How Identity Turns Political Disagreements Into Battles

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Note: This transcript was generated by an automated system and has been lightly edited for clarity. It may contain errors or omissions.

Kevin Cool: Tattoos are about more than just the artwork.

Shona: There’s a little bit of life counselling that comes into being a tattoo artist.

Kevin Cool: That’s Shona, also known as Skeleton Velvet, an artist at Black Serum, a tattoo studio in the Mission District of San Francisco.

Shona: It’s hard because I want to help people make a good decision. It is my artwork that they have to live with.

Kevin Cool: Shona’s approach depends on why the client is getting a tattoo.

Shona: A lot of times it’s to commemorate a memory or an interest, or maybe even a belief system,

Kevin Cool: Whatever the reason Shona says, it’s about helping clients express who they are.

Shona: Tattoos are a way to decorate our bodies in a way that it’s our choice. You can be born a certain height, have a certain hair color, et cetera, but body modification is a way where we’re able to take control over deciding how we look and how we present ourselves to other people.

Kevin Cool: Getting a tattoo can be an arduous process; a recent client spent five hours under the needle.

Shona: It’s quite a commitment of time and pain in order to get something that is really impactful.

Kevin Cool: So, what happens when someone changes their mind about a tattoo long after it’s inked?

Shona: So, I do also specialize in cover-ups because sometimes your identity changes, right? And you might have committed to something when you were 19 years old that you find out when you’re 29 years old, maybe isn’t you so much. So, that’s where cover-ups come in and even the more modern practice of laser removal.

Kevin Cool: People can change their minds about whether they want tattoos at any stage of life.

Shona: My grandmother, who was in her eighties, grew up in Charleston and she is very southern and she, for her whole life, had no tattoos, no interest, and I actually was able to give her her first tattoo a few years ago. And that’s a really amazing example of how someone can maybe present themselves a certain way their whole lives, or have ideas about what tattoos represent. But she, she changed, and she got a tattoo in her seventies. It was a sand dollar on her shoulder, and my sister, and grandma, and I all have matching ones.

Kevin Cool: Whether you’re aware of it or not, tattoos communicate something about who you are and how you see yourself may change over time, according to Christian Wheeler, a professor of marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Christian Wheeler: Think about all the opinions you hold now and think about all the opinions you held 10, 20, 30 years ago, and probably many of them have changed over time. And viewed through one lens, most of us would view that as a form of growth.

Kevin Cool: Today, we’re going to talk about beliefs, opinions, and identity, how they shape our polarized politics and what we can do about it.

This is If/Then from Stanford GSB, where we sit down with faculty and explore how their research deepens our understanding of business and leadership. I’m your host, Kevin Cool.

Christian studies consumer behavior, and today we’re talking with him about his research into identity. We asked him why identity is important in the first place.

Christian Wheeler: There’s no doubt that our, uh, identities provide us with a lot of benefits. You know, a lot of people, for example, when they learn their ancestry, find that they learn something about the types of individuals that they are, and our identities can give us a sense of purpose. My identity as a Stanford professor, for example, might guide me and my life direction as an instructor or educator.

And they also provide us with some self-esteem benefits. We feel good about ourselves, in part because we want to make our groups better than other groups. And they can also provide us with a source of prestige or esteem. You know, people think I’m a fancy person if they learn I’m a Stanford professor. So, we can’t deny the reality of all of these identity benefits, but what we can do is recognize their pernicious effects in matters of some discourse, right?

Kevin Cool: So, let’s start with a paper that you wrote about a concept called identity relevance. That’s a phrase I’m not familiar with, so just talk a little bit about what that is.

Christian Wheeler: So, identity relevance just refers to the notion that we feel that some of our opinions or attitudes define the type of person that we are, whereas other ones might be less relevant to our own self-definition. So, for example, your attitudes towards your microwave may not be particularly instructive or indicative to others about who you are, whereas your attitude towards something like abortion or immigration, you may feel, is more central to the type of person that you are.

