The Flexible Morals of American Voters feat. Professor Minjae Kim & Professor Ezra Zuckerman Sivan

[00:00] Maya: Welcome to Owl Have You Know, a podcast from Rice Business. This episode is part of our Up Next series, where faculty researchers and alumni weigh in on the trends currently shaping the world of business. I'm Maya Pomroy. And I have the distinct pleasure of being joined by not one, but two phenomenal guests on the show today, Assistant Professor of Management at the Jones School of Business at Rice University, Dr. Minjae Kim, and Dr. Ezra Zuckerman Sivan, the Alvin J. Siteman Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at MIT Sloan School of Management, who is also the co-founder of MIT Sloan’s Ph.D. program in Economic Sociology.

Thank you both for being here with us today. So, you both have a depth and breadth of expertise in not only management, but sociology, specifically organizational behavior. And you have dedicated yourselves to significant research on the human condition, our psychological motivations, and those sociological implications.

So, today, we're going to discuss your latest collaboration, focusing on flexible morality and a key reason why American voters support divisive misinformation. It's titled, “When Truth Trumps Facts: Studies on Partisan Moral Flexibility in American Politics.” And this is a forthcoming study in the American Journal of Sociology.

So, before we begin, I just want to say that this is a non-partisan study, as flexible morality is evident on both sides of the aisle, I think we can all attest. So, our conversation is going to be about the motivations of the human condition and evaluating personal truth over fact, which can sometimes lead to those mic-drop moments at the Thanksgiving dinner table. So, let's start a bit with your background. So, let's start with you, Ezra. Can you tell me what brought you to really have a passion for this kind of work?

[02:05] Ezra: Sure. Thanks, Maya. It's a pleasure being here. So, I'm a sociologist and was not working on politics for a long time, but I'm the child of a political scientist. That's one piece of background. The second is I have the great privilege of working with fantastic students at MIT.

Minjae is a former student, so are the other two co-authors on this paper, Oliver Hahl, who was a little earlier vintage than Minjae, Oliver and I were on Minjae's dissertation committee, and then the fourth co-author, Ethan Poskanzer, who's at University of Colorado Boulder, who was also a student, and I forget even who was on his committee, but we all, kind of, like, worked together.

You know, one of the pieces of pre-history for this project is a series of papers that, first, Oliver and I, and then Minjae and Oliver, and Oliver and I worked on together. And we were very, very interested in really understanding what sometimes I like to say as, sort of, funky logics of valuation. So, why it is that we value things that we, kind of, shouldn't value?

And that sounds like, what's the “should” coming from? Sometimes, it's actually inconsistent within our own valuation schemes, right? And so, what we were interested in was why is it that people sometimes seem to attribute more authenticity and more warmth to people or institutions who are lower status. So, on the one hand, you're, kind of, raising some people up, and you're taking them down on some other dimensions.

And so, Oliver and I and then Minjae and Oliver and I were doing a lot of work on this. And it's, kind of, a little hard puzzle to figure out. And then right after the 2016 election, one of our other former students, Roman Galperin, actually reached out and said, "You, guys, were right. It's all about authenticity."

And if you can recall back to that time, there was a lot of talk about how one of the reasons that Trump won, and Hillary Clinton lost was that Trump was perceived as being more authentic somehow. And he said, "See, you, guys, are doing all this work on authenticity. And you are right. It's all about authenticity."

[04:06] Maya: Or is it maybe being less scripted?

[04:09] Ezra: So, that was the puzzle I was trying to figure out. How it can be that he would be regarded as more authentic? And the reasons that... you know, first, for us, is I was trying to figure out what's, really, the puzzle here? Why is it hard to understand?

And so, some of it had to do with the fact that one of the reasons that people are regarded as more inauthentic, in general, is that if you're more intrinsically loaded, motivated, or you're more pro-socially motivated, but not if you're, like, seeking fame or fortune, you're extrinsically motivated. That usually makes people seem inauthentic.

And we're going to get into, both sides of the political aisle have their issues, let's say, in the response to the politician and to the various kinds of statements, but let's just say there are people in the world who I think seem more intrinsically motivated than, and more pro-socially motivated than Donald Trump. That was one part of it. But the other part of it is that he has a bit of a challenge with telling the truth.

And actually, within the... And now, we're going to really get into truth versus fact, right? So, let's just say, sticking with the facts, being disappointed about saying things that are only factual, things that would stand up in a court of law, that kind of logic. That's not his game, you might say. And I'm using the word game for a reason because he's playing a different game.

