Text Box:                                Core Research Topic:                                                                                  What is Hot Cognition? My Hot Cognition La

Text Box:    Political & Moral Judgment                                                                                 What is Hot Cognition? My Hot Cognition La

 

 

 

Text Box:       Over the last several U.S. presidential election cycles, two related trends have revealed themselves.        First, American politics has become "hyper-partisan."  Relations between Republicans and Democrats have steadily deteriorated over the last two decades, with each side perceiving the other in increasingly distrustful ways, and developing views on national and world affairs that differ more fundamentally from each other everyday. Some might argue that partisan bickering is a constant in U.S. party politics.  But what is certainly unique about the current flare-up is the overtly partisan media and internet environment that has served to reinforce it. The country has been cleaved into "red" and "blue" states, each with its own set of "values," and each with it own sources of information (books, news programs, political blogs)  to support them. Second, American politics has become increasingly "moralized."   The issues that dominate American political discourse today are moral ones. Abortion, same-sex marriage, and government funding of embryonic stem-cell research are all issues where policy decisions are made on explicitly moral grounds.  Moreover, many other issues like national defense and immigration policy -- topics historically viewed in pragmatic terms – today often take on moral connotations as well.   The battle lines on policy decisions used to be drawn based on issues of effectiveness vs. ineffectiveness, but now they are more often based on issues of right vs. wrong – with the potential for common ground and compromise as collateral damage. Given our lab's focus on the role of motivation and emotion in judgment, wading into research on the U.S. "culture wars" was a natural, and it is the primary focus of our current research.  Political parties are now groups and identities, political policies are now moral statements, and both of these trends have infused political decision making with emotion and motivated reasoning. We are interested in the many ways in which political partisanship biases the  perception and interpretation of policy-relevant information.  We are interested in the differing moral foundations of liberal and conservative worldviews, and the self-serving ways both sides bend moral principles to support desired conclusions.  We are interested in the ways that pragmatic and moral judgment can become blurred, and the implications (both positive and negative) of our increasingly moralized political discourse. And most generally, we are interested in using the theory and methods of social psychology to provide a clearer picture of the wild and woolly world of contemporary American politics. Our work in this area is just beginning, so there is not much to show for it yet.  But stay tuned for some interesting developments ahead.   Key Readings:  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Text Box: Munro, G. D., Ditto, P. H., Lockhart, L. K., Fagerlin, A., Gready, M., & Peterson, E. (2002).  Biased assimilation of sociopolitical arguments: Evaluating the 1996 U.S. presidential debate.  Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 24, 15-26.  Munro, G. D., & Ditto, P. H.  (1997).  Biased assimilation, attitude polarization, and affect in the           processing of stereotype-relevant scientific information.  Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 636-653. Ditto, P.H., & Mastronarde, A.J. (in press). The paradox of the political maverick. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Pizarro, D. A., Uhlmann, E. L., Tannenbaum, D., & Ditto, P. H.  (2007t).  The motivated use of moral principles. (Revised version of working paper will be posted soon). for a full list of papers on this topic to Return to Ditto Home     minar in social psychology, and specialized seminars in social cognition and related topics whenever I can.  Below  links to