There is some controversial research based on MRIs, asserting that liberals are more motivated by anger, and conservatives by fear, but fear is pretty hard-wired into humanity generally. And it matters. Part of the "conservatives are scared" argument is based on measuring activity in the amygdala, which is sometimes called the "fear center" of the brain, but... go read stuff by neuroscientists for that. Let's just get into the weeds here on the politics.
Racial and ethnic minorities. Trans people. Gay people. Are you scared of them? I'm betting no. You are reading a political scientist's blog. I'm a CIS, straight, white dude, and that conditions what I see and what I am likely to say, but... why the hell should I be afraid of anyone "other?" I never really got that, but lots of people are afraid.
And it's pretty interesting how you can determine who has what kinds of attitudes. I always relish any chance to refer to the American National Election Studies survey. Why? Numbers are awesome! In 2008, we asked a pretty cool question: we asked if respondents had friends, family, etc., whom they knew to be gay! Now, keep in mind that opinions on gay marriage have been changing pretty fast. In 2008... your lefty hero, Barack Obama, was still opposed to gay marriage! (Publicly, anyway... bloody coward...)
Dick Cheney? He supported it. Why? We'll get to that.
Anyway, the NES survey asked respondents about whether or not they had friends and family who were gay. And, we can compare answers to positions on gay marriage!
Respondents who said they did have friends and family who were gay? 51.9% supported gay marriage, with another 23.9% supporting civil unions. Respondents who said they didn't? 24.6% supported gay marriage and 27.4% supported civil unions.
Knowing gay people matters! Why? Well, at least in part, it helps cut into the bullshit about gay people being child molesters 'n shit. If you actually know gay people, you are more likely to understand that, gay people are, ya' know, people.
Extend to trans people. Could anyone seriously believe that trans people are going into bathrooms with the intent of committing assault if they actually knew trans people? Gets harder, doesn't it?
So, why did Cheney support gay marriage before Obama? His daughter is gay. It's amazing what happens when you actually interact with people. Sometimes they get less scary.
It doesn't always work that way. Race has been tricky.
We have a very important term in statistical analysis: ecological inference. Wanna know why it's a no-no?
Back in the bad-old days of the Jim Crow south (and gee, it's a good thing we aren't restricting voting rights anymore, right?), imagine the following empirical question. Look at counties. What would be the statistical relationship between the proportion of a county that is African-American, and the proportion voting Democratic?
In the pre-civil rights south?
The answer was, more African-Americans, higher vote shares for the Democrats.
In the pre-civil rights south.
Why? It wasn't how the African-Americans were voting. They weren't allowed to vote. If they tried, well... you know what that song, "Strange Fruit," is really about, right? What happened was that in counties with more African-Americans, the whites were really fucking racist, and so they were even more supportive of the party of segregation, which was, at the time, the Democrats. Remember, pre-civil rights south.
Proximity without interaction. Result? Fear. Result? Domestic terrorism, murder... U-S-A! U-S-A!
There I go, being a downer again.
Now, remember Bill O'Reilly? Yeah, I know. I'm sorry to make you think about him again, but... this matters. You remember that he was a racist, as well as a serial sexual harasser, right? One of his more... entertainingly clueless demonstrations of racism was his visit to a Harlem restaurant called Sylvia's. He went there expecting some sort of raucous scene from a movie directed by someone racist, and instead found... [gasp]... humans! Acting like humans!*
Yes, we can comment on O'Reilly's casual and clueless racism, but we can also notice what happens when someone like that actually comes into contact with African-Americans as people, and just interacts with them. He notices that they are people! Don't just focus on the shock. Focus on the fact that even someone as stupid and racist as O'Reilly can learn, at least a little!
See, I'm not being a downer! I'm showing you the bright side!
It is all too tempting to think of racism as a dichotomy. Person A is racist, person B is not. You're either a KKK-style racist, or you're marching with MLK. It isn't so simple. We are, each of us, bound by a set of attitudes, many of which are implicit and of which we are unaware that condition how we respond to social situations, and that's before we even get into structural racism, because if I start down that path, I'm never getting this post back on track.
Bill O'Reilly, like plenty of people who live in de facto segregated white communities, never interacts with African-Americans. His ideas about what African-Americans are like... come from fiction and stereotypes.
So he's scared.
How do white people (hi!) not be scared? Same thing as straight people and gay people. Interaction. Even Bill O'Reilly managed to realize that African-Americans weren't as scary as he thought! If Bill O'Reilly can start to confront his fears, imagine what would happen if people less racist than O'Reilly had more interaction across racial and ethnic lines?
Just sayin'... And remember, we've got social science data on this!
OK, liberals, time for your medicine now.
GUNS!!! BOOO!!!!
Calm down. As I keep reminding you, you aren't going to be shot.
Have you ever shot a gun? If you really are that terrified of guns, probably not, or at least not regularly. Care to see where I'm going with this?
How many people own guns? Best estimates: a little under 1/3 of Americans. They aren't going to shoot you. Once again, here's the link to FBI crime statistics, and here's the link to CDC top causes of mortality.
If you grow up in a rural area where hunting is prevalent, or in a military family, or something like that, you grow up in proximity to guns. And they just aren't that scary. And 1/3 of Americans own guns, with around 40% of people living in households with guns. For a lot of lefties, this is just an unfathomable culture. Lefties are, largely speaking, viscerally afraid of guns. Most have had very little exposure to guns, and that lack of exposure perpetuates the fear, making the culture that much more unfathomable.
