We tend to see our political opponents as stupid rather than evil

By Emily Reynolds

If we have strong political leanings, it’s likely that we’ll have similarly strong feelings about our opponents. We might think they’re misguided or stupid; we might consider them self-serving and selfish; or, worst of all, we may believe they’re actually evil.

A new study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin explores this question: do we think our opponents are evil or just stupid? While the common understanding is that liberals see conservatives as evil and conservatives see liberals as stupid, the team finds that whatever our political affiliation, we’re more likely to see each other as unintelligent than immoral.

In the first study, 481 American participants indicated where they would place themselves on a political scale running from very liberal to very conservative. They then thought about conservatives and liberals as a group, and indicated how many people in the group could be described using 12 different adjectives. Six of the adjectives were related to stupidity (e.g. illogical, unreasonable) and six to immorality (e.g. bad moral character, willing to harm others).

The results showed that, unsurprisingly, people were more likely to rate those with different political ideologies to their own as more unintelligent and more immoral than those with the same ideology. Ratings of unintelligence were also significantly higher than ratings of immorality, suggesting people see their opponents as stupid rather t...

Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - May 17, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: BPS Research Digest Tags: Political Social Source Type: blogs