Listen to the original at https://www.volts.wtf/p/why-social-change-is-so-excruciatingly
[00:00.000 --> 00:20.040]  Greetings and salutations listeners. This is Volts for October 24th, 2022. Why social
[00:20.040 --> 00:28.480]  change is so excruciatingly difficult? I'm your host, David Roberts. When looking over
[00:28.480 --> 00:34.040]  the course of human history, we tend to focus on times of disruption when the
[00:34.040 --> 00:38.920]  established order is crumbling and something new is rising. But if we take
[00:38.920 --> 00:44.120]  a step back, something different strikes us. The vast majority of human history
[00:44.120 --> 00:49.840]  is characterized by small groups of people wielding often brutal power over
[00:49.840 --> 00:56.000]  massive numbers of others without substantial resistance. Most of the
[00:56.000 --> 01:01.760]  time, the masses accept subjugation at the hands of a small cabal that they
[01:01.760 --> 01:07.760]  could almost definitionally overwhelm if properly organized. From this
[01:07.760 --> 01:13.120]  perspective, what's needed is not an explanation of why people rebel against
[01:13.120 --> 01:18.680]  systems that are not in their self-interest, but why they so often, most
[01:18.680 --> 01:26.780]  often, do not. What demands explanation is voluntary servitude. Why do people so
[01:26.780 --> 01:32.520]  often, rather than organizing and rising up against injustice, internalize the
[01:32.520 --> 01:37.520]  ideology of their oppressors and come to view themselves as naturally or
[01:37.520 --> 01:42.880]  fittingly subjugated? And it's not just history where such an explanation is
[01:42.880 --> 01:46.880]  demanded, it's also current events. Why have the citizens of developed
[01:46.880 --> 01:52.480]  democracies endured two decades of misbegotten wars, financial crises, and
[01:52.480 --> 01:57.280]  rising authoritarianism with very little in the way of radical resistance?

[01:57.280 --> 02:03.520]  Noted psychologist, researcher, and author John Joest of New York University
[02:03.520 --> 02:09.560]  offers an explanation. People have extremely strong psychological needs
[02:09.560 --> 02:15.760]  that weigh against thinking of themselves as subjugated victims. They
[02:15.760 --> 02:22.640]  crave certitude, closure, safety, and predictability. They are inclined for
[02:22.640 --> 02:28.240]  these reasons toward what is called system justification. As Joest writes,
[02:28.240 --> 02:32.920]  quote, people are motivated, often unconsciously, without deliberate
[02:32.920 --> 02:39.280]  intention or awareness, to defend, justify, and bolster aspects of the status
[02:39.280 --> 02:44.120]  quo, including existing social, economic, and political institutions and
[02:44.120 --> 02:50.360]  arrangements, end quote. The tendency to justify unjust systems is pervasive,
[02:50.360 --> 02:56.800]  even and especially among the people those systems treat worst. This means
[02:56.800 --> 03:01.720]  that everyone working for positive change is starting behind the eight ball,
[03:01.720 --> 03:08.920]  rolling a rock up a hill. I read Joest's two recent books, A Theory of System
[03:08.920 --> 03:13.720]  Justification and Left and Right, The Psychological Significance of a
[03:13.720 --> 03:17.520]  Political Distinction. Earlier this summer, and I've been thinking about them
[03:17.520 --> 03:21.960]  ever since, so I'm thrilled to talk to him about the evidence for system
[03:21.960 --> 03:26.280]  justification theory, the way it is distributed among conservatives and
[03:26.280 --> 03:34.160]  liberals, and ways those seeking social change can work around it.

[03:34.160 --> 03:48.200]  Without any further ado, Professor John Joest, welcome to Volts and thank you very much for coming.
[03:48.200 --> 03:55.000]  Thanks so much, David. It's great to be with you today. That was an outstanding summary of much of
[03:55.000 --> 03:58.920]  my work, especially the book on system justification, so I'm not really sure what
[03:58.920 --> 04:04.520]  I have to add. Well, we're done here. Thanks for coming and saying hi. Well, let's jump
[04:04.520 --> 04:08.280]  right into the main thing so we can just give people a sense of what we're
[04:08.280 --> 04:14.360]  talking about. So I frame it this way. I think ordinary people are familiar with
[04:14.360 --> 04:20.360]  self-justification, which just has to do with the fact that we're inclined to
[04:20.360 --> 04:24.400]  accept stories or interpret things or perceive things in a way that justifies
[04:24.400 --> 04:29.560]  our own position and interests. I think people get that pretty clearly. And then
[04:29.560 --> 04:34.360]  there's group justification, which I think people also get intuitively. People
[04:34.360 --> 04:39.240]  are inclined to sort of believe what justifies their group in that group, you
[04:39.240 --> 04:42.880]  know, can be their race, a geographical group, lots of different kinds of groups.
[04:42.880 --> 04:49.080]  But then there's this third thing that you identify called system justification,
[04:49.080 --> 04:53.000]  which has to do with people's inclination to sort of tell stories and
[04:53.000 --> 04:58.760]  believe things that justify the larger systems of which they are apart. And I
[04:58.760 --> 05:04.440]  think the reason people stumble on this a little bit is that it often seems like
[05:04.440 --> 05:11.400]  system justification pushes us in directions contrary to self-justification
[05:11.400 --> 05:15.200]  and group justification. It's often the case that we are embedded in larger
[05:15.200 --> 05:20.800]  social systems that are not particularly good for us. You know, we're in the sort
[05:20.800 --> 05:26.760]  of lower rungs and even then we have this tendency to justify those systems. So
[05:26.760 --> 05:31.240]  tell us, you know, for people who find the notion of this somewhat counterintuitive,
[05:31.240 --> 05:36.880]  explain sort of the evidence for it. Yes. I think that's well said, but just before
[05:36.880 --> 05:40.280]  I get to the evidence, let me kind of clarify the point that I'm trying to
[05:40.280 --> 05:46.360]  make. It's not really that people justify the social systems because they are bad
[05:46.360 --> 05:50.880]  for them. It's that we justify the social systems on which we depend whether
[05:50.880 --> 05:55.320]  they're good for us or not good for us. And I think of the family, for instance,
[05:55.320 --> 05:59.400]  as a social system. And there are a lot of things that are unique about every
[05:59.400 --> 06:06.640]  family, Dickens notwithstanding, that we come to experience as natural and
[06:06.640 --> 06:10.440]  reasonable and legitimate and desirable for the most part. You know, some people
[06:10.440 --> 06:13.800]  have an awakening in adulthood where they realize that a lot of stuff that they
[06:13.800 --> 06:19.080]  took for granted and experienced as legitimate and so on wasn't. And they
[06:19.080 --> 06:22.960]  kind of look back and rewrite their experiences perhaps in their family. But
[06:22.960 --> 06:28.440]  for many people, they never do. And those social systems, which can be as small
[06:28.440 --> 06:34.840]  as a dyadic relationship, a marriage or a family, or as large as an entire society
[06:34.840 --> 06:40.000]  or an economic system or a political system, cultural institutions, organizations
[06:40.000 --> 06:45.640]  and so on. But these things leave a mark on us psychologically. And it's not so
[06:45.640 --> 06:52.600]  easy for us to get outside of them or to see them in a neutral, unbiased way or
[06:52.600 --> 06:58.280]  even to see them necessarily as they are. There are a lot of ways in which our
[06:58.280 --> 07:04.560]  lives are easier and more subjectively satisfying to the extent that we accept
[07:04.560 --> 07:08.760]  those things as the default. We're gonna get it just a minute into the
[07:08.760 --> 07:15.480]  psychological needs that this answers. So I just want to like establish we have
[07:15.480 --> 07:20.360]  a very good sense that this exists. I think so. I mean, that's what I'm
[07:20.360 --> 07:24.000]  trying to... I'm reviewing hundreds of studies in this book called "A Theory of
[07:24.000 --> 07:28.800]  System Justification", which came out in 2020 Harvard University Press. I think
[07:28.800 --> 07:34.080]  there's a large variety of sources of evidence for this. Some comes from
[07:34.080 --> 07:38.880]  history, anthropology, political science, sociology, but also experimental
[07:38.880 --> 07:42.480]  social psychology and surveys. And I found it really interesting that we
[07:42.480 --> 07:45.120]  probably don't have time to get into this, but there's large parts of the
[07:45.120 --> 07:49.080]  book where you're just sort of engaging in other theories, previous theories and
[07:49.080 --> 07:53.800]  stories from psychology and elsewhere. And all these different attempts to
[07:53.800 --> 07:59.920]  explain why do people not just put up with being subjugated, but in a sense
[07:59.920 --> 08:04.240]  participate in it? Why do they adopt the etiology of their oppressors?
[08:04.240 --> 08:07.560]  And there's been lots of different attempts to explain this, like
[08:07.560 --> 08:12.440]  maybe it's in their self-interest, maybe there's money on the line,
[08:12.440 --> 08:17.200]  maybe they do it out of fear of reprisal. But sort of what you come back to over
[08:17.200 --> 08:22.360]  and over again is no, there's something even if you subtract all
[08:22.360 --> 08:26.800]  those things, there's something left at the root. Yeah, that's very well said.
[08:26.800 --> 08:30.400]  It's not that I'm saying those other things don't matter. I'm just saying
[08:30.400 --> 08:36.000]  that they're not sufficient to explain for the full extent to which we
[08:36.000 --> 08:41.840]  participate in social systems, including social systems that do contain
[08:41.840 --> 08:46.760]  elements of injustice and that we and other people sometimes do suffer the
[08:46.760 --> 08:50.280]  consequences of subscribing to the legitimacy of those social systems,
[08:50.280 --> 08:54.480]  which is also not to say that all social systems are unjust or illegitimate
[08:54.480 --> 09:01.000]  either. So the question then is why? Why do people have this tendency to justify
[09:01.000 --> 09:06.560]  systems even when the systems are not operating in their favor or are not
[09:06.560 --> 09:10.600]  doing well by them? It seems counterintuitive. It seems like based on
[09:10.600 --> 09:16.320]  my self-interest, lots of people ought to be rising up or rebelling or
[09:16.320 --> 09:21.960]  acting out, but they don't. So you identify three families of psychological
[09:21.960 --> 09:27.960]  needs that this system justification answers. Epistemic, existential, and
[09:27.960 --> 09:32.000]  relational. I think probably ordinary people are not immediately gonna get
[09:32.000 --> 09:36.120]  what those mean. So let's just say a few words about each. Epistemic
[09:36.120 --> 09:39.840]  has to do with knowledge. So what are the needs there that system
[09:39.840 --> 09:44.520]  justification answers? I mean the most fundamental one is a reduction of
[09:44.520 --> 09:49.520]  uncertainty. Most people experience uncertainty, especially high levels of
[09:49.520 --> 09:54.560]  uncertainty as aversive, and in fact there are lots of situations where people
[09:54.560 --> 09:59.160]  would rather have a sure answer that's an unfortunate or negative answer than to
[09:59.160 --> 10:05.080]  be left in a state of uncertainty for a prolonged period of time. So for most of
[10:05.080 --> 10:10.160]  us, we want what psychologists sometimes refer to as closure, cognitive closure.