And up to that point, Minjae... I mean, I got to turn to Minjae here for... One of the problems, I'm an advisor, I talk too much. So, Minjae should talk much more than me in this, in this episode. In the large social science literature leading up to that point, I would say there was almost, like, sincerity, you know, you could define as saying things that are only factual, for instance, was centrally regarded as a synonym for authenticity.

You know, that seemed like impossible, basically an impossibility that you could be regarded as insincere and also as authentic. And in fact, one of the first studies we did was a survey. And we showed that Trump voters actually themselves did not see Donald Trump as sincere, did not see him as warm, but did see him as authentic. That's what got us going in this line of research. And that ultimately leads to the study that we're doing today. We're not talking about our first study. We're talking about our second study.

[06:10] Maya: And that first study actually did win a prize. It was the Authentic Appeal of the Lying Demagogue. That's what the title was. Proclaiming the Deeper Truth About Political Illegitimacy. And it won the 2019 Cooley-Mead Prize for best article. So, was that your first collaboration together?

[06:26] Minjae: So, it was actually the second collaboration with Ezra and Oliver Hahl, the former student of Ezra, and, you know, now also one of my committee members. So, kind of, the go off of what Ezra was talking about. I think one of the key things that we really wanted to focus on was that we started with a premise that not only do politicians spread misinformation on all sides of the spectrum, but also, people often, you know, recognize the possibility, very salient possibility, that politicians lie very often.

So, there is literature in the political science talking about how it is actually very hard for politicians to appear authentic. So, one of the key things that we try to get at in that paper with the authentic appeal of the lying demagogue was essentially to identify a specific type of misinformation or specific type of lies that, you know, we label as lying demagoguery that would help that politician appear more authentic versus not under certain kinds of conditions.

So, you know, we thought that, kind of, one of the key motivation was not necessarily that all lies, you know, make politicians appear authentic or, you know, that people thought that, you know, the misinformation was actually factually correct, but, you know, why and... when and why they might see the misinformation as factually incorrect but still, kind of, see the appeal in that. And obviously, that has some, or a lot of relevance to the more recent paper as well.

[07:50] Maya: So, Minjae, what got you interested in this kind of work? And I also want to go back a little bit and talk about how you ended up at Rice and your background.

[07:59] Minjae: So, I always have this insecurity about calling myself a sociologist because even though, you know, I do work in sociology, published in sociology journals, none of my degrees is in sociology. So, my undergrad is in political science, and my Ph.D. is in economic sociology, and more officially in management, working with Ezra and some of other fantastic community members, including Roberto Fernandez, Oliver Hahl, and Kate Kellogg, but at the same time, you know, I always had some interest in politics, too.

As an aspiring grad student, you would apply to different programs. And I applied to MIT Sloan as a graduate student because I saw Ezra Zuckerman and Roberto Fernandez, and I really like them. Also, as a, kind of, undergrad student, you don't really know why you like their work when you're an undergrad student. You're, kind of, like, you have this intuition about how you like their work, but you don't really know why.

[08:51] Maya: That's a very psychological and sociological element as well, isn't it?

[08:56] Minjae: It is, it is. So, I emailed Ezra, and I sent him, like, some of the work that I had done as an undergrad. And he actually emailed me back saying that, "I'm not so sure if it is a good fit yet, you know," because the work that I was doing was just completely different. It was, it was, like, not about, you know, what, what their work that Ezra and Roberto were doing.

And then I later figured out that my work was actually not in that realm that I claimed to have had interest. So, it helped me, that kind of conversation helped me see, like, different types of research and, kind of, connected different types of research with one another, which really, kind of, helped my, kind of, intellectual growth as well.

[09:37] Ezra: That's interesting. You know, it's a very, very interesting process, I think, you know. There's a whole backstory, I think, for every perspective, Ph. D., and Minjae has one, too, about how it is they find out about... probably because also, like, our program is not, like, a degree that is a name brand, kind of, degree.

And so, you, kind of, have to find your way into a little niche, but if any applicant, like you, come in with a certain idea about what research is, and what you like, what you don't like, what kind of standards you want to use, methods you want to use, and then it's a pretty transformative experience. You, kind of, have to be open to transformation. And we never know where things are going. Even, like, the faculty are moving targets, too.

I mean, when Minjae first applied, we certainly didn't know we were going to do this, right? That was something that... It was more part of our community. We were all trying to figure out what's going on. And it related to our research. And so, it was this puzzle that came to us that we all, kind of, rolled up our sleeves and, kind of, really wanted to try to understand.

