SIO452: Ambivalent Attitudes Promote Support for Extreme Political Actions

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:12 Thomas: And welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 452. Your host, Thomas Smith, and I haven't seen you for a minute. Workload, not going to lie, but here's the thing that's, don't I know, either good news or bad news, depending on how you look at it. We've got a ton recorded. Really good stuff, actually. Up soon is a multi -parter on on Brett Weinstein and whether or not he really is even a scientist. I mean, he is, but like there's major questions as to how qualified he actually is. Really interesting stuff. Um, it got a whole series on, uh, addictive drugs and like fentanyl and what to do about it. I mean lots of stuff recorded just behind on the getting it out to you. And I apologize for that, but it's, uh, And we have not yet cracked how to manage this entire workload. We're still working on it alongside, by the way, trying to make time to get working on telling the whole OA story and all the legal stuff, all that. So as usual, you can expect that end of the month kind of flurry of episodes. And, uh, we'll start that off officially today because getting this one to you. Now, this is an excellent study. Study. This is a really interesting one. Remember Joe Sieve from a previous interview. This study though, I'm going to warn you, was very difficult for me to understand. Don't know that that will necessarily be true of all of you. I don' t know. The effect that was measured in this study is so alien to how I do anything in the world, how I think about anything, how I do anything. I think, I've spent a lot of time, that's another reason for the delay is I a Lot of time thinking about this to try to make sense of it. I think what happened was it's just so alien to my way of thinking that I truly cannot put myself in the place of anyone who is like this. And so I had a hard time understanding the effect we're going to talk about here. As such, I was very worried about the recording because if I don't understand something. I don't have confidence that I've helped the audience to understand what it is. But having gone over it a number of times, I realized the information is all there. That's the important part, because I think maybe this will be something that maybe others grasp more easily than I did. Going to warn you that even if you think you do, it's a little more counterintuitive than you might think. If you think, if you understand this effect right away easily, I'm gonna say there's like a 98% chance you're misunderstanding it and thinking you understand it because the results are really counterintuitive. So I'm going to go ahead and get to the interview. And then I actually think I'm gonna drop back in at the end to re -explain a few things that helped me understand it better in case anyone had those lingering issues of understanding that I had. Nevertheless, this is a really interesting study and it's, I mean, it's kind of a depressing effect. After this break, why don't we get right on over to Dr. Joe Sieve and talk about how ambivalence enhances support for extreme action. Joe, welcome back to the show.

0:03:06 Joe: Thomas, thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here.

0:03:09 Thomas: My pleasure. I remember last time it was a super fascinating discussion. I can't wait to hear you've got a new paper in the works. I believe my wife cyber stocks you now. So, yeah, it's an honor, except it's you and a bunch of alt -right pieces of shit. So, you is it an honor? No, we for our other podcast, we have to track those people. So, it is a mixed bag, but no, no, it just kidding. It is a really cool study. That interview last time was so cool, and I can't wait to hear about this one. We start? Do you want to talk about how you decided embark on this study, or do you want to get right into it?

0:03:18 Joe: It's an honor. I cyberstalk you guys right back. No.

0:03:47 Thomas: What do you think?

0:03:46 Joe: Yeah, let me give a little background about it. So the paper is now accepted. So when we planned this, it was still in the works under review. And since then, the paper got accepted, which is super exciting. It is coming out in June in Science Advances. And the final title of the paper is ambivalent attitudes promote support for extreme political actions the back story is that I started this project in grad school as a collaboration with my advisor richard petty who is my co -author on this paper and we wanted to do was take a belief -based perspective on extremism, meaning, like, we know a lot from research about which people are most likely to engage in extreme action, especially in the political domain, and also what kinds of context, social networks, situations tend to promote those kinds of actions. But we know a lot less about within a given person, like which beliefs are they most likely to express in extreme ways. So that could be, you know, anything up to endorsing partisan violence against one's opponents, or it could be things that, you think of as still pretty extreme, but maybe not quite as extreme as all that, like confronting people or arguing with them about politics or trying to get someone fired from their job, trying to, you meet out some kind of punishment against your opponents or even taking extreme risks oneself so we were thinking about like which beliefs which political beliefs that people hold would tend to promote those kinds of actions and so what we did was we started out by studying a bunch of different properties of beliefs that we know from prior research tend to impact behavior so that's things like how confident is a person about what they believe how conflicted do they feel about it so they do they they take a one -sided position or do they kind of feel drawn in both directions to some degree that's ambivalence that's what I'm going to focus on here and there are other things that we looked at and that are you to be clustered with those kinds of variables like how important is the belief to a person how much do they know about it how much did they assign moral weight to it so these are all kind of properties of beliefs that have been studied a lot in the context of trying to predict behavior and so we wanted to get in there and look at those same types of properties in terms of predicting extreme actions up to and including political violence and what we ended up kind in on was certainty and ambivalence and we published a paper last year on uncertainty um and what were going to talk about here this new paper is about ambivalance and And the main finding, which surprised us initially, is that on one hand, people tend to act more on beliefs that they feel strongly about. So if I feel confident about my opinion about political candidates, I'm more likely to vote in that election because I feel strongly about it. Same thing tends to hold true if I feels kind of one -sided about my beliefs. All of my evaluations, all of my considerations on that issue point me in one direction. But we found that the opposite is true when it comes to more extreme things. So even though people who feel more conflicted about their beliefs are less likely to go out and vote for those beliefs, the opposite it is actually true for more extreme actions. So the more conflict that people feel, the more that they endorse going to extremes for their beliefs.

0:06:59 Joe: So this was the main finding in the paper. We started with this kind of puzzle and we wanted to understand why it happens and so I'll stop here this is the this is what we tried to do in the paper was first just like stress test this finding make sure that it's the real deal and holds up and then try to understand why it happened so what's the psychological process that explains why this flip happens extreme for versus more ordinary actions so that's the backstory those

0:07:24 Thomas: I have a bunch of questions about what going to be defined as extreme for the purposes of this, what's supporting that look like. But I think that'll probably come out in, you the description of, of what you did. So I could probably hold those.

0:07:36 Joe: Know, we had intuitions about what's extreme and what's less extreme. But the way that we dealt with this in the paper was to collect ratings of how extreme people perceive different behaviors to be. So we had a whole bunch of different behaviors that participants in our studies rated their willingness to do. So we asked them about their willingness to vote for a candidate that they liked and their willingness to volunteer, to donate money, to advocate for their views. Those kinds of pretty standard political participation types of actions. And then we also asked them a bunch of other things. Willingness to confront someone who was opposing your views or to try to get someone fired from their job if they were on the opposite side of political issues, willingness to fight and like even to sacrifice one's life. We had a whole spectrum of these behaviors and then we measured additionally how extreme people perceive them to be.