[10:10.160 --> 10:14.480]  We want to know at least what we think about something and then move on with
[10:14.480 --> 10:19.400]  the rest of our lives rather than engage in a protracted informational search
[10:19.400 --> 10:24.640]  that could go on forever and ever. And so the status quo I think has an advantage
[10:24.640 --> 10:28.400]  over alternatives to the status quo in the sense that it is familiar and it is
[10:28.400 --> 10:33.280]  certain we know it. It's the devil we know. Whereas alternative social
[10:33.280 --> 10:38.240]  arrangements, utopian social systems, etc., these things often raise more
[10:38.240 --> 10:42.040]  questions than they answer. And so for most people, and especially people who
[10:42.040 --> 10:47.600]  are high on what psychologists call needs for cognitive closure or intolerance
[10:47.600 --> 10:54.160]  of ambiguity or avoidance of uncertainty, people would rather stick with
[10:54.160 --> 10:58.560]  what's known and familiar because it reduces the degree of uncertainty that's
[10:58.560 --> 11:04.760]  involved. That's the epistemic. So in a sense like we'd rather accept the idea
[11:04.760 --> 11:10.720]  that God has designated our group as slaves to some other group because at
[11:10.720 --> 11:14.040]  least that's an answer. And if you reject it, then you don't know what God wants
[11:14.040 --> 11:17.200]  and you don't know what you're supposed to be and you don't know how you're
[11:17.200 --> 11:20.800]  supposed to relate to other people. Yeah. And that is, for a lot of people,
[11:20.800 --> 11:24.240]  extremely anxiety producing. Well, that's a good example because it hits all
[11:24.240 --> 11:28.360]  three motives. It gives you certainty in an epistemic sense, but it also gives
[11:28.360 --> 11:32.680]  you safety or security if you think that God will protect you and save you and
[11:32.680 --> 11:37.040]  even in the afterlife, take care of you, look out for you. And it also satisfies
[11:37.040 --> 11:40.160]  your relational needs or motives because you're not alone in your religious
[11:40.160 --> 11:43.440]  group. You have lots of other people who share that and they provide social
[11:43.440 --> 11:47.640]  support for you for subscribing to that ideology. Right. So the existential
[11:47.640 --> 11:52.360]  needs are just a need for safety. And basically, this has to do with the fact
[11:52.360 --> 11:57.040]  that going along with your group, going along with the largest system around
[11:57.040 --> 12:03.920]  you offers you some physical safety. People who speak up, you know, the sort
[12:03.920 --> 12:09.520]  of squeaky wheels, you know, they draw attention and often not welcome
[12:09.560 --> 12:12.560]  attention. It's just safer to be in the group, basically. That's what
[12:12.560 --> 12:16.080]  existential has to do with. Yes. Yeah, that's right. Would you rather be one
[12:16.080 --> 12:18.680]  of the people that the police are protecting or would you rather be one
[12:18.680 --> 12:23.480]  of the people that the police are complaining about or worse? Right. And
[12:23.480 --> 12:27.200]  the relational needs, I almost think are the strongest. I go back and forth,
[12:27.200 --> 12:31.000]  but, you know, relational just has to do with, you know, these, the stories of
[12:31.000 --> 12:35.640]  the system you're in tell you how you relate to other people and in a sense
[12:35.640 --> 12:41.960]  give you that social network that humans need badly. Yeah. And if you reject
[12:41.960 --> 12:45.320]  that, how are you supposed to relate to other people? What are the, you know,
[12:45.360 --> 12:48.160]  again, you're sort of back to the uncertainty, but it's uncertainty
[12:48.160 --> 12:52.120]  about your social relationships, which, you know, people really need those
[12:52.120 --> 12:56.440]  for peace of mind. I think that's absolutely right. I think the risks of
[12:56.480 --> 13:01.000]  alienation are really high in a social sense. If you're a relentless critic
[13:01.000 --> 13:04.920]  or revolutionary, you can find quite a bit more support within your family
[13:04.920 --> 13:08.600]  and your neighbors in the community at large. If you're, if you're a supporter
[13:08.600 --> 13:13.120]  of the overarching social systems rather than a relentless critic of them.
[13:13.560 --> 13:19.680]  Yeah. I think Dan Cahen, I think at Yale, he sort of makes that point. He's
[13:19.680 --> 13:24.920]  like, what's better for you as an individual to be accepted in your group
[13:24.960 --> 13:29.560]  and to have the group systems around you protecting you or to have accurate
[13:29.680 --> 13:34.840]  beliefs? What good or accurate beliefs compared to, right, like a social
[13:34.840 --> 13:37.480]  system that you belong in, like there's just no real incentive for it?
[13:37.480 --> 13:40.360]  Well, I wouldn't say no incentive. I think there's always going to be some
[13:40.360 --> 13:44.720]  incentive for having more or less accurate, more than less accurate
[13:44.720 --> 13:50.720]  perceptions, beliefs, et cetera. I think reality is a plausible co-selector of
[13:50.720 --> 13:55.120]  belief and perception, as they say. It's more adaptive to have things that
[13:55.120 --> 13:58.720]  are somewhat hooked into reality, at least in the long run, if not the
[13:58.720 --> 14:03.880]  short run. So I wouldn't set that, I wouldn't set this up completely as
[14:03.880 --> 14:08.440]  either or, and that people always choose the group over what they know to be
[14:08.440 --> 14:14.840]  true. I think there are cases where people leave their groups because they
[14:14.880 --> 14:19.760]  believe that the ideologies are either untrue or unjust. And we have to pay
[14:19.760 --> 14:23.760]  homage to that and recognize that because that takes a special kind of moral
[14:23.760 --> 14:25.080]  courage in its own to do that.
[14:25.320 --> 14:28.440]  Right. But I think the significance of the theory is that that's the
[14:28.440 --> 14:34.160]  exception, right? That that's sort of a bit of bravery out of the ordinary.
[14:34.680 --> 14:40.600]  A bit of bravery is what creates progress in society. There's a reason
[14:40.600 --> 14:42.680]  we're not stuck in the Middle Ages entirely.
[14:42.920 --> 14:46.440]  Right, right, right. Okay, so we have this tendency towards system
[14:46.440 --> 14:51.840]  justification that answers epistemic existential and relational needs. It
[14:51.840 --> 14:57.840]  gives us a sense of certainty, a sense of safety, and a sense of belonging in
[14:57.840 --> 15:03.960]  accord with those around us. And those are substantial needs that everyone
[15:03.960 --> 15:09.360]  has. And so this is how you end up with, like you give some examples of
[15:09.360 --> 15:14.440]  system justification kind of stories. You mentioned stereotypes about rich and
[15:14.440 --> 15:19.040]  poor people. You know, one of the stories every system tells about itself is
[15:19.040 --> 15:23.720]  about why the people with power in it ought to have power in it.
[15:24.160 --> 15:27.120]  That's right. It's a fundamental question for coordinated socially
[15:27.120 --> 15:30.720]  organized life. Why do those people have more than other people? Yes.
[15:30.960 --> 15:34.640]  And as you say, if you come to the conclusion, well, it's a random life
[15:34.640 --> 15:38.480]  lottery and it's not fair, and we're stuck in this bizarrely unfair system,
[15:38.480 --> 15:41.920]  you suddenly are uncertain, unsafe.
[15:42.720 --> 15:46.480]  That's right. If you say it out loud, absolutely, you could be unsafe
[15:46.480 --> 15:48.600]  or ostracized for sure.
[15:48.680 --> 15:51.520]  Yeah, so this leads to sort of, I mean, this is one of the things I find
[15:51.520 --> 15:54.840]  valid. It's just one example, this sort of stereotypes about rich people,
[15:54.840 --> 15:59.800]  which have always existed, but exist still today, even in light of all
[15:59.800 --> 16:03.160]  we've learned about the sort of capriciousness of financial markets and
[16:03.160 --> 16:07.400]  the kind of lottery of capitalism, we still have these stories, even in
[16:07.400 --> 16:12.960]  contemporary U.S. society, about rich people basically being smarter and
[16:12.960 --> 16:15.400]  better and deserving to be rich and powerful, right?
[16:15.440 --> 16:17.840]  Yeah, a lot of people have written really good books in the last few years
[16:17.840 --> 16:22.480]  about meritocratic ideology, meritocratic myths, how it, in a way,
[16:22.480 --> 16:28.120]  it's keeping a lot of people signed on to the economic system we have and
[16:28.120 --> 16:29.840]  the educational system that we have, frankly.
[16:30.200 --> 16:33.440]  Yeah, and the flip side being that poor people deserve to be poor, and one
[16:33.440 --> 16:37.240]  of the things that has always been disturbing to me, but that your work
[16:37.240 --> 16:41.800]  really casts a light on, is all this research we have in the U.S.
[16:41.800 --> 16:49.000]  showing that the sort of strata of people that are just above poverty,
[16:49.000 --> 16:54.560]  that are just barely making a living, are the ones with some of the
[16:54.560 --> 16:59.840]  strongest and most negative stereotypes about poor people.
[16:59.880 --> 17:04.240]  They're the ones most inclined to say that poor people are lazy or drug
[17:04.240 --> 17:06.840]  users or don't take care of their families, and that's why they're poor.
[17:07.240 --> 17:08.320]  Well, I don't know.
[17:08.360 --> 17:10.600]  I wouldn't say they're most inclined necessarily.
[17:11.480 --> 17:12.760]  It's a complicated question.
[17:12.760 --> 17:15.080]  I wouldn't simplify it to that extent.
[17:15.080 --> 17:19.840]  It's possible that they feel freer to say things like that than other people do.
[17:20.080 --> 17:23.560]  I don't know whether they're thinking it more than people at the top,
[17:23.800 --> 17:28.680]  but I think at least what's striking to me is the extent to which many
[17:28.680 --> 17:33.320]  poor people do look down upon other poor people, and the extent to which,
[17:33.560 --> 17:38.680]  for instance, working class people in the United States reject liberal,
[17:38.680 --> 17:42.280]  progressive, socialist economic policies that they would clearly benefit
[17:42.280 --> 17:48.280]  from in favor of something that's quite a bit more conservative and regressive
[17:48.520 --> 17:50.440]  in terms of social redistribution.
[17:50.440 --> 17:54.440]  And the reasons they do so, I do believe, are at least in part ideological.
[17:54.880 --> 17:58.120]  Yeah, and you see it in other power imbalances, too.
[17:58.120 --> 18:04.320]  You mentioned gender, you know, you sort of have this imbalance of gender power,
[18:05.000 --> 18:09.200]  which then results in stories about why that imbalance in gender power
[18:09.200 --> 18:12.440]  is natural and right and makes sense.
[18:12.440 --> 18:17.040]  And then you find those stories even among women, right?
[18:17.240 --> 18:22.640]  Sure. Many women, I think, also have what we might say as a traditional worldview
[18:22.640 --> 18:27.120]  about gender relations, believe that in some ways, at least,
[18:27.120 --> 18:29.520]  they should be subjugated to men.
[18:29.920 --> 18:30.880]  And it's the same question.
[18:30.880 --> 18:35.640]  It's not that women are especially likely to stay in a bad or abusive
[18:35.640 --> 18:38.240]  relationship necessarily more than a non-abusive one.
[18:38.240 --> 18:42.880]  It's that, but it's that a remarkable number of women find themselves
[18:42.880 --> 18:48.080]  trapped in an abusive relationship and find it very hard to get out
[18:48.080 --> 18:51.160]  psychologically as well as materially in other ways.
[18:51.440 --> 18:55.040]  And that is in part because we are social beings.
[18:55.040 --> 19:00.280]  We are our consciousness is occurring in a social context.
[19:00.280 --> 19:04.240]  First of all, we're socialized to think in certain ways, including about gender.
[19:04.240 --> 19:11.160]  And second of all, we're immersed in a very intense social system of the family
[19:11.920 --> 19:16.720]  where we come up with our own, as you say, stories about why things are the way
[19:16.720 --> 19:18.800]  they are and why it's OK like this.
[19:19.560 --> 19:22.560]  And it's not so easy to break out of that.
[19:22.920 --> 19:25.280]  It's much easier to see in retrospect or from the outside.
[19:25.720 --> 19:27.480]  It's like trying to see the back of your head, right?
[19:27.480 --> 19:29.720]  Like, what are my hidden assumptions?
[19:29.720 --> 19:31.040]  Well, they're hidden.
[19:31.040 --> 19:35.240]  So, yeah, maybe a friend or a therapist can help you see it better than you can.
[19:35.240 --> 19:38.320]  Yeah. You know, gender is by no means unique.