[10:31] Maya: And so, this is around 2016.

[10:33] Ezra: This, kind of, tributary, or, I mean, river research, kind of, happened, like, two days after the election or something like that.

[10:37] Maya: Ironically, that was, that was the election.

[10:39] Ezra: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was the prompt.

[10:40] Maya: Yeah.

[10:40] Ezra: And for us, it was probably, like, we are supposed to understand what's going on with this thing about authenticity. And we were like, "Actually, no. We don't understand this at all." I think one of the things that's our principles, and you mentioned about the human condition, right, which is a big, lofty thing, but our reaction right away to that election and to the political dynamics since then and to a lot of dynamics that we see in other parts of the world where there's a lot of similarities to what's been going on in the States, is that we think that pretty much anyone can or would behave the way that voters are behaving.

And our emphasis is always on voters or citizens, not so much on the politicians. We want to understand why it is, sort of, like, the demand side of the political market, why it is that people respond the way they do. And our belief is that there's nothing really different fundamentally, let's say, about Democrats or Republicans. It's more that the situation that they're in.

And that's one of the things that we were very proud about in the first paper is that we got basically both Republican voters and Democrat voters to behave in the same way, depending on how, where they were in experimental conditions. That's always been very important for us.

[11:47] Maya: So, that was the base study that then you could, you know, add into with this study. Let's talk about this study specifically. Can you give me an overview of it? How did you begin?

[11:59] Minjae: So, we essentially start from why do people respond positively to misinformation? There are all different types of misinformation. So, you know, we wanted to focus on a specific type of misinformation that we also focused on in the previous work, which, you know, we often call lying demagoguery, but, kind of, the broader term might be the misinformation that people might actually recognize as based on not true facts.

[12:26] Maya: So, it's their truth, but it's not fact.

[12:29] Minjae: Exactly. So, by the way, we didn't know exactly... you know, we didn't have exact distinction when we started the paper. So, it was, kind of, a learning process as we went on. The technical term for this, and I don't know if it will make it to the podcast, is, “bullshit,” you know.

[12:44] Maya: I think that's great. It should be on the podcast. I think-

[12:47] Minjae: Yeah.

[12:47] Maya: ... everybody understands that word.

[12:49] Minjae: Yeah. So, actually, so, the philosopher, Harry Frankfurt, he came up with this concept that bullshit is... So, there are lies, and there is bullshit.

[12:57] Ezra: You can find him on YouTube, too. He passed away recently, sadly. But when the book came out, he was on Colbert. He was all over the place. It's great stuff.

[13:06] Minjae: And the book is essentially about how the lies, as we colloquially use, the lies are often to mislead people to believe in something that is not factually correct. So, lies often pretend to be, you know, factually correct statement, and which means that even the liars try to often hold the norm of what we call the fact grounding, that people think that it is... they think that it is important to be grounded in on facts.

[13:32] Maya: What I've noticed is, like, if you say something over and over and over again, then people start to believe it, regardless of what it is. Even, you know, my child will sit there and say the same thing over and over. I'm like, "That's not true," but if you say it over and over and over again, it starts to, sort of, overwhelmingly consume you.

[13:51] Minjae: I see. So, I think, I think that's definitely taking place in a lot of types of misinformation. And we actually get some of that, too, which we'll call, like, a factual flexibility. People actually believe the facts behind the misinformation.

But at the same time, we focus on, kind of, the type of misinformation that we, you know, label as bullshit, which, essentially, the people who are saying bullshit, they do not care. They not only don't care if it is grounded on facts, they don't care about the norm of fact grounding that, you know, one is supposed to tell a fact.

[14:22] Maya: Why do they not care?

[14:23] Minjae: I mean, so, that's another thing about, kind of, the... we also focus on the demand side. Like, the politicians who tell such bullshit, like, we don't really know their motivation. They might, you know, they might have more... you know, do them more habitually, or they might, you know, know, strategically speaking, they might know what kind of a reaction that it will evoke, and stuff like that, but that is more of a, kind of, the mystery to us, like, that we, kind of, black box that. Go ahead.

[14:46] Ezra: So, I'd say two things to that, Minjae. That was great. Right. I think if you use the metaphor of a market, right? Think about the political market. So, the politicians are selling something, right? Ultimately, what they're trying to sell you on is to vote for them, right? But they're trying to sell you on something. And ultimately, it's what the market will bear. So, if a particular kind of message is working in one way or another, that's what they'll go with.

