Who do I need to be worried about and angry at?

My Thanksgiving Day was quiet. Sister and Niece came for the afternoon and our meal did not require a lot of cooking. We sat and talked. And that was enough. Alix Breeden of Daily Kos discussed the many ways immigrants, frequently undocumented, supplied our Thanksgiving table. That includes, but is not limited to, the apples in our pie, the cheese in our mac and cheese, the green beans in our casserole, the mashed potatoes, and even the turkey. These workers are essential to our holiday meal (and every meal). They are under threat of deportation by the nasty guy and his minions. But because they are undocumented they are exploited, even as they are essential. I heard about half of an episode of the NPR show Hidden Brain at the end of September. I looked for it online, but something strange with the website kept me from finding it until recently. The episode is Sitting with Uncertainty. It is a conversation between host Shankar Vetantam and Dannagal Goldthwaite Young of the University of Delaware and the author of Wrong, How Media, Politics and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation. The first part of the episode shows that Young does not deal well with uncertainty. An example is when she and her husband Mike went to Hawaii and her luggage never got on the plane in Newark. Mike said, we’ll buy some clothes here. But Young was mentally stuck worrying about the missing luggage. Later Mike developed a brain tumor. He had surgery and it came back. That prompted Young to try to figure out why – which led her down conspiracy theory rabbit holes. She was angry and needed to know who to direct her anger towards. She could not understand this was a random event. As a university researcher Young was studying how people deal with uncertainty. As part of that she studied how people coped with ambiguity. She said:

People who have a high tolerance for ambiguity tend to be really comfortable with situations that are uncertain and unpredictable. They're really okay with change. They don't need a lot of routine in their world. They can be spontaneous and it doesn't stress them out. And people who are high in need for closure are quite the opposite. They really prefer routine and order and structure and predictability in their lives, in their interactions, and in their sort of physical environments.

Researchers are able to measure tolerance for ambiguity through a series of statements. If a person agrees with one set of statements they have a high tolerance for ambiguity. If they agree with another they have a high need for closure. Conspiracy theories take hold because a person who needs closure wants a quick explanation for a crisis event caused by a complex situation. Related to tolerance for ambiguity is a need for cognition. This is an enjoyment of thinking for the sake of thinking. Such people are less persuaded by emotional appeals. They want information and evidence they can analyze. A person who likes to think is one who has time to think, which means they aren’t constantly scanning their environment for threats. This affects our perceptions of art. Do you enjoy abstract art or realistic art? Do you want stories with a tidy ending or one where you can interpret the ending? Do you like improvisatory jazz or predictable pop music? Back to those constantly scanning their environment. Young said:

For people who are high-threat monitors, they are all about survival in the face of threat, and it's on their mind all the time. What serves these people best is making decisions quickly and efficiently based on heuristics, emotions, intuition, and shortcuts. That is what causes them to have this lower need for cognition. It's not that they can't, it's that it doesn't make sense for them based on their sort of psychophysiological predispositions. Similarly, these are folks who, because they're monitoring for threat, of course they're going to want to be in situations that are highly certain, ordered, predictable. They're not going to be very high in tolerance for ambiguity because that exposes them to threat.

When a threat is imminent one doesn’t want to take a lot of time to think through options. One needs decisive action. In other situations thinking through a situation is better. Both types of people have advantages in some situations and disadvantages in others. Different types of problems have different types of solutions Young did research into acceptance of transgender people. A need for closure is associated with negative opinions of transgender people. A person who needs a yes-no answer has a hard time with in-between things, such as transgender people. Young provides a long explanation on why people with a high need for cognition enjoy satire and irony and those with a low tolerance for ambiguity do not. In contrast, many shows, mostly conservative, emphasize outrage. It identifies threats, explains them clearly and in an emotional way, and it tends towards slippery slope language. When these shows are not conservative the level of outrage is much lower. Young said:

These traits of tolerance for ambiguity and need for cognition, they do cluster on the social and cultural left. And their opposites do cluster on the social and cultural right. And so to the extent that the people who are making these shows are of those ideological groups, and to the extent that they're trying to activate and appeal to audiences who are also of those ideological groups, then naturally, we're going to see these traits sort of manifest in the kinds of content that they create. You have Fox News very much in the spirit of Limbaugh, with their opinion hosts, really appealing to people who are driven by a need for closure, threat monitoring, and who are really just seeking to know, who do I need to be worried about and angry at, and what do I need to do?

We don’t recognize those on the other side think differently than we do. We just call them extreme. Part of why that happens is our media uses our political identities as shortcuts to activate our outrage. A society with a high need for cognition might be a society high in art and innovation, but could be attacked and conquered quickly. A society with a low need for cognition might be super safe, but not have much art or innovation. We need both. We who think one way should not demonize the other. Today’s pundit roundup for Kos has a couple good cartoons in the comments. Of course, there are several cartoons about Thanksgiving. After that, one by Dennis Gorlis is a commentary on the nasty guy’s cabinet picks. Two elephants are talking:

First: What do we do about the nominees who can’t pass background checks? Second: Can’t fail the test you don’t take! First: I like the way you think.

A cartoon by Nick Anderson shows the nasty guy walking a dog. The dog is labeled “DOGE (Department of Groveling to Elon)”