Reason coldly of your grievances, or else depart.
Shakespeare, Romeo And Juliet
All my life I’ve been a left-leaning liberal kind of guy. I believe in social justice, equality and protecting those less fortunate than myself. As such, voting Labour – or at a push LibDem – has always seemed the unarguable moral choice. So why do so many people vote Conservative?
This morning my Twitter timeline was full of outrage and anger against ‘class traitors’ who had betrayed their roots and voted Tory out of naked self-interest and greed. Apparently, the polls were wrong because people were too ashamed to admit they were thinking about turning their backs on all that is moral and just.
This is a convenient narrative and one I’d always shared until reading Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. In it, he proposes that there are six distinct foundations, or continuums, that act like ‘taste receptors’ on the moral tongue. They are:
- Care/harm: cherishing and protecting others.
- Fairness/cheating: rendering justice according to shared rules.
- Liberty/oppression: the loathing of tyranny.
- Loyalty/betrayal: standing with your group, family, nation.
- Authority/subversion: obeying tradition and legitimate authority.
- Sanctity/degradation: abhorrence for disgusting things, foods, actions.
He explains that those of us on the left tend to value the care/harm foundation most highly. We’re also moved by the liberty/oppression foundation and, in an incomplete way, the fairness/cheating foundation. We see it as morally right to care for others, protect the vulnerable from injustice and oppression, and to divide resources equitably. And, at least in terms of morality, that’s pretty much all we care about.
Those on the right meanwhile care about all six foundations. They see family values as a moral issue in the way those on left tend not to comprehend. Although they care about the care/harm foundation, they care mainly about protecting the groups to which they belong whereas liberals are more likely to care not just about people from different groups, but will also see animal welfare and the environment as moral issues. The sad irony is that when left wing voters caricature the right they are echoing the exact same moral triggers they so revile in other contexts. They feel betrayed, subverted and, it would sometimes seem, degraded.
Of course some voters may have voted Conservative for venal, self-interested motives but not all. Working-class voters who decided in favour of the Tories are not stupid or selfish; they just care about different things. They get upset by ‘scroungers’ soaking up benefits and immigrants ‘taking their jobs’. They feel angry at what they see as wasteful public services supporting the idle, the feckless and the undeserving. They care about ‘our brave boys’ fighting foreign wars and they care – at least to some extent – about God’s views on marriage, homosexuality and abortion.
There’s also some good evidence that the neurotransmitters that incline us towards liberalism or conservatism are genetically heritable. Obviously that doesn’t mean our political affiliations are predestined, just that our neural architecture is predisposed one way or another. Our brains are sufficiently plastic to allow for significant environmental factors to dictate the course of our lives. But still, it’s an interesting idea.
Haidt puts it thus:
People don’t adopt their ideologies at random, or by soaking up whatever ideas are around them. People whose genes gave them brains that get a special pleasure from novelty, variety and diversity whilst simultaneously being less sensitive to signs of threat are predisposed (although not predestined) to become liberals. The tend to develop certain ‘character adaptations’ and ‘life narratives’ that make them resonate – unconsciously and intuitively – with the grand narratives told by political movements on the left. People whose genes give them brains with the opposite settings are predisposed, for the same reasons, to resonate with the grand narratives of the right.
Whether you agree with or condone conservative concerns is irrelevant; other people’s moral principles are no more Right than ours. But as long as those on the left ignore, or worse scoff at, these concerns they’ll never understand why people vote Conservative. And, maybe more importantly, they’ll struggle to return to power without appealing to the full range of the electorate’s moral receptors.
Maybe we should understand a little more and condemn a little less.
Before you ask – and not that I should have to justify myself – I voted Labour. Although with some reluctance.
Update (13th December 2019): This post was written after the general election in 2015. For those that want to know, I voted LibDem, again with some reluctance, this time round.
Interesting. Different people have different concerns? I’m not sure how knowing the above will help the ‘Liberals’ to understand what is required to appeal to those who vote Conservative….any ideas?
Not yet, but I’m working on it…
It’s why Tony Blair’s New Labour was so successful.
for whom?
My impression is that people vote for all sorts of reasons. I voted Labour, but my sister, who is a nurse and caring person, could not bring herself to vote Labour mainly because she did not rate Ed Miliband. I wonder how many people kept Blair in power because of his personality. For those who think of Cameron as a toff there may be just as many who think he is just more “prime-ministerial”.
Well, of course. I’m just making the point that voting Tory isn’t just about self-interest, ignorance and greed.
why do you think the Tory vote is mainly from older, rich voters? 70% over 40 years old and the highest average income of all voters.