0:08:27 Thomas: Think it's so funny already. Just me. Like I'm thinking that how extreme with some exceptions, obviously people are going to think like, you Know, assassination is extreme, obviously, but with, but how extreme people rate stuff might have a lot to do with just like, how much does it impose upon a stranger in an interpersonal way? Like, like someone who's like I think we should recycle you well that doesn't seem extreme I'm willing to go to every stranger I see and be like are you recycling and then that's like fall this is a fucking extremist whereas if it's someone who had like you know a really extreme view like I Think we should end all ability to farm animals always you get rid rid of that, but they didn't tell anyone about it. I feel like we'd be like, yeah, okay. That's not that extreme. It feels to me, that's my intuition, but it feels like it's going to be way more like social based in terms of how much you're willing to, I guess it's like, now that I think about it, it's how much your willing to upset the normal course of the day with it, you know?

0:08:44 Joe: Yeah, right. Are you willing to turn over the apple cart for your beliefs or do you wanna kind of be lower key about it?

0:09:31 Thomas: In a way that feels to be almost like kind of, kind of separate from like the intent, the extremism of the actual belief. But I don't know if that's anything that, that that makes any sense for what you're talking about?

0:09:41 Joe: No, I think you're totally right. I mean, we're focused on the behavior itself. So it's kind of assuming some willingness to engage in the, or rather, you know, measuring people's willingness to engage In the behavior. And like you said, you can distinguish that from holding extreme beliefs, which which a person might not express, like you might have extreme beliefs that you keep to yourself. They might be completely extreme, but they wouldn't upset the apple cart in society society in the same way so I think I think it totally makes sense to talk about extreme beliefs as one thing um and extreme actions as another thing which don't necessarily have to go together you could engage in extreme actions on behalf of you beliefs yeah

0:10:21 Thomas: Yeah, okay, that's kind of what I was thinking.

0:10:23 Joe: Completely they're separate I think we're

0:10:26 Thomas: For the purposes of this study, you're looking at people endorsing extreme views, was it specifically? Or, okay.

0:10:32 Joe: Looking at people's um willingness to do things so if they they say that they're willing to, let's say, you know, confront or argue with a political opponent. So some of our studies took place in the context of COVID. So if you encounter someone who's like flouting COVID mitigation stuff, they won't wear a mask or social distance. Willing to get up in that person's face, start an argument about it, you with the situation that way.

0:10:55 Thomas: And so that's the thing that you're saying is connected to ambivalence. All right, I'm really curious, Maybe we step back and how did you, so you were in that process. You wanted to first validate that this exists and then try to, you come up with kind of a theory or framework for it.

0:11:10 Joe: Exactly. Yeah. I validating it part, where we kind of stress tested it, it. We looked at it in different contexts. We controlled for different variables. That stuff is fairly technical. I can get into that.

0:11:22 Thomas: Always love getting into it. I love, hold on. I love method talk though. Give me some method talk.

0:11:27 Joe: Want some method talk? Okay, for sure.

0:11:28 Thomas: Yeah, I'd love some method tech.

0:11:30 Joe: Was one issue in particular. I mean, there were a number of things that we had to address, but there was one thing in particular that was really important and that's come up in other research on this topic, which is response bias. And the reason that response bias could be an issue in this context is because most people don't agree to do extreme things. If you ask people, how willing would you be to fight your political opponents or commit violence? Most people are not super high on those ratings. So what we're really looking at here is a bit of an increase, maybe toward the middle part of the scale, not really seeing people give sevens out of sevens very often on those types of behaviors. Reason that that's an issue is because Because imagine if someone just gives you fours all down the line. So if you have a one to seven scale, you've got someone who's just kind of mindlessly going through your study, giving you a lot of fours. What could happen in that situation is that you start to see things, variables correlate with each other just because of the response bias, just because the person is giving fours to everything or sevens to everything, or could be ones to everything rather than because they're providing thoughtful responses. That's especially a concern when you're looking at variables that people don't tend to agree a lot with. So if most people give low ratings on both the behaviors and on ambivalence or whatever you're trying to correlate it with, then you run the risk of getting these kinds of spurious or not really psychological correlations. So that was a big thing that we had to try to rule out in our studies. So there's a little bit of methods talk. They

0:13:04 Thomas: Remember last time it was a lot of like pretend scenarios and kind of things like that. Is it going to be the same setup here where you're asking people like, all right, pretend you're this and how would you react? Or was it more based on real life?

0:13:16 Joe: Were hypothetical, but they weren't about hypothetical scenarios involving other people. So it was about, you personally, if this situation came up, how willing would you be to do this thing? So for example, in the COVID context, if we were talking to people who supported mask mandates, we would ask them, if you saw someone who was opposing mask mandates or refusing to comply with them, how willing would you be to confront and argue with that person?

0:13:46 Thomas: God, that just feels so situational.

0:13:48 Joe: What kinds of factors are you thinking of?

0:13:51 Thomas: For me, it'd be all about kids and how much it was going to affect people. Like, are we talking someone's in a, you know, a fucking hospital or something and they're exposing people versus somebody's, I just see somebody in a not very dangerous situation to begin with. And it's like, alright, it's better left alone kind of thing. I feel like that would be me but do the question that fine -grained or was it pretty much just like that general question

0:14:12 Joe: Was pretty general. I agree with you though, that there could be a lot of specific factors that would matter, but we measured it pretty generally just to try to get a sense of whether there was movement and whether there were differences between people in these kinds of relatively generic situations. So the idea is basically that people might vary just in how inclined they are to do these things and and so a generic situation could kind of pick up on that

0:14:37 Thomas: Well yeah give us a few more I know I mean the listeners love to feel like we're in the survey for a moment so what are some other things that we would have been asked

0:14:45 Joe: Yeah well so across our studies we looked at a number of different issues so I mentioned covid but we also had studies on gun control and abortion and environmentalism um the setup in our studies also in addition to the topics differed a bit so a really basic study that we ran was just to ask people about their political views and how conflicted they felt about their politics views and their willingness to engage in a variety of behaviors to support those views but then we had some other studies that had some more uh to them um there was one where we had people um in a raffle and they could choose any amount of money if they were to win so this was before they knew whether they were going to win the raffle or not but they could allocate any amount of that money to environmental charities and so we manipulated in that study whether the environmental charities were pretty mainstream like the nature conservancy or whether they were on the you know closer to the fringe uh kind of have a reputation for using more extreme tactics like just stop oil so that was another kind of setup that we used the

0:15:48 Thomas: Interesting doesn't directly necessarily ask what you're trying to ask, but it'll get you data that's to probably be pretty considered. People are going to think about that, I imagine.

