel their political choices reflect their core moral values more often vote in national elections (Skitka et al., Reference Skitka, Hanson, Morgan and Wisneski2021). Likewise, people speak up for their morally grounded views even at the risk of corporate backlash (Dungan et al., Reference Dungan, Young and Waytz2019) or social media ostracism (Crockett, Reference Crockett2017). For instance, those who choose to be vegan for moral reasons are especially willing to evangelize their unpopular views on animal consumption to everyone from family to social media networks (Judge et al., Reference Judge, Fernando and Begeny2022). And moral concerns can motivate individuals to join in collective political action like demonstrating and fundraising to support their stance on government-mandated university tuition increases (Sabucedo et al., Reference Sabucedo, Dono, Alzate and Seoane2018), discrimination against women (Zaal et al., Reference Zaal, Van Laar, Ståhl, Ellemers and Derks2011), and graduate student labor issues (Morgan, Reference Morgan2011). Voting, voicing one’s views, and participating in collective action represent key civic responsibilities in well-functioning democracies – in this way, moral concerns can motivate individuals to take democratically sanctioned routes to promote their favored policies.
Moral concerns can also help individuals rally others, inspiring them to pursue these same causes. Moralizers inspire effective group action by raising awareness of moral issues and signaling which stance their group should adopt (Spring et al., Reference Spring, Cameron and Cikara2018), and by compelling copartisans to vote (Gerber & Rogers, Reference Gerber and Rogers2009). People with strong, moralized views also seem prototypical of their political group (Goldenberg et al., Reference Goldenberg, Abruzzo, Huang, Schöne, Bailey, Willer, Halperin and Gross2022), which makes other group members want to befriend them and take up their causes (Hogg, Reference Hogg2001).
22.2.1.2 Moral Concerns Can Also Inspire Less Democratic Political Behaviors
Moralized political stances can also motivate less democratic, even violent means to political ends (Finkel et al., Reference Finkel, Bail, Cikara, Ditto, Iyengar, Klar, Mason, McGrath, Nyhan, Rand, Skitka, Tucker, Van Bavel, Wang and Druckman2020). Because moral concerns feel absolute, people prioritize them so much so that they will subvert other values and norms to achieve their moral ends. This can lead people with moralized views to become vigilantes, skirting due process to punish perceived transgressors; for example, sanctioning copartisans who stray from party norms (Marques et al., Reference Marques, Yzerbyt and Leyens1988; for a review, see Skitka et al., Reference Skitka, Hanson, Morgan and Wisneski2021) and excessively piling onto single targets online (Sawaoka & Monin, Reference Sawaoka and Monin2018). People with strong moral convictions might also try to draw attention to and rally support for their cause via destruction or even violence (Skitka et al., Reference Skitka, Hanson, Morgan and Wisneski2021). For example, people who moralize gender equality are more willing to vandalize and riot against organizations that discriminate against women (Zaal et al., Reference Zaal, Van Laar, Ståhl, Ellemers and Derks2011). Though drastic means may sometimes be necessary for progress, vigilantism and violence subvert democratic norms and endanger peaceful routes to societal change. And since most people find violent activism off-putting (Feinberg, Willer, & Kovacheff, Reference Feinberg, Willer and Kovacheff2020), moral movements that use violence to draw attention to their cause might, ironically, deter public support.
Another way moral concerns can impede constructive political action is by heightening identity concerns. When people care more about seeming rather than being moral (Aquino & Reed, Reference Aquino and Reed2002), they might choose superficially attractive yet ineffective actions. On social media, people can curate a morally concerned public persona through low-cost, low-impact behaviors, like calling out others’ missteps (Rothschild & Keefer, Reference Rothschild and Keefer2017). On one hand, these behaviors could help rally people around their cause: If people are unaware of an issue, these public posts can raise awareness to new audiences; likewise, when audiences see someone called out for their missteps, they can learn to avoid similarly condemnable behaviors. On the other hand, awareness and learning have less of a tangible impact than other behaviors: Social media advocates may feel that they have done enough to rally support for their moral cause, licensing them to skip out on higher-cost, higher-impact actions like volunteering, voting, or protesting (Merritt et al., Reference Merritt, Effron and Monin2010). These image-focused actions can also undermine collective action, as in the misguided July 2020 Instagram campaign to post black squares tagged #blacklivesmatter: This public moral signal crowded out organizing messages by Black Lives Matter leaders using that same hashtag (see also Brady & Crockett, Reference Brady and Crockett2019). Moral outrage and other online behaviors can catalyze collective action (Spring et al., Reference Spring, Cameron and Cikara2018) but when motivated by self-promotion, they more often impair it (Smith et al., Reference Smith, Krishna and Al-Sinan2019).
