Pod Insights Michael Covel's Trend Following Ep. 1322: Kurt Gray Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio About this episode My guest today is Kurt Gray, a social psychologist, researcher and teacher. He uses interdisciplinary methods to study our deepest held beliefs and how to bridge moral divides. Kurt is a Professor in Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he directs the Deepest Beliefs Lab and the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding. The topic is his book Outraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Ground. In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss: Political and cultural polarization in America Sources and perceptions of morality Finding common ground between ideological divides Influence of institutions (media, universities, religion) on shaping morality Homogeneous and pluralistic societies Jump in! --- I’m MICHAEL COVEL, the host of TREND FOLLOWING RADIO, and I’m proud to have delivered 10+ million podcast listens since 2012. Investments, economics, psychology, politics, decision-making, human behavior, entrepreneurship and trend following are all passionately explored and debated on my show. To start? I’d like to give you a great piece of advice you can use in your life and trading journey… cut your losses! You will find much more about that philosophy here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/trend/ You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/ Can’t get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast My social media platforms: Twitter: @covel Facebook: @trendfollowing LinkedIn: @covel Instagram: @mikecovel Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 An interesting conversation today with author, academic Kurt Gray from the University of North Carolina. Our topic is his new book, Outraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Ground. This is a tough conversation for me because it's tough for me to find common ground. And maybe I really don't want to find common ground with some issues of morality that violate my morality. So that can make a conversation like this with a gentleman like Kurt, who is trying to keep things somewhat down the middle.
0:45 Speaker 00 I probably made it a little bit difficult for him. But it's up to you, the audience, to give it a listen and let me know what you think. Without any further delay, let's jump right into my conversation with Kurt Gray. I hope you enjoy.
1:15 Speaker 00 You open your book with this line, "People today are divided." And of course, with the little setup I just gave you, you might be thinking, well, that guy might be thinking already, who are these people? I think for America, you're probably going to be going to left and right, Democrat, Republican. But let me let you define "people are divided." That's an interesting way to start a book.
1:37 Speaker 01 You're right that it's left and right. You're right that I'm thinking of America. But I think many people have less empathy and less compassion for folks who disagree with them when it comes to politics. I think part of that is because people have been pushed, not only ideologically, towards some extremes, but also that effectively our feelings, our emotions are much colder towards people who disagree with us. We even see those who disagree with us less. We interact with them less. We don't see them at Little League games, right? And restaurants, and we don't date them. And so increasingly, we're clustered into these echo chambers, is the word being used,
2:21 Speaker 01 but really neighborhoods in our minds that are pushed far away from those who think something different than us.
2:28 Speaker 00 If we are talking left and right in America, can you define for me left and right in America today?
2:36 Speaker 01 Whenever anyone has kind of like some poli sci background, they're thinking about like ideology and like, what does it mean to be liberal or conservative or progressive? When I think of left and right in America, I don't think that those ideological positions are necessarily well-defined or traditionally defined. I think it basically comes down to red versus blue to who you voted for. It's more of a kind of like cultural identification. Are you a Prius driver or a truck driver with an American flag with a black stripe out of it? It's like those kind of like ethos is in a sense that we're divided about, not strict kind of ideology.
3:15 Speaker 00 You've obviously put a lot of time into thinking about these issues. I feel comfortable pushing you and pressing you. Going through your book, from my perspective, attempted to keep things balanced. I think most people, if they were going through your work, they'd feel like, well, I feel like this author is talking to both sides. But I guess the reason I wanted to start with this left and right, and I was actually speaking of the ideology. I was speaking who specifically? Who are left and right in America today? Because I find there are very different groups of people, very different groups of culture, very different races. And I find sometimes if we just keep saying left and right,
3:58 Speaker 00 we obscure the fact that we're just talking about very different groups of people. Whereas I happen to be in a country right now where, yes, there are some different racial groups in Vietnam that are on the perimeter, but by and large, everyone in Vietnam is Vietnamese. Everyone in Thailand is Thai. Everyone in Japan is Japanese. It's a very homogeneous part of the world right now. So, America is not homogeneous.
4:21 Speaker 01 You're right that the left versus right fault line is consistent with lots of other fault lines that you mentioned. Although gender is fairly evenly distributed across this divide, if you dig down deeper, there's much more similarity, right? Kind of like superficial disagreement. And as you say, I try to be balanced and I try to be an optimist when I look at kind of what's in common between people in America who maybe vote differently. Most of the things that we really care about, we have in common. And so I try to focus on that deeper kind of psychological similarity between everyone, rather than saying, right, like Democrats have more black people than Republicans. But at the end of the day, we're all kind of concerned about the same thing.
5:06 Speaker 01 And so the book's an attempt to get at what are we concerned about? In my life, the red versus blue, I have friends and family who are both. They're mostly white people. My progressive college professor friends, you could call them liberal elites, coastal elites, sometimes derisively called that in the media. But then I've got family from Nebraska in the kind of heartland of America. They vote very differently. At the same time, it's very easy to hang out with all of them and they all care about much, much more than politics. My cousin in Nebraska just got a refinished old Corvette. He drove around in it. He's like 20 something. He's trying to figure out his career, right? It doesn't come off as like a standard trope when it comes to thinking of Republicans
5:50 Speaker 01 in America. And likewise, I've got friends who are progressive here that don't follow the tropes as well. So I think we need to see kind of maybe beyond those tropes of left, right, and think about the kind of people who are trying to understand the other side.