Look, I'm an academic. The most effete of effete. Most of us get our meat at Whole Paycheck, and the rest are a bunch of sneering vegans. I get it. Still...
How much exposure does it take to get over that fear? I'm the wrong person to ask. Academic. Whole Paycheck shopper. I'm not afraid of guns because I do the math, not because I shoot, so ask your rural or military-associated friends.
Hopefully you have some.
What they learn, though, and what gets drilled into their heads, is a set of basic rules. Always treat every gun as though it is loaded. Never point the gun at anything that you don't intend to shoot. And never at a person (keeping in mind that you treat every gun as though it is loaded). Always point the gun at the ground until you are ready to aim (keeping in mind that you treat every gun as though it is loaded). Never put your finger on the trigger, until you are ready to shoot. These kinds of things.
People who live around guns-- and there are a lot-- mostly have these rules as second nature. That makes guns less scary. That's the point of having safety procedures and drilling safety procedures.
People who go hunting on weekends? This is second nature to them, and the guns just can't be very scary. If you have never held a gun before, though, and a gun is nothing more than news stories on shootings...
They just scare you.
This doesn't mean one side is right or wrong on policy. That is a completely separate matter, and nothing in this post addresses gun control policy efficacy, morality or tradeoffs at all. I am simply making the observation that if you go hunting, target shooting, or something like that, or live in one of the 40% or so of households with guns, and have a basic understanding of gun safety, guns aren't viscerally scary. Lefties tend to have a visceral fear of guns, and the most hardcore gun control advocates generally aren't hunters, target shooters, or people with significant experience around guns, and that fear is related to a lack of experience.
Now, that said, if some nutjob is actually pointing a gun at you or shooting people in your vicinity, you may shit your pants. As in, I am predicting that you might shit your pants, and granting you permission to shit your pants. I would too. And no, conservatives, having your gun won't protect you. How fast is your draw? Not fast enough. Your bowels are faster.
However, I go back to that 40% figure. There are two ways to take it. First: HOLY FUCKING SHIT WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE BECAUSE THERE ARE GUNS EVERYWHERE!!!
OK, but remember those crime statistics and mortality rates?
So, here's the second way to take it: the probability of any one gun being used to kill someone is damn near zero.
The structure of that statement should sound familiar, if you think hard enough...
And if you take that second interpretation, you don't freak out about guns.
How, then, do you get from the first version to the second version? Well, math. That's my way, effete academic that I am. If you don't want to go that route...
Exposure. Interaction and exposure. Don't be scared. Confront your overblown fears. Take a shooting lesson, learn the safety procedures, and they might get less scary. It probably won't change your mind on much of anything, but it might help you think more clearly.
If you do not own a gun, have never owned a gun, have never spent any time hunting or target shooting, and do not interact with people who do, then the concept of a gun as anything other than the weapon in a "mass shooting" just doesn't register in your brain.
Gee, do you think that might affect how you think about guns?
Fear. Proximity, exposure and fear. This all works the same way.
At some point, the liberal reaction to this is some version of the following: But guns really do kill people! A gun isn't a person and nothing is more evil than bigotry!
Fear of guns is not prejudice, and I am not equating fear of guns with racism, homophobia, or anything like that.
I'll write that again: I am not equating fear of guns with racism, homophobia, or any other form of bigotry.
Racism, homophobia and other forms of bigotry are evil. Fear of guns is not evil. It is just a fear. Clear?
At its core, though, bigotry is rooted in fear, and generally a fear that comes in part from lack of interaction. It is easy to fear that with which we never interact. It's hard to have the same visceral fear that many liberals have of guns if you grow up hunting and learning gun safety.
That, itself, does not have direct policy implications. It has implications for how we think about policy.
Then, of course, there is the question of when fears are more appropriate. When Trump won, I started expressing what I still consider a legitimate fear: a fear of nuclear war. The probability that Trump will start a nuclear war is low, by some standards. Admiral Stavridis put the odds of a nuclear war with North Korea at around 10%. The thing is, the cost of nuclear war is so insanely high that 10% is way too high.
Tell me that there is a 10% chance of a major recession, and I'll shrug. Recessions happen. I've studied economics. Tell me there is a 10% chance that I will contract an antibiotic-resistant strain of nectrotizing fasciitis if I eat at restaurant, and I ain't eatin' at that fuckin' restaurant!
This is where we have to consider the probability of a bad thing happening along with the level of catastrophe.
If you are afraid of X, what is the actual probability that X will happen, and how bad would it be? Both matter. I admit, I'm afraid of nuclear war. I thought I was done with that when the Soviet Union fell, but then James Comey decided he didn't want Hillary to be President, so here we are again.
That's the calculation, though. If you are afraid of a group, what is the real probability that a member of that group will do something to you? Is that belief based on stereotypes or actual data? Exposure and interaction can help to break down stereotypes. Guns? They are different because guns are dangerous, but what is the real probability? Low, and exposure can help with the visceral fears.
Of course, you might die. Scratch that, you will die. It's just a matter of how and when, but the scary stuff is unlikely, so don't worry about it.
Why do I worry more about nuclear war? I'm just one person, but there are 7.6 billion people on this planet. Nuclear war seems to me to matter more.
*At this point, my Carlin-mouth requires me to comment that O'Reilly's expectation was that people at Sylvia's would behave horribly by calling each other "motherfucker," which is one of George Carlin's seven dirty words. Rather than go on yet another explication of the Latin versus Germanic issue and arbitrary societal taboos, I'll simply point out that the problem was O'Reilly's expectation having been built entirely from stereotypes.
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