22.2.2 Morality Undermines Motivation to Engage Constructively with Political Opponents
As we have seen, moral concerns can drive people to engage in actions aimed at promoting their political goals, though sometimes these actions are less effective and socially sanctioned. But in pluralistic democratic societies, promoting one’s favored policies may not be enough: Achieving majority support for a policy often requires engagement between opposing factions, as opponents can be persuaded to join the cause or negotiated with to at least partially advance it. Though people endorse various moral values that encourage such cross-divide engagement in principle, their other moral concerns (paradoxically) undermine it in practice.
Though there are practical and principled reasons for politically motivated people to engage across political divides, they seldom do so. The same moral values that fuel direct political action also keep people away from their political opponents and out of cross-party conversations that could actually help their political cause. Specifically, moral concerns both pull people toward those with politically similar beliefs, and push them away from those who hold different political opinions.
22.2.2.1 Moral Concerns Encourage Cross-Divide Engagement in Principle but Obstruct It in Practice
In a democratic society, where successful policies require majority support, people with moralized political beliefs need to engage with political opponents if they hope, practically, to garner majority support. When people do not have majority support for their favored policy, engagement is practically necessary to get it: Advocates can hear out opponents’ concerns and either persuade them to change their minds or compromise toward a mutually acceptable solution (e.g., a moderate or integrative policy). Even when they have majority support, advocates might still find it practically helpful to engage, since this promotes longer-lasting policies: When policies are passed with only slim majority support – without input from the minority group, as is often the case amid polarization – they risk being overturned as soon as that opposing minority gains power in the future (Barber et al., Reference Barber, McCarty, Mansbridge, Martin, Mansbridge and Martin2015). In contrast, engagement can help advocates conjure majority support for long-lasting policies, meaningfully and sustainably advancing their moral causes. Since engaging with opponents is often pragmatically necessary to overcome sharp disagreement and pass long-lasting policies, having moralized political beliefs should presumably motivate people to engage with opponents, if only to advance their causes.
Moreover, pragmatics aside, both liberals and conservatives hold values that seem like they would promote engagement across political divides. They both endorse care and fairness above all (Graham et al., Reference Graham, Haidt and Nosek2009), so they should gladly cooperate on policies advancing these shared moral values (e.g., reforms to curb gun violence or improve low-income students’ access to education). Likewise, they both agree that it is morally important for people to form their political beliefs through rational means (Ståhl et al., Reference Ståhl, Zaal and Skitka2016), such as evaluating all available evidence and facts, including those that support the opponents’ position. They also prefer open-minded, tolerant, and cooperative individuals and wish to espouse these traits themselves (Heltzel & Laurin, Reference Heltzel and Laurin2021), which should compel them to open-mindedly engage and cooperate with opponents. Finally, both groups support in principle democratic values like tolerance of opposing views (though conservatives somewhat less; Benjamin et al., Reference Benjamin, Laurin and Chiang2022), despite sometimes subverting these values for political gain (McCoy et al., Reference McCoy, Simonovits and Levente2020). Together, both sides’ tolerant, rational, open-minded, and cooperative moral values, not to mention their pragmatic concerns, should motivate well-meaning engagement with opponents.
Although these pragmatics and principles should push Americans toward constructive engagement, evidence instead suggests they have become more politically segregated in recent decades (Heltzel & Laurin, Reference Heltzel and Laurin2020; Iyengar et al., Reference Iyengar, Lelkes, Levendusky, Malhotra and Westwood2019) and moralization seems to be the culprit. In other words, rather than helping to bridge divides, people’s moral concerns interfere with their ability and motivation to communicate with opponents (Kovacheff et al., Reference Kovacheff, Schwartz, Inbar and Feinberg2018). We suggest two types of processes at work here: Broader psychological motives may pull people toward politically and morally similar others, while political and moral differences may also push people to actively reject political opponents and cross-divide communication.
