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Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
Many commentators considered President Obama’s reversal on same-sex marriage an act of courage. But this isn’t how the public usually perceives moral mind-changers, according to a team led by Tamar Kreps at the University of Utah. Their findings0 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggest that leaders who shift from a moral stance don’t appear brave – they just look like hypocrites.
The researchers conducted 15 studies, of which I’ll focus on one example that illustrates the core approach. Nearly 800 participants recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk read scenarios where a member of the US Congress took a stance on either the death penalty or same-sex marriage. In some cases, their stance was pragmatic, indicated in their statement through phrases like “it’s a matter of not having to invest in the cost of changing government systems”. In other cases the justification for the stance was moral – “it’s a matter of justice.”
Participants rated their initial feelings about the politician and then learned that he or she had since changed their tune, again making a statement based on either pragmatic or moral reasons. For example, a statement might read “It’s still a moral issue for me…I’ve realized, though, that we can never be 100 per cent certain that the convicted party is guilty, and truly defending justice means never taking the risk of killing an innocent victim.” Finally, participants rated the politicians again.
When their initial stance was moral rather than pragmatic, the political leaders suffered costs and gained no benefits after changing their moral mind. Participants rated them as less effective, less worthy of support and more hypocritical, with the intensity of hypocrisy driving the other two negative judgments. Even those participants who agreed with moral mind-changers’ new position saw them as hypocritical, although slightly less so than other participants. At the same time, moral mind changers were seen as no more courageous, effective, or worthy of support, compared to the congress men and women who changed their initial pragmatically grounded position.
0Hypocritical flip-flop, or courageous evolution? When leaders change their moral minds. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000103)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday August 01 2018, @06:45PM (14 children)
When Obama "evolved" his views on gay marriage, it just happened to coincide with the first presidential election where the national popularity of gay marriage was above 50%.
When youtube decided to stop financially incentiveizing nazis it just happened to coincide with advertisers withdrawing money after seeing their ads on videos like "Why white genocide is real".
I don't doubt that leaders are actually human, and do occasionally update their views by way of being convinced, but, in general, cynicism in American politics is 300% warranted.
(Score: 4, Informative) by meustrus on Wednesday August 01 2018, @06:52PM (7 children)
So if Obama’s stance on gay marriage was politically convenient, which stance reflected his personal conviction? The before or after? Thinking someone a hypocrite for changing their stance assumes that their earlier stance was what they believed in. Based on your argument (with which I happen to agree), there’s no reason to believe either stance was genuine.
But I already knew I am in the minority’s of people that consider all politicians equally hypocrital whether or not they stick to their “convictions”.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2, Informative) by meustrus on Wednesday August 01 2018, @06:54PM
Damn, missed a bad autocorrect.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ikanreed on Wednesday August 01 2018, @07:04PM (3 children)
It feels almost irrelevant to conjecture on an answer as to true beliefs about it.
"All politicians are equally bad and hypocritical" is exactly how you end up with concentration camps with children dying of trivial infections because no one is caring for them, though. Just because cynicism is constantly warranted and it fucking wears every one of us who pays attention to the godddamn bone, doesn't mean that all things are equal.
I wouldn't even call Obama a pure opportunist. Just not someone who actually was willing to stand against the tide for what was right.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday August 01 2018, @08:09PM
The British Crown put a price on the head of the author of "A Modest Proposal", but Jonathan Swift lived to a ripe old age because he published it anonymously
While I often use pseudonyms I'm never really anonymous because taking the blame for my essays lends weight to their arguments
I wrote Child Pornography on the Internet as Jonathan Swift but gave my real name in its conclusion where I end with:
"Perhaps if I work very, very hard to perfect my craft as a writer, I too might get a price put on my own head.
One Can Only Hope."
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01 2018, @10:09PM (1 child)
Except that he also actively defended egregious violations of the Constitution such as the NSA's mass surveillance. He not only did not stand up to evil, but he did evil himself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @05:05AM
That's the problem with finding the middle ground, which was Obama's speciality.
The right just lurched further right and dragged the middle to something unpalatable to liberals. Obama, in his typical compromise position, would then adopt the formerly right wing stance and take heat for being SOCIALIST!1!111 and also fail to deliver any liberal policies. It was always too difficult, too far, too divisive and we got stuck with mushy nothing.