They, kind of, surf the crowd. Basically, it's a, it's a, sort of, capitalist political market, right? By figuring out why voters or citizens respond to it the way they do, and you can, sort of, back out why it is the politicians would do what they, what they do, but the short answer is because it works. The second thing is, I just want to, kind of, like, reinforce something that Minjae, I think, was hinting at, which is so we, kind of, take issue with a lot of the way that misinformation is discussed in the media, but also by a lot of social scientists.

And it's a very subtle thing. It's not that we think that they're wrong, but we think we're, sort of, like... by being, kind of, partly right, you miss something really, really, really important. And the “partly right” is that people believe misinformation, you know. If you repeat something, people believe in it. That definitely happens.

Where our view is that people get... people, the media, and other social scientists for the most part, but there's some exceptions, tend to get a little bit too distracted by that fact, the fact that people actually do believe in, like, say, for instance, partisans. Partisan voters do tend to believe what their partisan standard bearers, their candidates are saying.

However, our view is that they don't just believe it, right? They find it compelling in a way that is not exactly, like, they believe it being, to be factual. They think there's a deeper truth that is behind it, or when they do, it doesn't, kind of, matter that much to them whether it's actually factual. And so, in a sense, they don't really believe it.

And our hunch is they can sort... You know what? They won't necessarily admit this. You have to, kind of, get it in a very subtle way, but they can tell the difference. They know the difference between things that are actually well-grounded factually and things that express a deeper truth that they're, kind of, let's say, excited about or maybe pissed off about.

[16:56] Maya: Yeah, that's part of it, I think, the emotional component that triggers people. And they won't budge, you know. The American population is very, very brilliant, smart. Well, in my experience, I've met folks where it doesn't matter. I mean, you could tell them that the sky is blue, and it is green, and it is going to be green forever.

And it's like, okay, I don't... I mean, I can't change your mind, even though they know that the sky is blue, but they'll just keep on telling me it's green. And you just, kind of, go round and round and round until you're just so tired. And you're like, "Okay. Fine. It's green."

[17:32] Minjae: So, yeah. So, one of the things, I think, so, one of the things that we tried to get at through these studies is, like, under what conditions do people say that the sky is green even though they know that it is blue? It's essentially, kind of, our key question. And the key thing that we tried to get at is that it's not because somebody is a Republican or Democrat, or if somebody is conservative or liberal. It's because they are under certain kinds of conditions, and they see this misinformation as taking place in those conditions.

So, that's, kind of, one thing. Another thing that I, kind of, want to add to what Ezra said was I thought it would be useful to, kind of, state the very questions that we asked the online subjects that we ask... you know, show this misinformation. So, we show, kind of, the Trump supporters the statements of misinformation that President Donald Trump has said since we have run these surveys during and after his presidency.

And actually, when we ask the question of whether they think that the statement was made based on objective evidence versus subjective impressions, objective evidence being seven and subjective impressions being one, in four out of the five studies, the people who say that they support Donald Trump and voted for Donald Trump, actually, they're more likely to say that those statements are based on subjective impressions than objective evidence, in four out of five studies.

So, you know, Maya, as you said, they know that, you know, the sky is actually blue, you know. And this is the same when we look at the Democrats as well. And we show the statements by Joe Biden and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. So, people often recognize that it is not based on objective evidence, but as you were saying, Maya, they do distinguish it from truth and fact.

So, the question that we try to get at in terms of the truth is, “How true do you think this statement is?” And the people, when they evaluated the statement of misinformation from their own partisan politician, they evaluated the statement to be much more true than based on objective evidence.

[19:36] Maya: And that's also confirmation bias. That's a confirmation bias, is if you already, you know, are aligned.

[19:42] Ezra: It is confirmation bias, but again, it's a little subtle, right? So, as Minjae was saying, so, you're more likely to say it's based on objective evidence, but you're much more likely to say that it's true. That distinction is not a confirmation bias kind of thing, right? Confirmation bias would be, like, I have a set of preconceptions about how the world works, and then I look for confirmation, and then basically reinforce in my belief about facts about the world.

And as Minjae was saying before, we didn't, this part of the study, where there's really two, kind of, main results, and this is one of them, we didn't expect this. We thought people, like Americans generally, use the term fact and truth interchangeably. We found that we don't.

