edge | What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class
and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when
their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic
policies? We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology
ever since Hitler sent us Germany's best psychologists, and we long ago
reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities
work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and
progress. But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious
attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism
is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people
to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid
of uncertainty, change, and death. People vote Republican because
Republicans offer "moral clarity"—a simple vision of good and evil that
activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in
contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy
options for a complex world.
Diagnosis is a pleasure. It is a thrill to solve a mystery from
scattered clues, and it is empowering to know what makes others tick. In
the psychological community, where almost all of us are politically
liberal, our diagnosis of conservatism gives us the additional pleasure
of shared righteous anger. We can explain how Republicans exploit
frames, phrases, and fears to trick Americans into supporting policies
(such as the "war on terror" and repeal of the "death tax") that damage
the national interest for partisan advantage.
But with pleasure comes seduction, and with righteous pleasure comes
seduction wearing a halo. Our diagnosis explains away Republican
successes while convincing us and our fellow liberals that we hold the
moral high ground. Our diagnosis tells us that we have nothing to learn
from other ideologies, and it blinds us to what I think is one of the
main reasons that so many Americans voted Republican over the last 30
years: they honestly prefer the Republican vision of a moral order to
the one offered by Democrats. To see what Democrats have been missing,
it helps to take off the halo, step back for a moment, and think about
what morality really is.