Enter the Republicans... there's no pretense at compromise. No pretense at balancing budgets. No pretense at working for the people. Just attack teh SOCIALISTS!!! and ruin lives.
Let's hope the Democrats can learn from this debacle..
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 01 2018, @09:26PM (1 child)
I'd agree with the answer of "He didn't have any personal convictions about it". Either that or "His personal convictions on the issue have been so well hidden that they never made it into any public record anywhere".
This afflicts the Democrats in general: Most of them (particularly Obama, Pelosi, Clinton, and Schumer) give every impression that they don't have any actual personal convictions about any controversial issue whatsoever, which they think makes them appear to be magnanimous and appealing to the broadest possible demographic, when in fact it makes them appear as though they stand for nothing but their own ambition. This affliction is so great that as best as I can tell they genuinely cannot understand either politicians or voters with convictions that affect how they vote, and think that neither policy nor principles actually matter in any significant way.
You can hear that in how their strategists talk and write: "We plan to win over $DEMOGRAPHIC_GROUP voters with our messaging about $ISSUE", rather than "When it comes to $ISSUE, I believe $PRINCIPLE" or "I support $POLICY to solve $ISSUE".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @05:12AM
It always seemed to me they are embarassed about their atheism and embarrassed that they don't oppose gay rights.
If Trump taught us anything, it's that "values voters" have absolutely no values whatsoever. They vote for the biggest a-hole. Period. Dress it up in abortion blah blah and small govt blah blah... why don't you STFU already? These fucks will vote for atheism, they'll vote for abortions, whatever gets them bragging rights to say they fucked over someone else.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by unauthorized on Wednesday August 01 2018, @07:26PM
Revisionist history. The adpocalypse was a response to manufactured moral panic in response over a comedy video from YouTube commedian PewDiePie in which he satirized nazis in such blatantly obvious way that only perpetually butthurt moral crusaders on a quest to find something to be outraged over would find offensive. It was never about the "nazis" because Google actually does censor hate speech, through they use a sane definition so the "white genocide" crowd doesn't get censored since claiming that a white genocide is occurring is not actually a call for violence.
I loathe to side with Google, but they did made it abundantly clear that the policy changes were in response to advertiser pressure, they made no attempt to deceive us into thinking it was some kind of political stance as you seem to be implying.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 01 2018, @07:34PM (3 children)
If I were ever on a Presidential track, my priorities would be 1) what matters to me and 2) what matters to the public. Let the pollsters and speech writers manage 2) while not interfering with 1), say whatever needs to be said to satisfy 2) and 1) can happen. Without satisfying the public, you won't get the chance to do what matters.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @05:23AM
I doubt your awesome values would last a month under bombardment from the world's best propagandists.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday August 02 2018, @06:09PM (1 child)
I challenge your list of priorities a bit, because you're putting "What I care about" first, and "What I care about" if I'm a politician usually involves first and foremost either getting re-elected to the office you currently hold, or getting elected to a higher office. And barring that, it usually involves some sort of way of paying my salary, which means not pissing off those with a big enough bank account to hire me after the people fire me. And that's all you need to become a typical corrupt politician serving the whims of your biggest donors rather than the real needs of your constituents.
What we actually need in the US are politicians who are willing to sacrifice their political careers and even their future livelihoods to do what is best for their constituents in the long term, rather than what they want or even what their constituents want in the short term. Those are rare finds under any circumstances: One I can think of that I've actually met is Dennis Kucinich, who as mayor of Cleveland refused to sell the municipal power company to the company that controlled electrical power for most of the state, and as a result had a mob hit put on him and the banks holding municipal bonds intentionally put the city into bankruptcy and ended his time as mayor ... and in the long run saved city residents millions in electric bills while giving them consistently better service (e.g. the company he refused to sell to caused the 2003 northeast blackout [wikipedia.org]).
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 02 2018, @08:28PM
Do you want a leader, or a mish-mash of public opinion driving the nation? Should we listen to public opinion monthly, weekly, hourly? I thought the founding fathers established an interval of executive public opinion polling at once every 4 years.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02 2018, @07:47AM
1. In a course of 20 years a quarter of Americans changed their views on gay marriage without such incentives.
2. Obama never had a moral position on gay marriage since he's a closet atheist like 99% of American politicians. Democratic voters usually understand this. Republican voters don't. Usually because the guy explaining this isn't standing in church on a podium so they're not listening anyhow.