This week, Mike and Elizabeth talk about research linking ideology to our habits of attention and memory, including our interpretation of cues related to social status and behaviors. The episode was recorded before Harvard’s president resigned, but our discussion is relevant to the ongoing controversy about her path to leadership and short lived tenure as president. The conversation was inspired by a popular online opinion piece proposing that “pathological kindness” (the author’s term, not ours!) leads individuals to act in ways that are ultimately unproductive or socially harmful.
Register for the Institute for Liberal Values’ January Liberal Values Laboratory, How to Star-Man, with Angel Eduardo.
Podcast notes:
Waldfogel, H. B., Sheehy-Skeffington, J., Hauser, O. P., Ho, A. K., & Kteily, N. S. (2021). Ideology selectively shapes attention to inequality. PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 118(14). https://doi-org.libserv-prd.bridgew.edu/10.1073/pnas.2023985118
https://unherd.com/2023/10/the-tyranny-of-pathological-kindness/
Attention Inequality: When and Where we Ideologically Focus