The Science of Dishonesty

A 2016 article examined brain responses to dishonesty. This area of science is important. Dishonesty significantly affects major areas of life including politics. The researchers commented that anecdotal evidence indicates that digressions from a moral code tend to be seen as “a series of small breaches that grow over time.” Their paper, The Brain Adapts to Dishonesty, describes empirical evidence for increasing self-serving dishonesty over time. Their data uncovered a plausible neural mechanism showing the brain’s adaptation to dishonesty.

The scientists wrote: “Behaviorally, we show that the extent to which participants engage in self-serving dishonesty increases with repetition. Using fMRI [brain scans] we show that signal reduction in the amygdala is sensitive to the history of dishonest behavior, consistent with adaptation. Critically, the extent of amygdala BOLD [biological activity seen in brain scans] reduction to dishonesty on a present decision relative to the last, predicts the magnitude of escalation of self-serving dishonesty on the next decision. The findings uncover a biological mechanism that supports a ‘slippery slope’: what begins as small acts of dishonesty can escalate into larger instances.

Many dishonest acts are speculatively traced back to a sequence of smaller transgressions that gradually escalated. From financial fraud, to plagiarism, online scams and scientific misconduct, deceivers retrospectively describe how minor dishonest decisions snowballed into significant ones over time(1–4). Despite the dramatic impact of these acts on economics(5,6), policy(7) and education(8), we do not have a clear understanding of how and why small transgressions may gradually lead to larger ones. Here, we set out to empirically demonstrate dishonesty escalation in a controlled laboratory setting and examine the underlying mechanism.

People often perceive self-serving dishonesty as morally wrong(9) and report uneasiness when engaging in such behavior(10). Consistent with these reports, physiological(11) and neurological(12) measures of emotional arousal are observed when people deceive. Blocking such signals pharmacologically results in significant increases in dishonesty. For example, in one study students who had taken and responded to a mild sympatholytic agent were twice as likely to cheat on an exam than those who took a placebo(13). Thus, in the absence of an affective signal that can help curb dishonesty, people may engage in more frequent and severe acts”

The researchers conclusions include these observations: “Dishonesty significantly impacts our personal lives(9) and public institutions(34). Here, we provide empirical evidence that dishonesty gradually increases with repetition when all else is held constant (see(35) for dishonesty escalation in response to escalating rewards). . . . . Our results also suggest that dishonesty escalation is contingent on the motivation for the dishonest act. Specifically, while the magnitude of dishonesty was driven both by considerations of benefit to the self and benefit to the other [benefit another person(s) might gain], the escalation of dishonesty, as well as the amygdala’s response to it over time, was best accounted for by whether dishonesty was self-serving.”

In other words, dishonesty for self-interest appears to be a more powerful motivator than dishonesty that would benefit someone else.

Politics - A Personal Comment: America has entered in a new norm where dishonesty is rampant. There is no way to reconcile the clashing versions of reality, facts and reason that conservatives and populists generally adhere to compared to the versions that many or most others tend to adhere to. To the extent there is objective evidence, this norm is reflected in dishonesty by elected conservative-populist politicians. For example, president Trump has amassed an impressive list of at least 5,000 instances of making false or misleading claims as of September 2018. That record is probably unmatched by any other US president.

Given other aspects of the science of politics, to be discussed in subsequent discussions, it is likely that at least for the time being the new norm cannot be reversed and returned to the level of dishonesty that characterized politics sometime before the rise of Trump. That said, the new norm is not all due to Trump. The rise of dishonesty in politics has been growing for several decades. Trump just came along at the right time and demolished old norms that made dishonesty less attractive. Now, there is little political downside to be dishonest, at least on the political right, while the upside appears to be enormous.

Information source: The quotes given above are taken from the authors’ manuscript, which is here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5238933/

The final, reviewed and edited paper is published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, which is behind a paywall here: https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.4426

B&B orig:10/7/18

The Social Science of Opinions About Abortion

Now that Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed on the Supreme Court, it is reasonable to believe that the new justice would either vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, or vote in support of state laws that continue to narrow abortion rights to the point that abortion is, for at least some women, not practically available. The latter seems less likely given Kavanaugh’s publicly stated beliefs.

In the case of Judge Kavanaugh, at least one source argues his position on Roe v. Wade is that it is inconsistent with the proper test for what can be considered an unenumerated constitutional right.

But what about what the people want?: As a general proposition, it is reasonable to think that what the American people want is largely beside the point. Recent research indicated that public opinion has limited impact on policy choices, with most influence coming from wealthy individuals and organizations representing business interests: “Our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts.”

