{"id":53983,"date":"2013-02-18T11:30:49","date_gmt":"2013-02-18T16:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=53983"},"modified":"2013-02-18T18:28:03","modified_gmt":"2013-02-18T23:28:03","slug":"purity-and-danger-partisan-politics-and-persuasion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/02\/18\/purity-and-danger-partisan-politics-and-persuasion\/","title":{"rendered":"Purity and Danger: Partisan Politics and Persuasion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

You\u2019re not going to persuade a conservative by appealing to liberal moral principles.\u00a0 Tell a Tea Party type that industrial waste harms the environment and should be regulated, you won\u2019t get very far.\u00a0 But if you appeal to conservative<\/em> moral principles, the story goes, you might have more luck.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been skeptical about Jonathan\u00a0Haidt\u2019s conservative moral principles — group loyalty, purity, and authority — mostly because they are used to justify practices I find wrong or immoral.\u00a0 Things like anti-gay legislation, torture, assassination, terrorism, etc.<\/p>\n

But a recent experimental study<\/a>\u00a0by UC Berkeley’s Robb Willer shows that the right kind of persuasion can make conservatives a bit more leftist on the environment.\u00a0 In his study, participants read a pro-environmental message that was based either on \u201cHarm\/Care\u201d (liberal logic) or on \u201cPurity\/Sanctity\u201d(conservative logic) along with photos that matched the appeal.<\/p>\n