Anyone who sees important things fundamentally differently cannot be a good person. Written so bare, this sentence seems very pointed. And yet he describes the current mudslinging and poison spraying quite well, which is often trivialized as a “debate about”. Frustratingly often, supporters of opposing political camps – from activists to publicists – hurl insults at each other rather than exchange arguments. The ones with the different opinions? Morally depraved, stupid, evil, intolerant or anything with the suffix -phob!
Quick interim question: do the howler monkeys even know which positions they are actually fighting, or is it more about shadow boxes with imaginary spirits?
Real, i.e. constructive, debates are only possible if those involved actually know the position of the other side, argue psychologists led by Charlotte Olivia Brand from the University of Sheffield in a recent publication. However, the researchers also show that this is exactly what many people find difficult. The rule of thumb here is: the lower the opinion about the respective opposing ideological camp, the more distorted and wilder the claims about its positions.
Understanding how others tick is rarely the goal
Brand’s psychologists refer to their experiments as the “Ideological Turing Test”. With this they refer to the famous Turing test, which is based on an idea of the British mathematician Alan Turing from the year 1950. The question was: How can one recognize when a computer has reached a level of thinking equal to that of humans? Then when test subjects can no longer say in a conversation whether they are communicating with a person or a computer. A comparable idea is now behind the experimental setup of the psychologists: A contrary position is considered to be really understood if someone formulates it in such a way that the other side cannot say whether someone from their own camp formulated it or not.
To do this, the scientists asked 600 test persons to formulate positions on controversial topics – on corona vaccination, Brexit and veganism. The participants each had to present pro and contra arguments, which were then presented to 1,200 other subjects for evaluation. The subjects were selected in such a way that all positions were actually equally represented: Brexit opponents and supporters, vegans and non-vegans, corona vaccination opponents and supporters. When it came to corona vaccinations, 54 percent of the participants managed to formulate the opposing side’s positions in such a way that their supporters accepted them as correct and one of theirs accepted them. The hit rate for Brexit was 64 percent and for veganism 71 percent.
The numbers don’t sound so bad at first. Presumably, however, they feed on the answers of people who do not participate in the loud and galling bickering about such subjects. Those who were able to convincingly formulate opposing positions also had a less negative image of the other side of the world. The subjects were more likely to say that the opponents had good reasons for their attitude, even if they did not share them. They were less likely to label dissenters as ignorant, stupid, or immoral, and were generally less judgmental. In short: These were people who probably didn’t feel any increased inclination to start the next shitstorm. According to the psychologists, they are characterized by a comparatively greater openness in thinking.
The results were camp-specific, neither in one direction nor in the other. Which camp the subjects belonged to had no predictive power for whether or not they could formulate and understand opposing positions correctly. It was surprising that dealing with the topics was not associated with an increased understanding of opposing positions: in comparison, those who read or debated more about the topics were in no way better able to formulate opposing positions. Presumably, these are the people who fight in loud arguments and look for ammunition for their arguments on their reading research. Obviously, understanding what makes other people tick is not their goal. It’s just a sweet poison to think you’re on the right side and put others down in the name of the supposedly good – even if you have a distorted idea of what the others believe exactly. This also applies to all sides.