22.2.2.2 Broad Motives That Pull People Toward Similar Political Others
There are at least three basic psychological motives that pull people toward like-minded moral others and away, though not intentionally so, from political opponents. In each case, people are seeking to fill a need that has nothing to do with politics, but ends up having political consequences.
First, people have a psychological need to feel that they understand the world, which they can fulfill by seeking out confirmation for their views. Most straightforwardly, this means partisans drift toward news media outlets that align with their political leanings (Iyengar & Hahn, Reference Iyengar and Hahn2009): Conservatives tune in to Fox News while liberals turn on MSNBC.
In person and online, people prefer to spend time with and be close to others who share their traits, hobbies, or attitudes, and this is especially true for political and moral attitudes. People prefer politically like-minded neighbors, physicians, and in-laws, and will even sit closer to strangers who appear to share their political beliefs (Skitka et al., Reference Skitka, Hanson, Morgan and Wisneski2021). Thus, just as people’s need to understand the world can lead them to seek out congenial information, it can also draw them to spend time with like-minded others (Hillman et al., Reference Hillman, Fowlie and MacDonald2022).
Not only do people prefer to socialize with political allies, but they especially prefer allies who show strong commitment to their moral values by expressing outrage at opponents (Goldenberg et al., Reference Goldenberg, Abruzzo, Huang, Schöne, Bailey, Willer, Halperin and Gross2022). Online, X (previously Twitter) users with similar moral beliefs interact more often with each other and use morally laden language that appeals to their own group but affronts opponents (Brady et al., Reference Brady, Wills, Jost, Tucker and Van Bavel2017; Dehghani et al., Reference Dehghani, Johnson, Hoover, Sagi, Garten, Parmar, Vaisey, Iliev and Graham2016). For example, compared to conservatives, liberals spontaneously use more language invoking concerns about harm and fairness and less invoking concerns about authority, purity, and loyalty (Feinberg & Willer, Reference Feinberg and Willer2019). They also go a step further than this; on Facebook, when people see a post that violates their moral foundations, they often unfriend whoever posted or shared it (Neubaum et al., Reference Neubaum, Cargnino, Winter and Dvir-Gvirsman2021).
As a result of these processes, whereby people seek to have their moral values and beliefs validated by politically like-minded others, they can become enmeshed, sometimes unintentionally, in social networks that preclude friendly contact with political opponents.
Second and relatedly, when people try to fulfill their needs to feel belonging and social connectedness, they often end up gathering in places with politically like-minded others (Hillman et al., Reference Hillman, Fowlie and MacDonald2022). People seek out places where they expect to belong, and these can often be the same places their political allies choose. For example, people want to move to communities with subtle cues that appeal to them and, as it happens, to their copartisans – churches and rural-themed restaurants for conservatives, art galleries and organic food stores for liberals (Motyl et al., Reference Motyl, Prims and Iyer2020). Sometimes seeking out belonging entails moving away from opponents: For instance, participants who identified as strong liberals or conservatives were 60 percent more likely to move when they lived in ideologically misfitting communities compared to when they lived in ideologically fitting communities (Motyl et al., Reference Motyl, Iyer, Oishi, Trawalter and Nosek2014). An unintended consequence of these actions, driven by a desire to feel connected to others around them, is that people segregate themselves from opponents, and have fewer interactions across divides.
Finally, people’s instinct to protect their emotions and preserve their energy might drive them to avoid cross-party interactions (for a review, see Minson & Dorison, Reference Minson and Dorison2022). Regarding emotions, people want to feel pleasant feelings and may find this easier when they avoid cross-party interactions. Imagine that you enter into a conversation with a political opponent. If this person seems like a reasonable person, or if they make an argument you find compelling, this could threaten your certainty in your core moral beliefs, leading you to feel anxious and confused. Alternatively, if the political opponent seems unreasonable, or makes an argument you do not buy, you may feel angry and frustrated that anyone could be so selfish or stupid. Indeed, many people avoid hearing from opponents in part because they expect doing so would upset them (Dorison et al., Reference Dorison, Minson and Rogers2019), and will sometimes even pay to avoid this (Frimer et al., Reference Frimer, Skitka and Motyl2017). In other words, people’s basic desire to preserve their emotional well-being may lead them to avoid engaging with dissidents.