6:03 Speaker 00 Do you think that's what people are trying to do today? Trying to understand the other side?
6:07 Speaker 01 I think many people are trying to understand the other side. There are people who are not trying to understand. The book is written for people who are trying to understand, for people who are maybe exhausted with all the rhetoric, upset with the conflict entrepreneurs, this term from Amanda Ripley that I really like, people in the elite and the media and politicians who can profit off of stoking division. When I give talks... When I meet with folks, they are trying to reestablish relationships with people who voted differently in their family, or just trying to understand how America can come back together. So not everyone is trying to bridge and to connect, but I think many
6:51 Speaker 01 are, and this is for them.
6:55 Speaker 00 It's really important at this outset, because ultimately, I know where we're going to end up having a conversation about morality, right and wrong, and people's different perceptions of morality, and how that perception of harm can be terribly important. But I guess for me, it's quite interesting here. I'm talking to you, a professor at UNC. I have a nephew at UVA, so I have some experience with just understanding a little bit about the ACC and growing up in that area. And I would guess that the vast majority of universities today are populated, whether it's professor or administration, by generally one side. Is that a fair assessment? I think it's a fair assessment.
7:41 Speaker 01 If you look at probably who votes in a lot of universities on the East Coast, many of those folks are relatively more progressive. If you think of like New England, and you're like, oh, those Ivy elite are generally progressive. Well, New England is generally progressive. So I think the trend is not as extreme as the media often makes it out to be. And I think there are lots of folks within, let's say, University of North Carolina, who are centrist or even conservative. And I'm on email lists with folks that think more broadly.
8:17 Speaker 00 It is probably fair to say, though, that there is a notable bias in education. For example, if we were to discuss something like a DEI program, that's going to be very well-installed across universities and colleges across America. And that would definitely be something that would be, that one side of this debate would be like, if I'm going to listen to the good professors that have done all the homework and done all the research, that you sometimes want to feel like, well, hold on, are we on a neutral playing field?
8:45 Speaker 01 Progressive states with big universities, things like DEI well installed. UNC like no longer really has DEI because we have a Republican legislature and Board of kind of Governors. I think the picture is more nuanced, but I think it is true that students at universities typically are more progressive than perhaps their parents, especially if they draw from the broader state.
9:07 Speaker 00 I'm in my mid 50s and there was the conversations and the politics that gets discussed today, and this ultimately gets into this notion of morality and different perceptions of morality. What to me feels like has been introduced in the last, let's say, decade especially, feels like a whole new morality, a whole new debate and argument to be had, which makes this whole conversation even more interesting because if there was a left-right morality conversation, let's say in the 80s, even somewhere in the 90s, it'd probably be very different than today, don't you think?
9:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's changing for sure, right? The point I made earlier, it's not clear whether there are these lasting ideologies between the left and the right, like Trump being elected with this idea of tariffs, right? That kind of protectionist economic stance is very different from NAFTA back in the day. Abortion, still the same debate from the 80s, so that's still relevant. I think law and order, crime, I think that's still relevant, immigration. So I think a lot of the issues have remained the same over the past few decades, even if the kind of populist bent is maybe something new.
10:21 Speaker 00 Well, you use the word gender. Gender is definitely new as a debate.
10:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, although feminist debates were certainly pretty big deal back in the day. I think like Dolly Parton working nine to five, right? This is maybe the echo of that, but I think the kind of maybe second wave feminists back when in the 80s were certainly like pushing boundaries and like women should be in these clubs and there shouldn't be these male only things. I don't know if there's anything new under the sun in some sense, right? It's kind of like this general arguments or navigation of kind of like power and equality in society. We can talk about these kind of perceptions of harm, right? I think that's what underlies the kind of left, right difference that we're talking about. Like, how much are these kind of disadvantaged or marginalized or relatively less powerful communities
11:10 Speaker 01 kind of like gaining on these more powerful demographics? I mean, that varies by perception and by the group you're in. And how much should they be gaining on those demographics, right? There's still the same kind of through lines running through society as there has been for maybe hundreds of years.
11:26 Speaker 00 Where do you perceive morality comes from for the left and the right in America today?
11:34 Speaker 01 I think morality comes from the same place for everyone, our kind of moral intuitions. And those have been given by evolution for the past millions of years and fine tuned by our societies. Clearly, liberals and conservatives disagree about a number of specific issues. I think I want to make sure we don't overestimate how much we disagree. If you opened up a book of law, we would agree, left and right, on basically 99% of every law. Where we're disagreeing are really fine trade offs where it's legitimate to argue on each side of these issues. Each side would argue that their side is more legitimate. That's fine. That's what morality is all about. You should feel convicted about your own side. You should feel strong.