Well, anecdotally, having children tends to make one more right wing. I know I’m a lot less tolerant of sections of society now I have a vested interested in the gene pool
David,
I think you are wrong about people on the left caring for ‘people from different groups’. Read the Guardian, and you will find precious little sympathy for those who don’t belong to an ‘approved’ identity group. Poor whites are flocking to UKIP because the left despise them. Listen to Russell Brand–he breathes hatred. As do animal rights supporters–25 years ago, I was physically attacked (from behind, no less) when I was passing out leaflets advertising our organic meats.
Although I’d call myself a conservative libertarian, I’ve never had any trouble getting on with reds. However much we disagreed about politics, we shared the basic assumption that differences in a civilised society should be resolved peacefully and amicably. Debate was our intellectual meat and drink. Alas, this tradition is fast disappearing; to an extent I think our educational system is responsible, as education itself has become increasingly politicised.
Unsurprisingly, the old stalwarts of the Revolutionary Communist Party–who have now rebranded themselves as the Institute of Ideas–share almost all of the same beliefs about education that you and I do. They still sponsor debate in schools and in the annual Battle of Ideas.
I think you are right. Having worked in an inner-city school in a poor white area I was shocked by the level of neglect of the children and the general sense of hopelessness in the community. It was as bad as Brixton and other areas I have worked in.
I do believe in hard work and that we have to take responsibility for our actions. Poor outcomes are poor structure and poor personal decisions together not one or the other. However, this can’t be broken with the current education system the way it is. One of the greatest failures under New Labour was their inability to actually reform the education system to improve outcomes for the poorest.
Brand breathes hatred? Towards whom? Big money and corporations? Yes. Individuals? I never had that idea. Might it be your libertarian bias talking because you can’t stand people who tell you what to do? or vocal people. Because deep down attention seekers hate attention seekers. I really mean this as an attempt to analyze as I didn’t see your observations at all and even was a bit offended by classifying someone I can appreciate as demonstrating hate. But that’s my bias 😉
Chris– Maybe Russell Brand didn’t actually hate Andrew Sachs, but his nastiness was there for all to see; even most of the comments in the Guardian show an appreciation of the damage he has done to the left. For heaven’s sake, he even hated the Labour Party until Miliband took the trouble to massage his ego.
You should be a lot more careful when you speculate about people you disagree with. Ad hominem remarks are not a part of a reasoned discourse. If I couldn’t stand people telling me what to do, I wouldn’t have I spent nine years in the Territorial Army, where one is constantly told what to do. Attention seeking? I spent 25 years in the building trades, which is not an occupation that rewards attention-seeking behaviour. Nor is teaching, for that matter.
I’m not claiming to be right – just presenting an explanation. Think you’d enjoy Haidt’s book
I think the attractions of the status quo are important too, especially in times when much of our society is in flux. I voted Labour, then felt oddly reassured to find Cameron in power when I woke up. Odd place, the human brain.
This is very true. In the absence of a compelling alternative, people will vote for the status quo. This election should have been an open-goal for the Labour party, but they failed to appeal to their core support, failed to counter the austerity narrative, and failed to inspire the undecideds.
The Managed Birth process plus the mysoginistic approach to breast feeding and consequential reduction in levels of oxytocin in our culture is one such environmental influence affecting behaviours and decisions. Wouldn’t you agree?
In order to agree I’d need a little more context, but that sounds plausible, yes
“Working-class voters who decided in favour of the Tories are not stupid or selfish; they just care about different things.” But they are not just ‘different things’. Some of the things you list are largely myths. Some are outcomes rather than causes. Doesn’t mean those voters are stupid or selfish, but doesn’t mean the things they care about are just ‘different’ either.
David – You write as if all these ‘different things’ are realities, but we don’t know whether they are, and some are largely myths. For heaven’s sake, what are God’s views on homosexuality? Surely we have to explain people’s realities not by neurotransmission alone but by reference to their social experience (e.g. class positions) and the Murdoch-mediascape within which we all move and have our being.
Goodness – it would nuts to attempt to explain behaviour through neurotransmission alone. I thought I made that point. Culture and social norms is hugely important in deciding how we behave. But I do think it’s naive to blame the media for views we find unpalatable; Murdoch just provides confirmation bias.
That’s pure value judgement. You’re only interacting using a a couple of Haidt’s moral receptors. Why do you say they’re myths? If you dismiss real people’s real concerns as myths, where does that get you?
