Empirical Evidence on Those Two Tribes
Continuation to Those Two Tribes; the stuff I’m talking about will make a lot more sense if you read that one first.
The Pew Political Typology study of 2014 is pretty interesting when compared to the U/R model. There’s the expected left/right distinction but also a strong second axis which seems to correspond beautifully to U/R-ness.
On a lot of questions it’s easy to observe a comb-shaped pattern where ‘solid liberals’, ‘next generation left’ and ‘young outsiders’ fall on one side and ‘steadfast conservatives’, ‘hard-pressed skeptics’ and ‘faith and family left’ are on the other. Solid liberals and steadfast conservatives are the obvious central cases of tribes U and R respectively, and the “values coalitions” map without too much shoehorning into:
U left: solid liberals (SL)
U centre: next generation left (NG)
U right: young outsiders (YO)
R right: steadfast conservatives (SC)
R centre: hard-pressed skeptics (HS)
R left: faith and family left (FF)
Business conservatives (BC) don’t match as easily to this simplified model, as they seem to opportunistically straddle the line between R and U. FF is very far from the R archetype in my original post and doesn’t really belong in tribe R (even the membership of HS is somewhat doubtful) but they are on the same side of the general R-ness factor so it should be noted that R means “R and R-adjacent and R-resembling” for the rest of this post. On many questions SC and BC form a Core of Evil which ruins everything; on these HS and FF disagree so it’s not so much an U vs. R thing as it is a “thoroughly evil” vs. “not irredeemably evil” thing.
This is pretty much exactly what I’m talking about. An obvious comb-like pattern in the responses on numerous questions that do match very well to the U and R characteristics. I didn’t realize I should’ve made actual testable predictions before I was on page 9 so I’ll instead just compare the answers to my original post, noting the accuracies and inaccuracies as much as applicable. The data will be just eyeballed; I’ll be reporting deviations from the general left-right trend, so YO might be less in favor of idea X than FF, but if they are above the overall line it’ll be taken as evidence that the U/R factor contributes to opinion X.
Section 1: U is more likely to favor compromise.
Section 2: U is more critical about the US and less exceptionalistic, it considers ability to change more important and wants to interpret the constitution in a modern context. It’s slightly more in favor of regulating business, and very marginally less in favor of protecting people from themselves.
Section 4: U is more positive towards immigration, although FF has a better attitude than YO.
Section 5: Basically everything. U is less islamophobic.
Section 6: U prefers diplomacy and restraint over military force, but only the core of evil is really evil. FF should not be listened to on terrorism.
Section 7: U is slightly more in favor of protecting the environment; the core of evil once again proves its name.
Section 8: U wants to legalize weed, nobody is surprised. U is also slightly in favor of gambling.
Section 9: U is less religious and spiritual, more upbeat and optimistic. And they recycle.
I’m not really seeing much deviation from the original descriptions on the issues so I’ll say the U/R factor is [confirmed] at least as solidly as anything coming from Mythbusters.
The demographics are where stuff gets interesting, though, and predictions would fly out of the window had I not added the disclaimer that only SC is properly R; with the disclaimer I’m able to save a bit of face.
U is boring. Its demographics are basically the same from left to right, and no significant trends can be observed apart from education making U-tribers lean left. It’s somewhat more white and well-off than the general population, that’s it. Even the drastic difference in economic views between SL and YO isn’t enough to establish dividing lines; if anything they are holding views very slightly “against” their own interests.
R is all over the place. In the core of evil black people are basically a rounding error, while women, PoC, and poor people are very strongly sorted into FF and HS. Income, race and education predict R views in exactly the ways one would assume. One might almost say that U evaluates politics more impartially, while R votes according to its class interests. This I honestly did not expect, and am quite astonished by.
Other, somewhat unrelated observations:
I had thought that the ~neoliberal~ was just a european mythical straw bogeyman created by the outgroup homogeneity bias making people think that there is one coherent set of people responsible for everything evil, instead of the realistic mess of politicking and different groups building mutually unsatisfying compromises. Then I saw BC and was like what the fuck 10% of americans are *actually* comic book villains
A lot of these typologies translate really well internationally. In Finland NG is obviously the green party; FF is christian theocrats; SL is the party formerly known as the communist party; the fascist party got to power by pandering to HS but in government turned out to do 100% evil core politics regardless; BC is the crony capitalist party; the redneck party is SC with a side order of FF and HS; and the social bureaucrats are whatever, a bit of SL, NG, FF mostly. YO are left all alone and homeless, mostly stuck in the youth wing of the crony capitalist party and constantly founding new ones in an attempt to become relevant.
YO is my problematic fave. I don’t understand why, because they are Wrong On Many Important Questions, but I get this weird sense of protectiveness about them all the same (maybe I want to rescue them away from the right which is dominated by the evil core, into the neotenic degeneracy of a left-libertarianism which can address their economic concerns without screwing over the poor). HS is another; I really sympathize with them while being simultaneously utterly disgusted by them, in the way only a U-triber can. All in all, the R typologies elicit an outgroupy reaction of revulsion, while the U groups are more like “let’s have a friendly discussion on why your policies are Objectively Terrible”, because they do have many Objectively Terrible policies.
NG is especially terrible, what the fuck happened to make leftists pro-oppression? Oh, right. Obama.
The questionnaire for sorting oneself is also terrible. Half of the questions feel like “have you stopped beating your wife yet”; both answers seem to imply approval of a different $BADTHING, and I’m feeling coerced to choose between Stalin and Hitler.
I’m viscerally terrified by the fact that 50% of the american public is evil, and 22% is EVIL. Those numbers go up to 56% and 36% for the “very engaged” category, and this is why the government shouldn’t have so much power aieeee *runs and hides*.
2 months ago · tagged #the best heuristic for oppressed people since sharp stick time · 6 notes · .permalink
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