12:18 Speaker 01 If you got people into a room and calmed them down, they would be willing to say, well, folks on the other side of that position, there's something to that. I can understand that. We're actually not as divided as you think, and the research plays that out, right? We way overestimate how much we actually disagree and how much we're actually divided than we are, especially psychologically in terms of like our core moral beliefs.
12:42 Speaker 00 Those elections are pretty telling, though. The voting is pretty telling. But at the end of the day, it does say something when America elects, for example, a president or a particular senator for their state or whatnot. It does say something, especially at the presidential level. To me, it speaks to a tremendous divide.
12:59 Speaker 01 As you say, there's certainly this like cultural divide. There's a different perception of the world. Should America be moving forward? Should it be making it great again? But that's baked into the very idea of conservatism, which is looking to the past and a sense in our traditions. And progressivism, which is kind of looking to the future and kind of like leaving some of those things behind. There is a divide, but I think in terms of everyday people, I'm not sure how coherent those ideologies necessarily are as much as we each got conscripted into our own teams. I often think about basketball. UNC has a very strong basketball team.
13:42 Speaker 01 You can get evenly matched basketball teams like North Carolina and Duke, and they'll play for the length of a game. The score will be up very high, but it'll come down to a razor's edge almost every time in the final minute. I think of elections a little bit like that. We're kind of evenly divided. It could go either way every time. But I think a lot of our division, some of it is grounded in kind of like ideology. But I think a lot of it is just like who your family is, who you voted for in the past. And there are these kind of through lines. So I think we shouldn't necessarily overestimate the kind of like strength of our ideological roots as much as our cultural identification, our social identity, maybe. And then these kind of competing perceptions of harm that I highlight in the book.
14:26 Speaker 00 When I ask where does the left and the right morality come from? My mind takes me back to trying to look at the big picture here in terms of how people get information, how people learn, how do they take in anything? This is actually kind of paraphrasing from a post that I saw. I don't think there's anything too controversial about this. But the left in America generally would have much greater control of journalism, television, advertising, universities, entertainment, social media, medicine, NGOs, education, and government. I don't think it's such a controversial thing.
15:09 Speaker 00 To say it's two different sides of morality, each getting their morality from different places. You say, well, the conservative side is more traditional. I guess people could watch Fox News, plenty of them do. But that's kind of a rarity in the overall situation. Do you take what I just read is too controversial? I don't see much controversy in it in terms of the left control of these institutions, which ultimately leads to asserted messaging.
15:35 Speaker 01 We need to separate where our morals come from, and I think that's like psychological question, a more ultimate question of our minds. And then we can maybe talk about the ecosystems that reinforce certain narratives. Yes, Hollywood is generally more left leaning. Social media, I'm not sure. I mean, X, Twitter, I think that leans very far right these days.
15:56 Speaker 00 Just to clarify there really quick, though, yeah, it changed, absolutely changed. Once Musk bought it, prior to Musk buying it, they were banning people left and right, and so was Facebook. One of the most interesting conversations, I didn't listen to it all, but that came out this week, was Mark Zuckerberg saying that under duress from the government, he was censoring stuff that should otherwise not have been censored. I don't think there's any doubt that everybody can look up who owns LinkedIn, everyone can look up who owns Google. Musk is out there with X, but generally, over the last 10 years, it's been a 100% monopoly on social media.
16:30 Speaker 01 I'm not sure that it's a 100% monopoly, given that social media content is created by users.
16:37 Speaker 00 There's been a massive censorship campaign. What I'm trying to get at ultimately here is I enjoy the conversation of saying, hey, we've got a left and a right. We have two different moralities, but I think it's terribly important to establish, or at least talk about where those moralities are ultimately coming from. I don't just think it's people just wake up and have some understanding. It's either family, friends, research, school, media. I don't know if it's all just intuitive.
17:05 Speaker 01 Certainly, I think we're born with the capacity to make moral judgments and to have a sense of morality. I think it comes from your family in a very powerful way. Thinking of my own kids, growing them a moral sense. It's powerfully constructed by your family and the institutions that you're exposed to as a young person, that could be your church, which I think is an institution that is very powerfully right-leaning typically, that I think was left out of the previous conversation. There's media, especially as a teenager, you're like thinking of music, and then there's universities, you go out there, but there's also workplaces, that's a powerful culture that I think also bears mentioning, that really shapes the morality of young adults to older adults. There are these institutions, but looking at families and churches and workplaces, I
17:51 Speaker 01 think is also really important when it comes to making sense of, I think not where morality comes from necessarily, but the places that kind of selectively reinforce certain tuitions, if that makes sense. I don't think people watch Fox News and just say like, oh, thanks Fox News, I was a blank slate and now I believe this, or people tune into MSNBC and be like, oh, now I'm super progressive. I think these are things that shape and tune the morality that we get from our parents, but I do think that the media and social media are kind of pushing us further apart in a way that we wouldn't get that if it was just about the morality of our parents and our churches and our sports leagues and our workplaces.