Regarding energy, people might avoid hearing opposing views because to consider them and logically weigh their merits requires time and immense cognitive effort, which people typically do not want to exert (Kahneman et al., Reference Kahneman, Slovic and Tversky1982). These psychological needs have the side effect of making cross-party conversation rarer, even though people’s intention is merely to preserve their emotional well-being and mental stamina.
22.2.2.3 Moral and Political Differences Actively Push People Apart
Compounding these effects of basic motives, moral differences can also directly motivate people to deliberately reject contact with political opponents. For one thing, people often hear of their opponents doing things that violate their moral values. Liberals hear of conservatives protecting the rich and deporting immigrants; conservatives hear of liberals degrading revered statues and disrespecting the national anthem. These likely prompt condemnation and, since people feel impotent to change their opponents’ unsavory behaviors, they are left with cold contempt (Malle et al., Reference Malle, Voiklis, Kim and Mason2018), further dissuading conversation. These reactions to perceived moral violations may be further linked to people’s stereotypes of their opponents as morally miscalibrated. For example, conservatives stereotype liberals as being unpatriotic and overly sensitive (Clifford, Reference Clifford2020) – in other words, too low on the loyalty and too high on the care foundation; conversely, liberals stereotype conservatives as callous to the suffering and injustice of others (i.e., low on care and fairness). More broadly, each group stereotypes the other as hypocritical, selfish, and close-minded (Iyengar et al., Reference Iyengar, Lelkes, Levendusky, Malhotra and Westwood2019). Making matters worse, due to the geographical and social clustering described earlier, people rarely have opportunities to correct these stereotypes; rather, their primary exposure to opponents is through partisan news sources, which often present sensationalized coverage of opponents’ moral violations (Yang et al., Reference Yang, Rojas, Wojcieszak, Aalberg, Coen, Curran, Hayashi, Iyengar, Jones, Mazzoleni, Papathanassopoulos, Rhee, Rowe, Soroka and Tiffen2016).
Setting aside actual behavior, people may choose to reject contact with opponents simply because of the positions they endorse or even merely entertain. When the policies people support become sacred values, they may find it offensive for anyone to even question these truths and debate alternatives (Critcher et al., Reference Critcher, Inbar and Pizarro2012; Merritt & Monin, Reference Merritt and Monin2011; Tetlock, Reference Tetlock2003). As an example outside of the political domain, many people hold the protection of children’s lives as a sacred value; the mere thought of sacrificing a child’s life for money fills people with moral outrage and the desire to cleanse themselves of such an immoral thought (Tetlock, Reference Tetlock2003). Moreover, when people learn that someone has entertained a debate on the matter, they are motivated to punish that individual and cut ties with them – even if that person eventually made the right decision to pass up the money and save the child’s life.
Translating this into the political domain, even if conservatives and liberals ultimately come to agree – as many do, for instance, on issues like marriage equality and climate change – it is likely that their latitudes of acceptance differ. That is, a conservative who embraces marriage equality may consider that it is legitimate to oppose it and may have spent time deliberating both sides before ultimately coming down in support. Liberals for whom marriage equality is a sacred value might find that deliberation horrifying and disgusting and prefer to shun anyone who was not immediately on their side.
Some claim that conservatives are more likely than liberals to actively avoid or try to silence their political opponents – that conservatives more strongly dislike dissimilar others (Jost, Reference Jost2017; Kugler et al., Reference Kugler, Jost and Noorbaloochi2014) and are responsible for more politically motivated violence than are liberals (Kalmoe & Mason, Reference Kalmoe and Mason2022). Others disagree, arguing that liberals and conservatives are similarly prejudiced, feeling equally strong animosity toward each other (Crawford & Pilanski, Reference Crawford and Pilanski2014; Ganzach & Schul, Reference Ganzach and Schul2021). This debate may eventually be resolved, but for the time being it is clear that, whether to the same or different degrees, liberals and conservatives both openly discriminate against opponents and negatively stereotype them – beyond this, they also censor their opponents’ opinions and support violence against them (Crawford & Pilanski, Reference Crawford and Pilanski2014; Kalmoe & Mason, Reference Kalmoe and Mason2022).
22.2.3 How People Morally Justify Disengagement from Cross-Ideological Dialogue
If people in principle believe they should be tolerant and wish to make political progress but in practice avoid opponents and even intentionally suppress their views, how do they not see themselves as moral hypocrites? Consider these three explanations.