0:15:58 Joe: The environmental governmental charities one yeah

0:16:00 Thomas: I don't know, just like my person intuition. I Feel like that would make a difference, my you answer, depending on who it was. And that's kind of an interesting effect to measure.

0:16:08 Joe: I was was nervous about that study because like real money to real organizations um just wasn't sure that people would be willing to make any kind of commitment along those lines and then lo and behold we found the same thing um particularly found that that the effect was I'm starting to get actually into the why it happens a little bit but just to just to note um that study it was particularly the case among people who felt really strongly about their views so they weren't only conflicted they also were conflicted about something that mattered a lot to them so they had they polarized positions on it so

0:16:41 Thomas: You tell me specifically what that means maybe

0:16:43 Joe: Um maybe this is a good time what do you think is this a good time to talk a little about our understanding of why this happens yeah

0:16:49 Thomas: But I I just wanted I to know um particular when you described that just then what results what were you talking about like people people were when they felt what they they did what in terms of that answer like that charity one you know I wasn't sure I understood kind of what you meant there hmm

0:17:04 Joe: Totally good question that was about environmentalism. And so the way that we did things in that study was we started out by first asking people what their views are on environmentalism, so how favorable versus unfavorable they were. Then after that, we asked them how conflicted they felt about that. So we had these two measures. One is just how favorable. Are you extremely favorable about environmentalism? Are you more lukewarm on environmentalism? Plus, how conflict did you you feel about that position?

0:17:31 Thomas: Do we say environmentalism was that because like I feel like super strong that climate change is a huge problem and I'm worried about it but I don't know if someone asked me general environmentalism I'd be like yeah I donno is that two different things in your mind or the same thing okay

0:17:45 Joe: Open to interpretation, I would say. Yeah. Mean, this goes to the, I mean our approach generally was to ask pretty broad questions to try to capture, you know, because there could be a lot of variability in the specifics that people bring to mind when you ask them about environmentalism.

0:18:03 Thomas: And youre just trying to get at these attitudes broadly and it I seems like for you the less specific the better in some things because you want to like just get these intuitions about how willing you are to to support certain extreme things right yeah

0:18:15 Joe: That was kind of our thinking about it. There are definitely trade -offs though, and I think you're kind of pointing out how you more know specificity kind you interpret the results you know and apply them to specific contexts

0:18:26 Thomas: Maybe in this one instance just because with it's something like climate change it's such a high stakes issue that I could see that like actually making a difference in how I would answer so if it's like you something really tied to hey this is a you know specifically climate change which I'm very worried about and here's a possibly extreme action you could back that would like have a tangible potential impact on that. Like, I probably would be willing to go a lot further on something like that than just environmentalism generally, but I don't know.

0:18:53 Joe: Interesting I mean you're making me wonder whether we could have stronger results if we had used a more specific topic part of the reason that we did that in that specific case was that ideally we were looking for a topic that could work for people across cross the political spectrum. So that was part of the logic of it.

0:19:11 Thomas: People are like, ah, we want to drill everywhere. Like I get it. And also it's like, I imagine you're using their confidence in their view, right? And so that's going to be relative to them anyway. Like if they say like, Like I'm, unless I'm misunderstanding, if they say like, yeah, I'm very sure of my environmentalism view, then all that kind of matters in terms of what they're thinking, right?

0:19:33 Joe: Exactly. Was our thinking. I mean, it probably also just like create some noise and a little bit of randomness in the data, because some people are thinking of climate change, other people are Thinking of other ways to like do environmentalism. Yeah, that I mean that was the logic was just to like, go broad and just kind of accept that trade -off to try to get at these general inclinations what we found was that um the more ambivalent people felt the more they were willing to donate to these extreme or kind of fringe environmental organizations and that was true especially when people felt really strongly about environmentalism in general so when people had really strong favorability on just that basic how do you feel about environmentalism question and then also they expressed that they had some conflict and felt ambivalent about it that seemed to be like the really potent combination so it's feeling conflicted about something that matters to the person you

0:19:54 Thomas: So what did that one find specifically? That like that environmentalism one? Huh?

0:20:32 Thomas: Oh, okay. I think I was misunderstanding. I'm glad I asked this. So I thinkI was looking at those two things as diametrically opposed, but the, so maybe can we get into that slightly? What's that difference? So it's people who rate the, like the issue as very important, but then are ambivalent about their feelings or I'm not sure I understand that.

0:20:51 Joe: Said it exactly right yeah I mean it is it's a little bit counterintuitive in the sense that like typically the more the more favorable people are towards something the less conflicted they feel about it or you know you could put it the other way the more conflicted people feel about something on average the less favorable they tend to be um so there is a relationship there just like you said in general but it seems like for that kind of subgroup of people for whom they don't go together quite in that way so people who feel really strongly about their position and yet at the same time they still feel some conflict about it and what exactly is going on in their heads is kind of an interesting thing part of what we were trying to figure out and is still, I think, a little bit open to interpretation and further research.

0:21:39 Joe: But basically, it's you feel really strongly and yet even so still have some conflict about it.

0:21:47 Thomas: Okay. I, yeah. I want to make sure I understanding exactly that concept. Can you give me another like issue maybe that, that I can make sense of this through? Like, I'm trying to think of what that would mean in terms of feeling strong. I still don't know if you mean feeling strongly about a given side of a, of a thing or just like an overall issue in general or your specific position on an issue.

0:22:10 Joe: It really about your specific position or having a very side on the issue issue is what seems to kind of increase the effect of ambivalence so people um another example you asked for another example so in some other studies we took kind of a similar approach except that instead of asking about a specific topic like environmentalism in some cases we just ask people you know where do you stand on politics are you more liberal are you more conservative um and then we ask them the same questions about that so how do you feel about your political views do you feel conflicted about them do you feel confident about them and we found a similar kind of pattern when we did that which is that the people who were most who for whom ambivalence was most strongly associated with being willing to do extreme things those were actually people who are more ideologically extreme so they were further away from the midpoint which again is a little bit it counterintuitive in that usually you would think that being more moderate would be associated with being more ambivalent.

0:23:17 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. So I think it's making sense. So you almost have like, like different axes on that or maybe, maybe three. It's like looking at the political spectrum is a good way to do it. So let's say just for fun, I'm just trying to understand here, if you got like some sort of zero to 100 scale of, I don't know, left to right or something or right to left for fun, but then you also have another scale, which would be, yes, but how strongly do you feel about that? So I could see someone being raised in a, you know, blue or red household that like for whatever reason, maybe their environment was pretty extreme, but they also haven't really thought about it much. So let's say you were raised somewhere where your household has pretty extreme values, but you're not really political. You might rate like, oh yeah, I'm answering these things on a super right -wing way. Like I'm super far right, maybe you'd consider that kind of extreme. And then someone asks you like, well, you on those beliefs? How much, like how certain are you and that kind of thing, they might say like, yeah, I'm not super certain. It's just kind of what I feel. And you're saying, if I have this right, that specific person is often open to like supporting extreme stuff because looking at that combination of answers.

