Karyn Clark
Janel Spencer
Writing 101S
10 October 2019
Civil
Political Conversations
Social Psychologist, Robb Willer in his TED Talk, “How to
have better political conversations” published September 2016, addresses the
topic of the political divide in America and argues that it is the worst it has
ever been in centuries. He supports this claim by telling the audience how
divided our political parties are, then explains conservative and liberal moral
values. Then discusses a moral study he conducted using various types of
essays, and finally discusses a solution on how our country can come back
together. Willer’s purpose, of this TED Talk, is to help others have better
conversations when it comes to politics; so, when certain topics arise, we can overcome
them together as a nation. He adopts to a serious tone for his audience, listeners,
and others interested in this topic, so they can better understand other
political party ideologies and how to have reasonable conversations between
those individuals. I will be analyzing how Willer uses his credibility, as a
social psychologist to describe conservative and liberal moral values, uses movie
references to help simplify parties mindsets of being the good/bad guys, a
study he did on moral reframing with the use of essays, and how we can come
together as a nation to fix this divide.
One of Willer’s main claims is that the United States of
America is more divided now than in the past two decades. He
supports his claim by referencing his own studies and talking about how the
political hatred is a result of different deep moral values. In these studies,
he continues to show, how and why both conservatives and liberals drift further
and further apart. Willer uses the “robust findings” in political psychology by
Jon Haidt and Jesse Graham in his seminar. They state conservative morals are
focused around loyalty, patriotism, respect for authority, and moral purity, while
liberal morals are focused on equality, fairness, care, and protection from
harm. When Willer states, “And I think that most alarming of all of it is
seeing this rising animosity on both sides,” he is effective in showing the
audience that this can be seen in today’s mainstream media. When he declares
that most people, “don’t want their children to marry someone who supports the
other party, a particularly shocking statistic” he wants to help the audience
think about how they might be choosing their own political parties over the
potential happiness of their child/children. Knowing about conservative and
liberal moral values helps Willer understand why both don’t like each other and
why they tend to always talk past one another.
When using movie references to explain to the audience
how divided our country is and who each political party thinks they are, one of
the examples Willer uses is that we are in a zombie movie and each party thinks
they are the “Brad Pitt” in this situation, but are they? Conservatives and
liberals want to think they are the good guy who saves the day and their
counterparts are the mindless beings intent on destroying the very fabric of
society to spread their horrible disease, but is this true? When Willer claims,
“I think that the truth is that we’re all a part of this” it is one way of
explaining that both parties are not the good guys, but maybe they are the bad
guys. Later in the seminar Willer goes into his second movie on instead of a
zombie movie maybe we are in a buddy cop film instead. It’s the type of film
where the partners never get along in the beginning because one cop is
organized while the other is sloppy which inhibits their ability to get any
work done due to this difference. Willer goes to say, “it’s usually worst in
the second act when our leads are further apart than ever before. And so maybe
that’s where we are in this country, late in the second act of a buddy cop
movie torn apart but about to come back together” to make the audience laugh a
little and helped explain his view on the subject.
Willer, along side his colleague Matt Feinburg, conducted
a study using a technique called moral reframing. In the first study Willer and
Feinburg recruited liberals to write an essay trying to convince conservatives
to legalize same-sex marriage. What they discovered was 69% liberals invoked liberal
morals of fairness and equality while 9% invoke more conservative morals. The
second part of the study Willer and Feinburg recruited conservatives to write a
persuasive on making English the official language in America. What was
discovered was that about 59% of conservatives wrote more conservative values
of patriotism and loyalty. From the data collected the audience can see how
these moral values run deep and it’s going to be very hard to change those very
values. Willer and Feinburg recruited liberal and conservatives, in their last
study, and have them read 3 essays on the environment. The first group was
tasked with reading the first pro-environmental essay which invoked more
liberal moral values using loaded phrases like, “we are causing real harm” and
“it is essential that we take steps now to prevent further destruction.” Another
group read another pro-environmental essay but this one invoked the more
conservative values with phrases like, “Keeping our forests, drinking
water, and skies pure is of vital importance” and “We should regard
the pollution of the places we live in to be disgusting.” They found that
no matter what essay liberals read they tended to be pro-environmentalist
regardless, but conservatives were more for progressive environmental policies
if they read the moral purity essay. The studies Willer and Feinburg conducted helped
Willer find a possible solution to our divide.
Willer used his past studies to form a solution to help
this divide and help individuals have better conversations. This solution is to
connect to the opposite parties’ deep moral values. When Willer states:
“Studied this on a whole slew of different political
issues. So if you want to move conservatives on issues like same-sex
marriage or national health insurance, it helps to tie these liberal
political issues to conservative values like patriotism and moral purity. And
we studied it the other way, too. If you want to move liberals to the
right on conservative policy issues like military spending and making
English the official language of the US, you’re going to be more
persuasive if you tie those conservative policy issues to liberal moral
values like equality and fairness.”
This may sound like an
easy solution, but people tend to talk past others when it comes to political policies
instead of trying to tap into those individual’s moral values. If Americans
want to start coming back together as a nation, then we need to start tapping
into the opposite party’s moral values which in turn will start passing
policies to change the world.
Willer makes a calling to his audience to come back
together as nation because we owe it one another and we can’t afford to let the
hate divide us any longer. The audience has more middle aged to older people,
but as a younger listener this is a very moving TED Talk because this divide is
only going to get worse if we do not start agreeing on important policies. The
constant phrase, that Willer uses in the last part of his seminar, “empathy and
respect” is emotionally loaded and makes the audience think about how they talk
to someone who is of the opposite political party. Coming together as a nation
is the least, we each other as citizens.
Works
Cited
Willer, Robb. “How
to have better political conversations.” TED Talk, September 2016https://www.ted.com/talks/robb_willer_how_to_have_better_political_conversations/transcript?language=en
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