That concern aside, survey data indicates a significant amount of public support for at least some abortion rights, although results vary among polls. Historical polling by Gallup indicates complexity in opinions. How questions about abortion are worded has a strong effect on poll results.

A January 2017 Pew Research Center article indicates that 59% of Americans approved of abortion in all or most situations. Pew comments: “When it comes to the Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 ruling, about seven-in-ten Americans (69%) say Roe v. Wade should not be completely overturned.” Public opinion, however, is nuanced. Poll data shows that most Americans support abortion early in pregnancy, but most oppose it later in a pregnancy. Support for abortion rights drops from about 60% in the 1st trimester to about 28% by the start of the 3rd trimester. Thus, if public opinion had influence, the Roe decision would left more or less intact.

Existing data indicates that most of the opposition to any abortion rights comes from religious Americans, which varies among religious groups.

Source: http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/views-about-abortion/

Other recent poll data indicates a rather surprising degree of incoherence in public opinion: “But I’ve spent a lot of time talking to friends and family and the people I meet in my reporting about how they view the issue. Here’s what I’ve learned: they don’t live in this world of absolutes. Abortion views are indeed strongly held, but what most discourse misses is the nuance — the personal factors and situations that influence how each individual thinks about the issue. Our poll confirms my anecdotal findings: 39 percent of Americans don’t choose a label in the debate.”

One poll respondent expressed his views like this: “From my point of view, I believe all babies go to heaven. And if this baby were to live a life where it would be abused . . . it’s just really hard to explain. It gets into the rights of the woman, and her body, at the same time. It just sometimes gets really hazy on each side.” The poll data reflects the moral confusion and complexity of the issue.

But if one rewords the abortion question to focus on women, the results vary.

Additional nuance in opinions is revealed in questions about what Americans want a woman’s abortion experience to be like.

The Vox poll also found that talking to people about abortion can make a difference: “If you find the one-in-three-women [who have had an abortion] statistic surprising, you’re not alone: when we told participants in our poll this figure, 73 percent of them said it was higher than they expected. One possible explanation for why this shocks people: we don’t talk much about abortion. The one-in-three figure suggests there’s a decent chance that most of us know a woman who has terminated a pregnancy. But only four in 10 of our poll respondents tell us they’ve talked to someone about their abortion experience or decision.”

If that poll data is correct, it appears that simply discussing an abortion experience or decision increases support for a woman’s access to abortion services. How much that increase would be if all Americans were to engage in an abortion conversation cannot be determined from this data. Nonetheless, the moral complexity of the issue and the effects of society in shaping public opinion cannot be ignored. In essence, the Vox poll reveals that life experiences, and personal moral and social factors, all contribute to how people form their opinions. Cognitive and social science indicates those human traits dominate politics and political thinking. This data also suggests that there is significantly more common ground on abortion than most Americans might believe. If that is true, one can argue that this issue should be far less divisive than is now commonly described and perceived.

B&B orig: 10/22/18

Political Thinking: The Brain’s Timeline

----------------------------------------- BRAIN FACTS ------------------------------------------- 

The unconscious mind is estimated to process about 11 million bits of information per second when awake, about 10 million/second for sight, about 1 million/second for hearing and less for other senses. It does parallel processing and works with thousands or millions of memories, some or many of which are not accessible to consciousness.

By contrast, the conscious mind is estimated to be able to process about 1-500 bits of information per second, depending on the task at hand. Consciousness operates by serial processing and can work with an estimated 5-9 memories at one time, processing each independently of the others.

In their 2103 book, The Rationalizing Voter, political scientists Milton Lodge and Charles Taber posit a hypothesis about how people react to political content or information and then form beliefs. In describing their hypothesis, the John Q Public model of political thinking, the authors touch on the timeline the brain or mind operates on to form critically important initial reactions to politics-related inputs.

This helps put the nature political thinking into some context.

At time zero, information is perceived, usually something such as an image is seen, or words are heard. An example is the image in this picture, which is taken from a political ad that Mike Huckabee aired when he was running for president in 2008.

On seeing the image, the mind immediately but unconsciously recognizes the Christian cross in the shelf behind Huckabee.[1] That is time zero. Within about 300-400 milliseconds (~0.3 to 0.4 seconds), the brain has reacted emotionally and the unconscious mind has subjectively experienced the physiological emotion. Psychologists call the subjective experience being in an affective state.