[19:38.320 --> 19:41.760]  This is something that social reformers throughout history find over and over again
[19:41.760 --> 19:46.480]  is that the attempt to liberate a group of people who are stuck in an unjust system
[19:46.480 --> 19:52.080]  often not just fails to sort of create enthusiasm among the people who are trying
[19:52.080 --> 19:56.600]  to be liberated, but often a hostility, often working against it to some extent
[19:56.600 --> 19:58.880]  the people you're trying to liberate.
[19:58.880 --> 20:03.320]  Yeah. Backlash is always a serious issue when you're talking about making
[20:03.320 --> 20:08.800]  transformative social changes, upsetting the status quo can be very psychologically
[20:08.800 --> 20:12.520]  disturbing to people, including people who don't have it so well under the status quo.
[20:12.520 --> 20:15.120]  But they're, of course, afraid that things could get even worse.
[20:15.120 --> 20:16.840]  And that is always a possibility.
[20:16.840 --> 20:18.040]  That's part of the uncertainty.
[20:18.040 --> 20:18.560]  Right.
[20:18.560 --> 20:22.640]  So, and yeah, and it's been pointed out on many, many occasions for many
[20:22.640 --> 20:26.360]  decades by social scientists and others that many of the social movements on
[20:26.360 --> 20:31.680]  behalf of the disadvantaged in society are led, not necessarily by people who are
[20:31.680 --> 20:35.400]  at the bottom, but people who are at the top of at least those groups.
[20:35.400 --> 20:36.240]  Right.
[20:36.240 --> 20:40.840]  Maybe not the very top of society, but at least middle or middle upper class people.
[20:40.840 --> 20:47.000]  You know, you say that system justification is, I think, in an obvious and intuitive way
[20:47.000 --> 20:51.960]  helpful and pleasant for those in the systems that are benefiting from them,
[20:51.960 --> 20:55.680]  right, the privilege, like it's good for the subjective well-being
[20:55.680 --> 21:05.040]  of the privileged in society to think that their privilege is natural, you know,
[21:05.040 --> 21:07.040]  and the way it's meant to be.
[21:07.040 --> 21:07.680]  Sure.
[21:07.680 --> 21:11.960]  But it's a little more complicated story about the people who are, you know, sort
[21:11.960 --> 21:15.160]  of on the ass end of the system who are not benefiting from it.
[21:15.160 --> 21:16.360]  Right.
[21:16.360 --> 21:21.840]  You say in the short term, for those people, system justification can offer sort
[21:21.840 --> 21:26.040]  of a palliative, you know, could make you feel better in the short term because
[21:26.040 --> 21:30.440]  of these psychological needs we were discussing, but you point out in the
[21:30.440 --> 21:34.320]  long term, it's not really good for a group of people to think of themselves
[21:34.320 --> 21:36.240]  as naturally lesser.
[21:36.240 --> 21:37.040]  You're absolutely right.
[21:37.040 --> 21:39.480]  You've read the book very carefully and I'm grateful for that.
[21:39.480 --> 21:40.320]  Thank you for that.
[21:40.320 --> 21:44.280]  That's a subtle point and there's only maybe a handful of studies that have
[21:44.280 --> 21:48.080]  really looked at the short term versus long term differences, but that's
[21:48.080 --> 21:53.760]  absolutely my take at this point is that believing in the legitimacy of the
[21:53.760 --> 21:58.480]  system, sometimes even against some of the evidence at least, can have short
[21:58.480 --> 21:59.640]  term palliative benefits.
[21:59.640 --> 22:01.680]  It can keep your motivation going.
[22:01.680 --> 22:06.880]  It can keep you working harder and feeling like you maybe do have some
[22:06.880 --> 22:08.080]  self-efficacy in the system.
[22:08.080 --> 22:14.360]  You have some opportunities to succeed, but the longer you're plugging away and
[22:14.360 --> 22:20.120]  the less success you experience and the less success all the other members of
[22:20.120 --> 22:24.000]  your group are experiencing, I think it becomes first of all harder to sustain
[22:24.000 --> 22:28.200]  those illusions, but also sustaining those illusions comes at the cost of
[22:28.200 --> 22:33.280]  your own self-esteem or your own, the image or the esteem you have of your
[22:33.280 --> 22:34.960]  fellow in-group members.
[22:34.960 --> 22:39.000]  I mean, if we're all working so hard and we can't get ahead and the system
[22:39.000 --> 22:42.920]  itself is fair and legitimate and desirable, then it must be that we're
[22:42.920 --> 22:44.560]  deficient in some way.
[22:44.560 --> 22:49.960]  One of the most sort of stark examples of all this is slavery in the US and
[22:49.960 --> 22:56.240]  there's some really striking and disturbing stuff in the book about
[22:56.240 --> 23:02.520]  slaves' attitudes toward other slaves and even toward themselves.
[23:02.520 --> 23:04.000]  And toward their masters, yeah.
[23:04.000 --> 23:07.440]  The same thing was observed in the Holocaust and in concentration camps
[23:07.440 --> 23:12.120]  in World War II when people are completely dependent for their entire existence.
[23:12.120 --> 23:15.040]  I mean, talk about an existential threat.
[23:15.040 --> 23:23.560]  It's pretty hard to not look for some way in which what you're experiencing is
[23:23.560 --> 23:30.080]  okay and looking for whatever silver linings you can possibly find, but also
[23:30.080 --> 23:36.680]  the other people who are suffering, the other victims, it's also hard to
[23:36.680 --> 23:41.480]  maintain solidarity with them and keep your own sanity and confidence that
[23:41.480 --> 23:43.240]  you're going to be okay.
[23:43.240 --> 23:43.640]  Right.
[23:43.640 --> 23:51.640]  And that just kind of shows how strong this force is, even at work among
[23:51.640 --> 23:53.480]  the victims of the Holocaust.
[23:53.480 --> 23:59.080]  It just shows, I think, the degree to which human beings are averse to
[23:59.080 --> 24:04.240]  living day to day with the thought that they're in a broken, unjust system
[24:04.240 --> 24:09.760]  that they don't belong in and that just that unsettledness is so grating
[24:09.760 --> 24:14.520]  and unhealthy for people that they will resort to justifying almost anything
[24:14.520 --> 24:15.440]  they find themselves in.
[24:15.440 --> 24:17.480]  It's really mind-boggling.
[24:17.480 --> 24:18.680]  I think so, too.
[24:18.680 --> 24:23.080]  And one of the other stories that was striking was the interviews with maids
[24:23.080 --> 24:28.000]  and housekeepers in South Africa, and these are almost all black women
[24:28.000 --> 24:33.280]  serving white families, but they don't think of themselves as unfairly
[24:33.280 --> 24:35.560]  taken advantage of or exploited.
[24:35.560 --> 24:36.440]  Right.
[24:36.440 --> 24:38.240]  Yeah, that's not research that I did myself.
[24:38.240 --> 24:43.440]  But social psychologists in South Africa did these in-depth interviews
[24:43.440 --> 24:45.680]  with domestic workers, as you say.
[24:45.680 --> 24:51.520]  And most of them reported that they felt lucky and that they were the
[24:51.520 --> 24:54.360]  beneficiaries of a system that works for everyone.
[24:54.360 --> 24:59.400]  And yeah, again, from the outside, it seems pretty surprising.
[24:59.400 --> 25:03.200]  Yeah, they take all this satisfaction, basically, in playing a role,
[25:03.200 --> 25:05.760]  a needed role in the system, right?
[25:05.760 --> 25:11.720]  That's so satisfying to them that the larger injustices don't affect them.
[25:11.720 --> 25:12.600]  It's just very striking.
[25:12.600 --> 25:14.360]  Unless it's explicitly brought to their attention.
[25:14.360 --> 25:19.160]  I mean, that's the point of critical consciousness-raising movements.
[25:19.160 --> 25:24.640]  And all the movements, the progressive egalitarian social movements
[25:24.640 --> 25:30.720]  of the last century or two, have had that as an element of we need to look
[25:30.720 --> 25:35.120]  at, for instance, gender socialization in a more critical way
[25:35.120 --> 25:39.680]  and to realize that we've been accepting a lot of things as natural and fair,
[25:39.680 --> 25:41.840]  that we don't have to necessarily.
[25:41.840 --> 25:47.200]  I mean, that's the key of kind of a critical ideology that points out
[25:47.200 --> 25:51.240]  the problems with the social system that like fish swimming in the water,
[25:51.240 --> 25:52.360]  we're not always aware of.
[25:52.360 --> 25:53.280]  Right, right, right.
[25:53.280 --> 25:57.240]  And this was sort of the thrust of when feminism says the personal is political.
[25:57.240 --> 25:57.920]  Yeah.
[25:57.920 --> 25:59.440]  It's the same thing, trying to make that shift.
[25:59.440 --> 26:03.560]  Like this system that you're involved in, take a step back
[26:03.560 --> 26:05.840]  and try to look at it from the outside.
[26:05.840 --> 26:10.400]  Right, I think it's a useful exercise to think about what women today think
[26:10.400 --> 26:15.800]  about these things and what they did 70 years ago and to do that thought experiment.
[26:15.800 --> 26:19.880]  Because I think it's easier to understand something like how system
[26:19.880 --> 26:25.080]  justification or dominant ideology can operate if you really understand how,
[26:25.080 --> 26:28.480]  let's say, the average housewife 70 years ago thought about things.
[26:28.480 --> 26:30.680]  Our own mothers are grandmothers, right?
[26:30.680 --> 26:31.680]  Our great grandmothers.
[26:31.680 --> 26:33.120]  Right, progress does happen.
[26:33.120 --> 26:36.400]  It's just, I guess what, you know, when you're coming up like me as a fresh-faced,
[26:36.400 --> 26:40.920]  innocent person who believes in reason and dialogue and persuasion,
[26:40.920 --> 26:43.480]  it just seems like it shouldn't be that hard, right?
[26:43.480 --> 26:47.960]  Right, of course, we all kind of think that and maybe we see, again,
[26:47.960 --> 26:50.320]  we see it in others more readily than we see it in ourselves.
[26:50.320 --> 26:51.760]  But I think that's absolutely correct.
[26:51.760 --> 26:55.320]  But also that, I don't even know how old you are and it doesn't matter.
[26:55.320 --> 26:58.720]  But the point is that we're born into a new generation and that is part
[26:58.720 --> 27:01.280]  of this system justification process.
[27:01.280 --> 27:06.400]  Because the way things are when we're sentient beings is the status quo
[27:06.400 --> 27:08.720]  for us in many different ways.
[27:08.720 --> 27:13.760]  So the world that girls are born into and raised in today is a very different
[27:13.760 --> 27:17.360]  social system than 70 years ago or 40 years ago.
[27:17.360 --> 27:22.280]  Right, so you say, quoting here, the strength of system justification,
[27:22.280 --> 27:28.000]  motivation, and its expression are expected to vary according to situational
[27:28.000 --> 27:30.320]  and dispositional factors.
[27:30.320 --> 27:35.160]  In other words, this system justification is not a set quantity.
[27:35.160 --> 27:41.080]  It's not some standard unit that exists in all people and places the same.
[27:41.080 --> 27:44.800]  You know, shift this way and that based on circumstances and disposition.
[27:44.800 --> 27:48.400]  I want to save disposition for later because it's the one I'm most interested in.
[27:48.400 --> 27:51.280]  But let's talk about situational or contextual sort of factors.
[27:51.280 --> 27:58.800]  So what kinds of circumstances are likely to elicit system justification?
[27:58.800 --> 28:03.680]  So we've got experimental studies on this and we've also got sort of archival studies
[28:03.680 --> 28:08.240]  that involve how people respond, for instance, before and after 9-11,
[28:08.240 --> 28:12.320]  how people respond before and after terrorist attacks around the world.
[28:12.320 --> 28:18.320]  And we're still sort of trying to suss out what happened during COVID.
