To put this into perspective, one 2006 survey found that in 2006, the countries of Cuba and Iran each received average scores of 27 by Americans.In other words, people with extreme political views tend to view their political opposition as enemies of the nation? That's sad.
I'd be curious to see the statistical distribution of what percentage of the population is in each political category. I'd also like to know if and how these perceptions have changed over time.
The basic relationship shown below is that you think highly of people who are like you and poorly of people unlike you. The closer they are to your views the more you like them. That's certainly nothing new.
3 comments:
I would have to disagree with the comment, “you think highly of people who are like you and poorly of people unlike you.” As a matter of fact, I believe that well educated people would value different opinions that are based on thought through logics. The value of education is not only that one learns something but an individual also get dumped into an ‘idea’ pools with a collection of sharp minds.. as iron sharpens iron…
For example, someone I worked with has a different political point of view than mine however, he arrives at his decision base on his values and ideas. The process he used that leads to his decision is extremely logical and well thought through. Not only do I think highly of someone who are Not like me in this case, we respect each other.
aquagirl
Aquagirl,
Thanks for the comment. This post is meant to be descriptive (explaining what is) rather than proscriptive (explaining what ought to be). I agree that you should think highly of others. Judging by your reply, I would expect you are both educated and relatively moderate in your political views. If so, you are supporting Arthur Brook's data indicating you think well of people like yourself (well educated) and don't think too badly of others (moderate).
Of course it is possible that people with strong political opinions think well of those who disagree with them, but it is more common that those with more extreme views think less highly of those who are politically "distant" from them. I'm not saying this is a good thing, but that it seems to be a real thing.
There's also something called "confirmation bias" which means we tend to give more weight to evidence that supports our views and less weight to evidence that opposes our views. This is in some respects rational (learning by experience/Bayesian updates), but affects our logic in response to new evidence and different ways of thinking. People can be quite creative in finding logical reasons to support our perspectives. We like to think our opinions are based on logic, but sometimes it seems it's actually the other way around. I suspect this becomes even more true the more extreme people become in their political outlook which helps explain Brooks' graph.
To assume that one does not think highly of group B because he thinks highly of group A wouldn’t be a very good argument, could it? Not to defile the creditable study/ research but to be true to one’s thinking.. if I’d get to put my thought on that graph.. score given to liberal & conservative would probably land on the same dot and the political orientation would land somewhere between conservative & extremely conservative.
I'd agree with you that's not the most common behaviour but more of a rational one.
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