First, people might not even notice that their segregationist behavior violates their tolerant values and pragmatic political interests (Crawford & Pilanski, Reference Crawford and Pilanski2014). If people unintentionally gravitate toward politically congenial people and information, they may be oblivious to their exclusion of opponents. When they move to a neighborhood that feels right to them, they may not realize this precludes friendly connections with political adversaries. And when they choose the comfort of ideologically aligned news, they may fail to notice how this violates their open-minded values.
Second, people may notice the disconnect but refuse responsibility for it. As noted earlier, people excel at justifying desired conclusions; if partisans are motivated to find fault in their opponents, they may find ways to blame their lack of contact with opponents on the opponents themselves. For example, partisans might claim that they are willing to engage, if only their close-minded opponents were equally willing to socialize (Iyengar et al., Reference Iyengar, Lelkes, Levendusky, Malhotra and Westwood2019; Iyengar & Westwood, Reference Iyengar and Westwood2015). Or they might argue that they have tried to engage with opponents before and therefore know how useless it would be to engage further, perhaps claiming that their opponents are stubbornly immune to persuasion or compromise, or that they already know exactly what they will say (Yeomans, Reference Yeomans2021). These rationalizations blame opponents for the impasse, allowing partisans to acknowledge that they are not engaging without feeling guilty about it.
Finally, people may see their political stonewalling as morally righteous (Hawkins et al., Reference Hawkins, Yudkin, Juan-Torres and Dixon2019). If conservatives view liberals as overly sensitive, unpatriotic flag-burners who welcome criminal immigrants, they likely find it perfectly justified – or even necessary – to sacrifice tolerance at the more sacralized altar of national security. If liberals view conservatives as heartless, gun-brandishing racists, they may similarly forgo tolerance to advance their sacred value of racial justice. Indeed, people perceive prejudice toward moral opponents to be uniquely justified (Cole Wright et al., Reference Cole Wright, Cullum and Schwab2008), feeling no dissonance when they disparage, censor, and disregard groups with dissimilar morals (Crawford & Pilanski, Reference Crawford and Pilanski2014; Iyengar & Westwood, Reference Iyengar and Westwood2015). While people endorse empathy and tolerance in the abstract, they believe these should be withheld from immoral people (Haidt et al., Reference Haidt, Rosenberg and Hom2003; Wang & Todd, Reference Wang and Todd2020).
22.2.3.1 Overcoming Moral Barriers to Engagement with Political Opponents
Interventions could help overcome these challenges and foster bipartisan engagement with opposing opinions and individuals. We consider how to motivate people to engage across political divides, to ensure people approach these opportunities in good faith, and how to structure this engagement for optimal results.
22.2.4 Improving Motivation to Engage With, and Attitudes Toward, Political Opponents
People actively avoid engaging with their political opponents, so interventions fostering positive cross-party engagement must first overcome this motivational barrier, by making people see positive engagement as a desirable goal. Since most people endorse tolerance, helping them see the hypocrisy of their avoidant behavior might induce them to act differently (Batson et al., Reference Batson, Thompson, Seuferling, Whitney and Strongman1999). Of course, people could instead resolve this hypocrisy by disavowing tolerance; to prevent this, interventions should emphasize tolerance as a primary moral virtue (see Kovacheff et al., Reference Kovacheff, Schwartz, Inbar and Feinberg2018). Alternatively, interventions could leverage social pressures. People are strongly motivated to behave in ways that their group approves of (Hillman et al., Reference Hillman, Fowlie and MacDonald2022); since partisans strongly prefer copartisans who seek to better understand, rather than avoid, opponents (Heltzel & Laurin, Reference Heltzel and Laurin2021), interventions could harness this social approval to motivate political discourse. Such interventions could increase people’s awareness of their avoidance of opposing political views and motivate them to start seeking ways to engage.