[28:18.320 --> 28:23.200]  But I think there's a general picture that's emerging that's consistent with
[28:23.200 --> 28:26.960]  what you and I have been talking about with regard to uncertainty and threat.
[28:26.960 --> 28:31.680]  That events that happen or situations that just happened to you or me
[28:31.680 --> 28:36.800]  or events that are big enough situations that they are happening to all of us at the same time,
[28:36.800 --> 28:41.520]  highly threatening circumstances that are filled with uncertainty,
[28:41.520 --> 28:46.640]  such as terrorist attacks or war or an economic crisis.
[28:46.640 --> 28:51.920]  These are things that put most of us into a state where we want more certainty,
[28:51.920 --> 28:57.120]  we want more safety, we want more conformity, social belongingness.
[28:57.120 --> 29:01.680]  And that puts us in a mindset, I think, that is more conducive to
[29:01.680 --> 29:07.120]  hankering down on the status quo, justifying and defending the way things are now,
[29:07.120 --> 29:10.960]  rather than thinking about ways of improving the system.
[29:10.960 --> 29:14.400]  So in a way, thinking about how to improve things
[29:14.400 --> 29:18.800]  is a luxury that we can only really have as a society
[29:18.800 --> 29:22.160]  when we're feeling like things are pretty good,
[29:22.160 --> 29:24.720]  when we're feeling that things are pretty secure, pretty safe,
[29:24.720 --> 29:27.920]  and we're pretty much in agreement.
[29:27.920 --> 29:31.440]  When there's a lot of discord, when there's a lot of uncertainty,
[29:31.440 --> 29:34.320]  when there's a lot of insecurity or threat,
[29:34.320 --> 29:38.720]  it's, I think, difficult for people to think about alternatives
[29:38.720 --> 29:42.080]  or even improving the social systems that we have.
[29:42.080 --> 29:47.680]  That's such a maddening catch-22, though, don't you think?
[29:47.680 --> 29:52.000]  I think it's like, and 9-11 is such a perfect,
[29:52.000 --> 29:55.760]  you'd never wish it on anyone, but it is an ideal case study
[29:55.760 --> 30:01.120]  for this kind of things, because 9-11 very much created uncertainty
[30:01.120 --> 30:05.440]  in the minds of the U.S. public, like, is it going to happen again?
[30:05.440 --> 30:09.040]  Who did it? Are there terrorists in my small town?
[30:09.040 --> 30:10.720]  Remember that whole thing?
[30:10.720 --> 30:11.680]  Absolutely.
[30:11.680 --> 30:16.000]  And then, obviously, existential safety risks.
[30:16.000 --> 30:19.600]  And, you know, you saw in the wake of 9-11
[30:19.600 --> 30:23.760]  just this intense, immediate pressure toward conformity.
[30:23.760 --> 30:25.920]  Mm-hmm, absolutely.
[30:25.920 --> 30:29.200]  President Bush's approval ratings were, what, 86 percent?
[30:29.200 --> 30:31.920]  God, yeah, I know. We'll never see again.
[30:33.120 --> 30:34.720]  This is what I mean about a catch-22.
[30:34.720 --> 30:37.360]  It's like those who are on top of the system
[30:37.360 --> 30:42.720]  and who benefit from those lower in the system accepting things,
[30:42.720 --> 30:49.040]  right, can use, can create the very uncertainty
[30:49.040 --> 30:52.400]  and threats that reinforce the system, right?
[30:52.400 --> 30:56.480]  Like you saw, I mean, you saw that in the wake of 9-11.
[30:56.480 --> 30:58.160]  Basically, Bush and the Republicans
[30:58.160 --> 31:00.560]  did everything they could to heighten uncertainty,
[31:00.560 --> 31:02.160]  heighten threat, right?
[31:02.160 --> 31:04.160]  Remember the threat levels?
[31:04.160 --> 31:07.200]  The orange, yeah, orange, red, yeah.
[31:07.200 --> 31:08.000]  I think that's right.
[31:08.000 --> 31:11.200]  I, it's obviously, it's not only the U.S. government that does that,
[31:11.200 --> 31:15.200]  but governments all over the world do this pretty routinely.
[31:15.200 --> 31:16.560]  I think that's right.
[31:16.560 --> 31:19.600]  And that's why I think people who are interested
[31:19.600 --> 31:22.560]  in improving people's lives and creating better
[31:22.560 --> 31:26.720]  and more just social systems have to wait for the right moments
[31:26.720 --> 31:30.480]  and be opportunistic when they have a brief opening
[31:30.480 --> 31:34.400]  to make some changes before people have completely forgotten
[31:34.400 --> 31:36.640]  what the problems were, right?
[31:36.640 --> 31:39.520]  So it's, I do think, I have to say, I've come to the view
[31:39.520 --> 31:44.160]  that it's much easier to govern from the right
[31:44.160 --> 31:48.240]  in a system justifying conservative manner
[31:48.240 --> 31:52.960]  because you can always frame your opposition as a threat.
[31:52.960 --> 31:54.160]  Yeah, this is what I mean.
[31:54.160 --> 31:56.640]  Like anytime there's a little glimmer of social change
[31:56.640 --> 32:00.560]  or a glimmer of consciousness pushing towards social change,
[32:00.560 --> 32:03.680]  it's just trivially easy if you're a powerful person
[32:03.680 --> 32:06.560]  or at the head of a country to sort of generate
[32:06.560 --> 32:12.160]  the very sort of uncertainty and threat that will quash that consciousness.
[32:12.160 --> 32:14.720]  It's amazing that, I think, I mean, this is sort of the result
[32:14.720 --> 32:15.840]  of my reading both your books,
[32:15.840 --> 32:19.840]  is I've just come out sort of amazed that progress ever happens.
[32:19.840 --> 32:20.480]  Right, right.
[32:21.600 --> 32:24.240]  My view of progress is definitely two steps forward,
[32:24.240 --> 32:26.800]  one step back, but you're right, it's amazing
[32:26.800 --> 32:29.120]  we're ever able to take two steps forward.
[32:29.120 --> 32:31.920]  But part of it is because new generations,
[32:31.920 --> 32:34.480]  younger people are born into a different world,
[32:34.480 --> 32:38.800]  and they're able to, at least until their cerebral cortices
[32:38.800 --> 32:40.640]  are completely frozen like ours,
[32:41.520 --> 32:44.560]  they're able to envision new and alternative ways of doing things.
[32:45.520 --> 32:48.160]  Progress comes from the young, I think that's right.
[32:48.160 --> 32:50.720]  Yes, or one death at a time, whatever the...
[32:50.720 --> 32:52.240]  Yeah, maybe so, yes.
[32:52.240 --> 32:54.800]  That's right, that's the more negative view of it, but yes.
[32:55.520 --> 32:58.880]  I mean, this gets to my larger pessimism.
[32:58.880 --> 33:03.840]  My pessimism has layers, but my larger pessimism has to do with it.
[33:03.840 --> 33:09.040]  It just seems like globally we're heading into a time,
[33:10.000 --> 33:12.000]  just look at climate change, right?
[33:12.000 --> 33:15.040]  Climate change is going to create more disruption,
[33:15.760 --> 33:21.360]  more migrations, more uncertainty and threat,
[33:22.000 --> 33:26.720]  which are going to have the effect of making it more difficult
[33:26.720 --> 33:30.320]  to think clearly about how to solve climate change in a just way.
[33:30.320 --> 33:32.560]  And it just seems like everything's heading that direction
[33:32.560 --> 33:36.400]  in the direction of more disruption, more threat, more uncertainty,
[33:37.360 --> 33:40.480]  the very kinds of things that make the problems more difficult to solve.
[33:40.480 --> 33:42.640]  This is a very uplifting podcast, David.
[33:42.640 --> 33:43.600]  Yes, kind of tight.
[33:44.480 --> 33:47.680]  No, I agree with you, but we're going to sound like Debbie Downer's here,
[33:47.680 --> 33:51.440]  but I think that's exactly the problem.
[33:51.440 --> 33:54.240]  Over the weekend, I was at an academic conference, social psychology,
[33:54.240 --> 33:59.280]  and one of the presentations was about how system justifiers
[33:59.280 --> 34:02.640]  and political conservatives do tend to score higher on measures
[34:02.640 --> 34:05.920]  of system justification than people who are liberal or progressive.
[34:06.560 --> 34:11.760]  High system justifiers tend to perceive policy solutions aimed
[34:11.760 --> 34:15.120]  at addressing climate change as more threatening
[34:15.120 --> 34:17.680]  to the status quo, particularly the economic system,
[34:17.680 --> 34:20.320]  than they do the threat of climate change itself.
[34:21.440 --> 34:25.120]  This is where we're at with the framing of the problem.
[34:26.080 --> 34:28.000]  We think doing something about climate change
[34:28.000 --> 34:30.800]  is more upsetting to the status quo than waiting for the effects
[34:30.800 --> 34:32.080]  of climate change to happen.
[34:32.800 --> 34:35.440]  This is a colossal problem, I think.
[34:36.000 --> 34:38.240]  I don't know how pessimistic you want me to be here,
[34:38.240 --> 34:40.000]  but I can join you if you like.
[34:41.600 --> 34:46.640]  Well, I think Volts listeners are pretty accustomed to general pessimism.
[34:46.640 --> 34:52.960]  So we talked about contextual features that will tend to exacerbate system justification
[34:52.960 --> 34:56.400]  to basically anything that tickles those psychological needs
[34:56.400 --> 34:59.440]  we were referring to earlier for certainty and safety
[34:59.440 --> 35:01.440]  and connection to other people.
[35:01.440 --> 35:03.760]  Anything that threatens those or disrupts those
[35:03.760 --> 35:07.360]  tends to strengthen system justification in everyone,
[35:07.360 --> 35:09.680]  because everyone has some degree of this.
[35:10.160 --> 35:11.840]  Yes, I think so, but also we need to think about
[35:11.840 --> 35:15.040]  some people are justifying certain systems and not others.
[35:15.040 --> 35:18.960]  So not everyone is justifying every imaginable social system,
[35:18.960 --> 35:22.960]  but probably you've met people who are very critical,
[35:22.960 --> 35:26.080]  for instance, of the capitalist system or something,
[35:26.080 --> 35:29.760]  but are also very sexist and very defending of the...
[35:29.760 --> 35:30.640]  What?
[35:30.640 --> 35:33.760]  Yeah, maybe once or twice, you've encountered something like that.
[35:34.400 --> 35:36.400]  So I think we have to keep in mind that,
[35:36.400 --> 35:40.640]  and who knows, maybe I'm justifying the academic system,
[35:40.640 --> 35:45.680]  the university system and so on, we're all justifying social systems
[35:45.680 --> 35:49.360]  and hopefully we can, at least at times,
[35:49.360 --> 35:52.720]  step back and look at them critically and think about issues of justice.
[35:52.720 --> 35:56.480]  But it's important to think about the fact that we can
[35:57.120 --> 36:00.160]  satisfy our system justification needs in different domains,
[36:00.160 --> 36:02.800]  and not everyone is justifying in all the systems.
[36:02.800 --> 36:08.240]  Although, by and large, people who justify one of the aspects
[36:08.240 --> 36:11.040]  of the overarching social system tend to justify the others,
[36:11.040 --> 36:12.320]  but it's not a perfect correlation.
[36:12.960 --> 36:16.080]  Right, and so this gets us to the dispositional differences,
[36:16.800 --> 36:22.080]  which are crucial to your other book about left versus right.
[36:22.080 --> 36:24.000]  So let's just get into that a little bit different.
[36:24.000 --> 36:26.960]  So the short answer here is that...
[36:28.240 --> 36:30.240]  How to summarize your entire second book.
[36:30.240 --> 36:31.920]  I don't know, you did a pretty good job with the first one,
[36:31.920 --> 36:34.720]  so I'm just impressed that you read both my books.
[36:34.720 --> 36:37.440]  I don't know if anyone outside of my family has read both of the books yet.
