Do Conservative Ideas Make More “Horse Sense” Than Liberal Ones?
This post is by Everett Young.
Although I’m trained as a political psychologist—which these days can verge on meaning something like “statistician who does models that are nominally about psychology applied to subjects that are nominally political”—I’ve always tried to think mostly and first about what happens in the everyday world of political talk. I still think that’s the best path toward true understanding of ideological thinking—with statistical tests used to make sure you’re not fooling yourself.
Anyway, I’m always looking for that perfect episode that captures the psychological difference between liberals and conservatives, that moment worth ten thousand words when you say, “wow, there it is: there’s the difference, boiled down to its clearest essence.” Such a perfect essence probably does not exist, but that doesn’t stop me from chasing the chalice.
A few weeks ago, at a dinner party, I had one of those experiences. I was seated next to a conservative—almost a caricature of a masculine, burly, blue-collar, proud-to-have-earned-what-I’ve-got kind of guy. He was exactly what you think of when you think of “resentful white working class Republican.” So somehow I get roped into talking about policy, and I’m trying to describe why some kind of semi-complicated liberal policy idea makes sense. And then leans in, a little too close to me, a little too loud, and drops this on me:
“You know what kind of ideas I like? I like ideas that makes horse sense.”
And with that, he was quite satisfied that he had settled things. Whatever policy I was defending had required that I construct some complicated edifice to explain it. It didn’t make horse sense. And therefore, he had no use for it. And neither should anybody.
I think I laughed out loud at his comment. It was just so rich. As a political psychologist, I thought it was the perfect moment. This was one of those instances that came very close to drawing a focused picture of the naked essence of the difference between our two sides. Conservatives like things that make “horse sense.” And really, what liberal (at least what typical, artsy-fartsy one such as myself) would ever use a phrase like “horse sense,” or even bother for a moment with that concept, to help him figure out whether he liked or did not like an idea?
Because what, really, do we mean by “horse sense?” We mean this: an idea makes horse sense when it can be understood, and has a logical “feel” about it, without much at all in the way of effortful thought. Things that make horse sense are “obviously true” at first blush, and require no reconsideration.
Liberals, though, are inherently suspicious of “horse sense.” To liberals, “horse sense” means something more like “deceptive simplicity.” We habitually reconsider. Liberals carry a sense that the world is typically more subtle and more complicated than it might appear at first glance. And so they investigate, they study, they measure, they theorize, and they test. They get PhDs. They try out strange ideas and give them a real chance. For liberals, what looks “obviously true” sometimes turns out to be, a little less obviously, false. In fact, we almost want the obvious to be false.
Actually, I should say, it’s not that “liberals reject the obvious.” It’s that people who regard the “obvious” with suspicion—people who distrust concepts like “horse sense”—have a psychological profile that tends to make them become liberal when they apply their thinking to politics and society.
Not all conservatives would actually use the words “horse sense” to describe what they like in a policy, but I think even many highly educated, intellectual, libertarian-types make use of concepts that are essentially high-brow versions of horse sense when deciding whether they like an idea. Just as liberals are suspicious of simple- and obvious-sounding ideas, these conservatives are suspicious of liberal talk that sounds to them like needless overcomplexification. You could imagine them saying, “if you can’t explain why your idea works in one sentence, then you’re probably engaging in sophistry, and I don’t trust it.” This is not an argument that conservatives are dumb. Intelligent conservatives can certainly understand complex analysis—I just don’t think they trust it; they see it as a road open to sneaky self-persuasion. They think liberals hide the ball from themselves. They like ideas that make horse sense.
Indeed, time after time, conservative ideas make more horse sense than liberal ones.
*It makes horse sense that, if we’ve got oil under our own American soil, we ought to go get it, since horse sense tells us that every drop of American oil we use is a drop of Saudi oil we don’t use. It does not make horse sense that American oil simply joins Saudi oil on a world oil market, barely lowering the price of oil worldwide—and that this small price benefit will be shared with the entire world, while the environmental risk of additional American drilling is concentrated entirely inside the U.S. “C’mon man, I haven’t got time for all that fancy talk and hand-waving. All I know is we’ve got the oil, it’s right there in the ground, and those damned liberals aren’t letting us go get it. It just doesn’t make horse sense!”
*It makes horse sense that, if I look outside my window and see snow, and I am having to shovel my goddamned driveway all morning just to get my car out, then there is no global warming. It makes horse sense that, if the weather man can’t tell me it’s going to rain tomorrow, then some climatologist damn sure can’t tell me how cold it’s going to be in a hundred years. I encounter this kind of thinking all the time with conservatives I talk to. To truly understand (and probabilistically believe in) global warming, you have to be willing to tolerate a thousand instances of what looks like contrary evidence—cold snaps, even an unusually cold year! Global warming just does not make horse sense. “When winter feels like summer—that’s when I’ll believe it. Last I checked, winter was still cold.” Would a liberal ever talk like that? Would a conservative?
*It makes horse sense that if you haven’t earned something, you shouldn’t get it—and if you have earned something, you should get to keep it all. Hence taxation, redistribution and welfarism don’t make horse sense. Never mind that having a country where some people starve or live under extreme economic distress might indirectly be bad for everyone and bad for the overall economy. The “overall economy” is too vague a concept to be useful for thinking in horse sense. (In fact, all indirect effects and abstractions are pretty useless for horse sense.) One of my favorite ways of explaining liberal versus conservative economic thought is that conservatives think about the effects of economic policy at the individual level, liberals at the societal level. Hence, conservatives are willing to tolerate poor society-wide economic performance if the incentive structure makes “horse sense” at the individual level—e.g., if an apparent lack of effort results in failure while apparent effort results in success—while liberals are willing to tolerate having some of the “wrong” people rewarded (giving health care to stereotypical unemployed punks drinking beer from paper sacks on the street corner) if it means a better overall society.
Remember, conservatives were eager to let the U.S. auto industry go completely kaput to properly punish the U.S. car manufacturers (who are conceptualized as individual people—that makes them useful for thinking in horse sense) for their poor decisions. Never mind that this would have been horrible for the economy, and for tens of millions who aren’t even involved in auto manufacturing. Some libertarians were openly willing to tolerate a depression if that’s what it took to keep from rewarding bad actors.
*And for my final example, it damn sure doesn’t make horse sense that I came from a damned monkey. How the hell could that have happened?
I’d love for blog readers to come up with more ideas about how conservative ideas make horse sense whereas liberal ideas don’t. Or, refute me with some liberal ideas that make more horse sense!
Note, this does not mean that liberal or conservative ideas are the best ones. Ideas that make horse sense might ultimately lead to good results, and ideas that do not make horse sense are not guaranteed to produce good results at all. This is a commentary onhow liberals and conservatives perceive ideas. My claim is that the conservative mind is the one that applies “horse-sense analysis.” Or, as I said, that people who apply horse-sense to understand the world tend to be conservative when they think about politics.
Anyhow, much of my own research has been devoted to trying to describe and measure, in a way, what psychological trait causes a person to favor or disfavor horse sense. I’ll talk more about that in the months ahead, but I invite you to take a look at my dissertation for now—you’ll get it.
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