0:24:31 Joe: Potentially, yeah. I feel like you're describing a profile of a person who could fit this bill.

0:24:36 Thomas: Yeah. Well, I've tried to, I just want to try to understand who we're talking about.

0:24:39 Joe: Totally. Totally. I mean, I'm not 100 % sure about that specific person. I think it's an interesting profile to think about because a who grows up in a in say in an ideologically you're

0:24:49 Thomas: Disregard that. I just meant the, I was trying to come up with a story in my my mind, but disregarding why, just like, is that the thing you're talking about where they have, they, they do measure extreme on a view, but they're the part I was, I was just wasn't understanding in my mind was could there, be more extreme, but they're, they're more, when you say the ambivalence part is measuring what their certainty in that view.

0:25:13 Joe: You're exactly right yeah ambivalence is measuring how conflicted they are which is related usually how certain they are so

0:25:18 Thomas: A, give me a question that would, indicate would that I'm I'm just curious, like, what's an answer that would indicate I have a high ambivalence about a position or something?

0:25:26 Joe: So we usually use these three measures the scale which is which go um mixed do you feel about your x so it could be your political views or your position position on mask mandates how conflicted do you feel about that same thing and how indecisive do you feel so mixed conflicted and indecise it's

0:25:42 Thomas: It's literally just those questions or, or it's like questions that get at those concepts.

0:25:45 Joe: Those questions those those are the questions those Are the words yeah

0:25:50 Thomas: So someone's just at, so you're just at. Oh. Okay. So how conflicted are you? That's interesting. I'm trying to think about how I would take that. Like if, if somebody asked me, okay, mask mandates, how can I probably be like, yeah, I totally support mask mandates. Is how conflicted are you man that's interesting I feel like that could what do you think that's saying about it because someone answered that like oh yeah I am conflicted and could they be answering like yes I feel conflicted because I I feel Like my belief is causing friction or going to cause friction or are we interpreting it like I'm conflicted in that that. I'm not super sure that I'm right about this.

0:26:27 Joe: A great question I think I know the answer to that but I can't prove it um so mean I think that part of what's going on is that that ambivalence kind of has two, it along two things with it. One of which is kind of a feeling of tension or discomfort, because if you're kind of torn between two sides, it's a little bit of an unstable position. Tend to feel uncomfortable about that. It's not a great feeling most of the time. So that's one part of what's going on. But the other part of us going on that I think also relates to your question is that it seems like people who do this are interpreting their ambivalence, meaning they're feeling mixed and kind of conflicted between two sides. They're interpreting that as a signal that they kind of get it, that they have both sides of the story, that They have complete information. And that is, uh, that's kind of associated with feeling justified or valid in your views. And so there are two things going on. There's this discomfort that people are experiencing which is kind of an affective or emotional experience along with this more cognitive or intellectual interpretation of that feeling which seems to be favorable people are thinking to themselves something like um means that I know both sides of the story I understand the other

0:27:45 Joe: Side and I know where I come down and so there's a kind of validity that comes with it. And so, so I think, you know, that kind of gets back to the two, the two versions that you were talking about.

0:27:46 Thomas: That's interesting.

0:27:57 Joe: I think that people are interpreting their, kind of feelings of discomfort as like a good signal. Does that make sense?

0:27:56 Thomas: Hmm oh I maybe but yeah I don't know because I feel like when you talk about a issue where I feel I understand both sides so I'm trying to think for me personally where do I really feel like I feel, like I understand both, sides of the bullshit like trickle -down economics versus you We need low taxes to make sure that every business, government, whatever, the economy.

0:28:27 Thomas: And then the other side being, I know this is definitely expressing, this is only showing you how much I feel like I understand the other site. No, but I grew up in that though. I'm kind of making a joke, but the whole like supply side economics. All that stuff. And then as I, you got older, I feel like I came to a better understanding of what's going on there. And I would feel like that's an issue where I would answer that I understand both sides. And I wouldn't say I'm at all conflicted about that. I don't know if I'm misunderstanding or I t know. Does that make sense?

0:28:53 Joe: It make sense. Yeah. So I mean, I think that it's possible to have one without the other. I think what's going on in our studies where people who say that they feel mixed, conflicted, and indecisive are then reporting more willingness to do these extreme things, I think probably they're experiencing both.

0:29:15 Thomas: Interesting.

0:29:16 Joe: Pointing out, they don't have to go go together, right?

0:29:19 Thomas: Yeah.

0:29:19 Joe: You could, you could feel conflicted and not think that's good. You might not want to be conflicted. And like, you'll reduce that feeling of conflict at your earliest opportunity. Or you could think that, you know, both sides and not feel conflictED about it. So that's another way that it could go. And they could be separate. But it is also possible that, you feel subjectively conflicted, that's associated with tension. And it's also possible to interpret that as a good signal. So I think that unless you have both of those things, we might be talking about a slightly different scenario where I probably wouldn't predict that you on the issue of trickle down or supply side economics, I probably wouldn't expect you to be more extreme. Although if you are just, you know, we're in a safe space here and no judgment. But I think that probably our data wouldn't predict that for you given what you said about your own views on it

0:30:11 Thomas: Interesting. Well, now I have to ask again is that I would be probably pretty extreme in terms of my views about taxation. It would be pretty extreme left. But if it's more about like, yeah, but are you getting in people's faces and grocery stores about it? Then I don't do that with anything. So, so which is it more the second thing that you're measuring or is it more just like your views?

0:30:32 Joe: It's more the second thing yeah it's not the second yeah

0:30:35 Thomas: Okay. Interesting. Interesting. The only thing, and sorry, I'm harping on this, but I genuinely curious about, because like, I wonder when you first said it, I would interpret combining these things, like knowing that these people, ultimately the point of your study, knowing that the kind of the group of people we're looking at are more willing to support extreme things or to take those extreme actions, right? Is that ultimately the group? I almost wonder when we talk about conflicted and first thing I thought of is there are these positions, like let's say I, when it comes to me and climate change, like there's a part of me that's like, yeah, it's really possible that, Given all I know and how grim it looks, I'm like thinking we need to do some pretty extreme things to get us to where we need to be as a planet. I can, I can imagine that being some, some policies that people would find extreme. Maybe like, I think we I shouldn't think I might support certain, certain behaviors in a way that people would find extreme. Let's just say that. If you ask me, are you conflicted about that? That's an interesting thing, because that's one where I think in my mind, and I'm just using me, and maybe I'm not representative whatsoever. I'm usually not. But when I use me, I could interpret conflicted as meaning like, yeah, I don't really know. I'm kind of like 50 -50. Or I could interprete to mean, yeah. I'm pretty certain that the logical conclusion of my views is that some pretty stuff might need to happen. Happen and that would just make me feel conflicted and wondering if that's anything that that might have an impact on this like so therefore that would make sense that someone if that is a person or if it's just me that would makes sense that they might be willing to support extreme stuff but it might be out of that conflicted answer might be like yeah I fool I think this is true man this sucks but I think it's true

