Jonathan Haidt: "What on Earth is Happening to Us?"
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Channel: Oregon Humanities Center
Views: 87,507
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Keywords: politics, psychology, Jonathan Haidt (Author)
Id: WLHVBhK8hVg
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 98min 27sec (5907 seconds)
Published: Wed Feb 19 2014
Please note that this website is currently a work in progress! Lots of interesting data and statistics to come.
The presentation was from 2013 and is in its entirety pretty informative, drawing a line back to George W. Bush Jr. He claims that Bush Jr. and Karl Rove were the ones who figured out that the main focus shouldn't be the centre, but instead the focus should be increasing the turn-out of your base. Centrists aren't motivated, they need to be motivated by blind outrage and this can be achieved by threatening something sacred.
Elsewhere he says that the generations who came after the 'Greatest generation' (those who fought in WWII) have increasingly become more susceptible to polarization, because they didn't have a shared experience of fighting a common enemy. Instead, these later generations view their political opponents as the 'enemy'.
He also mentions that Democrats and Republicans (politicians and supporters) no longer socialize like in the previous century. This has also heightened the sense of polarization.
At 11:19 he says that racism in the USA has plummeted based on surveys and attitude items.