Kevin Cool: And what are you finding about identity relevance? What did your paper reveal?

Christian Wheeler: What our paper shows is that when people come to view attitudes and opinions towards, say, political policies or issues as relevant to their identities, they become more extreme in their attitudes. So, I become more positive or negative towards an issue the moment it becomes, uh, relevant to who I view myself as being.

Kevin Cool: And what are the implications of that?

Christian Wheeler: Well, the implications of that are that not only do we form more extreme attitudes, but that we prefer politicians who have more extreme positions on those attitudes. And we can look at extremity in a number of different ways; we did all of these in the paper. Extremity could mean, for example, the way attitude researchers think about extremity is if you have a one to seven scale, say four is the midpoint, the further I get away from that midpoint, more positive or more negative, the more extreme I am.

But extremity could mean other things, for example, having an unprecedented level of funding in favor of an initiative or ticking strong action versus limited action in the near future.

Kevin Cool: What led you to think about this in terms of sort of the psychology of what’s happening here?

Christian Wheeler: Well, I’ve done a, a fair bit of previous work on identity and what research shows in this area is that with our identities, we want our identities to be clear and distinct. So, identities work best for us, you might say, they serve the psychological functions that identities serve more effectively when we know exactly what they are and they’re different from other identities.

And so, we thought in this political context, for example, that if an issue that maybe previously wasn’t the identity relevant, but it became more identity relevant, these drives for clarity and distinctiveness might make me more extreme. Because the more extreme I am, the more differentiated I am from the other side, the more distinctive that attitude is for me, and the better it’s serving those identity functions.

Kevin Cool: So, clarity creates a kind of allure toward a more extreme position.

Christian Wheeler: Precisely. And some of my previous work had shown that when we have a desire for self-clarity, when we, uh, feel maybe that we don’t know exactly who we are or where, in a context where self-expressiveness is important, what you find is that people prefer products that are going to provide them that clarity. For example, products that are polarizing, versus products that most people agree on. And in this political domain, what we’re doing is we’re showing the people adopt attitudinal positions that make them distinct from the other party.

Kevin Cool: Often, at least recently, one of the remedies we’ve heard about for political polarization is we’ll just listen to the other side, this is a big narrative now. But your paper suggests something different.

Christian Wheeler: What we were interested in, in, in this paper is not whether or not we ourselves are receptive to other people, but how we view other people who share our own opinions, uh, when they are receptive to opinions that are counter attitudinal.

So, imagine for example, that you’re in favor of gun control and imagine that I am as well. But I said to you, I just wanna listen to the other side to see what the other side has to say about gun control. How would you view me as a person? Would you view me more favorably if I were receptive to, willing to engage with, and listen to these counter attitudinal opinions, or would you view me more negatively? That was the focus of this paper.

And what previous research has shown is that we like people who are receptive, people who are receptive or viewed as more trustworthy, as more intelligent, as more collaborative. But this finding seemed to us at odds with what you see in the political sphere, right?

Kevin Cool: Right, right.

Christian Wheeler: Where someone like Gavin Newsom is viewed negatively for talking to somebody like Steve Bannon. And so, how do you make sense of this contradiction in our intuitions on this issue and what the previous literature has shown? And what we found here is this distinction that you find between an opinion and an identity that might be associated with that opinion. So, what our studies showed is that if I were to consume information, the pro-gun freedom or gun rights information, even though you and I are both in favor of gun control, you might view me more positively if you didn’t know who the source of that information was.

So, it’s very good for me to be open-minded to information that might contradict my viewpoints. But the moment that you hear that, that information is coming from the other side.

Kevin Cool: So, the messenger matters.

Christian Wheeler: The messenger is the entire effect. And so, if you don’t know the messenger, you view me more positively when I’m receptive than when I’m unreceptive. But if the messenger is someone from the other side, then you view me more negatively.

Kevin Cool: Wow. That is quite a finding actually, and seems to me to have frankly, a kind of alarming implication if what we’re trying to do is build bridges here. Have you had any feedback about this yet?