18:30 Speaker 00 Let me bring up an example that obviously paints me to one side. I appreciate what you are attempting to do with your work in trying to stay in the middle and see both sides as different sides that perhaps have different moralities for different reasons. For example, I can think back to not too long ago, perhaps five, six years ago, the idea of walking into a local CVS and having everything behind locked Plexiglas was not a thing. Now, maybe it was in New York City, it probably was for a long time, but not everywhere. And now it's become an everywhere thing.
19:14 Speaker 00 And so I think what's interesting about your perspective is that the right side of America is not in any way, shape or form on board with that. They're not at all. It's like, hold on, why can we not enforce the laws? Why can we not stop crime? For me, there's a vacuum on the other side. It's like, well, hold on. The idea that we've got these two moral compasses and they're actually a lot closer. When I look at an example like that, unfortunately, I could go down way too many examples. But when I look at an example like that, I'm not seeing the closeness. I'm seeing something that looks like a massive tunnel, this massive bridge separating the sides. Because I know the conservative side would be like, just enforce the laws.
19:59 Speaker 00 We don't need to have everything locked up in a store. This is a new thing. Why are we doing this?
20:03 Speaker 01 I'm a little confused. I don't think progressives are pro kind of taking all the things from CVS either. I have a hard time seeing how that's like a partisan issue.
20:12 Speaker 00 We know, for example, in California and other locations, I think they've repealed some of these, but they've had situations where they don't enforce. They've made laws and said, we will not charge you if the amount stolen from a CVS is under $600, $800 or something like that. I have a hard time imagining that if we've got these two moral pieces. And ultimately, this gets to the big picture, I think, is where you go in your work is the whole idea of a democracy, of a Western-style democracy. That if you have these kinds of divisions of morality, it's very, very difficult to keep it together, isn't it?
20:43 Speaker 01 Folks on both sides are navigating these kind of trade-offs. California's a good example, right? They used to have a three-strikes law as well. That was celebrated as like, look, we're tough on crime now. But then you get someone who messed up three times in a relatively minor way and then they're put away behind bars for the rest of their life. Many people would not be comfortable with that policy either because it's kind of draconian. Many progressives would think, yeah, you shouldn't steal from a CVS. You should follow the laws. We all teach our kids not to steal and not to shoplift. The question is, is there additional harms? Because America is a special place, especially when it comes to guns, that you're risking more harm stopping these folks than you might be otherwise.
21:25 Speaker 01 At the end of the day, it all comes down to these competing perceptions of how do we safeguard the most good, innocent people from harm in a way that we Can all live with. And on either side of these issues, there's mistakes and there's things that we think are regrettable. But I think the important point to recognize, and I talk about this in the book, is that on the other side, they do think that those miscarriages of justice are regrettable. If it comes to, let's say, abortion law, if a strict abortion law means that a 13 year old who was raped by her stepfather has to take a pregnancy to term, there's no Republican, even if they support generally kind of protecting fetal rights, there's no Republican who thinks that's a great situation. That is a regrettable situation,
22:10 Speaker 01 and Republicans think that that is bad. But many progressives are like, no, Republicans want this to happen. That is not true. But I think the opposite is also true. There's no progressive that's like, yeah, let's have pandemonium in big cities when it comes to multinational corporations and people stealing from them. No progressives like this makes a lot of sense. It's important to understand both sides as like trying to protect.
22:31 Speaker 00 How did we get to a place, though, for example, I mentioned earlier that I'm in Asia, and I've spent a lot of time in Asia. And sure, there could be crime, there can be problems, but I don't see anything in Asia that looks like what I see in America at all. I don't see crime, I don't see violence. And so ultimately, those are right there in the issue of morality. At some stage of the game, I start to say, well, are there some moral perspectives in America that say a certain amount of crime is okay? A certain amount of violence is okay?
23:03 Speaker 01 No amount of crime or immorality seems like it should be acceptable in our minds, but I think at the end of the day, we're always dealing with these trade offs. Should people have access to legal marijuana? Or should people go to jail for kind of harder drugs? These are things that societies need to navigate as they move forward. What seems like immoral and what isn't are things that we all kind of like figure out collectively. Does that make sense?
23:31 Speaker 00 You bring up a great point, though, with, for example, marijuana. So I probably would have for sure, in fact, I was, I guarantee at some stage in this podcast, I gave the marijuana libertarian argument. And here we are now, a couple decades into this experiment, and it's literally vape shops on every corner, a massage parlor down the corner, like almost every place in America now. And basically, people meandering around our cities, they're messed up.
24:00 Speaker 00 There is that morality, the idea that, hey, let's let people make their choices as long as they don't harm anyone else. That was always my perspective, but I think we've now pushed past that where if we're getting everybody gacked up on marijuana, that's probably not a societal good. And that was a morality that we regulated. I guess I keep coming back to the idea that you see things more similar or more two sides are closer together, and I don't see that.