The subjective experience to an emotion can be positive or negative, and strong, medium or weak (ambiguous). At about the same time and in the seconds thereafter, the unconscious mind gathers memories that it decides to place in our consciousness.

Becoming fully conscious of an input is a process that takes about 700-2500 milliseconds. The process starts at about 300-400 milliseconds, once the initial unconscious experience is well underway and maturing. Early on at about 300-400 milliseconds there is a vague consciousness with an experienced sense of positive and/or negative feeling. The authors call the mental state about 300 millisecond to fully conscious at about 1,000 to 2,500 milliseconds ‘preconsciousness’.

Lodge and Taber describe the process like this: “Most of this processing -- the establishment of affect, meaning and intentions -- is subterranean [unconscious, then unconscious and preconscious], each process following one upon the other in about a second of time. An inkling of conscious awareness begins 300-400 milliseconds after stimulus exposure with a felt sense of positive and/or negative feeling, followed by a rudimentary semantic understanding of the concept, both of which are based entirely on unconscious prior processes. People can report simple like-dislike judgments in about 500-800 milliseconds, and make simple semantic categorizations in about 700-1000 milliseconds, depending in part on whether on the priming context facilitates or inhibits comprehension. It takes somewhat longer (1,000-2,500 milliseconds) to provide a scaled response, and even longer to answer open-ended questions. Were we to ask a committed republican to evaluate Secretary of State Hillary Clinton using a simple like/dislike response, it would take about 700 milliseconds to hit the dislike button.”

Lodge & Taber’s mention of the priming context refers to things that make content easier or harder to comprehend. For example, it is easier to comprehend Mike Huckabee’s image with a Christian cross in the background, that it is to comprehend Donald Trump or Kim Jong Un with a Christian cross in the background. All sorts of things , both expected and unexpected, exert priming effects and that affects the time it takes to become fully conscious of political content, and how it is evaluated.

Long story short, unconscious thinking dominates how we perceive and think about political content, much of it happening in less than a second, which is generally before full but slow conscious reason can be brought to bear.

Footnote:
1. Huckabee claims the cross was not intended to be an appeal to Christian imagery. Professional political observers assert (i) it acts as a powerful stimulus on the way to forming opinion about the ad, whether Huckabee intended it or not, and (ii) Huckabee could not be so dense as to not realize exactly what we was doing and why. Playing these kinds of emotional tricks are well-known to all politicians (and marketers-persuaders in general), and if there are any exceptions, they are failures and need to find another day job.

B&B orig: 10/27/18

Conservative vs Liberal Minds: Much Fear vs Much Less Fear

At about 6:15 in this 7.5 minute monolog,[1] Bill Maher raises the issue of fear among republicans. He makes fun of it, but empirical evidence is solid that there is a major difference in how conservatives and liberals perceive fear. Fear is seen as far more easily evoked and more powerful in driving beliefs among conservatives. Some speakers at NRA meetings list the kinds of killers and murderers out there, such as campus killers, shopping mall killers, terrorist killers, church killers, and so forth, the fear that evokes is real and powerful.



The evidence is about equally as solid that the liberal mind tends not to react with much or any fear in similar situations. Liberals tend to see conservatives, as Maher put it "panicky, fear-based, babies."

The point here is the conservative vs liberal difference of mind on this is not an illusion. Whether liberals understand it or not, conservative fear is real, and when conservatives evoke fear, e.g., the immigrant caravan traveling through Mexico to the US border, many or most conservatives respond with real fear, and maybe also with more than a tinge of xenophobia or even a little racism. Both of the latter tend to evoke a range of emotions that roughly run from unease and anxiety to outright fear.

How liberals or anyone interested in politics should respond to that information, if they respond at all, is up for debate. One thing seems logical to infer. Making fun of conservative fears probably isn't going to help close the vast and increasingly bitter left vs right gap.

Footnote:
1. On a different issue, at about 2:40 in the monologue Maher raises the question of whether the MAGABomber from Florida could reasonably be called deplorable. That thought deserves some consideration.

B&B orig: 10/28/18

The Real Terrorist Threat in the US Today

Author: PD

The following is a sobering assessment of the changing face of domestic terrorism in the US which helps to put into perspective the traumatic events of recent days. It appeared in Foreign Affairs (online edition) on 10/30/18, and was written by national security analysts, Peter Bergen and David Sterman. It provides a useful snapshot of the state of domestic terror, the incompetent and inappropriate national security framework of the current administration, and the profound challenges that lie ahead if we want to stem the tide of the growing threat.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

On 9/11, 19 Arab hijackers trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan killed almost 3,000 people in the United States in a matter of hours. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history and has indelibly shaped Americans’ understanding of security and terrorism ever since.