Christian Wheeler: We had some issues in opposition getting this through the publication process, but, uh, most people are struck by the finding as were we. It’s very difficult to turn this finding off.

Kevin Cool: We’ll hear more from my conversation with Christian Wheeler in a moment, including some practical approaches to handling political disagreements.

So, we’ve talked a lot here about identity, identity relevance, and the notions of how that’s expressed in various ways, but how do you see the very notion of identity?

Christian Wheeler: Yeah, well, a simple way to think about it, and one way people have studied the multiplicity of identities that people have is just having you answer the question, who am I, 20 times?

Kevin Cool: Mm-hmm.

Christian Wheeler: And you might list various characteristics. You might say, I am a son or a daughter, or a father or a mother. You might say, uh, something related to your profession, I’m a professor, I’m a doctor, I’m a construction worker. You may say things related to groups that you didn’t choose. I am an American, I am an African American.

Kevin Cool: Mm-hmm.

Christian Wheeler: Maybe religious identities, all of these different ways of thinking, some of which are on the more individual level and some of which are on the group level, some of which are, are chosen aspects of ourselves, and some of which are things that we, uh, did not choose that were given to us at birth. All of these things form our individual sense of who we are.

And so, on some level that seems pretty slippery. But when you ask these types of questions on a, Who Am I task? What you’ll find is a lot of consistency in the types of characteristics that people list. And what you find is that each person has a whole array of these characteristics and, and the more we can get people to think about the whole collection of things that identify themselves, rather than just one thing, I’m a Democrat, I’m a Republican. I think that’s another way of helping people view, uh, these issues through a different lens. That I may view a given political issue differently as a professor, or as a son, or as an American, then I might as a Democrat or a Republican.

Kevin Cool: You’ve also talked in one of your papers about potentially finding a way to reduce or minimize that sense of identity, or the strength and stickiness of that identity. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Christian Wheeler: So, from our own side, I think one useful thing that we can do is just to recognize that we’re more than our opinions. Uh, you know, as Whitman said, we all contain multitudes. But you know what I find, both in this research but also in my personal interactions, for example, for academics who view their own uh, ideas as being the core of their identity, is that the more I think of my attitude as me,

Kevin Cool: Yeah.

Christian Wheeler: Then it becomes something that I need to defend very strongly,

Kevin Cool: Right.

Christian Wheeler: Opinions can come and go, but if I think of opinions as me, well, I need to defend myself. But one useful thing to do to think about is that, think about all the opinions you hold now and think about all the opinions you held 10, 20, 30 years ago. Probably many of them have changed over time and viewed through one lens, most of us would view that as a form of growth. We are growing and expanding as people and evolving and changing our beliefs and opinions. and so maybe we don’t need to hold them quite so dear in every circumstance.

Kevin Cool: Right.

Christian Wheeler: But then from the other side, we can think about viewing people beyond their group memberships. So, a lot of us are aware of, for example, the pernicious effects of stereotypes. We automatically, as human categorize or size people up from their appearance and their categories, you know, their racial categories, their gender categories, their age categories and political categories. But we know that, for example, that racial stereotyping and so forth has a lot of negative effects, but yet many of us who are very against that form of stereotyping are very willing and ready to stereotype the other side.

Kevin Cool: Mm-hmm.

Christian Wheeler: So, one thing we can do from the perceiver side is to start thinking about people beyond these categories. And our research shows multiple ways that you can, you know, attenuate or eliminate that effect. And it comes through a process of individuation. And so instead of viewing you as a Democrat or a Republican, I view you as an individual.

One way I can do that is by learning information about you that has nothing to do with politics. Maybe you’re a loving and caring father. Maybe you have a, an enjoyment of fly fishing or whatever the case may be, right? Anything that humanizes you and moves you away from this simple category will help me to view you as an individual and less as just an interchangeable member of a category. And this works better to the extent that this individuating information is not prototypical of your group. So, for example, we all have stereotypes of Democrats and Republicans. So, some of the stereotypes are research showed, for example, is that you know, maybe Democrats are more likely to be vegan, and Republicans are more likely to kill their own food.