Still, even if partisans want to engage across divides, their dislike for opponents may doom their attempts. Partisans dislike their opponents and expect to be disliked in return (Lees & Cikara, Reference Lees and Cikara2020). This may create a self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby partisans enter into a cross-party interaction feeling defensive and unforgiving, causing it to go poorly. That is, because they expect to be disliked, partisans may approach an opposing interlocuter with cold indifference, offending the opponent and thereby creating the chilly atmosphere they initially expected. Such interactions likely only reinforce negative stereotypes of opponents, hampering productive conversation and dissuading well-intentioned partisans from trying again. Interventions seeking to foster productive and sustained cross-divide engagement, then, should not only motivate people to engage but also inoculate against partisan animosity that would otherwise foil pleasant engagement. To this end, we discuss intervention strategies that target individuals’ attitudes and interpersonal relationships (for a broader review, see Hartman et al., Reference Hartman, Blakey, Womick, Bail, Finkel, Han, Sarrouf, Schroeder, Sheeran, Van Bavel, Willer and Gray2022).
22.2.4.1 Interventions Targeting Individuals’ Attitudes
As a first step toward ensuring more productive cross-party conversations down the line, interveners can focus on the individual level, changing individuals’ thoughts and feelings about their opponents, ahead of any interactions with these opponents. A recent large-scale study tested the efficacy of 25 interventions aimed at improving attitudes toward political opponents (Voelkel et al., Reference Voelkel, Chu, Stagnaro, Mernyk, Redekopp, Pink, Druckman, Rand and Willer2023) and found the most successful ones worked by helping foster individuals’ empathy toward, and perceived similarity to, out-group partisans; this finding provides some good starting places.
Perspective-taking interventions effectively foster empathy and self–other overlap between apolitical groups (Todd & Galinsky, Reference Todd and Galinsky2014) and so might also work to reduce partisan animosity (Saveski et al., Reference Saveski, Gillani, Yuan, Vijayaraghavan and Roy2021). These interventions have people imagine the thoughts and feelings of someone else (e.g., an out-group member), raising awareness of and responsiveness to their experiences. But features of the political context make it likely that these interventions would backfire. Many partisans think their opponents are immoral (Finkel et al., Reference Finkel, Bail, Cikara, Ditto, Iyengar, Klar, Mason, McGrath, Nyhan, Rand, Skitka, Tucker, Van Bavel, Wang and Druckman2020) and feel hated by them (Lees & Cikara, Reference Lees and Cikara2020). When asked to imagine conservatives’ perspectives, liberals might feel that their core identities and moral worldviews are under threat, leading their attitudes to worsen (and vice versa for conservatives imagining liberals’ perspectives; Sassenrath et al., Reference Sassenrath, Hodges and Pfattheicher2016; Vorauer, Reference Vorauer, Olson and Zanna2013). Likewise, when conservatives feel that liberals have cheated to gain a political advantage (e.g., by passing laws that restrict or expand voting access), imagining their perspectives might lead conservatives to dwell on liberals’ cheating, dislike them, and cheat in response (Epley et al., Reference Epley, Caruso and Bazerman2006). In other words, perspective-taking interventions are unlikely to improve partisan animosity because they do not change people’s beliefs about opponents; when people’s stereotypes about opponents are negative, taking their perspective can backfire by encouraging people to recall and dwell on these unsavory stereotypes – thereby justifying and reinforcing their prejudices.
A more promising intervention strategy is to invalidate negative stereotypes by correcting partisans’ misperceptions, or inaccurate beliefs about their opponents, helping them see that they are more similar to these out-group members than previously believed. This can be done in two ways. First, interventions can correct people’s first-order perceptions of their opponents. Americans overestimate the extremity of their opponents’ average policy preferences (Fernbach & Van Boven, Reference Fernbach and Van Boven2021) and how often their opponents talk about politics (Druckman et al., Reference Druckman, Klar, Krupnikov, Levendusky and Ryan2022). For instance, liberals overestimate how many conservatives are obscenely wealthy, and conservatives overestimate how many liberals are militant atheists (Ahler & Sood, Reference Ahler and Sood2018). When partisans discover that these stereotypes are not true – that their opponents are more moderate and less vocal than previously thought – they like them more.
Second, interventions can correct second-order perceptions of how they are seen by opponents. For example, people overestimate how much they are disliked and dehumanized by their opponents (Lees & Cikara, Reference Lees and Cikara2020; Moore-Berg et al., Reference Moore-Berg, Ankori-Karlinsky, Hameiri and Bruneau2020); when liberals discover that conservatives detest and dehumanize them much less than anticipated, liberals tend to like and humanize conservatives more (and vice versa for conservatives). Conceptually, these interventions likely work because they highlight commonalities between partisans and their opponents, thereby fostering empathy and self–other overlap (Hartman et al., Reference Hartman, Blakey, Womick, Bail, Finkel, Han, Sarrouf, Schroeder, Sheeran, Van Bavel, Willer and Gray2022; Voelkel et al., Reference Voelkel, Chu, Stagnaro, Mernyk, Redekopp, Pink, Druckman, Rand and Willer2023).