Unfortunately, that understanding is increasingly out of step with reality. Jihadist organizations are no longer the main terrorist threat facing the country. Since 9/11, no foreign terrorist group has successfully conducted a deadly attack in the United States. The main terrorist problem in the United States today is one of individuals—usually with ready access to guns—radicalized by a diverse array of ideologies absorbed from the Internet.

The multilayered domestic threat was made tragically clear last week. A series of package bombs was sent to former U.S. President Barack Obama, the financier and philanthropist George Soros, and other critics of President Donald Trump. A racially motivated shooting at a grocery store in Kentucky, which killed two people, appears to have originated as a plan to attack a black church. And on Saturday, 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue were shot and killed by a man with an extensive history of expressing anti-Semitic and anti-refugee views on social media. The recent attacks show that the most glaring terrorist threat facing the United States today is primarily domestic in nature. Ubiquitous firearms, political polarization, images of the extensive apocalyptic violence tearing apart societies across the Middle East and North Africa, racism, and the rise of populism have combined with the power of online communications to drive up violence across the political spectrum.

Whether expressed in right-wing, left-wing, jihadist, or black nationalist ideological terms, today’s acts of political violence share a common lineage in the above mixture and together have resulted in almost 200 deaths since the 9/11 attacks. The death toll is even higher if one includes other deadly attacks with less traditionally political or clear motivations ranging from the new ideological misogyny of “incel” violence (incel being a term for a community of people who view themselves as involuntarily celibate and generally frame their perspective in ideological misogyny) to a spate of deadly school shootings. Addressing this threat will require a broad process of renewing U.S. society, a task far more difficult than disrupting a foreign terrorist organization’s operational capacity.

JIHADIST ORGANIZATIONS’ FAILURE In the years since 9/11, groups such as al Qaeda, the Islamic State (or ISIS), and the Pakistan Taliban have demonstrated scant capacity to carry out operations in the United States. The last time any of these groups came close to successfully conducting its own deadly operation on U.S. soil was in May 2010, when Pakistan Taliban–trained Faisal Shahzad tried and failed to set off a car bomb in New York City’s Times Square.

ISIS-trained terrorists never succeeded in mounting a lethal operation in the United States. In one instance, ISIS did directly communicate via encrypted apps with individuals to plan an attack in Garland, Texas, in 2015 at a cartoon contest to draw the Prophet Muhammad. But the two perpetrators, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, were both U.S. citizens who never traveled to an ISIS training camp. Both were killed by a security guard at the contest venue before they could launch their attack.

Threats and concerns remain, of course, about the possibility of a foreign terrorist organization carrying out an attack on U.S. soil, but these are largely issues about managing a so-far-successful counterterrorism apparatus. Indeed, every lethal jihadist terrorist attack in the United States since 9/11 has been committed by a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident. This runs counter to how Trump conceptualizes the threat, given his focus on keeping putative foreign terrorists out of the country. Trump’s travel ban was a solution to a problem that doesn’t really exist.

HOW THE NEW THREAT DIFFERS

Jihad is a part of the new terrorist threat, but not in the way that Trump and many others believe. The danger largely comes from attackers inspired by jihadist ideology but not trained by or in direct communication with foreign terrorist organizations. These attackers have killed 104 people in the United States since 9/11, according to New America, a research institution that tracks political violence. Three-quarters of those deaths and eight out of the 13 deadly jihadist attacks since 9/11 occurred after ISIS began a sophisticated online messaging effort in 2014. It is this pitch and power to inspire that’s responsible for all of the deadly attacks tied to ISIS in the United States, not the group’s training camps and military forces in Syria, Iraq, or other conflict zones.

Far-right terrorism, such as the spate of attacks last week—including violence motivated by racial, anti-government, and anti-abortion political views—has killed 86 people since 9/11, according to New America’s research. The new threat, however, is not limited to the far right. In June 2017, James Hodgkinson, an individual with strong anti-Trump views, shot and gravely injured Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the third-highest-ranked Republican in the House of Representatives. Individuals inspired by forms of black nationalist ideology have also killed eight people in two attacks over the past three years.