Kevin Cool: Yeah.

Christian Wheeler: Democrats are more likely to be atheists. You know, Republicans are more likely to be very religious. These are, uh, obviously very, caricatured or whatever, but these are things that people will say in our studies. But the more you can move away from those categories or these, category descriptions, the more I can view you as, as an individual and the less then I will punish you for being receptive to the other side’s ideas.

Kevin Cool: Yeah. How do we get to that point? How do we kind of break that cycle?

Christian Wheeler: Yeah. Well, we increasingly see, for example, both on dating platforms and, uh, more, uh, generic social media platforms that people’s political identities are part of their tags or things they use to identify themselves, so they are self-categorizing as members of their own groups.

What research shows also is that a lot of the opinions that we express on social media are not simply because we feel the need to express them because you, you need to know what I think. But because they’re self signaling, uh, I’m indicating that I’m a group member by verifying or reiterating how my group feels about these things. And we know that, for example, when people are anonymous, they will do lots of things, or in case of social media, say lots of things that they wouldn’t say face-to-face with a person. And so, this represents a real challenge.

And another challenge is that we are increasingly, uh, separated, not just in our social media silos that feed us the stuff that we want to hear, but we’re also increasingly segregated geographically. You know, we have a rural urban divide, which predicts a lot of, you know, political opinions, and we’re less likely to have these incidental contacts with individuals who differ from us dramatically in beliefs, either through work or through social clubs or so on and so forth. But the more that we could encourage those types of interactions, and the more we can see people for the individuals that they are, rather than just the categories, it’s going to be more effective in helping us reduce this extremization. And so, individuation is the key.

And then another big thing is the way that we interact with people when we do get those chances. You know, a lot of us who have strong political opinions or strong beliefs, the moment someone launches into something that may have any contact with a political belief that we have, many of us feel the strong need to defend our viewpoint and to attack the other person’s viewpoint. And the more we can restrain from that instinct, the more effective we’re going to be at individuating that person. And so, one thing I just told you about earlier is not thinking of my opinions as me, that something needs to be defended, but just simply something that I happen to think.

But also, instead of listening to your speech to take notes to show you that you’re wrong, to adopt a different approach, to simply listen, to understand how you feel and why you feel that way. And that’s going to have two effects. One effect it’s going to have is it’s going to help me be less defensive and help individuate you, where you may have a basis or life experiences for your beliefs that, that I wasn’t aware of, for example, and that might give me a different perspective. But also, the moment I’m listening simply to understand, and I can also indicate that by acknowledging what you just said. “Oh, I heard that you feel, that gun control is good for these reasons, or so on and so forth.” The less defensive you’re going to be because you’re going to recognize that I’m not here just to shoot you down, but I’m here to understand where you’re coming from.

And then I can also use language that is going to also help deescalate that. For example, in addition to acknowledging something that is effective is hedging. So instead of saying, you know, “Republicans always do this”, or “This always leads to that”, you know, “Sometimes I feel that some people do this now and then”, or you know, “Sometimes this can go a little too far.”

And what you’ll find is that the person is likely to reciprocate that ground. “Sometimes I find that when people, people of this group tend to be this way” and it’s like, “Yeah, I, I agree. Some of them can be that way.”

Kevin Cool: Yeah, yeah.

Christian Wheeler: And now all of a sudden, you are in a position where you can emphasize agreement with one another. Okay. “We, we both agree that some people can go a little too far some of the time”, and now we’re on a team where we’re in the middle ground. We’re the sensible people.

Kevin Cool: Right.

Christian Wheeler: In a world of extreme people.

Kevin Cool: Maybe this is a good segue to talk about how we can apply what you’ve studied and what you’re saying here into an organizational setting. How does knowing this or, or having some understanding of these insights help those folks? How can they apply that?