0:30:40 Joe: Good yep exactly yeah

0:32:22 Thomas: No

0:32:23 Joe: So so like potentially there could be the opposite direction of effect also is that kind of the idea mixed

0:32:31 Thomas: I think It would I think It would be the same effect but maybe with a different explanation maybe if I'm if I I'm understanding things correctly, but I could be wrong. Like when you talk about the conflicted and the other two adjectives you use, maybe the other too wouldn't hold up to that hypothetical person. What were they again?

0:32:45 Joe: And indecisive those are usually the three mixed conflicted and indECISive

0:32:50 Thomas: So those are different. Yeah, mixed could almost go that way, but indecisive, I guess. Well, I don't know. Okay. So now I'm just going to put this forward as a hypothetical, as a different person that might be the same effect that you're describing. Describing I just think when I have a view that feels like a bunch of people are getting something wrong so like I mean I don't really feel this way but I'm I'm a vegetarian and I could imagine being more vegan and a little more extreme and thinking look everyone is fucking wrong about this and we need to put a stop to me I'm just hypothetically like if I had a more you view on that like this is horrible everybody need we need to put a stop to this factory farming we need to you know like not let people eat this much meat you know that kind of what people would think is pretty extreme if I could imagine a hypothetical um I could Imagine answering that I would be conflicted or uncertain if I felt like the solutions to the problem as I saw it were extreme does that make sense even

0:33:24 Joe: Think it makes sense yeah

0:33:50 Thomas: Though I still believe the thing yeah now I now I want to know Is that consistent with kind of what you're thinking or am I going a different direction in terms of interpretation?

0:33:50 Joe: You're going a different direction but I think its a totally reasonable direction and its something that we gave some thought to during you know the process of the research what it eventually led us to was needing to run more studies to get at the direction of the effect and the reason I say the direction of the effect is because um it's possible along the lines of what you're saying that if you feel like you have to do extreme things that might make you feel conflicted

0:34:03 Thomas: Interesting. Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm thinking. It's more based on like, shit, I think the logic, like, sorry to give another example, but I know this wouldn't be one you'd likely ask, but for me, there's the antinatalism and kind of that viewpoint people have or that philosophical thing. Well, I, oh, really? Oh, I didn't know that. I'm so busy.

0:34:40 Joe: It's been in the news recently yeah there's there's some couple that's going viral on social media these days and people are talking about some natal a pro Pro, anti, I don't really know. But yeah, I've been seeing some of that.

0:34:47 Thomas: For antinatalism? Okay. Well, think when you just look at straight philosophy, like the philosophy of antinatalism, I actually don't, me personally, I don't think there's a good answer to that. I actually think, mind you, I have three kids. I think that philosophically it's not justified to have kids. It's just like a view I have that I can't really poke a hole in the arguments, but my feeling is like, yeah, but I'd rather just not not exist and not have kids. So I don't care, you know, like that's, but setting that aside, I I don'T have kids, I'm somebody who's like, philosophically, I'm like, yeah, I'M ANTINATALIST. Like, I don't, I don't think it's right to potentially expose innocent life that doesn't get a choice in the matter to suffering. Like I just think that's wrong. And I could see, like, let's say I think that's logically sound. I'm really like just certain about that part. Like in terms of certainty, I'm certain that that's true, let's say hypothetically but if I am certain the only thing could to really be done about that is well then people shouldn't be allowed to have kids essentially I mean unless you're like well yeah I'm just gonna only look at myself sure but like in terms of public policy it'd be like yeah we can't let people have kids that would be super extreme and I would find myself being like oh that's really extreme I'm feeling conflicted about that I'm not sure like so I think the the thing I'm getting at that I think you already understand, but I couldn't resist putting in another example

0:36:10 Thomas: In case anyone's not understanding what I'm saying.

0:36:10 Joe: Good example. Yeah, I'm with

0:36:12 Thomas: Yeah. It's like the more, the more extreme it feels like the solution to the problem will have to be, the more I would be very worried about it and I would be conflicted about it. And I might express uncertainty when it's not really uncertainty in my position. It'S like just the stakes are higher.

0:36:32 Joe: You. Yeah, yeah. Do think that that can happen, but I don'T think that that's what we found.

0:36:40 Thomas: And like that right as I said I'm like yeah also I just feel like that's a me thing and a lot of people aren't like that I don't know oh

0:36:45 Joe: Well, no, I mean, I think it could be it could Be a general thing. I think It makes a lot of sense. It wouldn't be surprising to me at all if that's something that happens pretty generally. The reason that I say that I don't think that's what we found is because um some of our findings seem more consistent with people's ambivalence causing them to be more willing to engage in extreme actions what I think is is going on is related to this concept of compensating so I don' know we talk about over compensation in everyday life right if you see someone who's who's driving conspicuous consumption types of things right it could be an example where someone is trying to send a signal to try to deal with something that they're insecure or uncomfortable about um how we interpret uh finding that people are essentially trying to signal strength because they're feeling uncomfortable and and weak or insecure about something that matters to them so that's you know one element of that is what I mentioned about the effect being stronger when people have more polarized or extreme attitudes so they're they feel more strongly about their views that seems to kind of activate their ambivalence or their conflict a bit more um we also find that people report feeling uncomfortable and that seems help explain their willingness to do these extreme things so those are a couple things that seem consistent with with this kind of compensation story that people are feeling insecure about their position and they want to signal strength in this domain um I do want to mention this study that we ran because I think it's cool and fun and because I think it helps to uh of unpack what's going on um so um mentioned that that we know we think that people when they interpret their ambivalence positively that's part of what's Going on here they think it's kind of a good sign that they understand both sides or that they have complete information or unbiased or something like that the reason that it was important for us to think about that is because um could feeling conflicted could increase extremism for a couple of different reasons so like one reason is that people might not want to keep feeling ambivalent and they might try to go to an extreme to take a side and be done with it to kind of overcome their ambivalence but there's another possibility, which is that people might think that their ambivalence is a good thing. They don't intend to become less ambivalent or to take a clearer side on one end or another, but they might still feel uncomfortable about it. And so that's been called, this has kind of a jargony name in research literature, that kind of thing is called symbolic self -completion. This is when people feel uncomfortable, uncomfortable about something. So let's say that you experience a threat at work or in a relationship context and that makes you feel insecure in that domain people then oftentimes will try to kind of reassert competence in that area so they'll try to show off that they're such a good worker or you know that they are that they so charismatic or whatever the case might be um

0:39:46 Thomas: Like I can imagine that with masculinity. People are insecure about their masculinity. And so they do like a hate crime to feel tough.