[36:38.240 --> 36:41.920]  There's this long running debate in psychology about
[36:42.880 --> 36:47.600]  whether ordinary people have anything that you would refer to as ideology.
[36:47.600 --> 36:54.480]  And we don't have to get into this methodological debates around this long running.
[36:54.480 --> 36:57.760]  But basically, your whole point is that it's very difficult.
[36:57.760 --> 37:03.360]  You cannot cleanly separate ideology from these deeper,
[37:03.360 --> 37:08.480]  more fundamental psychological needs that they feed into one another,
[37:08.480 --> 37:11.280]  and that depending on your psychological makeup,
[37:11.920 --> 37:15.360]  different kinds of ideology will appeal to you.
[37:15.360 --> 37:22.960]  So you can trace the connection between these deep psychological profiles and ideology.
[37:22.960 --> 37:25.120]  And secondly, and most importantly,
[37:25.920 --> 37:29.040]  we find again and again through experimental evidence
[37:29.040 --> 37:31.840]  and the evidence of our eyeballs,
[37:31.840 --> 37:38.560]  that there are deep psychological differences between conservatives and liberals,
[37:38.560 --> 37:41.280]  between broadly speaking, the right and the left,
[37:41.280 --> 37:45.040]  that are stable over time and this sort of transcend,
[37:45.760 --> 37:52.160]  because the exact expression of left and right obviously differ from place to place,
[37:52.160 --> 37:53.680]  time to time, system to system,
[37:54.320 --> 37:59.440]  but you find these sort of deep undercurrents that are true across systems.
[38:00.000 --> 38:06.000]  And one of those is that conservatives are more prone to system justification.
[38:06.000 --> 38:11.600]  So just say a little bit about why that is and how we know that.
[38:11.600 --> 38:14.000]  Yeah, that was an excellent summary of the second book,
[38:15.440 --> 38:17.680]  as good as your summary of my first book.
[38:17.680 --> 38:22.160]  Thank you. Yes, there's a lot there.
[38:22.160 --> 38:23.120]  It is a whole book.
[38:23.120 --> 38:24.240]  It is a whole book.
[38:24.240 --> 38:31.040]  The way I've come to think about it is there are two kind of fundamental value orientations,
[38:31.040 --> 38:32.640]  let's say that separate left from right.
[38:32.640 --> 38:35.600]  And this goes back to the French Revolution, if not before.
[38:35.600 --> 38:37.680]  Some people say it goes back even before that.
[38:38.640 --> 38:42.400]  There's passages in the Bible about the right hand of God and things like this.
[38:43.600 --> 38:46.880]  But let's say at least since the French Revolution,
[38:46.880 --> 38:54.080]  the potential for a fundamental clash between people on the left who want more equality,
[38:54.080 --> 38:58.080]  more social equality, more economic equality, more political equality,
[38:58.080 --> 39:03.680]  and they're willing to change the status quo, push for social change in order to arrive at a more
[39:03.680 --> 39:09.840]  equal place. And there's people on the right who want social stability, social order.
[39:09.840 --> 39:15.440]  They want to maintain the status quo or at least slow down the pace of social changes.
[39:15.440 --> 39:21.520]  And in so doing, they end up having to defend and justify existing forms of hierarchy and
[39:21.520 --> 39:24.800]  inequality as legitimate or desirable or both.
[39:25.360 --> 39:33.120]  And this to me is the fundamental left-right distinction in terms of values or philosophy
[39:33.120 --> 39:37.920]  or something like this. And I think they're correlated dimensions, they're not uncorrelated
[39:37.920 --> 39:42.000]  dimensions. They're correlated dimensions and the reason they're correlated is for historical
[39:42.000 --> 39:47.520]  reasons because human beings over a period of hundreds and even thousands of years,
[39:47.520 --> 39:52.560]  in general, most of our traditions have been more hierarchical and less equal.
[39:52.560 --> 39:58.480]  And most social change movements have been in the direction of pushing for more equality,
[39:58.480 --> 40:03.680]  more equality for women, more equality for people of color, more equality for poor people,
[40:04.400 --> 40:10.400]  elimination of slavery and feudal bondage and all kinds of things in the direction of greater
[40:10.400 --> 40:16.160]  equality and more recently for sexual minorities and so on too. And so that's why system
[40:16.160 --> 40:20.880]  justification is so crucial to this because it's sort of the thing that links those two
[40:21.600 --> 40:25.920]  dimensions together and the dimensions you could think of as equality versus tradition
[40:25.920 --> 40:30.960]  or something. So the right wants to maintain tradition and in order to do that they are
[40:30.960 --> 40:37.680]  willing to accept if not push for inequality and on the left people want more equality and
[40:37.680 --> 40:43.520]  they're willing to upset up and tradition in order to do that. And system justification is
[40:43.520 --> 40:49.680]  sort of I think of as the motivational glue that leads people to prefer stability if they're
[40:49.680 --> 40:55.600]  high on system justification and order again because it serves these epistemic existential
[40:55.600 --> 41:02.640]  relational needs to attain certainty, security, order, closure, safety and conformity and social
[41:02.640 --> 41:08.000]  belongingness and tradition is all about that. Whereas on the low end people who are less
[41:08.800 --> 41:13.840]  likely to engage in system justification they need to be able to tolerate a lot of uncertainty
[41:13.840 --> 41:18.800]  not only about what the revolution looks like but what happens the day after the revolution
[41:18.800 --> 41:24.400]  succeeds if it succeeds. There's no blueprint as they say and things like this and willing to
[41:24.400 --> 41:31.360]  tolerate a great deal of personal lack of safety. You don't know if you go to the protest if you're
[41:31.360 --> 41:37.840]  going to get arrested or beaten up or thrown in jail or what. So you have to be pretty high on
[41:37.840 --> 41:43.840]  the tolerance of uncertainty and even tolerance for threats, potential threats and on social
[41:43.840 --> 41:51.280]  belongings willing to be ostracized even perhaps by even your own parents or your grandparents
[41:51.280 --> 41:57.200]  or your aunts and uncles or people who don't understand why you're so upset about the American
[41:57.200 --> 42:02.320]  way of life or the American system or something. Plenty of people don't understand the protesters
[42:02.320 --> 42:06.880]  and feel that they're out of step with mainstream society and so on and that's why I think burnout
[42:06.880 --> 42:11.840]  rates are so high among social activists. It's hard. You need a lot of social support from
[42:11.840 --> 42:17.840]  within the activist community to counter the fact that you're essentially being excluded from
[42:17.840 --> 42:25.440]  mainstream society as a whole both actively and passively. So I think this creates the possibility
[42:25.440 --> 42:33.440]  for people to in part because of dispositional things which personality characteristics people
[42:33.440 --> 42:38.960]  find themselves at some point on this continuum from left to right. Most people are somewhere in
[42:38.960 --> 42:44.160]  the middle but how close you are to one side or the other is affected I think by temperament and
[42:44.160 --> 42:50.400]  personality even beginning in childhood and there seems like there's some genetic basis I think in
[42:50.400 --> 42:56.400]  the psychological characteristics that make people more likely to gravitate toward the left or to
[42:56.400 --> 43:02.560]  the right if they're in a society with a lot of options with a menu of options from left to right
[43:03.200 --> 43:08.000]  typically a democratic society where you have a lot of things to choose from and have enough
[43:08.000 --> 43:13.760]  education and interest to be exposed to those things on the menu. So all of these things are
[43:13.760 --> 43:18.400]  happening in interaction so I'm not saying like people are born to be a liberal or born to be a
[43:18.400 --> 43:24.080]  conservative. I'm saying people are born with certain psychological predispositions that increase
[43:24.080 --> 43:29.360]  the likelihood or decrease the likelihood of them gravitating towards specific sets of ideas
[43:29.360 --> 43:35.120]  if they encounter them in their social and cultural environments as they mature. Right but
[43:35.120 --> 43:39.360]  these dispositions you're talking about here so I'm going to read a quote from the book says
[43:39.360 --> 43:47.120]  meta-analytic reviews confirm that uncertainty avoidance intolerance of ambiguity perceptions
[43:47.120 --> 43:53.200]  of a dangerous world and death anxiety are positively associated with an affinity for
[43:53.200 --> 43:59.120]  political conservative system justifying ideology conversely cognitive complexity openness to new
[43:59.120 --> 44:05.280]  experience and the motivation to prolong cognitive closure are negatively associated with conservatism.
[44:05.280 --> 44:11.680]  Now when I read those dispositions it seems to me that they all have a common root which is
[44:11.680 --> 44:18.240]  basically fear or threat sensitivity whatever you want to call it the sort of down at the most
[44:18.240 --> 44:26.240]  root brainstem level people seem to have different sensitivities toward threat is that accurate.