24:27 Speaker 01 You could look at anything and see more similarities or differences. If you look through time, society in general has evolved to be much safer, much less dangerous, much kinder, much more compassionate. That's a good thing. We have still many kind of problems in our society, but at the end of the day, I think addressing those additional problems require us to work together across divides, across ideological spectrums to compromise and pass policies to make our society better. And so part of this book is to think, well, how can we see eye to eye with the other side? How can we reestablish relationships with the friends and family who we might disagree with on some issues and like come back together?
25:12 Speaker 00 This is one of the reasons I was trying to establish some definitions in the beginning. If you have a morality that has been practiced for a very long time, let's say we don't want to see the violence, we don't want to see the theft. Now, okay, the progressive side doesn't want to see that, but I know what the theft and violence statistics are in America and I know where it's concentrated. Why compromise? If there's one side that has a certain morality that says, we're comfortable with this morality, I could run off a whole litany of things that the right would not like for the last 10 years. We don't need these advances. Even though you're trying to come down the middle on this subject, the word compromise doesn't feel like it's coming down the middle. It feels like it's asking the right side to lessen up and go ahead and allow some of
25:57 Speaker 00 these changes in morality.
26:00 Speaker 01 I'm not sure I agree. All right, going back and forth, the left is always the group that is pushing towards particular kind of progress. It's inherent in the word progressive. The right is inherently trying to think about tradition and maintain those traditions. There is a conflict and it's inherent in just identifying as progressive or conservative. I do think, America in particular, why America, one, has these divides and has such an exciting political scene, is in part because it's a pluralistic democracy founded on huge amounts of immigration, founded on diversity of perspectives, a diversity of
26:39 Speaker 01 race, a diversity of ethnicity. This is why there's more violent crime in the US instead of Vietnam. But if you think about GDP, you think about the world's biggest tech firms, you think about the movies that are consumed around the world. I'm not American originally. One reason that I'm here is because it's a place where science is just on fire all the time. It's exciting, right? There is something special about pluralistic democracies, in particular, America, it stands out as a pretty remarkable place. And that mixing of perspectives includes left and right. We all need to come together to navigate this complexity of society. And I think we've done a pretty good job since the founding
27:21 Speaker 01 fathers kind of created the Constitution. But it's messy and it's hard. You have to admit, in some sense, defeat from your side if you don't want to take away a dictatorship. You're like, well, we're gonna have to live with the left if you're on the right, and we're gonna have to live with the right if you're on the left. But that kind of compromise helps us navigate a path through the middle and a path forward that's actually better than either side on its own would create.
27:43 Speaker 00 That perspective, I don't know anybody on the right that would say that's anything other than an attack on the right. I'm talking to somebody who is progressive, rightly or wrongly, and that is a full-on coming for the guns, coming for the kids, whatever. That's a full-on attack. I think that's how people would see it.
28:01 Speaker 01 I think there are folks on the left as well who see that as a capitulation, as a surrender to values they disagree with. But again, you're thinking of people who are really strongly yelling on social media. And this report came out by More in Common, this organization that tries to bridge divides in America, and it suggests that 65% of Americans are part of a group called the exhausted majority. These are folks who are not particularly ideological, and they just want their country to do the best it can when it comes to making life better for themselves. We're here really overstating how much people are kind of like ideologically committed versus just want cheaper gas prices.
28:43 Speaker 01 They just want to be able to afford milk. I don't think people are power as left and right as we think they are as talking heads.
28:51 Speaker 00 I've watched the polls for the 2016 and the most recent presidential election. In both times, Nate Silver, who's a well-respected pollster, not by me, because I find his methodology doesn't work. It's not a partisan issue. I just find it doesn't work. But it doesn't seem like anyone has been able to poll Trump voters for both of those elections. You just mentioned science a second ago. After coming out of COVID, I'm not even sure where we are on the scientific method anymore. But I hear you say something about essentially polling people. I'm skeptic. I'm the Gen X skeptic who just keeps saying, well, hold on. We don't seem to get a lot of these things right in terms of the polling. You're saying,
29:34 Speaker 00 hey, people are not so diehard ideological. Maybe they're not on the left, but I tell you what, on the right, I have a hard time imagining that. People can like this point or not like this point. Surely X is absolutely galvanizing the right to certain perspectives and certain views. And there's conversations being had there that I've not seen in my adult lifetime. Some absolutely good, strong, some probably in the conspiracy weeds. That's just competing with the likes of it. MSNBC and CNN, which has been having their own versions of conspiracies for the last 20 years. It's interesting to hear you lay out the scenarios,
30:19 Speaker 00 and I just keep trying to push back on you.