0:39:55 Joe: Would definitely be an example

0:39:57 Thomas: Of the dudes I went to high school with would fall in that category.

0:40:00 Joe: How are they doing now

0:40:00 Thomas: I probably just voting for Trump and loving it, you know, just like super excited to potentially storming the Capitol next time.

0:40:11 Joe: Yeah I mean that's the kind of thing right I think that um what we're seeing in in our data might be something similar where where just like someone might wanna be a real man or a good worker or a person, people also wanna be kind of true to their beliefs. They wanna be good group members or they want to be good supporters of abortion rights or whatever the case might be. So we ran a study to kind of test this, to see which one it was. Is it that people wanna reduce their ambivalence and take a side, Or is it this more kind of symbolic self -completion, overcompensating type of deal? So we ran an experiment where we randomly assigned people to either read about how great being ambivalent is. It means that you're fair, you're unbiased, you're thoughtful. In the other condition, we told them about how terrible it was to be ambivalent. It means you're unreliable, you're wishy-washy, you lack principles. And what we found was that this had a pretty big impact on the effect. So when people were told that being ambivalent and seeing both sides was a bad thing that they should not want to do, the effect went away completely. Ambivalent people no longer were more willing than anybody else to do these extreme things. And so that seems to suggest that it's not about reducing the ambivalence. Because if you tell people that their ambivalence is a bad thing they should want to get rid of it and if the reason that they're going to extremes is to get rid of well that should that should increase the effect if anything it didn't do that it made the effect go away and the effect was strong only when people were led to believe that ambivalent is a good thing it means they're unbiased it means they have complete information and so that's that's how we were able to tell these two two explanations apart. It doesn't seem to be that people want to get over it and take a side. It seems to be the people view the political domain as like legitimately two -sided. Many people do. Of course, people vary a lot in those beliefs, but it's a common belief, at least among American participants, that there are two sides to political issues legitimately.

0:42:19 Joe: And so people, many people kind of want to stay that way. Those are the people who are showing this kind of reaction.

0:42:19 Thomas: They want to stay that way? What do you mean?

0:42:27 Joe: Think that seeing both sides is a good thing. It's how you should view the political domain.

0:42:33 Thomas: So when you told a story about people being ambivalent, being good, then they kind of—well, shoot, now I'm mixing up was this completely separate from the extreme action stuff and the supporting extreme whatever was this like a different sub experiment or

0:42:47 Joe: Is the same thing. So this is why it's great that we're having this exchange, because I'm sure that I didn't explain that clearly enough. And so now I get a chance to clarify. Was the same things as the other studies that I described. So people would report how they felt about an issue and then how conflicted they felt about it. But we added something this time, which was we convinced people to view their ambivalence either positively or negatively. So half the people we convinced to view their ambivilence as a good thing, something that they should want. The other half, we convinced them to view it as a bad thing, as something that they should not want. That was the design.

0:43:26 Thomas: I got that so think I got mixed up on the effect of that so

0:43:29 Joe: We found is that, yeah, we told people that ambivalence is bad means that you lack principles and you're wishy -washy then people no longer showed the effect so ambivalent was no longer predicting extreme actions or support for extreme actions exactly

0:43:46 Thomas: Yeah so it still is that—okay. Okay. That's where I just got a little confused. So, okay. So it is. So that effect went away. So once you made people think ambivalence was bad, then ambivalent people no longer supported extreme stuff. Is that right? Okay.

0:44:01 Joe: That's exactly right yep it's

0:44:04 Thomas: Interesting. And so take me again, and apologies. I don't know why that was that my brain didn't click on that one.

0:44:10 Joe: A little it took us months

0:44:12 Thomas: So can you take me through that, that that how you guys interpreted that again like how that um of the logical steps of of what you take that to mean right

0:44:12 Joe: To figure out Yeah, absolutely. Well, so let's assume that this discomfort story that I'm telling, this kind of overcompensating story that I told is what's going on here. So people feel uncomfortable when they feel conflicted and they react to that in some way. A question and that question is, are people who are ambivalent more supportive of extreme actions because because they don't want to be ambivalent. They want to get over it and take a side. That could be one reason. And so if they want to take a slide, they take an extreme position, and that's a pretty good way to take aside. If that's the case, then making people more comfortable with their ambivalence, telling them that it's a good thing, don't worry so much about it. That should help them chill out, no longer feel like they need to compensate and take a clear side. So that was one possibility. Other possibility is that, no, they don't want to get over it. They don't want to take a clear side because maybe people tend to think that the political domain is legitimately two -sided, like there are sides on those issues. And if that's the case, then what would make the effect go away would be convincing people of the opposite, would be telling people, actually, you're wrong. Ambivalence means means that you lack principles and you're wishy -washy and so by manipulating whether people viewed being conflicted as a good thing or a bad thing we wanted to try to tell uh wanted to get at the mechanism what's the process are people trying to get over their ambivalence and take a side or are people try to cope with their discomfort and end up overcompensating it

0:45:55 Thomas: And so this is key evidence for why you think it's it's like you think its the people just think there's two sides to things so the ambivalence you're measuring is less about an actual ambivalent over the questions and is more about people just thinking, well, there's two sides to it. Not sure I understood that. Right. Okay.

0:46:11 Joe: Could be both that yeah it's—should just say that this is a tricky process that I think there's still some open questions about so just to backtrack a little because maybe this is a good time to do that we started just to remind folks we started with this empirical finding where usually more ambivalence reduces behavior people are less likely to vote for a candidate that they they feel conflicted about. But we just find this reversal, and it shows up over and over again, and it seems to be robust. And so we're trying to understand it. And our best understanding of it is that it seems to be compensatory. People are coping with discomfort. And it seems like that is causing them to take more extreme actions as a kind of signal, as a compensatory response. But that leaves open details about what's going on under the hood and potential things that we could follow up on. So yeah, I think it's still kind of a live research question, but that's where we're at right now.

0:47:12 Thomas: Yeah. No, sorry. I, I, yeah, I don't know what's why it's not clicking for me. So you're saying that experiment with the convincing people ambivalence was, you know, kind of good or bad that led you to believe that, that, it's not about compensating or it is about like, I that's the part I think, I think I'm misunderstood what you said okay

0:47:30 Joe: Good point to clarify. I think that it suggests that it's about compensating. It's About coping and trying to feel okay with the the situation, with feeling conflicted, especially if a person is not really trying to get over their conflict and take a side, if they think that, you know, ambivalence is kind of the way that it's going to be, but it's still uncomfortable. So it seems like that, tension that is what's driving it. So one thing that I, that's potentially interesting is how this relates to both sides sidesist rhetoric.