[44:26.240 --> 44:31.520]  Well I wouldn't I wouldn't essentialize that so much or say it goes back to the brainstem or
[44:31.520 --> 44:37.840]  anything like that but I would say that and there are evolutionary theories about why things like
[44:37.840 --> 44:44.160]  authoritarianism which in democracies tends to be more associated with right-leaning or
[44:44.160 --> 44:49.440]  conservative leaning politics than with liberal or left-leaning politics but there are theories
[44:49.440 --> 44:55.920]  about that that suggests that when there are high levels of threat such as such as pathogen threat
[44:55.920 --> 45:03.040]  threats of disease or threats from out group members threats from groups that could do harm to us
[45:03.040 --> 45:10.080]  the group tends to bond together enforce social norms to a much higher degree punish deviance
[45:10.800 --> 45:16.240]  look for strong leaders you know things that we associate with authoritarianism and with
[45:16.240 --> 45:25.200]  maintaining tight traditions and being closed to you know people who who deviate too much
[45:25.200 --> 45:31.120]  from those norms and so I would say vigilance towards threats certain kinds of threats
[45:31.120 --> 45:38.160]  especially I think yes they do lend themselves to a more conservative and a more authoritarian
[45:38.160 --> 45:44.160]  way of of seeing the world in a way of thinking but some of the evidence about you know physiological
[45:44.160 --> 45:49.360]  differences and so on has not been replicated and so it's a it's a complicated business that people
[45:49.360 --> 45:55.920]  in my field are still trying to sort out this is a good maybe footnote here is there's a lot of
[45:55.920 --> 46:01.200]  controversy about you know people have been trying to trace these differences deeper and deeper and
[46:01.200 --> 46:06.560]  deeper and they're like maybe they're genetic maybe they're neurological all that research is
[46:06.560 --> 46:12.160]  highly um let's say provisional and uncertain at this point it is but can I just stop you right
[46:12.160 --> 46:19.120]  there because because the even the assumption that those things are more fundamental or unchangeable
[46:19.120 --> 46:25.120]  that's part of the problem here because the brain stuff certainly is not that our brains
[46:25.120 --> 46:29.600]  are changing in response to all kinds of things that we're doing if we learn to juggle or we
[46:29.600 --> 46:35.760]  learn a second or third foreign language our brains change dramatically if we start driving a
[46:35.760 --> 46:41.200]  taxi cab you know certain parts of our brain where the you know geolocations are stored is
[46:41.200 --> 46:47.120]  going to be massively changed as a function of driving a taxi for a couple of years so we shouldn't
[46:47.120 --> 46:52.800]  think of the brain as fixed we shouldn't think of it as the cause and everything else the effect
[46:52.800 --> 46:57.600]  you know I think it's very very plausible that the direction of causality runs the other way
[46:57.600 --> 47:04.560]  as well that once we become inundated with a particular ideological worldview once we start
[47:04.560 --> 47:10.480]  I don't know you know listening to npr or watching fox news it's going to have effects on our brains
[47:10.480 --> 47:16.320]  over time after years so the fact that there are neurological differences and I think there are some
[47:16.320 --> 47:20.160]  but you're right to point out we're still we're still just talking about a handful of studies
[47:20.160 --> 47:26.000]  doesn't mean that the differences originated with the neurocognitive structures or functions
[47:26.000 --> 47:30.000]  right I understand why you're why you're so sensitive about this because people
[47:30.000 --> 47:34.960]  well I'm not sensitive I just want people to understand what what we can and can't get from
[47:34.960 --> 47:41.200]  neuroscience right people have this weird idea that if you're saying that certain proclivities
[47:41.200 --> 47:47.120]  let's say would urge people to one side or the other that you're somehow essentializing things
[47:47.120 --> 47:51.840]  and and you're not you know I think we I think we can hold two thoughts in our head which are that
[47:51.840 --> 47:59.520]  the brain is very plastic and changes based on circumstances but also that it has certain
[48:00.080 --> 48:06.640]  proclivities right that that incline at one way or the other and those proclivities can be formed by
[48:06.640 --> 48:12.000]  you know I think about this a lot like why do some brains end up with this heightened threat response
[48:12.880 --> 48:18.160]  and I feel like this is one area where sort of like physiology and sociology can help you know it
[48:18.160 --> 48:24.240]  has everything to do with like did the mother breathe polluted air while she was pregnant you
[48:24.240 --> 48:29.680]  know like we can trace these things back like how was the prenatal care how's postnatal care like
[48:29.680 --> 48:34.880]  all these things affect the brain's proclivities that it emerges into the world with that may very
[48:34.880 --> 48:41.680]  well be true but let's not rule out the role of social cultural things if you grow up in a
[48:41.680 --> 48:47.120]  environment where where people are always suspicious of the foreigner or the person whose food smells
[48:47.120 --> 48:53.280]  different or whatever that's going to make you vigilant in a way that someone else who's grows
[48:53.280 --> 48:58.240]  up in a more cosmopolitan environment isn't going to be vigilant to that sort of stuff right obviously
[48:58.240 --> 49:02.480]  there's a two-way causal loop here right the proclivities that's what I'm trying to say
[49:02.480 --> 49:07.520]  affect the circumstances the circumstances affect the proclivities they're in a they're in a loop
[49:07.520 --> 49:12.080]  here that's exactly what I want to say I'm not a reductionist about these things and and even on
[49:12.080 --> 49:18.880]  the genetic front I mean the the highest estimates we've seen and these are based on on comparing
[49:18.880 --> 49:25.360]  essentially you know identical to fraternal twins monozygotic dizygotic twins who are raised in
[49:25.360 --> 49:31.200]  different families different environments the the monozygotic identical twins do tend to have
[49:31.200 --> 49:37.040]  more similar political attitudes and political orientations in adulthood than the dizygotic
[49:37.040 --> 49:44.000]  same-sex twins who are also raised apart but the the maximum amount of the variability of
[49:44.000 --> 49:49.760]  political attitudes that could be explained on on the basis of this is 40 which first of all leaves
[49:49.760 --> 49:54.960]  you know a lot more to be explained by social cultural effects but second of all even that 40
[49:54.960 --> 50:01.680]  percent I think it's it's certainly not that there's a gene for left and right right the psychological
[50:01.680 --> 50:08.880]  characteristics make you more or less open to certainty or uncertainty and the threat or safety
[50:08.880 --> 50:15.760]  or maybe uniqueness versus conformity yeah the the controversy around this puzzles me somewhat
[50:15.760 --> 50:20.960]  like it just seems to me easy enough to say you'll have these proclivities based on maybe
[50:20.960 --> 50:26.640]  physiological stuff maybe some genetic stuff maybe early childhood or pre and post natal care
[50:26.640 --> 50:32.400]  and then you know you'll have those proclivities which can be shaped informed in a million different
[50:32.400 --> 50:38.080]  ways depending on what kind of society and circumstances you emerge into like obviously
[50:38.080 --> 50:43.520]  both things are going on so when you say we can trace some of this to genetics you're not saying
[50:44.320 --> 50:50.240]  people are born you know liberal like it's just a weird but people are very very very
[50:50.240 --> 50:54.320]  hypersensitive about that kind of essentializing so I just well not only that there's not there's
[50:54.320 --> 50:59.920]  not a very high level of scientific literacy I think in our public discourse especially around
[50:59.920 --> 51:04.160]  politics and especially maybe with regard to social science and many people I think are
[51:04.800 --> 51:09.040]  are knee-jerk reductionists I'm not saying you are by any stretch of the imagination but
[51:09.040 --> 51:13.760]  but most people when they hear about brain research they don't think about the fact that
[51:13.760 --> 51:20.560]  situations or experiences can cause changes in brain structures or functions but they can
[51:20.560 --> 51:24.720]  right right so this gets back to what we were saying earlier it's contextual and dispositional
[51:24.720 --> 51:30.480]  so yes I'm an interactionist in my field I'm a louisian person my situation interact with
[51:31.520 --> 51:36.960]  from Kurt Lewin yeah yeah and that's the only take that really makes any sense to me like
[51:36.960 --> 51:42.320]  it's supposed to be a course like of course we're not blank slates that's right but also of course
[51:42.320 --> 51:48.080]  our like specific opinions about I don't know welfare policy are not genetically encoded like
[51:48.080 --> 51:56.080]  of course it's both yeah I think so but we do end up with psychological profiles that are one or
[51:56.080 --> 52:00.080]  the other right like we do end up with pretty deep differences well I wouldn't say one or the other I
[52:00.080 --> 52:05.040]  would say that on a spectrum yeah that's right that can be located on a spectrum that's exactly
[52:05.040 --> 52:09.600]  right I see it as a continuous dimension I think it's left and right in the political sense it's
[52:09.600 --> 52:15.440]  like east and west they're relative to each other and they and they change their meaning changes
[52:15.440 --> 52:22.560]  somewhat depending on the context right so it's possible that that someone in the US who considers
[52:22.560 --> 52:27.520]  themselves left of center is actually would be right of center with those same attitudes in France
[52:27.520 --> 52:34.400]  or whatever just as you know New York is an eastern city but not when compared to Paris you know
[52:34.400 --> 52:41.360]  right so if you let's say emerge from childhood with similar proclivities you'll be shaped differently
[52:41.360 --> 52:46.480]  whether you are born in the US or born in France or born in China like those proclivities can be
[52:46.480 --> 52:52.560]  shaped into very different political philosophies depending on your circumstances oh for sure and
[52:52.560 --> 52:57.840]  that includes the family that includes schools that includes the political system the media
[52:57.840 --> 53:02.880]  environment all those things and if I think if you're born into a talitarian system there's really
[53:02.880 --> 53:08.080]  no menu whatsoever so I don't think your psychology is going to predict your political attitudes at
[53:08.080 --> 53:14.880]  all in a context like that this theory really only applies to democracies where people have
[53:14.880 --> 53:20.160]  some freedom of choice even within a constrained menu of options as long as there's some choice we
[53:20.160 --> 53:26.160]  can we can explain relative preferences within that range yeah you know obviously the whole
[53:26.160 --> 53:30.080]  book is about these differences between left and right so we can't cover the whole thing but
[53:30.080 --> 53:34.960]  there's some of them some of these sort of experimental results I just found so familiar
[53:35.520 --> 53:41.680]  and telling that they kind of maybe laugh like this one for instance I'm quoting on several
[53:41.680 --> 53:48.960]  specific issues conservatives exhibited the truly false consensus effect by assuming that like-minded
[53:48.960 --> 53:54.320]  others share their opinions more than is actually the case liberals on the other hand often display
[53:54.320 --> 53:59.840]  an illusion of uniqueness assuming that like-minded others share their opinions less than is actually
[53:59.840 --> 54:06.480]  the case that is just so thanks I'm glad you appreciated that there is something funny maybe
[54:06.480 --> 54:11.200]  about both sides getting it wrong in opposite directions I know I look around you look around
[54:11.200 --> 54:16.320]  and you see that like this is the moral majority right like conservatives seem to have this very
[54:16.320 --> 54:22.640]  deep-seated belief that everyone agrees with them but is just afraid to speak up yeah and of course
[54:22.640 --> 54:26.640]  that has happened sometimes in history we in social sciences or social psychology we call that
[54:26.640 --> 54:33.040]  pluralistic ignorance like apparently there was a time when alcohol was prohibited and apparently
[54:33.040 --> 54:39.200]  was never a majority opinion of American citizens to prohibit alcohol but people were afraid to say
[54:39.200 --> 54:44.240]  no I want to keep alcohol legal and so a false norm can take place but I think you're right the
[54:44.240 --> 54:50.160]  whole issue over abortion maybe is exemplifying that that conservatives believe that people are
[54:50.160 --> 54:55.600]  more supportive of striking down Roe versus Wade than is the case apparently I mean if the public
[54:55.600 --> 55:01.040]  opinion research is to be believed what 62% disagree with the Supreme Court's decision that's
[55:01.920 --> 55:06.240]  maybe a case of pluralistic ignorance on the on the other side there well yeah and you know
[55:06.240 --> 55:11.440]  speaking of liberals thinking that their beliefs are more unique than they are there's there's all
[55:11.440 --> 55:16.800]  this polling I read about I don't know maybe this was in your book but early in the civil
[55:16.800 --> 55:24.320]  rights era like 1960 in the late 1950s early 1960s there were polls showing that the majority of the
[55:24.320 --> 55:31.120]  public supported desegregation inequality but also that people who supported desegregation
[55:31.120 --> 55:36.880]  inequality thought that other people disagreed with them right thought thought that they were
