True Left

Supporters of Democratic candidates tend to be less cognitively rigid and more interpersonally warm than Trump supporters, according to new research published in the Journal of Social and Political Psychology. This was found to be true even for supporters of left-wing Democratic candidates such as Bernie Sanders, suggesting that extreme liberals and extreme conservatives do not share similar psychological dispositions.

https://www.psypost.org/2022/01/trump-supporters-exhibit-greater-cognitive-rigidity-and-less-interpersonal-warmth-than-supporters-of-liberal-candidates-study-finds-62400

Just reading that shows how intuitive it is. Why would a so-called "extreme liberal" Sanders supporter be less empathetic than a mainstream liberal? Intuitively, we would expect the opposite--the Sanders-supporting liberals are motivated by social justice, whereas the mainstream liberals are just corporate elitists.

“There is an ongoing debate in psychology about whether liberals and conservatives fundamentally differ from each other (asymmetry), or whether both extreme liberals and conservatives are similar to each other on various psychological dimensions (symmetry),” explained study author Jake Womick, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

“So, for instance, past work has shown cognitive rigidity and interpersonal coldness are linked to conservatism. There is a question of whether this is unique to conservatives, or if these might apply to anyone who endorses extreme ideology, regardless of whether they are on the left or right.

This is why people don't give a **** about what "experts" have to say. The left literally says they are motivated by social justice, and left-leaning journalists write articles with headlines titled "I Don't Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People". Anyone who has spent 3 milliseconds examining politics would know how obvious the left-right empathy divide is.

The participants also completed psychological assessments of four variables representing cognitive rigidity (openness to experience, active open-minded thinking, dogmatism, and preference for one right answer) and two variables representing interpersonal warmth (compassion and empathy).

“In general, we primarily found support for the asymmetry hypothesis,” Womick told PsyPost. “Supporters of relatively extreme Democratic candidates (Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren) were similar to supporters of more moderate Democratic candidates (Joe Biden and Michael Bloomberg) and were not similar to Trump supporters. This trend was particularly strong for interpersonal warmth.”