30:21 Speaker 01 The point about science, I'm going to stand up for the scientific method and for the accuracy of a lot of behavioral science, in particular, my own work and that of my colleagues. I think polling is so brutal. One, because people don't want to necessarily express their views, but I think more importantly, the response rate for polling is just abysmal. I think it's like 1% of people who respond back to polls about politics, then your conclusions are going to be not great. They're going to be trash because you're not actually polling the people that you're trying to make inferences about. I think with behavioral science, it's much better. So when we poll people, response rate is like 90%, not 1%. When it comes to
31:01 Speaker 01 things like how people overestimate the severity of views on either side, or how much we dislike each other, I think there's very strong evidence for that. You can definitely point to specific examples of people being very divided, but they can, everyday life... If you prime the pump, so if you do what you're doing now and you're really trying to galvanize people by pointing to hot button issues and pointing to the threats out there, and my work suggests that our morality is all about these feelings of threats, then you get people to partisan, knee jerk reactions. If you're just trying to talk to them about their life, you're just trying to talk to them about their hopes and dreams for their kids, those are conversations that don't really dig into politics in an intrinsic
31:44 Speaker 01 way, although you can connect them, obviously. That's what I want to understand with people, what it means to be human beyond just the shirt you wear.
31:53 Speaker 00 Fair enough. I think the word threat is interesting in terms of people's perception of threat. A lot of where your work goes, the perception of harm, perception of threat. As I've tried to lay out in this conversation, I just think it's the playing field is a little unequal in terms of how the sides are treated. I've only been censored by one party, right? Even on a social media platform, but it's controlled by one party. And the censorship has generally gone by one party in the last, I guess, before COVID, actually. When it's not a level playing field, like for example, I would love to know that everybody in your world, that there was a ideological divide that where everyone participating was, each
32:37 Speaker 00 side was represented. If you're going to go into your work and you're going to dig into this particular topic and looking at morality on both sides and considering how people get to their morality and how they get to their perception of harm, that if you're going to go down this path, that there's a representation of both sides. It's a tough topic because when I look at society, I see one side controlling so many of the levers. And I think that definitely makes the right more skeptical and definitely makes the right less trustworthy of all of these institutions. The trust has gone out the window from the last 10 years. If New
33:17 Speaker 00 York City can pass laws saying that there are 31 genders, then the right just says, my hands are up, I'm out, I'm out. And that's an issue of morality right there, right? I get it from your perspective. You're saying, well, hold on, Mike, you're focusing on some hot button issues. The hot button issues are important to people. These are terribly important to people.
33:36 Speaker 01 I think focusing on these clickbaity things does a disservice to people's psychologies. At the end of the day, let's say with gender, like, most progressives are not into 31 genders. You can find examples on the right where folks on the left are like, "Look, people want child marriage."
33:53 Speaker 00 But the right's real simple. It's man and woman. It's two sexes. That's it.
33:57 Speaker 01 The right has more complexity than that as well. Many progressives are like, "Well, conservatives are only concerned about what's written in the Bible." And I think that does a disservice to the many thoughtful evangelicals on the right who are thinking of navigating their moral world when it comes to religion and politics. We can keep having these arguments about, "Well, the left likes this, or the right likes this." But it doesn't move us anywhere. It doesn't move us anywhere to keep on harping on these divisive examples that you can think about coming from the most progressive or most conservative places. How can most Americans come together and have better conversations on planes, in Uber rides? We do have to come together.
34:42 Speaker 01 You're perhaps not super interested in coming together.
34:45 Speaker 00 If I have to have one arm tied behind my back, yes, I'm not interested in coming together. That's the part that drives people on the right nuts, is that you have to have one arm tied behind your back.
34:56 Speaker 01 It depends on the sphere. Business, I think, is largely conservative, and church as well. These are huge parts of America that we're neglecting to talk about here that are really more conservative-leaning. The billionaires out there are typically voting for more free enterprise, lower taxes, and also creating narratives that, I think, help the conservative ideas that are in the government.
35:24 Speaker 00 Some of our most famous billionaires right now, from George Soros to Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos to the Google guys, to the LinkedIn guys. The billionaires seem to be all over the map on the partisan polls these days.
35:35 Speaker 01 Right, but I think business is itself kind of inherently a more conservative enterprise in the sense that it's trying to lower taxes for itself. There's anything like conspiracy about this, thinking of classical liberal ideas, invisible hand and so forth. We could keep talking about the left versus the right, but it misses the core of the book, which is like trying to understand the everyday people who are just trying to navigate their lives. Like, when I take an Uber ride with a guy who tells me he's a Christian nationalist, right? I think that's interesting and I want to understand what that means for him. And then we start having a conversation about abortion. How you can navigate that conversation? If you don't want to have conversations with people who disagree with you, and if you
36:16 Speaker 01 don't want to understand their common humanity, then I think I can't help, in a sense, because there has to be some motivation there to understand. And if you think you want to write off half the country, then it's hard for me to convince you not to.
36:31 Speaker 00 Do you think that's what both sides are doing right now?
36:33 Speaker 01 There are people on both sides who are writing off the other side, especially, I think, folks who are grounded in social media or partisan news. There's still underlying this deep urge where people want to connect. I want to think about people's everyday lives. We could talk about policies, municipal policies in cities, or universities, or churches. At the end of the day, I want to think about, look, here's someone who's coming to Thanksgiving, and their uncle, their cousin, their niece voted differently than they did. Everyone's getting ready for a fight because that's what we've come to expect, but I want, at the end of that Thanksgiving dinner, to have people say, "I had a good conversation
37:18 Speaker 01 with my uncle or with my niece, and now I understand them a little better, and I think next time we see each other at Christmas time, Easter dinner, I think it's going to be better." And I think I'm better for having that conversation than I am for just sticking to the same partisan talking points that make us yell at each other. I just want to find ways to help people understand each other, and I think there is that motivation.