You say “they get upset by ‘scroungers’ soaking up benefits and immigrants taking their jobs.” There’s precious little evidence that either has a big impact on public expenditure or employment rates. These ideas are largely myths. I’m not suggesting they’re not real concerns for some people, but nor are they ‘just different’ things to say, food security or democratic processes.
Well, that’s a point of view. It’s one I’m largely sympathetic to, but I recognise that others feel genuinely angered by the unfairness they perceive around them. If you’re unemployed then it might be understandable to feel hostile to an immigrant who has job. If you’re struggling to pay the bills on a low income it’s probably seems reasonable to feel upset at the amount of benefit others claim. Dismissing these conscerns as myths doesn’t help anyone.
I’m not dismissing their concerns. I’m saying that some concerns are not ‘just different’ to others.
Those concerns are relentlessly amplified and inflated by the Murdoch press and the sitting government, in order to conceal the much larger costs to the public purse (war, tax evasion, corporate subsidies) and persuade the poor to vote against their own economic interests. They aren’t myths but they are blown out of all proportion for political ends.
If they feel genuinely angered and frightened by concerns that are not real, because they have absolutely no foundation whatever in reality, then they are stupid. It is that simple. There is no evidence at all that there exists a vasts army of workshy scroungers. There is no evidence at all that homosexuals are likely to be paedophiles or that being gay is even unatural to start with. None. Not a scrap.
Futhermore, if they are worried about the Bible, why not worry about lending and borrowing at interest, or women having short hair, or fabrics made out of more than one fabric etc? There is just as much Biblical condemnation of those things as there is of gays.
If they are worried about “our brave boys at the front”, why vote Conservative when they Tories have cut the funding for armed forces to the bone and beyond?
I am sorry. Conservatives ARE stupid. Objectively so.
A reassuring lie is often preferable to an uncomfortable truth. Good luck with your certainties.
But sanctifying loyalty is a reification of selfishness. Then those outside are seen as repulsive and not legitimate recipients of care, justice or protection. Read Rene Girard- it’s all in there.
That’s as maybe, but who’s to say it’s ‘wrong’?
You could always just ask one of these odd people. I’ll happily give you an explanation.
Please do 🙂
I’ve worked in government (during the Labour years) and seen with my own eyes how much waste there is and how little accountability. Society’s problems are best dealt with at the most local and personal level, not by a massive, unaccountable and wasteful bureaucracy. So I tend to see cuts in government programmes as a liberation of cash which ordinary people will now be able to use. I believe in ordinary people.
So for you it’s a coldly reasoned calculation? That’s unusual, but thanks for your perspective
What’s cold about believing in human freedom and reason? It’s inspiring to realise that we are responsible, and stop carping about the government. It is a realisation that has come to me from parenthood (I have five children).
Sorry – I wasn’t being pejorative – I meant to ask whether your judgements were coloured by tribal emotions and if so, how do we avoid these cognitive biases?
And you’re right – my views have changed greatly since having children
Haidt was one of my favourite reads of 2015. I particularly appreciated his assertion of two types of fairness – liberals (using his term) favour fairness as equality, conservatives as proportionality. When I hear fairness used a lot it is in the former context but I hardly feel that foundation at all – much more the latter.
Another aspect of Haidt you might mention is that whereas conservatives can predict the moral response of liberals, liberals do not understand conservatives. This perhaps explains the outrage I’ve seen on social media of my friends insisting I don’t care about anyone other than myself. I’ve directed them to your post in the hope that they will understand a little more. Haidt’s truths from conservatives “by destroying the hive, you don’t necessarily free the bees” and from libertarians about the market would be of interest, I’m sure.
Finally, it was really interesting when he was explaining about heritability and described a brother and sister, the former conservative, the latter liberal. I laughed all the way through as it described very accurately my and my (lefty) sister’s background.
I really liked the brother & sister story too – not my experience with politics but certainly lots of other areas. And yes, you’re right to point out that conservatives seem to be better at understanding liberal morality.
[…] De conservatieven wonnen onverwacht in de UK. Waarom stemt iemand conservatief? […]
I disagree with the assessment of left-Socialists mainly caring about foundations 1 and 2. I am a pro-active socialist and I hold all six in equal measure. However number 5 ‘respect for authority’ has a proviso for me; ‘…if that authority is deserved and fair’.
You’re welcome to disagree, but this about tendencies and statistical likelihoods. Your experience is your experience. If you want to read more I recommend Haidt’s book.