Christian Wheeler: I think exactly through the types of listening techniques and so forth that I just described, right? And discouraging use of labeling and stereotyping and so on and so forth. And again, this deescalation, this detachment of identity from opinions.

Kevin Cool: Mm-hmm.

Christian Wheeler: This listening to people as individuals. And then also I think sometimes what you can do is force people to, uh, adopt positions from the other side in a systematic way. If you take some classic management research that I’m sure your listeners are familiar with, but for example, Ed de Bono’s, ‘Six Hats’ perspective, where, we can do this within individuals, uh, in a meeting or, you know, when we’re considering this proposal, we’re only going to think about the positive aspects of this proposal. Okay. Now we’re only going to think about the negative aspects of this proposal, where each, you know, type of person needs to adopt the other side of an issue.

Kevin Cool: Mm-hmm.

Christian Wheeler: Just think about what are all the reasons that people might think this way? That can help reduce this.

Kevin Cool: So, the individuation that you’re describing, how do you apply that in an organization?

Christian Wheeler: So, one challenge I may have if we’re from different groups, however those groups are defined, is you, uh, may view me as just another one of them, another interchangeable member of my group. But when I can say, ah, you know what, I happen to disagree with my group on this viewpoint, or I happen to not be like my group in this area. Even though I do agree with my group in this area, what that can help do is individuate me and make you view me as less of an interchangeable member of my group and be more receptive to my point of view on, on my focal topic.

Kevin Cool: It’s the difference between a caricature and an authentic human being.

Christian Wheeler: Absolutely. And what you find with a lot of political issues that may creep into the workplace is that all of these political issues have multiple value structures that are relevant to them. And when we’re talking about any heated political issues, we can think about it from the lens of different types of values. And those lenses that we bring to bear are going to make us think that a given policy is good or bad.

Kevin Cool: So, what are some examples of lenses in what you’re describing here?

Christian Wheeler: Take a very heated issue like abortion. Uh, people who are in favor of abortion tend to think about the individual rights of the mother of the child, and her ability to control her own life outcomes. And viewed through that lens, a ban on abortion seems like a terrible thing. You’re impinging upon the rights and freedoms of this individual and also maybe their ability to take care of the child going forward.

Someone who is negative toward abortion views it from another lens. They think that you’re ending a human life, and it’s unequivocal that ending a human life is a negative thing. These are both reasonable approaches to this issue. Both of those things could very well be true, and to the extent that I am able to look at this issue from both of those sites, I recognize that it is not as black and white as I thought. And when I can do that, even if I may not come to agree with you, I could understand how a reasonable person might hold this viewpoint.

Kevin Cool: And it seems to me that, again, in the context of someone who’s a leader in an organization, modelling this could have an effect, a positive effect on the culture.

Christian Wheeler: Yeah, absolutely. And then again, finding those areas of common ground, right? And I think if you look politically in the United States, we have much more common ground than we might think. I mean, I think we want a lot of the same things; we want prosperity for individuals, we want our children to be well educated and so forth. We want reasonable infrastructure, right? It’s only when, you know, we have this team-oriented thinking that we lose sight of this large common ground that is much, I think, much larger than our areas of disagreement.

Kevin Cool: Well, thank you, Christian. I found this exceedingly interesting, and thank you for doing this research.

Christian Wheeler: Oh, thanks for having me. It was my pleasure.

Kevin Cool: If/Then is a podcast from Stanford Graduate School of Business. I’m your host, Kevin Cool. Our show is written and produced by Making Room and the Content and Design team at the GSB. Our managing producers are Michael McDowell and Elizabeth Wyleczuk-Stern. Executive producers are Sorel Husbands Denholtz and Jim Colgan. Sound design and additional production support by Mumble Media and Aech Ashe.

For more on our faculty and their research, find Stanford GSB online at gsb.stanford.edu or on social media @StanfordGSB. Thanks for listening. We’ll be back with another episode soon.