Both Democrats and Republicans don't use facts, or in this case, say objective evidence and truth interchangeably, but you actually have a different standard for what you consider to be true somehow. And it seems to be about, kind of, this deeper sense of truth that isn't necessarily rooted in fact.

And then what people do is, if it's about my side of the political divide, I use a truth standard, and I say... I am more likely to say that it's based on objective evidence than the other side is, even though, like Minjae was saying, not really that much, but I'm really more likely to say, "Oh, yeah. It doesn't really matter so much if it's based on objective evidence. What matters is that it's true," but then...

[21:00] Maya: It's a higher standard. It's a higher standard.

[21:02] Ezra: Well, it depends, you know. The thing is that I flip it. That's the key thing. So, when I'm evaluating the other side... So, if I'm a Trump supporter, I will use the standard of truth to evaluate a Trump statement, but I'll use the standard of objective evidence when evaluating a statement by, say, as Minjae was saying, AOC.

I hold them to a factual standard. And then we flip it, right? So, Democrats hold their own candidates to a truth standard, but they hold, they hold Trump, and we also have one for Ron DeSantis, to a fact standard, right? So, in a sense, the fact standard really is the higher standard.

[21:42] Maya: So, it's different standards, but it's, I mean, apples and oranges. So, you've got apples and oranges. And, you know, you just, sort of, pick and choose based on what your own personal-

[21:52] Ezra: Right.

[21:52] Maya: ... truth is regardless of the facts.

[21:55] Ezra: The facts. Yeah.

[21:56] Minjae: Right. So, again, just to, kind of, put it in a more concrete example. So, one of the, kind of, statements that we showed to Democrats by the President Joe Biden was about vaccination.

And he said the following statement about vaccination, which is, "The unvaccinated, not the vaccinated, the unvaccinated, that's the problem. Everybody talks about freedom and not to have a shot or have a test. Well, guess what? How about patriotism? How about making sure that you're vaccinated so you don't spread the disease to anyone else?" And that's not factually correct in that, you know, even if you're vaccinated, you know, there's a probability, you know, I don't know.

[22:31] Maya: You can still get sick.

[22:31] Minjae: Exactly. And you might still-

[22:33] Maya: Yeah. I mean, I was vaccinated, and I got sick.

[22:35] Minjae: ... you might still spread it to other people. So, we showed it to a lot of different kind of democratic subjects from the online subject pool. And we asked them, kind of, like, "Why do you evaluate the statement as the, as the way that you do?" And one of them says that, "I'm not saying that it is never important for a leader to be based on objective evidence. In many cases, it is essential. However, I believe that there are times when it is more important for a leader to send the right message even if it's not entirely accurate."

[23:05] Maya: So, moral flexibility.

[23:07] Minjae: So, moral flexibility. That... you know, it is important to be, "True," you know, that... you know, which is more consistent with their partisan value than it is based on being factually correct. So, there's a, there's a, kind of, interview by Anderson Cooper with representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a few years ago. I think it was, it was before COVID, you know.

It was after 2016, I think. She expresses this kind of sentiment when Anderson Cooper, kind of, asks, you know, that she is sometimes flexible with facts, sometimes does not state always factually accurate statements. She says something along the line, I don't think it is verbatim, but something along the line about how it is more important to be morally correct, you know.

Although it is important to be factually correct, but it is more important to be morally correct. And I think that communicates much of what we find. And just to be very, very clear, I'm sure that I am also subject to that.

[24:01] Maya: We all are. We all are.

[24:02] Minjae: We all are. We all are. It's not like, you know, people are, kind of, morally corrupt or people are, you know, more upstanding or something like that. We all are. And to some extent, we might even need to be in some situations, but, you know, in this particular case of political misinformation, it does not really help us to get over the political partisanship and, kind of, meet on the same ground based on facts.

[24:27] Maya: We touched on a little bit about... Could you explain the difference between factual flexibility and moral flexibility?

[24:33] Ezra: So, one of the things we do is we ask people in each of these studies. So, they get a statement. And Minjae gave one of those examples. The very first statement we used that was a Trump statement was a statement he made right before the midterm elections in 2018, which was about, you know, a caravan of Middle Easterners who were coming up towards the border. And that was, let's just say, very, very, very loosely based on a pseudo fact. Yeah.

And then more importantly, maybe it's also, like, there was no attempt to try to, like, justify it factually. Like, when Trump makes a statement like that, and when he was in the administration, like, the administration doesn't even try to bother to, like, try to... So, that's, kind of, like, a violation of the norms of... our usual norms of, say, a courtroom, of fact grounding.