0:48:05 Thomas: Yes please deliver that into my veins because I hate both sides

0:48:08 Joe: I thought you might like that. It's tricky. I mean, I don't want to go beyond the data here. But essentially, what we did in this study, in those two things that I just described, like, you know, ambivalence is a good thing, or ambivalence is a bad thing, that pretty much parallels a lot of rhetoric that you hear in journalism and on social media about, you are there really two sides to political issues or not? I feel like that's a a meta debate that plays out a lot. For example, on the left, progressives are more likely to believe that one side is pretty much correct on many issues. Centrist Democrats are more likely to believe often that both sides have a point. And so one thing that we're doing is digging into that and how that rhetoric actually affects people's responses.

0:48:55 Thomas: What's weird is based on everything you've said it's like it sounds like by that logic the centrists would be more likely to support extreme stuff or or where's that disconnect

0:49:06 Joe: Kind of an ironic finding that, you know, you might have expected that getting people to accept that, there are two sides to things, it's complicated, that might chill people out. Our findings suggest that maybe it's not so simple. There could be another effect of rhetoric like that, which could be to kind of embolden people to an extent, to give people a sense that like, yeah, that's the lay of the land. Like I get it. I'm going to take my position. There's a kind of licensing or justification that get from that kind of rhetoric potentially. That's one implication. I think that that's just a kind of a provocative potential takeaway from this that also be an interesting future direction. So like one thing that I'd like to do in in future studies is to test more uh of both sides rhetoric meaning like uh does the view that politics is really two -sided versus politics is really one -sided um affect people's responses I'm

0:50:07 Thomas: That would be fascinating I will say that that my my main issue a lot of my issues with the both sides of stuff is oh boy yeah well this is I I love this because it forces me to clarify kind of what I think in my own mind I I feel like it's less about an individual effect and more about creating an ecosystem that just enables moving further to the right like if if your stance is and and okay maybe the difference is if if you're talking about both sides of them in a generic sense versus like on an actual issue so like I think that in attitude the media has uh someone like the new york times that like they They just need to kind of report what both sides think. And it's sort of, you know, agnostic as to what we're talking about. Like it can get so, extreme, but still you need to like make sure you're providing balanced coverage and equal time kind of thing. That to me is a big issue because it normalizes extreme views. Now I'm like, I'm just thinking through this, that might be something different than what you're talking About, right? Or is there, or do you think that's the same thing?

0:51:10 Joe: Not sure I think that's interesting um I mean I kind of think that you know this is a new direction really I mean we use this kind of rhetoric in our studies but really it's a it's new question um know what what could those effects have and so you could be kind of a conveyor belt type of thing I think like you're describing um it plays a role in shifting people toward an extreme um is that the kind of thing that you're seeing that

0:51:31 Thomas: Trying to think of the difference. So the being this emboldens those extreme people who aren't conflicted this effect you're talking about where it is the conflicted people that are worried about supporting extreme stuff. Does that make sense? Hmm.

0:51:45 Joe: Does make sense yeah one thing that I don't know yet is you know how this kind of rhetoric could affect people differently depending on where they fall on the political spectrum so we were focused you know on a pretty specific subgroup um you know as far as this effects go but like there could be other things going on as well

0:52:01 Thomas: Right. Yeah. And well, that's a good that's a good thing to clear up when that again the title of the paper being effectively ambivalence sort of being well, I don't know if I want to use causal language, right? But like being associated with supporting extreme stuff, right that still within the data somewhere would also just super extreme people who support extreme stuff right like Like the certain, yeah. Okay. So it's not, it's not as though this effect encompasses all of the extremists. It's just that this was like one particular group of extremists that was counterintuitive.

0:52:34 Joe: Yeah and I think like in the context of the extremism literature extremism research more generally where ours kind of fits in is this compensatory route to extremism there there are lots of different ways that someone could become extreme or engage in extreme actions um some you know some of those we know lots about definitely having more extreme attitudes does tend to predict more extreme behavior too um this is this novel um that predicts it and and it's this root which is about feeling uncomfortable and trying to compensate or cope with that um leading people to to extreme actions so that's um part of what we're trying to add um not the only example of this kind of like tension or discomfort um to extreme actions um but it's been relatively understudied and um hasn't been studied in in the context context of you know which beliefs or ambivalence so it's definitely not uh know this isn't everybody who's extreme this is one uh way that you can get there but it's a little bit of a counterintuitive one um so that's why we dug into it

0:53:39 Thomas: Joe, this is super fascinating. I always like to ask what's, so we've talked about a lot of it or alluded to a lot of it. What's, what's next? Like what, what do you really hope to be looking at next? Is it whether or not it's, you question or a different study, what is on the horizon for you study wise?

0:53:54 Joe: Um great question uh on one hand there's you extending this to see whether it shows up in other contexts so that that's one straightforward type of extension. So do we find the same kind of thing in other cultural contexts or in other political systems? That would be one thing that we wanna get into a bit more over time. Also in other domains. So can we find similar things in consumer behavior or in close relationship contexts, for example? The other thing that just mention is ambivalence is relatively understudied. I shouldn't say that. It's been studied pretty extensively but there are still lots of open questions specifically in politics in about ambivalence and so one thing that that I've been working on lately is how people perceive those who express kind of two -sided ambivalent positions about politics so know relative to someone who takes a one -sided stance so the third person perspective I've been talking here about the first person perspective but also want to you drill in a bit more to the third person perspective and how those people are viewed by others so those are a few things that are kind of on the horizon thank

0:54:58 Thomas: Love it. That's—looking at very interesting questions. I, uh, I love this. I can't wait to have you back on another one. Cause that, that, are super fascinating. So Joe, Oh, is there anywhere you want to appoint people? Send listeners?

0:55:08 Joe: You if you'd like to learn more about this research or my other work you can check my website j-o-e-s-i-e-v.com, josev.com, check it out feel free to email me if you would like to get in touch for any reason I'd love to hear from you?

0:55:20 Thomas: Love it. Uh, sure you'll get more emails from my wife about future stuff. No, actually I'm not kidding.

0:55:24 Joe: I hope so. I hope so.

0:55:25 Thomas: You will. Yeah. Uh no, super fascinating thanks so much for taking us through that and looking forward to more.