The politics of Britain is fairly basic, although over the last 100 years the right wing has become less right wing and left wing less left wing in terms of the large parties that go into power. In a nutshell for the uk, the conservatives reward enterprise and hardwork but most significantly ability and progression is rewarded. And as such you will always need periods of conservative rule to ensure the country does allow for people to better themselves and thus drive and grow the economy and country for the better. However, more left wing rule I.e labour is also equally important as it helps redistribute some of the extra wealth create by conservative rule to the people less able or unable to improve their own situation. If this redistribution of wealth and quality of life does not happen I.e we never have a labour government in power then it would effect the social balance and you would have uprising anarchy and turmoil that would prevent the country developing full stop. Both parties play their part in this simply by the conservatives allowing the people that generate the growth and development of this country to keep too much of what they make and separate themselves too far from others. labour rebalances this by giving a way a too high proportion of finance and life improvement to the people who have not been actually driving the growth and who take out more than they put in. The conclusion is that it creates balance! We had 3 terms of labour redistributing too much and so it is no surprise that we now have a second conservative term as it will take two or three terms to rebalance fully. then it will be labours turn to give away the excess to people less competent at generating it themselves to prevent social uprising. If labour had got into power it would have been too early in the rebalancing and devastating for the long term economic performance and quality of life for this country. Irrelevant of the millions feeling the pinch labour coming in would have been a knee jerk reaction of people wanting more out (without putting more in) for short term quality of life. Once the Tories have played their part then labour will always be back into power to redistribute wealth and quality of life for people who either can’t or do not want to do it for themselves. And the cycle will go on and on. And as long as it does this country will continue to be a better to live that 95% of countries in the world
All very interesting. But you need also to think about why people vote against their own interests and this is precisely what people have done in this case.
You don’t explore fear and the power this emotion has to control people. Neither do you explore the intimate connections between the media and the way people think. In a battle for hearts and minds the main stream media has been a vital component in the right’s colonisation of political thinking. In addition, people do not understand the basic concept of ideology: they fail to see that there are different ideas about how society should be run, what the role of the state is and what is the best way to run an economy. Enforced ignorance has seen people pushed out of political debate; the media has been instrumental in this and has sought to push people out of politics for the benefit of its owners. Where is the programming on the effects of austerity, on understanding how community life and political ideas have changed the UK? Notions of class have given way to the false meritocratic notion of ‘aspiration’. In essence your measures are all very well – but we need also an understanding of how we are socialised into our norms and values; how schools have promoted business and capitalistic ideas such as competition; how even uttering a left wing idea marks you out as the devil incarnate. Where also is an understanding of neo-liberalism and how this project has defined our thinking and our society for more than 35 years.
We need to understand how our political and social consciousness is developed; because it is through this development that we can best understand how people are induced to vote for parties that do not have their interests at heart; how notions like trickle down which don’t work have been accepted by the people; in effect we need a political education. And if people don’t have this they will never be in control of their own lives and will never have political influence again. History is key.
You make a lot of very good points that I find both interesting regarding the points I raised. Admittedly my points are narrow minded in terms of economics and how it evolves around that as a political see saw, which you response makes me considered. I would suggest people vote against their own interests for two possible reasons. Example one is no doubt many people with labour based ideals voted conservative this time round as no matter their long term believes social it is clear the country in the needs a conservative government for the next 5years I.e voting with your head not your heart, and as soon as the country is in a position that more dispersed and given to those that contribute less economically speaking they will vote their party of choice into power (labour) I.e short term pragmatism in voting. The second reason is maybe more long term in that realising that voting for their usual party (labour) and if they had come into power would have effected the long term position of country and long term possibility of labour governments and taking in more than you get out over their lifetime. Although you are probably right in that many would not have even considered the second reason although I stand by short term pragmatism as why they may have voted against labour this time round.
I personally think capitalism is just essentially a modern day version of survival of fitness that humans have conducted since cavemen. And it is not brainwashing into this frame of mind but actually the standard mind set of basic human instinct. I do not agree in the communist horse show theory of a utopia based on us having all been equal at beginning of modern man, because fundamentally from the very start the strongest, smartest, ones with most endeavour had more than people that were not as driven by basic needs.
I find it interesting that you suggest propaganda and education as such makes left wing the devil, as I think we are manipulated to think both ways. In my experience in the business I work in and the education I had by far the most outspoken and aggressive in their approach to make people think like them and use a crowd mentally has always been left win. That’s why it was a surprise that the conservatives won a majority for many as the labour based population is far more outspoken that the conservative base.
You only have to read labour’s promises to know that voting labour was the only humane thing to do. Sadly, I think many of us will regret putting the conservatives back into power without the liberal Democrats by their side to provide a more balanced view.