[25:18] Maya: Did you find that this is... you know, the golden goose, so to speak, I'm trying to make it sound nicer than it is, of why there's so much divisiveness and alienation and... You know, is that what it is, is that it's not the same standard? It's not the same test. It's a, it's a higher degree of fact as opposed to belief. So, is that the reason that there's so much divisiveness and anger, really, and people can't talk to each other anymore.

You know, what I've noticed, and I'm sure everybody on the planet has, is that you just, sort of, stay away from that because you don't want to open up a box of wasps that's going to come and attack you. And so, without that discourse, aren't we losing, really, what this country is based on is this political discourse that we have this freedom, but because of this divisiveness and these different standards, that we're losing, sort of, who we are in the midst of all of it.

[26:25] Minjae: So, the short answer is that we don't have an exact answer to that question, but I browse academic Twitter a little bit. There's a philosopher, whose name I'm forgetting. He put it in a term that I thought was really insightful, which is that misinformation may be a symptom and not necessarily a cause of this, kind of, the political divide.

The fact that people are so divided, and there is already populist politics, which, kind of, gives a rise to this, kind of, misinformation, but at the same time, I'm sure that it might still feed back into being a cause of this deeper political divide based on which, you know, when people don't agree on facts and what is important, they might never be able to agree on what policy to implement, for example.

[27:09] Maya: So, what's the cause? Big question.

[27:12] Ezra: So, I agree with Minjae. I think it's probably more symptom than cause. We don't know. It maybe reinforces, though. Like you're saying, Maya, it can't be good if you can't actually have... be on the same page and talk about the things you really talk about, right, which is, I think, what you're speaking to, Maya, is somehow get to those deeper truths, right? So, there's a narrative that's very, I think, popular on the right in America about what's wrong with America.

And there's narratives on the left, you know, that are deep narratives about what's wrong with America. And those are very different narratives. And that's what people... when you express those deeper truths, those narratives, is what gets people on each side, kind of, excited without necessarily being so grounded in facts, but then can we actually have a conversation about what those narratives are and reconcile those? That seems to be really hard.

In our previous paper, what we did was we created, kind of, like, a simulated version of an American political moment in which we created a situation. Like, it's like it was a campus election in which there were two ways of creating what's known by political sociologists as a legitimacy crisis that made people feel like the system was illegitimate in some way. And one way was through making it seem like the establishment politicians were corrupt, right?

So, think about some of our current politics and when that's mentioned, right? And the second was about making it seem like the establishment was favoring some groups over others, upstart groups. So, when we created those conditions, that's when people got excited about and found a lying demagogue authentic.

And it's when they made statements that were essentially, kind of, like, a little bit of a dog whistle about those narratives. That's what these statements, sort of, do. I would say, you know, getting to the truth of those grievances, those grievances exist on both right and left, and trying to get a discourse about them-

[29:07] Maya: And fester.

[29:07] Ezra: ... they totally fester.

[29:07] Maya: They fester.

[29:08] Ezra: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this, kind of, discourse reinforces it rather than actually addresses them. That's our challenge is getting to a discourse about those narratives.

[29:16] Maya: Well, and one thing that you said is that I think everybody has their ideas of what's wrong with America, right? Both sides. This is wrong, and this is wrong, but nobody seems to be focusing on, okay, this is wrong, and this is wrong. Let's talk about what's right, right? Let's talk about how we're more alike than we are different, you know. And I think that's what's missing.

And that's what I think a lot of people are really aching for today is that, you know, let's talk about how... you know, all the good that we have in this country. And I think that that's the focus is this is wrong, and this is wrong, and I don't believe this, and I don't believe that, rather than, "Hey, we're Americans."

[29:55] Ezra: So, here's something that might be both a source of hope, like you were saying, building what you were saying, Maya, though also, to me, troublesome, which is Minjae and I are both in schools of management. So, we have a little bit of perspective on the economy.

And so, I think the economy, the American economy, is a place where Americans of all types meet each other, and do business with each other, do all kinds of creative, exciting things together. And it is quite robust. Now, it has challenges. But if you look at the state of the American economy, especially compared to, to the rest of the world, the American economy is doing fantastically well. Now, that doesn't mean it doesn't have troubles.

And now, I'm going to get into trouble a little bit because, like, this is one of the things that is very different across the partisan divide, though, actually, I think both on right and left, people are complaining about the economy. You ask most economists, you ask most business school professors, people seem to be complaining about the economy more than they should.