0:55:27 Joe: Great. Thanks, Thomas. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

0:55:36 Thomas: Right. So here's me in the bonus end extra, just in case I emailed with Joe a little bit too. And he said, oh, we wrote a blog post that like, truly is just a hard hard thing to understand. Like that I just could not relate to this at all by putting myself in that place. And I don't want to sound holier than thou, or maybe I do. I don'T, it's not a fake. This is a hundred percent. Objectively speaking, there is no chance that this is a thing I would ever do. Like being ambivalent on something and therefore supporting more extreme action is so fucking backwards to me that I could not imagine. I could not imagine, and so I think I was trying, I think you heard me in the interview kind of fighting it and trying to figure it out and make it into something else, but there's this blog post they wrote because this was hard to understand that I think helped, and it wasn't available at the time of the interview. Understanding that we went past pretty quickly, and when I was editing I genuinely thought, oh, I know what happened. He must have said the wrong thing. Then I went and looked it up and I was like, no, he said the right thing. The whole deal with when they studied prompting people to believe that the ambivalence was that's when the support for extreme actions would remain. When they prime people to belief that whatever it was, was not justified. So the ambivalence was not justified. The effect disappears. So they're saying, this support for extreme actions is not about reducing your feeling of ambivalence. And that took me a long time to try to wrap mind around and make a comparison to a boss. So by analogy in this blog post, they say, consider two possible bosses. Both bosses report thinking very highly of themselves, but one boss is secure in that extremely positive self -assessment, but the other one is conflicted about it. Latter boss might suffer from imposter syndrome. Imagine you tell the boss with secure high self -esteem that you think a mistake was made in introducing a new company policy. The boss might thank you for pointing it out and then aim to correct it. However, what happens when you tell the boss with fragile, high self-esteem about the mistake? Might instead lead to an extreme reaction, perhaps berating or even punishing you for the disclosure. That boss is taking what might appear to be strong action but it is largely to compensate for their underlying high self-esteem fragility that is their underlying weakness but now they talk about that um thing I just told you about priming people to think it's justified or not and then After that they add this is like telling your boss that but their imposter syndrome is valid. It leaves your boss in a fragile, insecure state in which the boss might feel a need to justify the high self -esteem by acting in a powerful, extreme way. I hope that helps a little bit. I mean, it's still, it is so alien to me, but have I to say, once I understood it, I do see a bit of that on the left. I don't mean I'm calling out the left more than the right. I'm just saying, because that's who I interact with. I can think of people who I have thought online, hey, you didn't really think very deeply about this issue, but all of a sudden you jumped to like an extreme statement, you know, like ACAB or whatever. And again, that's not to say that the extreme statement might be unjustified, like, it's to say, I've noticed at times people's understanding of an issue seem out of step with how extreme their rhetoric is. And I do think that could be this effect sometimes. Like you're having a discussion and someone just wants to signal this exact thing. Like they don't really know much about the issue, but they have a far left view of it just because of their environment and what they tend to believe. So they want to signal that strength by supporting extreme far left action. This is not to single out the left. This is just saying I've seen it. I've seen this. That's all. Noticed this. And again, that's not to say that if you have a very knowledgeable and secure position far left that you're advocating extreme action is like That's not what that means at all. I'm just saying sometimes I think that's where we see this effect. That's where I sometimes see this effect on left in some like online discourses. Is that feeling of someone jumping to that far left position. And it's also sort of a conversation ender. It's a way to like get kind of out of that interaction by still signaling that they're far lefty, even though you get the sense that they haven't actually explored the issue that much. That's the best I can wrap my mind around who this real person is in terms of politics issue think that's what we're talking about here. And so on the right, I'm sure there's the same thing. People are very far right. In fact, actually, you know what snapped into focus for me was thinking about kind of how my mom talks politics. She's far right just on basis of like her atmosphere where she is. She also doesn't really care that much, I think, about like the details. It's more, I think her politics is more socially determined. So often the positions she takes are just about quickly signaling a far right view in a very not thoughtful way. And the reason I just had the hardest time grasping this is this is so fucking alien to me. Like I cannot understand being like this in any way, shape or form. Them. And maybe you folks might feel the same. That might be why you listen to my very niche show where I try to actually get to the real truth on everything. And I don't take any easy shortcuts or anything. If I feel ambivalent about an issue, then I'm not going to support strong action for it. I'm not going to support extreme action on it because I'm ambivalent. If I'm like, ah, I'm Not sure what the right answer is here. I'm not going to be like, ooh, better overcompensate by saying, let's do a genocide or something like, I don't, that's so alien to me, but it's because my views are not socially determined at all. And that's me adding that in. I actually am not sure if that's part of what they would say in the study, but that's what I feel like. I feel my views to the extent, believe I my views are very logic -based. You might not agree with my logic all the time, but the way I arrived at them is based in logic and empathy and I came to a situation where I was like boy I don't know which of these solutions is right because on one hand this would really you this benefit but it would have this downside over here to this other group of people I'm gonna be like oof man maybe there's a compromise maybe like I'm good that's where I'm going to go like is there a maybe that's a time where a centrist solution makes sense like if you're really ambivalent about a thing. You're not sure either way. More likely, I just won't have a far left view if I haven't justified. That's what it is actually. Someone says, what's your view on eco -terrorism? Given, not a general, if they're like, like, what's your view on should these far leftists take over this, I don't know, government facility here? And I don't really know anything about it. View will be, I don't know. I'd better research that. I do think the group we're talking about who has this effect, think they're going to be the kind of people who are like, well, it's a leftist thing and I'm far left and I want to signal that I'm strong. Yeah, those leftists should storm that facility and go even further. They should hang the whatever and just like signal your belief, which is something, again, I cannot fathom doing. I just cannot wrap my mind around that. But this group of people exist. And that's the thing. This isn't one of those effects. I believe this isn't One of those affects where anyone's making the claim that everyone does this. I think this is like, no, no. this is a subgroup of people on, by the way, that could be left or right. This says it could be either left or right. It's not dependent on politics. I don't know if it correlates with one more than the other. I can't remember if that's in the study, but I do know that it can be on both sides. So that's important. This isn't one of those effects where it's like, yeah, everybody does this a little bit necessarily. So this is a specific group of people, I think, that tend to do this. And this study sheds a lot of light on what's going on there. And perhaps we need to just be keeping this in mind that this group of people exists. And it's a tough problem. There's I'm seeing at the bottom of this blog post is, well, this is so tricky that essentially the best thing to do is is just to try to reduce the extreme attitude. Like there's no way to get around this weird effect, perhaps, other than just moving people away from the extremes in general, it seems like. So, all right. Well, I hope that helped in understanding. I hope it didn't make it more confusing. And thank you so much for listening. I'll see you again very soon. And you'll see me on Where There's Woke very soon for a very important series we're doing. So thanks so much for listening. Support the show, patreon.com/seriouspod. we'll see YOU next time.