Meanwhile, attacks by perpetrators citing motivations that don’t quite fit traditional notions of political or terrorist ideology are also on the rise. In Toronto in April, Alek Minassian killed ten people in a vehicular ramming, having written of an “incel” rebellion. In a social media post, Minassian seemingly mimicked the form of pledges by ISIS attackers on Facebook. The United States saw an early case of this ideological misogyny when Elliot Rodger killed six people in 2014 near the University of California–Santa Barbara in a stabbing, shooting, and vehicular ramming attack, leaving a long manifesto. Minassian specifically referenced Rodger in his social media post.

MEETING THE CHALLENGE

Terrorism in the United States is still less common today than it was during the 1970s, when relatively organized groups and movements such as the Weather Underground carried out hundreds of bombings and hijackings. In 1975 alone, the Weather Underground claimed credit for 25 bombings. But that is not as comforting as it may at first seem. Many of the recent U.S. attacks have been the most lethal of their kind. The Pittsburgh shooting was the deadliest attack on Jews in American history, according to the Anti-Defamation League. The June 12, 2016, ISIS-inspired attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando by Queens-born Omar Mateen was the most lethal terrorist attack in the United States since 9/11.

Broader trends also raise the stakes. Trump has turned a blind eye to far-right terrorism, while some of his most prominent supporters such as Lou Dobbs and Ann Coulter have denied the existence of a right-wing threat. Right-wing media personalities and activists, including Candace Owens and even the president’s son Donald Trump, Jr., have peddled conspiracy theories regarding recent attacks. At the same time, politics, particularly on the right, is shifting into a more radical register. Recent public marches organized by the far right have resulted in violence, including the vehicular ramming that killed Heather Heyer during the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally last year.

This new terrorist threat cannot be addressed with an overwhelming focus on jihadist ideology. Nor will a travel ban address a threat rooted in domestic politics and the Internet’s conveyance of global issues into American homes. Instead, today’s terrorist threat requires effective law enforcement, a real discussion of the dangers of lax gun laws, policies to regulate the ways social media has helped spread violence, community resilience, and a reckoning with the forces driving U.S. and global politics increasingly toward radicalism.

Since 9/11, the U.S. government has been extraordinarily successful in disrupting foreign terrorist organizations’ ability to strike the United States. But the task of renewing and strengthening American society to face down the new terrorist threat could be even more difficult.

B&B orig: 10/30/18

What Political Psychology Is & Does

The 2013 book Political Psychology: Neuroscience, Genetics and Politics is a textbook for upper level college undergraduates. Written by political science professor George Marcus, the book describes what political psychology (PP) is and how it goes about gaining new knowledge. Among other things, the book links cognitive science and neuroscience with PP, and also gives some historical context for the origins of the discipline. The following is a brief summary of chapter 1, The Importance of Political Psychology.

The main concerns: Marcus points out that fundamental PP issues and concerns have been with the human species for millennia and that they are remarkably stable. He asserts that the two dominant concerns of PP are studying and trying to understand: • How people govern themselves individually and collectively; and
• How to live within the political structures that society builds.

Broadly speaking, the goal of inquiry into those two concerns is to “examine human nature to better understand the interplay of human nature and politics.”

Theory focus: Marcus describes four approaches or categories of study that encompass much of PP research. The broadest, ‘theory focus’, attempts to observe and understand aspects of human psychology that collectively lead to a comprehensive theory of human psychology. This focus looks for what is universal to the human species. An example is rational choice theory from economics research.

The independent vs dependent variable: The two main variables in an experiment are the independent and dependent variables. An independent variable is the variable that is changed or controlled in a scientific experiment to test the effects on the dependent variable. A dependent variable is the variable being tested and measured in a scientific experiment. The dependent variable is 'dependent' on the independent variable. As the experimenter changes the independent variable, the effect on the dependent variable is observed and recorded.

Problem or dependent variable focus: The ‘problem focus’ in PP looks at a dependent variable such as when people exhibit political tolerance compared to when they are intolerant. In the case of political tolerance, researchers measure tolerance in the face of an independent variable such as harsh (intolerant), neutral and empathetic (tolerant) political rhetoric. That allows researchers to see if different kinds of rhetoric correlate with (or maybe even cause) varying and/or different levels of tolerance.

In essence, the dependent variable is seen as ‘the problem’ or, maybe more accurately, an end result.

Solution or independent variable focus: In contrast to the problem or dependent variable focus, the ‘solution focus’ looks to see if there are previously unknown independent variables that correlate with or possibly cause phenomena such as political tolerance. Here, the focus shifts from the end result, i.e., the dependent variable, to the possibility of a previously unknown independent variable exerting influence on beliefs or behaviors.