[55:36.880 --> 55:42.080]  unique in thinking so so you had this sort of majority opinion that the majority was not aware
[55:42.080 --> 55:49.040]  of it being a majority and this is I feel like liberals get into that a lot that's a very good
[55:49.040 --> 55:53.840]  point that that that particular statistic was not in my book but it's a very interesting one
[55:53.840 --> 55:58.880]  and I'm also curious whether that was before or after the 1954 Brown versus Board of Education
[55:58.880 --> 56:03.360]  Supreme Court decision because we do know that that over time and we'll see if this turns out to
[56:03.360 --> 56:09.200]  be the case with Roe versus Wade or with Dodd but but the Supreme Court decision because it becomes
[56:09.200 --> 56:13.120]  the stat the new status quo the law of the land it does have an effect on people's attitudes over
[56:13.120 --> 56:19.680]  time but we'll see but the other point there that that I think is germane to that is that political
[56:19.680 --> 56:25.840]  scientists have often distinguished between symbolic and operational ideology and symbolic
[56:25.840 --> 56:30.320]  ideologies when you think of yourself in a certain way as a conservative or liberal and
[56:30.880 --> 56:36.160]  more people in the United States for a very long period of time have thought of themselves as
[56:36.160 --> 56:41.280]  conservative than as liberal and I think in a way that's consistent with system justification theory
[56:41.280 --> 56:46.480]  that people want to think of themselves as maintaining the the social system the stability
[56:46.480 --> 56:52.080]  being patriotic being defender of of the way things are and our way of life and so on but on
[56:52.080 --> 56:57.840]  issues that's the operational part of ideology on specific policy opinions people look much more
[56:57.840 --> 57:03.440]  liberal often than on the actual issues and that's a good example where liberals may not always
[57:03.440 --> 57:10.320]  realize how much support there is for actually liberal policy opinions and it's kind of an
[57:10.320 --> 57:15.920]  opportunity let's say yeah and I also think about in light of this another phenomenon which we're
[57:15.920 --> 57:23.760]  seeing a lot today which is people who self identify as liberals you know obviously being
[57:23.760 --> 57:30.160]  subject to this system justification effect sort of like I grew up thinking of myself as a liberal
[57:30.160 --> 57:36.240]  but now here I am 50 years old and the kids are telling me to say Latinx and all and all the
[57:36.240 --> 57:42.080]  sudden I'm having exactly those feelings that conservatives get right like that is such a good
[57:42.080 --> 57:47.760]  a good point this is too far like yeah you know the I changed the system when I was young
[57:47.760 --> 57:53.360]  but now it's now it's proper and now like further change further change yeah triggers my system
[57:53.360 --> 57:58.320]  justification no that's right and I don't think it's a deep philosophical response you're having I
[57:58.320 --> 58:04.160]  think it's a social psychological one to something that is just outside of the bounds of how we've
[58:04.160 --> 58:10.720]  come to understand what the status quo is and the status quo gets a kind of default legitimacy
[58:10.720 --> 58:17.440]  and then when when young people come up with new gender schemes and really complicated you know
[58:18.400 --> 58:25.840]  14 by 14 matrix of gender bisexual orientation identification things for people a certain
[58:25.840 --> 58:32.720]  age and older it's it's a very kind of shocking experience to work through that and it's for
[58:32.720 --> 58:37.440]  exactly the same reasons psychologically that conservatives you know can't countenance the
[58:37.440 --> 58:42.640]  idea of whites not being a majority in the United States in the next decade or two yeah I guess
[58:42.640 --> 58:46.400]  it's just more frustrating when liberals do it because they're supposed to be that self-awareness
[58:46.400 --> 58:50.960]  right like there's supposed to be that that's right but give give everybody some time to you
[58:50.960 --> 58:56.480]  know come to it and I think that that we've seen this already I think that liberals and progressives
[58:56.480 --> 59:03.120]  have been the first that doesn't mean they're always fast enough but the first to embrace
[59:03.120 --> 59:09.600]  these new ways of thinking about sexual identities and and gender identities and orientations and
[59:09.600 --> 59:16.480]  so on yeah and then over time it spreads to the rest of the population it may take conservatives
[59:16.480 --> 59:21.840]  another 10 or 20 or 30 years behind that but in general most historical trends have been in that
[59:21.840 --> 59:28.560]  direction around these kinds of issues yeah I just think it's very very difficult to maintain
[59:28.560 --> 59:33.920]  even if you're born with the sort of proclivities the sort of openness to experience and all these
[59:33.920 --> 59:40.640]  other characteristics of liberals it's just very difficult to consistently maintain that
[59:40.640 --> 59:45.920]  over a lifetime to retain that sort of negative capacity that sort of thought that like all my
[59:45.920 --> 59:50.800]  beliefs are provisional you know things are still going to change I'm going to be open to change
[59:50.800 --> 59:58.720]  it's just you know you get old and yeah right I think you're you're right both about personality
[59:58.720 --> 1:00:05.840]  in the sense that we know that some personality traits change more in certain decades of your
[1:00:05.840 --> 1:00:12.240]  life and then and then sort of stabilize and different traits are are changing a lot in your
[1:00:12.240 --> 1:00:18.160]  teens and your 20s and other traits are coming online and mattering more in your 30s and 40s
[1:00:18.160 --> 1:00:23.920]  and so on so you're you're right both at the level of personality and probably also at the level
[1:00:23.920 --> 1:00:29.200]  been talking about brain formation and and so on and what is and isn't continuing to develop in
[1:00:29.200 --> 1:00:35.920]  the human brain into your 20s and 30s and beyond but also I think you're right in terms of the
[1:00:35.920 --> 1:00:41.200]  experiences that people have and there are big cohort effects that I think are very consistent
[1:00:41.200 --> 1:00:46.000]  with what we've been saying about system justification you know the world is as you encounter it
[1:00:46.000 --> 1:00:52.000]  at your moment in in time whether it's when you're 18 or 25 or 30 whatever your worldview
[1:00:52.000 --> 1:00:56.960]  comes together that is the status quo for you and even if you're motivated to keep updating
[1:00:56.960 --> 1:01:03.120]  sometimes you feel like like you don't want to it's a motivational question right and
[1:01:03.120 --> 1:01:08.160]  but but I think some people deserve credit for sticking with it and thinking more deeply about
[1:01:08.160 --> 1:01:13.200]  things that were initially upsetting to their sense of of reality that were initially threatening
[1:01:13.200 --> 1:01:18.480]  to their epistemic existential and relational needs but they worked through it and they
[1:01:18.480 --> 1:01:24.880]  they came to a position where they can be open to new ideas or other people if if those ideas are
[1:01:24.880 --> 1:01:29.920]  are worth you know being being open to and supporting yeah this is part of what I wanted
[1:01:29.920 --> 1:01:33.840]  to do this pod and part I want to want to just get the sort of notion of system justification
[1:01:33.840 --> 1:01:39.360]  out there it's just to make people a little bit more self-aware or self-conscious about it like
[1:01:39.360 --> 1:01:47.920]  if you find yourself in a position of saying that kids these days yes are are lazy you should
[1:01:47.920 --> 1:01:52.720]  have a glimmer of self-awareness like oh wait a minute all the other old people throughout
[1:01:52.720 --> 1:01:57.680]  all of history have thought that about young people maybe there's something maybe these are
[1:01:57.680 --> 1:02:02.960]  psychological proclivities acting on me that I'm not fully aware of and I should take a step back
[1:02:02.960 --> 1:02:07.360]  you know like very good people people just don't do that people are or people will say
[1:02:07.360 --> 1:02:14.560]  people will repeat sort of misogynist myths you know like Hillary sounds shrill like my ex-wife
[1:02:14.560 --> 1:02:19.520]  with no glimmer of like wait a minute that's what all the other misogynist said about all
[1:02:19.520 --> 1:02:23.920]  the other women throughout history maybe I'm not making an objective assessment of Hillary Clinton
[1:02:23.920 --> 1:02:29.200]  here maybe there are forces acting on me that I should be more aware of I don't know why that's
[1:02:29.200 --> 1:02:33.280]  so difficult for people but I think that's absolutely right so maybe we should we should
[1:02:33.280 --> 1:02:38.480]  try to de-stigmatize a little bit this process of system justification and recognize that all of
[1:02:38.480 --> 1:02:45.440]  us experience it to some degree or another yeah but but also I do think some people are more
[1:02:45.440 --> 1:02:53.120]  willing to prioritize other concerns such as accuracy such as social justice and such as you
[1:02:53.120 --> 1:02:58.480]  know innovation and I think all of those things can be things that counter the system justification
[1:02:58.480 --> 1:03:05.040]  motives that maintain the status quo right and at our best we can create social systems like
[1:03:05.040 --> 1:03:13.120]  science itself that encourage accuracy that encourage mutual fact-checking and then encourage
[1:03:13.120 --> 1:03:20.480]  openness to correction like you can ideally you can create system justification for good systems
[1:03:20.480 --> 1:03:26.320]  if you you know if you can pull it off I think that's exactly the ideals of the liberal democratic
[1:03:26.320 --> 1:03:33.440]  system where you have a plurality of voices and arguments and reason debate this is the ideal
[1:03:33.440 --> 1:03:39.840]  obviously not the actual we're talking about here reason debate about what the facts are and what
[1:03:39.840 --> 1:03:46.480]  counts as evidence and then you have a free vote and you resolve it with the mechanisms of democracy
[1:03:46.480 --> 1:03:52.400]  you resolve the covers and it's an unambiguous result and you move on to the next thing to debate
[1:03:52.400 --> 1:03:57.840]  and I think that is the ideal of a liberal democratic system and I think we're very very far
[1:03:57.840 --> 1:04:03.920]  from that ideal right now obviously yeah so a couple final questions I know that a lot of
[1:04:03.920 --> 1:04:11.680]  people are going to hear that conservatives are prone more prone than liberals to system justification
[1:04:12.560 --> 1:04:20.560]  and then they're going to look at trump and trump voters who appear to be willing to tear
[1:04:20.560 --> 1:04:26.400]  everything down yes while making america great again by the way yes yeah so so help people
[1:04:27.200 --> 1:04:32.240]  square that circle like why does this apparently radical movement that doesn't seem to give a
[1:04:32.240 --> 1:04:37.280]  shit about the sanctity of any of america's systems how is that commensurate with conservatives
[1:04:37.280 --> 1:04:42.880]  being more prone to system justification yeah trump definitely made a lot of things more
[1:04:42.880 --> 1:04:49.120]  complicated for social scientists and social theorists to understand but um but first of all
[1:04:49.120 --> 1:04:55.920]  I think what he did was he tapped into a lot of anger about the pace or perceived pace of social
[1:04:55.920 --> 1:05:01.680]  change and that's why this slogan of make america great again resonated with so many which which of
[1:05:01.680 --> 1:05:08.720]  course is a slogan from reagan's campaigns so it is a very conservative message and it is a message
[1:05:08.720 --> 1:05:16.240]  and the way he delivered it was tapping into I think a lot of especially let's say you know white
[1:05:16.240 --> 1:05:24.000]  males frustrations at how things for them seem to be much better when they were 20 or 25
[1:05:24.560 --> 1:05:31.440]  than they are now and in the world was looked different you know much less diversity and much
[1:05:31.440 --> 1:05:37.440]  less salience of social and cultural diversity so he tapped into I think a lot of resentment
[1:05:37.440 --> 1:05:43.440]  about social change and the pace of social change and the feelings that the movements for equality
[1:05:43.440 --> 1:05:50.160]  had gone too far and we're now you know biased against whites which is an opinion that a lot of
[1:05:50.160 --> 1:05:57.600]  people have even though it's a false opinion I would say but you're right he also used the language
[1:05:57.600 --> 1:06:04.240]  that was very disruptive of the status quo and and that was maybe part of his appeal so I think
[1:06:04.240 --> 1:06:11.200]  in some sense people are frustrated with the status quo but they don't have a good understanding of
[1:06:11.200 --> 1:06:16.640]  the origins of their dissatisfaction with the status quo and they also at the same time want to go
[1:06:16.640 --> 1:06:24.560]  back to some idealized version of an earlier time for them and so they are open to rhetoric that
[1:06:24.560 --> 1:06:29.440]  sounds like it's you know going to shake up the status quo when in fact what it's really going to
[1:06:29.440 --> 1:06:36.000]  do is restore the older hierarchies and so it's kind of having your cake and eating it too in a
[1:06:36.000 --> 1:06:41.120]  way yeah in that sense but but I do have I do have an empirical answer though for you because we study
[1:06:41.120 --> 1:06:45.840]  that oh yeah the question that you're talking about about whether Trump supporters were higher or
[1:06:45.840 --> 1:06:50.880]  lower in system justification relative to supporters of other candidates and the answer is they were
[1:06:51.760 --> 1:06:57.920]  lower on general system justification but higher on economic and gender specific system
[1:06:57.920 --> 1:07:03.760]  justification so they were more likely to justify the system in economic domains like capitalism