37:43 Speaker 00 There's a certain nobility in that. I'm not going to disagree in that sense. I just find it interesting that you have two groups in America that have their perspectives and morality. These groups are made up of very different organization. I remember seeing the statistic for the Biden-Trump election, that if it would have been all women voting, Biden would have got like 400-plus electoral votes. It would have been all men voting. It would have been less, but Trump would have won if it was all men voting. So I think the interesting thing about the morality issue too, is that I started the conversation going down this path, is that if we just keep it at the idea of like, hey, we're all Americans, we're all the same, without looking at the particular groups and seeing
38:26 Speaker 00 who makes up the groups in terms of race and sex, I think that's a disservice as well too. That seems to be the way that America, in a way disguises its problems. Because you're not allowed to talk about that. You're not allowed to talk about the real differences in people. And the real differences are showing up in morality and ultimately showing up at the polls.
38:52 Speaker 01 I maybe disagree in that I think all we're doing right now is thinking about the differences. That's all that cable news does. And so I think we really do need a way to think about our similarities and to kind of move forward with policy, especially after an election, right? Where it is really us versus them. We want to come together and have these conversations.
39:15 Speaker 00 The knives are going to be out for Trump and all that other kind of stuff. And the conflict will start again, and the cycle will start again. And I appreciate that you want to see a common ground and you want to see people come together. Let me ask you this, kind of like a final type question. I'll let you take the floor. Let's imagine these two different groups, could be different sexes, different races, different ideological perspectives, different moralities. They come together. They got to put all that stuff to the side and not talk about that stuff. And then they're going to keep their conversation on more, you might say these are not narrow topics, but on something that's more narrow, that doesn't let those hot-button issues get in.
39:56 Speaker 00 The question I have is, how long is it that if you bring those two sides together, how long is it until the hot button issues are not right back to the forefront?
40:06 Speaker 01 This is a question facing so many workplaces today. I was just on a panel with the, sponsored by the Society for Human Resource Management, and politics is coming up in so many work teams today, that people have common goals to achieve the goal of their workplace, of their organization, but maybe they voted differently. I'll take the middle road here, as I always like to do. You can talk about how you have convictions, but I think you don't need to make it that's like, all you are. I think it's so flattening if someone just identifies as only, as a member of a political group. How de-individualizing.
40:46 Speaker 00 What if they don't identify as a member of the political group? And what if they just say, "I like to have the right to have a gun." Or, "I don't like you to have the right to have a gun." Or, "I don't really care about if there's some theft in the CVS." Or the other person says, "I do care if there's theft in the CVS."
41:05 Speaker 01 That'd be a great, actually, way to start it. And then the question is, well, what do you do when someone says that? A lot of the book is about how you can have these conversations. So if someone says, this Christian nationalist that I took the Uber to the airport with, if he says, like, "I want the right to have a gun," I think then the question is, interesting. I'd like you to tell me a little bit about that. Maybe, why are you so committed to that? We talk about the science in the book. We should talk about kind of personal stories here, instead of just like, spouting off facts, because spouting off facts don't seem true. Everyone knows you just pull the facts from the partisan news that you're listening to.
41:43 Speaker 00 Crime statistics are facts, though. You can't find this in the FBI.
41:47 Speaker 01 That's right, but what statistics are the most relevant is always up for grabs. When you tell a personal story of like, "Look, I once used a gun to defend my family from a home invader," that's a story because it's based on a real experience of harm that people on both sides can really see eye to eye with. I work with this organization called Narrative Four, and they try to bridge some of the worst divides out there you talk about. So they have this man who runs a gun sales website. He has a disability. He has to work from his house before COVID, and he's really committed to Second Amendment rights. And he had a conversation with a woman whose daughter was killed in a mass shooting by
42:29 Speaker 01 a semi-automatic weapon with a big magazine. They're very divided on gun rights, but they have this conversation where they share their personal perspectives and have much more empathy than you could imagine at the beginning. But it's possible to have these conversations against huge divides. Certainly, you can have them at work if you come with the right mindset, if you come with the right willingness, but there has to be some willingness.
42:55 Speaker 00 Kurt, great stuff. I'm looking at your title right here, and I want people to check out the book, "Outraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Ground." I love the title. Title's great. I don't think you want me to be that outraged at this conversation. You want me to be more calm. Your title and your perspective makes me think about an entirely different perspective, and I don't know who would win. I give you credit. You out up on the ledge, so to speak. You are taking a chance. You are trying to find a new way to bridge the gap. I think this is a fair assessment, right?
43:32 Speaker 01 That's right.