Methodologically, interventions aimed at correcting misperceptions are more likely to succeed when they show these commonalities through videos or stories of real people interacting, rather than telling participants that these commonalities exist using results from polls or studies (Hawkins et al., Reference Hawkins, Yudkin, Juan-Torres and Dixon2019). Indeed, in the large-scale test of interventions mentioned earlier (Voelkel et al., Reference Voelkel, Chu, Stagnaro, Mernyk, Redekopp, Pink, Druckman, Rand and Willer2023), three of the top five most successful interventions used vivid, engaging videos of real partisans discussing their beliefs and values either alone or with an opposing partisan; this likely helped partisans to realistically see what their opponents are like and how those opponents feel about them.
22.2.4.2 Interventions Targeting Interpersonal Relationships
Interventions levied at individual attitudes, such as the misperception-correcting strategies discussed in Section 22.2.4.1, may be simpler to implement than those levied at interpersonal interactions. However, individual-level interventions should be followed with interventions that bring partisans in actual contact with opponents, as these likely have a stronger psychological impact, helping to more effectively improve attitudes and facilitate better dialogue. Contact reliably improves prejudicial attitudes between even adversarial groups with long-lasting effects, boasting a meta-analyzed average effect of r = –0.22 (Dovidio et al., Reference Dovidio, Love, Schellhaas and Hewstone2017; Pettigrew & Tropp, Reference Pettigrew and Tropp2006). Though contact interventions were originally designed to improve interracial relations, they have been applied to other group settings, including morally conflicting groups: Israeli and Palestinian children who attended summer camp together developed lasting positive attitudes toward each other (White et al., Reference White, Schroeder and Risen2021).
Contact interventions are most likely to succeed under specific conditions (Pettigrew & Tropp, Reference Pettigrew and Tropp2006): when contact is repeated, institutionally sanctioned, lasts more than 10 minutes, and when participating groups feel they have equal status and are working toward a common goal under a shared identity (Levendusky, Reference Levendusky2018). For conservatives and liberals, then, contact should include multiple, not-too-brief interactions where institutional authorities (e.g., leaders, policymakers) encourage cooperation toward any shared goal – even a nonpolitical one – under the banner of a broader, shared identity. Care should also be taken to ensure both parties feel they have equal footing. Interactions such as those on partisan news platforms, where a conservative spokesperson joins a liberal broadcast only to have their opinions ridiculed, are unlikely to benefit participants’ intergroup feelings.
Contact works for a variety of reasons. For one, it can correct negative stereotypes and exaggerated perceptions of the out-group (Pettigrew & Tropp, Reference Pettigrew and Tropp2006). Because contact allows partisans to see first-hand proof that their opponents are not as awful as expected, these interventions likely work better than indirect interventions in which partisans read about opponents or see them in videos or stories. That said, direct conversation between liberals and conservatives – who may go into these interactions deeply disliking each other – can easily go wrong; as such, we recommend preceding contact-type interventions with the individual-level interventions described earlier.
Contact also works by deemphasizing group boundaries. By having partisans work together toward a shared goal, they feel like part of one superordinate group (e.g., as Americans; Levendusky, Reference Levendusky2018). As a result, partisans can see each other as individuals and bond over shared nonpolitical interests and values (e.g., hobbies, family).
22.2.5 Improving Constructiveness of Contact and Dialogue
Once people are motivated to engage in cross-party dialogue and like opponents enough to approach it in good faith, there are still many opportunities for the conversation to derail. We close by identifying conditions under which political conversations, once initiated, remain pleasant and constructive, especially given that conversation may drift to morally relevant (and therefore potentially divisive) topics.