So, we're back to a little bit of the, you know, gap between some kind of sense of truth and facts. And also, there are people who are really clearly suffering in this economy. But the American economy, and there was a great jobs report that came out just now, like, shows you that Americans, even despite our divide and our different narratives, at least about politics, can do great things together. And so, maybe that's a source of hope.

[31:10] Maya: Absolutely, it's a source of hope. And I'm wondering, based on history, because that was one of my questions as well when I read the study was, has this happened before? And is social media the reasoning behind this or not?

[31:25] Minjae: So, on the, on, kind of, the more contemporaneous example and perhaps example that, you know, not to trivialize this issue, but one of the things that I often talk about, that two people... when we talk about this example, is that we often tell the story to young kids or, you know, babies about how Santa Claus is there. The gift that you get on the Christmas morning is a, is a Santa Claus drops off the gifts under the tree overnight.

[31:53] Maya: And he comes down the chimney, which is really scary.

[31:56] Minjae: The chimney, you know. And, you know, there all, kind of, the related factually incorrect statements that are made to the kids. But people of, you know, many different backgrounds endorse that statement because they agree what the underlying truth, in this case, kind of, to keep the pristine, the magic of the holiday, magic of Christmas to the young kids.

[32:24] Maya: Until they find out that it's not true. That's the worst day ever.

[32:29] Minjae: So, I think the hope that Ezra is mentioning, and which I also share essentially, that when people... even if there is some kind of separation between the facts and truth that people recognize as, that if they can agree what, kind of, the goal that they should seek out for, then, you know, there might be... this divide might not necessarily be a hurdle.

That said, we don't know if it is easier to arrive in the same goal or if it is easier to arrive at the same facts. We don't really know which one is easier. So, the prescription would have to depend a little bit on that. But, you know, the economic goal might be, kind of, one of them, so it could be, but yeah, that's...

[33:10] Maya: Economics is always a shared goal, you know. Like, let's bring it back to business. And that's true. It's the quality of life. It's the quality of life that you have.

[33:19] Minjae: That's right.

[33:19] Maya: And Ezra said, you know, the U.S. population and the American economy is, at this moment, doing significantly better than most. And that is one source of where we can agree. And we can agree to disagree on some things, but, you know, everybody wants to be able to feed their children and have homes and be able to go to the grocery store and be able to live in a peaceful, safe environment, those basic needs.

[33:47] Ezra: And that's at a base level, but we also, I think, hope... and Minjae was saying, I think, we don't know exactly how to get there, but we do hope that... like Minjae was saying about himself, I say it's true for me, too. What this paper has done is made me reflect on when I basically shift standards and use a higher standard the other side than I use for myself, whatever, kind of, divide I'm in.

And we, kind of, hoping that people, if you read this paper, you think about it. You reflect on, like, "Maybe I can be a little more consistent in the standards that I'm holding and not hold my rivals, opponents, the other side of the Thanksgiving table," as you're saying, Maya, "to a higher standard that I hold myself to and my side to." We're not sure how to get there, but we're hoping that we can get there.

[34:34] Maya: One of my questions is, when has this happened in the past?

[34:36] Ezra: So, I'm not an expert in Texas politics, but there's several great chapters in one of the volumes by Robert Caro, his multi-volume series on LBJ. And if you read that volume, it's really eye opening. So, this is about the 1948 Senate election. And there's a series of chapters there. It's most notorious for a famous boat stealing, a thing that happened down in the Rio Grande.

But I think from contemporary politics, what's most interesting is that in that, you know, describes, actually this is all, I think, preceded LBJ, it was a part of Texas politics at the time, was two features that we associate today with contemporary politics were very well-known back then. One of them is fake news. And so, you know, he put out, kind of, a very professional-looking newspaper that was meant to look like a real newspaper.

And you can think about the environment back then, very, very rural, very large state. And so, getting the word out was not easy. It was, I think, called the Johnson Gazette or something, but it was like one tool that he used very, very well, but like I said, it was just part of Texas politics that he didn't invent. And the second, which I think is the most interesting, is he used something that was also the pre-existence of him, which was known as missionaries.

And these were men who were known in local communities. And Caro describes essentially very immigrant-dominated communities, I think German speaking or Czech speaking, and maybe some others, in which you would basically pay a guy who hung around the town square.