Why is fairness and skimming a little of wealth off the top such a bad thing.I don’t understand people who think it’s somehow better to take from the less fortunate and allow the super rich to get ever more wealthy. I don’t believe society should or could ever be entirely equal in terms of wealth but when people are genuinely suffering on the bottom rungs of society should we really just ignore it. I don’t like people exploiting the benefit system any more than the next person but for every so called ‘benefit scrounger’ there are so many people who have nothing or very little and have no way of changing that for themselves.
I’m happy with the way I voted but I’m saddened by the outcome of the election and by the way so many people have voted.
It’s like you didn’t read the post 😉
Merely commenting on it really. I wasn’t going to get into the whole psychology behind why people vote the way they do and have done this time.
But in so doing, you merely perpetuate the misunderstandings. If Labour is to regain power it needs to know how conservatives think. Like Blair did.
Well, that was not my intention. It came from an overwhelming sense of despair I think.
Perhaps many of the people with similar values to the labour party feel unable,even with democracy ,to make a difference. It seems that among the more privaleged sectors of society , people are often more confident and have a greater sense of worth. I know that’s a gross generalisation but I’ve certainly encountered that at times, and of course it’s those people who would tend to vote conservative.
As for those who would normally vote labour but have voted conservative this time , it is perhaps fear of change, misinformation and in some cases merely self interest. Who knows!
I agree that Blair seemed to understand how conservatives think and that maybe the labour party need a leader like that in order to succeed .
Some people see taxes as a necessary evil and others as a potential force for good. Politicians have lost people’s trust big time – no wonder people decided that they didn’t really want to give power to a party that seemed only to be concerned with spending (oh and borrowing to invest) our money.
[…] Why do people vote Conservative? […]
So there are six moral foundations that are shared by all humanity except Liberals? Who are all missing the exact same three? That sounds even less likely than the theory that Liberals are all morally superior to Conservatives.
And what does Liberal mean, anyway? Is Jeremy Corbyn a Liberal? What about Castro and Hugo Chavez, whom he admires? I can’t help but think that “Liberal” just means “people I like” and “Conservative” means “people I don’t like”. It’s a watered-down version of calling people “Progressive” and “Facist”.
If that’s what you’ve inferred I don’t think you read the text very carefully. These are tendencies, not absolutes. All it’s meant to point out is that people think differently and make moral judgements based on different values. It would be absurd to suggest that one group’s narrow interpretation of what is moral is superior to another’s. It was precisely that sort of binary thinking I was seeking to challenge.
The reasons posed for working class people voting Tory are the same media lies that are fed to them through the MSM and therefore it is an ignorance of the facts and brainwashing that cause working class people to vote Tory on the whole with the occasional aspiration to snobbery inasmuch as if I vote Tory I might become the priveleged!!
Erm, no it isn’t.
So I just stumbled on this page looking for a genuine answer. Every time someone here says the reason conservatives hate ‘dole scroungers’ and ‘the gays’ isn’t because their morality receptors are balanced differently, it’s because they’re propagandised, your response is “Read the article/book, their morality receptors are balanced differently”. Or just “No it isn’t”. I don’t find that a compelling argument.
The demonisation of muslims, single mums, gays, immigrants, dole scroungers is a political invention, that’s inarguable. People swallow it. Just as the credulous/busy/uninterested swallowed the WMD invention, and the Left was propagandised with Responsibility to Protect. You maybe swallowed that one yourself?
The question is Why do they vote the way they do? Propaganda frames a reality of important topics for their moral biases to respond to. There’s plenty of evidence on the ubiquity+efficacy of propaganda. Just look at the inverted reality of reporting on UK foreign policy.
Many fundamental Left policy positions, e.g. universal healthcare, climate action, international rule of law, anti corporate tax avoidance, public ownership of utilities, etc. are held by the majority of the population (in UK and US), and yet people still vote Right (for healthcare privatisation, fracking, aggressive wars, corporate welfare).
Could it be that morality doesn’t have much bearing on how people vote – what matters is how clued up they are on what’s actually happening?
There’s an additional concern. Because of its… constrained… moral perspective, the Left tends to see the Right as consciously evil when it does things the Left’s moral taste buds can’t perceive. By contrast, the Right understands the Left’s motivations but sees them as uninformed or, at worst, idiotic. That’s going to lead to very different reactions at the mass scale – righteous rage from the Left when its codes are violated, eye rolling dismissal from the Right when the same happens vice versa. These reactions are not a good formula for social peace.