Stupid vs. Evil?: The Psychology of U.S. Politics

We live in a time of absurd and frightful confusion, with political divisions widening every day like a planet fragmenting into shards in the latest Armageddon-based blockbuster. The relentless advance of technology beyond the human capacity to integrate change, the hyper-connected overload from social media and disinformation, and the rapidly accumulating trauma of history and recent past conspire to put us increasingly in peril from dissociation and destruction borne of bad decision-making.

The jury is out on how we will sentence ourselves: Will we will be at each others’ throats until we can't anymore, or learn to collaborate in resolving the “collective prisoner’s dilemma” before things go even further?

Of Donkeys and Elephants

Recent research on U.S. politics sheds further light on how Republican and Democrat polarization influences how we see one another across the great divide. At the heart of it is how we understand where the other is coming from: Are they evil or merely ignorant? Research in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (2022) tackles this question head-on, anchoring on the political trope that “conservatives think liberals are stupid, and liberals think conservatives are evil”. But is it true?

Authors Hartman, Hester and Gray point out common stereotypes. We tend to see more liberal Americans highlighting perceptions of conservatives as racist, sexist, afraid of foreigners, closed-minded, or perhaps simply malevolent—attributing greater intentionality. On the converse, conservatives may be construed as backward, “unsophisticated rednecks who vote against their self-interest”.

Likewise, views of liberals range from being naïve dupes who buy in to stupid policies with unrealistic idealism to being willing hypocrites in a political systems that espouses egalitarianism while surreptitiously driving a more nefarious agenda incorporating horrific charges of supporting “death panels” and “baby killings”.

Psychologically, people generally want to view others as essentially good on the inside. Seeing others as fundamentally and irreversibly evil is the last thing we want to believe. People tend to view those who agree with their own perspective as more intelligent and those who differ as dumber. Concluding that others are immoral is a bitter pill to swallow—perhaps it is not a matter of morality, but of intelligence or education.

The Research

Study authors conducted four studies with over 1,600 participants in total to look at perceptions of opponents’ immorality and ignorance. The first study established that regardless of political affiliation, participants view people from the other party as more stupid than evil, contrary to stereotype. In this study, they asked whether people were “conservative” or “liberal”, rather than their party affiliation. Immorality and ignorance were found to be distinct and different concepts. This may seem self-evident, but it’s important to show statistically.

In the second study, participants were polled in November 2018 immediately following a vote on amendments to the North Carolina state constitution. Both Republicans and Democrats tended to lean toward seeing the other as stupid rather than evil. However, conservatives were a tad more likely to go with evil over stupid, compared with liberals.

In the third study, researchers posed questions around explicit party affiliation—Democrat or Republic (other affiliations were excluded from the analysis) and then asked participants to rate members of the opposing side on various adjectives. Again, both endorsed perceiving the other as overall more ignorant than immoral.

In the fourth and final study, rather than ask members of one group what they thought of the other group, researchers surveyed a representative sample of U.S. residents about attitudes they thought Republicans and Democrats held toward each other, to get at “meta-perceptions”. Regardless of political affiliation, how do you think Republicans see Democrats, and vice versa? The overall patterns held: Generally, people understand that both Republicans and Democrats are more likely to ascribe ignorance over evil to opponents, going against stereotype.

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However, there were interesting differences in how Republics and Democrats viewed Republican versus Democrat attitudes. Participants tended to view Republicans as holding more negative views of Democrats than they actually do. In addition, Democrat participants perceived Democrats as viewing Republicans as more ignorant than immoral; Republican participants had a misperception that Democrats viewed Republicans about the same on ignorance and immorality.

Again, Republicans were a bit more likely to ascribe evil than Democrats, perhaps related to underlying differences in authoritarianism and personality, or cultural and religious beliefs. On balance, however, the culprit was more commonly thought to be stupidity, rather than evil–regardless of political orientation.

The Fate of the Earth Is In Our Hands

While it can be a grim subject with plenty of room for pessimism, understanding in- and out-group attributions is important for working out whether and how we can begin to heal the divides in our body politic.

If the opponent is out-and-out evil, there is little room for hope. Ignorance, oddly, is hopeful, as in principle it can be addressed with education, granted that work is done to establish dialogue and combat disinformation echo chambers. Work on conflict resolution shows that dialogue can start with an “alliance of moderates”, as building bridges in the middle can help pull extremes together.

An intriguing recent study (2022) by Broockman and Kalla highlights the possibility of change through deprogramming disinformation. In this study, Fox News viewers were paid to watch CNN for 30 days. Participants “treated” with this intervention were able to reverse false beliefs, and come to understand that important information had been hidden from them by their preferred media outlet. The results also suggest that reviewing information from diverse, credible sources across the continuum of political beliefs would allow intelligent and open-minded consumers to triangulate a more accurate view.

Understanding key factors, such as cancel culture and large-group psychology, the effect of radical belief on the brain, ways that leadership short-circuits reason, how we come to believe lies, and other factors, are critically important if we are to leverage knowledge for optimistic and compassionate action. Given the state of the U.S. psyche, fragmented and dis-integrating, there's no time like the present.