And that guy presented himself as just a guy who happened to know about this congressman, you know, out in Hill Country, you know, near Austin, that was a great guy. "And you didn't hear about him. You know, Lyndon, he's a young guy, but he's going places. And he's my boy, Lyndon." That, kind of, thing. And this is, kind of, the equivalent of what today we notice, like, Twitter bots, right?

People who present political ideas and present themselves as being, kind of, neutral, but in fact are agents, right, are tools. And that's probably as old as politics, in one way or another. And so, to me, when I read that, and I share that with my students, kind of, does clue you into, yeah, things change and things get worse, but actually, some of this stuff is things we've been... that have been part of our politics for a long, long time, and that. And by the way LBJ was a Democrat. Don't tell anybody.

[36:53] Maya: Sure. No, that's why I thought it was an interesting story because it isn't Republican or Democrat or Independent or anything. It's just human nature and...

[37:04] Ezra: Yeah. And the incentives of politics.

[37:05] Maya: Since the beginning of time.

[37:07] Minjae: Some of the, kind of, the intervention work that, on this topic, has been done by other researchers, not by us, but some of the other researchers, including people like Jan Boeckel and James Chu and Robb Willer, who come out of this, kind of, project called the Strengthening Democracy Challenge.

And they have done, you know, a lot of work, both, you know, in the lab setting and also in the, in the field experiment, meaning that they actually have the real people come in and do different types of intervention in order to make sure that they come closer in their... you know, how they perceive facts and how they perceive truth and how they see one another and stuff like that. So, there are, there are lots of projects that come out of this that are related to this and that should be relevant to our conversation as well.

[37:49] Maya: Sure. And recognizing and being open to understanding that this is happening. And once you recognize the problem, then you can start thinking about the solutions in anything in life, you know, but step one is recognition, right? And so, one of my last questions is... I guess, we don't know what the answer is on how to solve it other than this is a study.

It's an impartial study. This is what we see. This is happening. This is fact. This is fact. And you can interpret it however way you want to, weaving in your own truth, but these are the facts. We don't know what the future holds, but what are your hopes of what your study... how it will help our society?

[38:33] Ezra: I would say, a little bit what I said already, is that I hope it gets at least some self-reflection, that people are realizing that they're using different standards for themselves and for others. And actually, one of the things I hope is, like, this is just the beginning research for us. We hopefully have a lot of people build on our research. I see a lot of areas of application where people are using different standards in different ways.

You can see it, I would say, in a lot of the tumult since October 7th on our campuses. People are using very different standards on each side of the divide, again, holding the other side to much higher standards than you're holding yourself to in the statements that you're making. And so, my hope is that, somehow, we get to be a little more reflective about these things and apply those lessons and maybe take the temperature down in our politics because of that.

[39:19] Maya: Yes. Temperature down sounds like a good plan. And that would definitely... that's something that I'm hoping for ourselves and for future generations as well. So, Minjae, what's next for you? I know that you have done a lot of other really interesting and unique studies.

[39:35] Minjae: So, on some of what's next on my plate is related to, kind of, your question as well. Like, under what kind of conditions do people actually come together, and when and why they might, you know, take this temperature down? I'm, you know, optimistic about... perhaps not completely optimistic, but somewhat hopeful about this, partly because, you know, insofar, as there's this distance between facts and truth and, you know, people of different partisan sides, they can't meet in the middle round because they disagree on what the, what the truth should be, then there should be some, kind of, you know, political entrepreneurs, so to speak, some of those who try to bridge those gaps for their own good, for their own strategic good.

And they might profit off of it. And so, it might be more individually motivated, but that might be good for the collective and for the whole society as well. So, me and my another co-author, we're trying to get at, essentially, kind of, conditions under which that might be happening. And this is very much still research in progress, but that's some of what's on my plate.

[40:34] Maya: Well, that's very exciting. And we certainly look forward to that. This has been a fascinating discussion. And I've learned a lot. And I hope that our listeners do as well. The study Flexible Morals: A Key Reason American Voters Support Divisive Misinformation will be in the American Journal of Sociology. And we look forward to more of your research and more of your work. And we want to thank both of you for being on the program.

[41:01] Ezra: Been a pleasure, Maya. Go, Owls!

[41:03] Minjae: Thank you very much.

[41:06] Maya: Thanks for listening. This has been Owl Have You Know, a production of Rice Business. You can find more information about our guests, hosts, and announcements on our website, business.rice.edu. Please subscribe and leave a rating wherever you find your favorite podcasts. We'd love to hear what you think. The hosts of Owl Have You Know are myself, Maya Pomroy, and Scott Gale.