They Need to Hate You
18th December 2020
For me, the single most interesting finding in Righteous Mind was his account of this particular test. Subjects were given a questionnaire to ascertain where they were located on the political spectrum. Then they were then given the same questionnaire and asked to answer as if somebody with the other point of view was filling it out. Conservatives were asked to answer as a liberal would and liberals as a conservative. Conservatives correctly mimicked the likely pattern of liberals but liberals had an absurdly wrong view of likely conservative answers, erring heavily on the side of bad motives and lack of compassion, empathy, etc.
If you get the impression that the left has a caricatured view of conservatives as hate-filled, bigoted, and uncaring you aren’t wrong. There is empirical evidence that they really do think that way. They almost have to.