43:33 Speaker 00 I can feel from you that your perspective would be a little dogmatic and a little less fact-based than I might be, but that would be an interesting comp. Who would win? Who would win ultimately? If we actually didn't have to hold one arm behind our back? If we didn't have to bite our lip? If we didn't have to pretend that there aren't these big divides, that we might actually get to common ground. I feel like the common ground that we are not finding is because we're all lying to each other. And it's coming from every which way to Sunday, media at the biggest forefront. And I feel like if we could get to a place where
44:16 Speaker 00 we were just damn open and honest about everything, maybe we could find common ground, especially from the right, when you see so much effort at obscuring things. Again, the right doesn't really control most of the mainstream media. I appreciate where you're trying to go. And you're saying, hey, let's try to find common ground and let's keep some of our hot button understandings under wraps. Then maybe the exact opposite would get us there ultimately. We don't really have proof yet. You might be saying to yourself immediately, well, Mike, and I've studied the psychology and neuroscience for a hell of a lot longer than you have. And I generally think that we're going to probably have a better chance than the direction that you're saying. But ultimately, so far, we're not there, right?
44:58 Speaker 01 My answer is maybe nuanced here. It is good to be honest with each other. You can't be honest and unkind in a conversation. So let's say, think about the division between the left and the right as like two people who are married together and they have to stay married for the kids who are, I don't know, the American electorate and the future of our nation. I think with that perspective, you need to think about, yeah, well, I need to be honest, but I need to have some compassion. I need to have some sense that the other person is not just out to get me. There are some good ideas on both sides. Moving forward, we can acknowledge that there's some differences and that's inherent in even just the term liberal and conservative.
45:41 Speaker 01 And in the book, I try to point to what those specific differences are when it comes to the science of morality. But I do think that we have been focused more on our differences than our similarities, especially of late. And the research does suggest that focusing on what we share, even if we acknowledge that there are differences, can help move us forward.
46:03 Speaker 00 I'll add one more nugget for a future UNC research project. I have absolutely, and I never planned to be in Asia, I never planned to live in Asia. I have absolutely loved beyond loved and enjoyed more than I can ever imagine and learned more than I can ever imagine, living in a homogenous culture, which for Americans is completely foreign.
46:31 Speaker 01 Interesting. That is a difference between folks on the left and right as well that you highlight. There is a general commitment in America to pluralism. Folks on the left are relatively more culturally pluralistic, even if folks on the right still endorse some kind of ideological pluralism or religious pluralism at times. But I think it is a big question that we've touched on is like, well, how much should there be pluralism in the world, in particular nations? Maybe the left is more generally in flavor of pluralism
47:13 Speaker 01 oftentimes than perhaps those on the right. Even folks on the right at the founding of America were really committed to pluralism. I want to hold up that example as something that makes sense and something that makes me excited about being here, kind of different perspectives, different ethnicities, including kind of disagreement across politics.
47:34 Speaker 00 It was and still is the great experiment because most all the other countries around the world are tribes essentially. And so, America is the great experiment. It will be interesting to see how everything plays out. If it continues to be a success, we probably won't know. There was a movie last year called Civil War. I don't perceive those kinds of things happening, but I do think that some of the issues that we've touched on today are pretty divisive. And so, it's going to be interesting to see over the course of history, the American experiment goes forward.
48:04 Speaker 01 Yeah.
48:05 Speaker 00 Hey Kurt, where can we send people to? Where's the best website for them to check you out?
48:10 Speaker 01 You can come to outragedbook.com. There you can get reader resources about the book. The book's available on Amazon. KurtJGray.com is my personal website. And if you want to learn more about my thoughts on morality, I have a Substack, MoralUnderstandingNewsletter.com.
48:28 Speaker 00 The book, once again outraged why we fight about morality and politics and how to find common ground. Kurt, thank you very much.
48:36 Speaker 01 Thanks for having me.
48:38 Speaker 00 A footnote to that conversation. I have now listened to that interview three times and some thoughts.
48:48 Speaker 00 First, there are two sides on that conversation. Even though during the conversation, I gave my guest the benefit of the doubt and stated that he was trying to be down the middle. After listening to that conversation for three times, I think it's clear my guest was coming from a progressive perspective and I was coming from a conservative perspective. Why is that important? It speaks to the idea that if you're going to go down the path
49:25 Speaker 00 of attempting to define two moralities
49:30 Speaker 00 and somehow or another bring them together, then there needs to be an equal playing field. And there's not.
49:40 Speaker 00 Second, I brought up several factual points during that conversation.
49:47 Speaker 00 They were either corrected incorrectly or ignored. I generally don't like that type of situation on my podcast.
50:00 Speaker 00 And I will do my level-headed best to make sure in the future that the truth is out there where the conversation doesn't happen, where the conversation stops.
50:13 Speaker 00 Again, thank you for sticking with me. And I promise, I always promise, that I will search for the truth.
50:26 Speaker 00 I see a time when those awake will understand how to make money in up, down, and surprise markets. Whether a new trader or experienced, college student or financial advisor, protecting against a crash or just trying to make a lot of money, trend following offers everyone an answer in uncertain times. To get started immediately, send me an email, [email protected] . I will send you the right trend following steps to take along with my free video. But if you want to buy and hold, trust the government and trust Wall Street, this is absolutely not for you.
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