Partisanship: Nature or Nurture?

I don't usually recommend reading the New York Times but I thoroughly enjoyed William Saletan's review of Jonathan Haidt's new book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion in the Sunday Book Review.

 [Google it -- it's called  "Why Won't They Listen?"]

You’re smart. You’re liberal. You’re well informed. You think conservatives are narrow-minded. You can’t understand why working-class Americans vote Republican. You figure they’re being duped. You’re wrong.

This isn’t an accusation from the right. It’s a friendly warning from Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who, until 2009, considered himself a partisan liberal. In “The ­Righteous Mind,” Haidt seeks to enrich liberalism, and political discourse generally, with a deeper awareness of human nature. Like other psychologists who have ventured into political coaching, such as George Lakoff and Drew Westen, Haidt argues that people are fundamentally intuitive, not rational. If you want to persuade others, you have to appeal to their sentiments. But Haidt is looking for more than victory. He’s looking for wisdom. That’s what makes “The Righteous Mind” well worth reading. Politics isn’t just about ­manipulating people who disagree with you. It’s about learning from them....

 

 

 

"Those who want an end to political bickering will have to come to terms with the fact that being conservative or being liberal is often genetically based and therefore unlikely to be jawboned or reformed away," said John Alford, a Rice University political scientist...  (Boston Globe, November 2008)

Comments

[Mannie Sherberg]

Despite what anyone says, the notion that being liberal or being conservative is genetically based is not a fact -- it is a hypothesis, and one that we should approach with great caution. Neuroscience -- and the idea that this, that, and everything else is rooted in our genes -- is all the rage in academia these days, but much of this stuff is being peddled on shaky grounds. The linguistic saga is a case in point: For some decades now, Chomsky's idea that the acquisition of language is genetically determined -- and that the grammar underlying all of the world's 6,000 or so languages is hardwired into our genes -- has dominated the study of linguistics. But in recent years, this hypothesis has been challenged by a number of scholars who claim that language is -- not entirely but for the most part -- learned, not acquired through the automatic working of a language gene or a language instinct. The whole subject is up in the air right now, and I suspect arguments will be presented by both sides for many years to come. But no one, I think, can deny that Chomskyite linguistics is coming under increasing attack. The idea that our politics are genetically determined is on even shakier ground than Chomskyite linguistics; even the authors of the cited political study admit that their evidence only "suggests" a genetic link. A suggestion is a long, long way from a proof. To prove a genetic link, neuroscientists would have to locate a specific gene or a specific region of the brain that is dedicated exclusively to the production of political attitudes; no such gene or region has yet been found -- either for politics or for language. While we await the final outcomes of these debates, which are unlikely to come in our lifetimes, let's remember that we're dealing with explosive stuff here. Hitler, after all, was no neuroscientist, and he'd never heard of genes or genetics, but he firmly believed that Jewish "depravity" was an inborn trait of all Jews -- a trait which could never be eradicated because it had biological roots -- and therefore its elimination could be accomplished only by the elimination of every Jew on the planet. The idea that our biology determines something of crucial importance to human beings is always a dangerous idea. Such an idea may finally be proven true -- but until it is, we had best approach it with extreme caution. Ultimately, there's a lot more at stake in all of these academic theories than mere academics.

[Walt Gottesman]

Sage words from Mannie that remind us to be wary of theoretical (as yet unproven) genetic determinism. Genetics, through DNA sequencing, has been characterized as the "Alphabet of Life," while the emerging study of Epigenetics can be thought of as the "Grammar of Life," a study of environmental factors that influence how genes are expressed. This topic is touched upon in a 2010 Time magazine article titled "Why Your DNA Isn't Your Destiny." Education is an important epigenetic factor. Thank you Yael for your daily educational offerings. Thank you Mannie for your frequent enlightening comments.

[Mannie Sherberg]

Thank you. Walt, for the kind -- and very generous -- words.