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

Owl Have You Know

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21d ago 41:57

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Why do American voters support divisive misinformation? That’s the question driving our guests' latest research, and the focus of today's episode.

Minjae Kim and Ezra Zuckerman Sivan are experts in sociology, and organizational behavior. In this episode, they dive into their latest collaboration, exploring moral flexibility and why some voters are drawn to divisive misinformation. Their new study, When Truth Trumps Facts: Studies on Partisan Moral Flexibility in American Politics, will be published in the American Journal of Sociology.

Minjae is an Assistant Professor of Management at Rice Business and Ezra is the Alvin J. Siteman Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at MIT Sloan. Together, they sit down with host Maya Pomroy ’22 to unpack their findings. Listen as they discuss how personal truths can override objective facts and why misinformation often resonates so strongly with voters.

Episode Guide:

01:40 Motivation to Pursue this Study on Moral Flexibility

02:30 The Puzzle of Authenticity

05:36 Insights From Their First Study Together

11:43 Current Study Overview

16:06 Truth vs. Fact

34:30 Historical Context and Examples

39:31 Minjae’s Future Research

Owl Have You Know is a production of Rice Business and is produced by University FM.

Episode Quotes:

A hope for more reflective politics

38:42 [Maya]: What are your hopes of what your study... how it will help our society?

38:49 [Ezra Zuckerman Sivan]: 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 they're holding themselves to in the statements that they'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.

On The Authentic Appeal of the Lying Demagogue

06:37 [Minjae Kim]: 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.

Economics is always shared goal

06:37 [Minjae Kim]: 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.

33:16 [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.

Despite divisions, American economy shows potential for growth

30:15 [Ezra Zuckerman Sivan]: 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, 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, [30:44] 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.

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