[1:07:03.760 --> 1:07:09.280]  and in gender domains like traditional division of labor within the family and within society
[1:07:09.280 --> 1:07:14.560]  but less likely especially compared to the other conservative candidates to justify the whole
[1:07:14.560 --> 1:07:19.920]  American society as a whole interesting and it also seems like I mean one of the sort of
[1:07:19.920 --> 1:07:29.440]  characteristic features of fascism is this idealized past right this idealized thing that
[1:07:29.440 --> 1:07:34.080]  we've lost the system that we've lost so in a sense you can sort of bring system justification
[1:07:34.080 --> 1:07:40.960]  to bear on a system that is itself somewhat mythical right like it's yeah I think it's possible
[1:07:40.960 --> 1:07:47.440]  in both directions in a way to justify imaginary social systems whether they're imaginary versions
[1:07:47.440 --> 1:07:54.640]  of of some you know Nordic past or whatever or some utopian system that never has been
[1:07:54.640 --> 1:08:00.000]  and and maybe that's a way that people can try to satisfy their epistemic existential
[1:08:00.000 --> 1:08:06.400]  relational needs while not buying into the immediate status quo yeah and another weird
[1:08:06.400 --> 1:08:10.880]  inversion that that trump has pulled off and I maybe this is characteristic for the authoritarians
[1:08:10.880 --> 1:08:18.720]  too is somehow he's framing things as if the radicals the outsiders the agitators the people
[1:08:18.720 --> 1:08:27.040]  who want to change your beloved system have taken over now and sort of are the power and so the system
[1:08:27.040 --> 1:08:31.920]  has been taken over by system changers so in a sense you're sort of like fighting the actually
[1:08:31.920 --> 1:08:38.160]  existing system that's run by liberals in an attempt to restore a deeper and more true system
[1:08:38.160 --> 1:08:42.560]  that existed before they came along yeah and screwed everything up that's a very interesting
[1:08:42.560 --> 1:08:48.800]  way to put it I mean maybe I mean clearly the that whole first part is is like system justification
[1:08:48.800 --> 1:08:55.200]  by the book you know all these people who are critics unpatriotic threats to the status quo
[1:08:55.200 --> 1:09:02.000]  it's easy to turn people against those those people it's a it's a tactic that's been used
[1:09:02.000 --> 1:09:07.120]  since time immemorial for that for for leftist probably was using the french revolution and
[1:09:07.120 --> 1:09:11.600]  certainly throughout the 20th century in the united states but the other part is interesting too
[1:09:11.600 --> 1:09:18.400]  because it does suggest that that you can get some motivational juice maybe from also shaking up
[1:09:19.360 --> 1:09:24.800]  or making people realize that they are frustrated with aspects of the status quo even if they're
[1:09:24.800 --> 1:09:30.960]  not fully aware of it or even if they're not aware of the true sources of their dissatisfaction
[1:09:30.960 --> 1:09:37.440]  so I think it's very possible that many trump voters are extremely frustrated with the effects
[1:09:37.440 --> 1:09:44.560]  of global capitalism but they don't see it that way at all they don't make the connections they
[1:09:44.560 --> 1:09:49.600]  instead they have been led to believe that it's because of immigrants or it's because of you
[1:09:49.600 --> 1:09:56.080]  know journalists or whoever else it's this bizarre and power inversion that all fascism and fascism
[1:09:56.080 --> 1:10:03.680]  adjacent uh movements seem to do which is to say the groups who are properly outsiders right who
[1:10:03.680 --> 1:10:09.280]  are properly on the bottom of the system have taken over right this is always kind of the the
[1:10:09.280 --> 1:10:14.320]  fascist message like the proper order of the system the people who are supposed to be in charge
[1:10:14.320 --> 1:10:21.360]  have been displaced by outsiders so we gotta restore the proper operation of the system
[1:10:21.360 --> 1:10:26.240]  yeah I think you're describing kind of exclusionary populism right wing populism
[1:10:26.240 --> 1:10:32.000]  which aims perhaps to impose some kind of authoritarian or even fascist social order
[1:10:32.000 --> 1:10:39.360]  in order to you know provide that all of that safety security uh and and so on but the appeal
[1:10:39.360 --> 1:10:45.600]  early on is that yes the elites are the problem and in this case if you can paint the elites to be
[1:10:45.600 --> 1:10:52.400]  your political opponents like you know liberals whatever journalists minorities etc and that
[1:10:52.400 --> 1:10:57.760]  they don't deserve the full spectrum of rights afforded people in the in the united states
[1:10:57.760 --> 1:11:02.640]  then they should be excluded and that's in contrast with left-wing populism which tends to be more
[1:11:02.640 --> 1:11:07.840]  inclusionary and also is critical of elites but in their elites are different right though the
[1:11:07.840 --> 1:11:12.640]  elites there are the sometimes it's it's you know conservative government sometimes it's
[1:11:12.640 --> 1:11:21.440]  capitalist etc sometimes religious elites and so on on behalf of a more exclusionary definition
[1:11:21.440 --> 1:11:27.600]  of the people which might include women minorities people from other countries and so on so yeah
[1:11:27.600 --> 1:11:34.320]  it's a populist message that appeals to right wing sentiments and we have seen it throughout
[1:11:34.320 --> 1:11:38.800]  history you're absolutely right I've kept you too long but I wanted to elite's address here at the
[1:11:38.800 --> 1:11:45.680]  end I think if people read these two books it's pretty bleak this well that's not why I wrote
[1:11:45.680 --> 1:11:55.680]  them I mean people uh let's just say everyone has this in them and so the fight or the push
[1:11:55.680 --> 1:12:04.000]  to change things is in a sense always the underdog right it's always you're not you're not fighting
[1:12:04.000 --> 1:12:10.640]  on a level playing field here it's the field is in a sense always tilted against change because
[1:12:11.200 --> 1:12:18.880]  of this system justification that all people are subject to but you know as you point out
[1:12:18.880 --> 1:12:28.000]  change has happened uh progress has happened somehow system justification has been overcome
[1:12:28.000 --> 1:12:34.880]  at least at the margins um you know repeatedly throughout history so it can't be that we've
[1:12:34.880 --> 1:12:39.120]  talked ourselves into thinking that progress is impossible because progress is clearly not
[1:12:39.120 --> 1:12:44.400]  impossible so let's let's no my view is not fatalistic in that in that way at all so let's talk
[1:12:44.400 --> 1:12:50.080]  about you know if I'm a change maker whether you know I'm an activist or a politician or just a
[1:12:50.080 --> 1:12:58.000]  concerned citizen and I want change and I read and appreciate and internalize this work about
[1:12:58.000 --> 1:13:06.320]  system justification and I now know in my head that when I go out and try to change you know
[1:13:06.320 --> 1:13:14.800]  zoning zoning laws in my town or or the the label on the bathroom door whatever change I want to make
[1:13:15.600 --> 1:13:22.880]  there's going to be a certain level of automatic resistance people automatically are going to be
[1:13:22.880 --> 1:13:28.320]  nervous about change and not want change so as an activist having internalized all this
[1:13:28.320 --> 1:13:33.520]  how do I operationalize it like what kinds of things would you advise people to do
[1:13:33.520 --> 1:13:41.280]  to overcome system justification or work around it yeah no that's that's good and I do I do talk
[1:13:41.280 --> 1:13:47.280]  about this in the book some I think there's first of all to be aware of the and to anticipate that
[1:13:47.280 --> 1:13:51.920]  resistance in the precisely the ways that you and I have been talking about it in both even
[1:13:51.920 --> 1:13:57.680]  understandable ways in which people find new ideas a little bit hard to grasp or something
[1:13:57.680 --> 1:14:04.800]  let alone to be inspired by them that's one thing but it but also you can't get around
[1:14:04.800 --> 1:14:09.920]  social organizing for change I mean it's just telling you that you need more resources and
[1:14:09.920 --> 1:14:15.680]  more of an organized ability to overcome that resistance the resistance is not you know something
[1:14:15.680 --> 1:14:20.240]  that could never be overcome but it's something that's going to take more more effort to overcome
[1:14:20.240 --> 1:14:24.000]  and and if it's easy to do maybe it's not you know you don't you don't need to do it
[1:14:24.000 --> 1:14:30.320]  but more than more than clever arguments even yeah right much much more than a bunch of scientific
[1:14:30.320 --> 1:14:34.960]  facts clever arguments are not not necessarily going to win the day right but the other thing
[1:14:34.960 --> 1:14:43.200]  we talk about is one is to try to avoid running into the headwinds of motivated system defensiveness
[1:14:43.200 --> 1:14:48.000]  so being aware that this is a possibility and trying to avoid it and rather rather than
[1:14:48.000 --> 1:14:52.960]  provoking and eliciting motivated system defensiveness by just poking people right in the
[1:14:52.960 --> 1:14:58.160]  status quo right this is something liberals need to be aware of is that if you if you feel like
[1:14:58.160 --> 1:15:04.400]  the prospect of radical change is exciting and you're into it like you need to know
[1:15:05.040 --> 1:15:09.760]  that you are unusual right and if you go out with that as the headline
[1:15:10.960 --> 1:15:15.840]  you're going to be in a tiny minority of people that's exactly right and and the other thing
[1:15:15.840 --> 1:15:22.320]  is that we talk about interventions that actually take advantage of system justification motivation
[1:15:22.320 --> 1:15:29.200]  in various ways by framing certain policy initiatives as congruent with the aims or the
[1:15:29.200 --> 1:15:34.720]  ideals of the societal status quo and so just one you know small example we had and it was an
[1:15:34.720 --> 1:15:41.680]  experimental study we conducted about resistance to support climate action and what we found was
[1:15:41.680 --> 1:15:50.160]  that high system justifiers could be persuaded to be more supportive and more open to thinking about
[1:15:50.160 --> 1:15:57.760]  climate action when we framed the threats of climate change as and doing something about it
[1:15:57.760 --> 1:16:02.960]  as patriotic and a way of conserving the American way of life against environmental
[1:16:02.960 --> 1:16:07.920]  challenges protecting the status quo against climate change right which is going to radically
[1:16:07.920 --> 1:16:13.040]  change it that's right and the other you know historical example you know Martin Luther King
[1:16:13.040 --> 1:16:21.040]  Jr was a genius at doing this was tying the egalitarian goals of his movement to the American
[1:16:22.080 --> 1:16:29.840]  ideals about about freedom equality democracy and so on he was constantly referencing the
[1:16:29.840 --> 1:16:35.920]  Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and things and in stark contrast to Malcolm X for
[1:16:35.920 --> 1:16:40.880]  instance who you know said I didn't land on Plymouth Rock Plymouth Rock landed on me you know a
[1:16:40.880 --> 1:16:45.600]  clear declaration that I am not part of the system I'm against the system right Martin Luther King
[1:16:45.600 --> 1:16:52.240]  was using the system to persuade people to make changes to make the system fulfill its its promise
[1:16:52.240 --> 1:16:57.760]  well in a more contemporary example very very similar I always thought this was Barack Obama's
[1:16:58.480 --> 1:17:06.000]  most brilliant rhetorical device you know which I guess he sort of took from Martin Luther King
[1:17:06.000 --> 1:17:14.320]  Jr which is to say America's struggle to be better to perfect itself to be more equal
[1:17:15.600 --> 1:17:21.520]  is the American status quo that's what America is right like so that's what we're trying to defend
[1:17:21.520 --> 1:17:28.320]  here that's what we're trying to pay tribute and and live up to here is the American system the
[1:17:28.320 --> 1:17:35.120]  American the struggle for greater equality is the American system that's what Obama always
[1:17:35.120 --> 1:17:40.400]  emphasized over and over and over again I think that's right and and now if we want to preserve
[1:17:40.400 --> 1:17:47.600]  what's left of our democracy I think that people who who feel that our historical legacy around
[1:17:47.600 --> 1:17:53.120]  democracy which used to be you know the envy of the world in many in many ways not maybe not the
[1:17:53.120 --> 1:18:00.640]  whole world but lots lots of it I think we need to have that same kind of defense and pride in
[1:18:00.640 --> 1:18:08.720]  that legacy but or we're gonna lose it yeah well that seems like a good place to wrap up here thanks
[1:18:08.720 --> 1:18:14.240]  so much I really the books were very eye-opening and interesting to me I urge other people to
[1:18:15.360 --> 1:18:21.840]  read them or at least read the summary chapters it's it will sort of I think change the way you
[1:18:21.840 --> 1:18:29.520]  approach trying to change things mainly by daunting you to to begin with well the first
[1:18:29.520 --> 1:18:35.120]  step towards overcoming a problem is correctly diagnosing it right exactly

                               exactly all right
[1:18:35.120 --> 1:18:37.920]  thanks for coming on
                               it's my pleasure thank you for having me David take care
[1:18:44.480 --> 1:18:51.600]  thank you for listening to the Volts podcast it is ad-free powered entirely by listeners like you
[1:18:51.600 --> 1:18:56.800]  if you value conversations like this please consider becoming a paid Voltssubscriber
[1:18:56.800 --> 1:19:06.400]  at volts.wtf,yes that's volts.wtf so that I can continue doing this work thank you so much
[1:19:06.400 --> 1:19:29.440]  and I'll see you next time