Conversations between partisan opponents may fare better when participants foster empathy by highlighting shared moral ground. Since morality is key to building trust and liking, cross-party conversations will naturally fare better when they invoke shared moral values (e.g., care and fairness; Graham et al., Reference Graham, Haidt and Nosek2009). But even when conversations bring up moral disagreements, partisans can avoid conflict by discussing how their personal experiences have informed their political views: Compared to facts that can be dismissed as fake news, personal experiences are difficult to refute and easier to empathize with (Kubin et al., Reference Kubin, Puryear, Schein and Gray2021), allowing even staunch opponents to see opposing views as reasonable and legitimate (Stanley et al., Reference Stanley, Whitehead, Sinnott-Armstrong and Seli2020). For example, conservatives respect a liberal’s gun control stance more if the stance stems from having suffered from gun violence and less if it stems from statistics supporting gun regulation. These strategies can allow people to talk about the loaded moral beliefs that infuse their political views while still increasing empathy and improving attitudes toward opponents.
Another strategy to facilitate political discussions is to make political opponents feel respected, heard, and included. Respect can make interactions friendlier. Telling political opponents that one respects their status can make them less defensive (Moore-Berg et al., Reference Moore-Berg, Ankori-Karlinsky, Hameiri and Bruneau2020) and more friendly toward you. In one study, when an opponent who disagreed nevertheless acknowledged respect for participants’ views on the Affordable Care Act, participants viewed the opponent more positively and were more willing to give them money in a dictator game (Bendersky, Reference Bendersky2014). Making sure your opponents feel heard can have similar effects (Yeomans et al., Reference Yeomans, Minson, Collins, Chen and Gino2020). This is even true among groups with a history of violence: When members of conflict-affected communities in Colombia were able to tell their personal experiences to ex-combatants on the other side, they liked the ex-combatants more (Ugarriza & Nussio, Reference Ugarriza and Nussio2017). And when people include rather than exclude an opponent, even in low-stakes online conversations, the opponent likes them more and sees them as more moral (Voelkel et al., Reference Voelkel, Ren and Brandt2021).
These strategies may also succeed because they elicit reciprocation, opening the door to good-faith compromise and agreement. When people listen to each other, their opinions shift closer to the center. For example, after door-to-door canvassers nonjudgmentally listened to participants’ personal narratives about immigration policy, those participants shifted their views closer to the canvassers’ (Kalla & Broockman, Reference Kalla and Broockman2020). When a person hears their opponent out, they can better acknowledge their opponent’s arguments, making them seem informed and unbiased (Hussein & Tormala, Reference Hussein and Tormala2021; Xu & Petty, Reference Xu and Petty2021); as a result, opponents may feel more willing to soften their position and compromise. For example, when liberals show they properly understand conservatives’ pragmatic concerns about the economic opportunities of pipeline projects, conservatives may feel more receptive to reasons for canceling pipeline projects. When people have heard each other, they can also speak to each other’s moral concerns, and find common ground in that way; for example, liberals can highlight the purity violations inherent to pollution, and conservatives can highlight the fairness benefits of funding the military as an employer and educator of the disadvantaged (Feinberg & Willer, Reference Feinberg and Willer2013).
22.3 Conclusion
Politics have become increasingly intertwined with morality. As political issues become moralized, people feel compelled to ensure their side succeeds. The standoff between the two sides increasingly feels like a high-stakes conflict between good and evil.
Despite the noble aims underlying moral values, their strong ties to politics have impaired goodwill among citizens and the efficacy of their government. People striving to satisfy basic motives gravitate toward morally and politically like-minded others, but in a more direct sense they also feel contempt and condemnation toward those who disagree, resulting in record levels of partisan animosity. As a result, partisan communities increasingly segregate rather than communicate.
To combat these forces and increase people’s willingness and ability to communicate across divides, one might moralize political tolerance, correct misperceptions of the political divide that emerge when people rely on their imaginations to picture their typical opponent, and instead promote real and constructive contact between opposing political sides. Globally, activist groups like Braver Angels (in the United States) and Diskutier Mit Mir (in Germany) have begun these efforts, facilitating conversations across political divides. Similarly, Stanford’s Center for Deliberative Democracy has brought together hundreds of politically diverging Americans and encouraged courteous political debate. Given the digital and geographical segregation between liberals and conservatives, more active and widespread efforts are needed to encourage both virtual and in-person contact with opponents. Combined, these strategies can strengthen cross-divide communication and, in doing so, help people and democracies reach their political goals and maybe even find common moral ground.