Social dominance orientation (SDO) is a personality trait which predicts social and political attitudes, and is a widely used social psychological scale. SDO is seen as a measure of individual differences in levels of group-based discrimination; that is, it is a measure of an individual's preference for hierarchy within any social system and the domination over lower-status groups. It is a predisposition toward anti-egalitarianism within and between groups. The concept of SDO as a measurable individual difference is a product of social dominance theory.

Marcus cites a trait called social dominance orientation, as an example of a relatively new independent variable.[1] Regarding social dominance orientation, he comments that “some of us are very concerned with sustaining established hierarchies and order, whereas others are much less concerned and find greater importance in sustaining individual autonomy.”

About rationality: Marcus writes: “As citizens we develop habits of thought and stable preferences. We often defend them and those who articulate them on our behalf (political leaders, interest group spokespeople, columnists, and pundits). Notice that the discipline of political psychology, as other scientific disciplines, goes to considerable effort to set aside such established patterns of trust. Rather, as political psychologists, you are asked to set aside convictions and instead rely on rigorous reliance on evidence.”

Aristotle: Marcus points to Aristotle as having come up with a simple six category taxonomy of political regimes. The taxonomy is still used today, although variations are common, e.g., the US has been argued to be an oligarchy based on analysis of where the balance of political power resides and on how little influence public opinion has on policy at the federal level. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0f31211a6180787dea6f13cd9ea639811e95cda79833030b76bfd0651f50e41a.jpg Note that democracies can be virtuous or corrupt. Obviously, those are essentially contested concepts, and people will disagree over, for example whether president Obama’s time in office represented a period of virtuous or corrupt rule. The same applies to how people see president Trump’s time in office. An example: PP analysis of the role of threat in political tolerance: Marcus cites some of his own research on what threat in politics is and when it influences tolerance. Marcus included eight questions about sources of threat in a massive public opinion survey. The independent variable was threat and the dependent variable was tolerance. The eight questions constituted a problem focus experiment. The initial hypothesis was that all eight factors that could influence perceptions of threat in about the same way and all eight would correlate with or maybe cause decreasing tolerance.

The results were surprising: “We had expected the eight indicators to be equally good measures of one concept, Threat. Instead this result led us to revise our understanding of Threat, rather than a singular concept we now understand it as two concepts.; so different that we found the two concepts are not correlated at all. And, when we analyzed the data we found that how strongly people judged their disliked group had no impact at all on whether they would support the rights of that group to practice their rights: None at all. On the other hand, it was the second concept of threat, malevolence, that proved to be the single most important independent variable in explaining when people would be politically tolerant.”

Marcus found that if a disliked group was either strong or important, that made no difference in people’s tolerance. What set people off and triggers intolerance was groups that violate social norms. That made them appear to be malevolent. The six intolerance-inducing factors were groups characterized as unpredictable, untrustworthy, bad, dishonest, violent or dangerous.

Let that sink in for a moment or two. This point is very important. How does president Trump characterize his political opposition? He never calls democrats strong or important. He routinely characterizes democrats as some combination of untrustworthy, bad, dishonest, violent (‘mob rule’) and/or dangerous (‘mob rule’ again). That rhetorical cognitive-social strategy pushes five out of the six emotional-moral factors that Marcus showed could induce intolerance toward political opposition and out-groups that Trump creates by his rhetoric, e.g., murdering, rapist, drug dealing, illegal immigrants, or democrats in general.

Trump is the master of smashing political and social norms and there are excellent reasons for that. It whips up his base into an emotional, logic-deficient state of mind. PP provides another social science point of view from which to observe Trump and his fact- and logic-detached, immoral political tactics and rhetoric.

Footnote:
1. This 1994 paper describes SDO like this: “Social dominance orientation (SDO), one's degree of preference for inequality among social groups, is introduced. On the basis of social dominance theory, it is shown that (a) men are more social dominance-oriented than women, (b) high-SDO people seek hierarchy-enhancing professional roles and low-SDO people seek hierarchy-attenuating roles, (c) SDO was related to beliefs in a large number of social and political ideologies that support group-based hierarchy (e.g., meritocracy and racism) and to support for policies that have implications for intergroup relations (e.g., war, civil rights, and social programs), including new policies. SDO was distinguished from interpersonal dominance, conservatism, and authoritarianism. SDO was negatively correlated with empathy, tolerance, communality, and altruism.”

B&B orig: 11/1/18