Kurt Gray on How to Bridge Moral Divides and Rebuild Trust | EP 591

26:53And they're internal emotional pains. And not only do you feel like a victim, but you look for someone to blame for your victimhood, right? If you're suffering, then our minds are compelled to find a kind of agent or villain responsible for that suffering. And so maybe that's someone else in your life. Maybe, I don't know, your ex-partner or something like that. But often it could be politicians or regimes or the other party. And so I think we really need to pay more attention to people's feelings of being aggrieved or victimized in the current political landscape, because they really drive our kind of moral judgments and I think ultimately our voting.

27:35I wanted to ask one more question on this whole harm topic, and that is political divides. So liberals and conservatives see harm differently, focusing on different groups as being vulnerable. How do you break down these contrasting perceptions that both sides have? That's a good question. And at the outset of this research project, looking at how liberals and conservatives make sense of harm perhaps differently. I didn't really know how to do it. I just knew that there was a number of issues that liberals and conservatives were very divided on. We can take Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, affirmative action, environmentalism, taxation.

28:15And I just tried to figure out what were the kind of specific entities or people that might connect to those hot button issues and would those things cluster together in a way that made sense. And we looked at maybe, I don't know, 80 different targets. And in the end, we found kind of four clusters that are really most useful in explaining kind of these hot button disagreements. And they are, one, the environment, so coral reefs, planet Earth. Two, the other, which you could say is more marginalized people, but there's disagreements about what it means to be marginalized. So the other are just folks who are outside the kind of center of American society or center of power.

28:54So I think trans folks, undocumented immigrants, Muslims. We've got the powerful. Those are maybe state troopers, corporate leaders, CEOs, and then finally the divine, like God, Jesus, and the Bible. So we've got these four clusters, right? The environment, the other, the powerful, and the divine. And what we show is when we ask liberals and conservatives to rate how much each of those is especially vulnerable to victimization, how much they're likely to get harmed, how much they're likely to suffer. One, you find actually similarities. I think it's important to point that out. So everyone has the same kind of rank.

29:32So liberal conservative doesn't matter, you're one and two are the environment and the other, and then it's the powerful and the divine. But you show some really big differences across politics if you look at the data, which is liberals, progressives, see the othered and the environment as very vulnerable to harm, right, as oppressed in a sense, whereas conservatives see these groups as a little more vulnerable to harm, but mostly in the middle. And then if you look at the kind of powerful and the divine, you'll show that progressives see these targets as being almost totally incapable of suffering, right, invulnerable to harm.

30:11Whereas conservatives see them as higher, the powerful and the divine is pretty close to the other in the environment. So what you get now, this landscape, if you can picture it, is this sideways V, in a sense, right, with liberals really making this big difference between who they see as the oppressed and the oppressors, and conservatives narrowing in and seeing everyone as more or less generally vulnerable to harm. And so you can think of it as like progressives think about a kind of group based understanding of victimhood. Some groups are very susceptible to victimization, some groups are very not like CEOs.

30:48Whereas conservatives are more likely to think about victim, but in terms of individuals, right, everyone can be harmed. everyone bleed if they're cut. And so it doesn't matter if you grew up poor or rich, you can still be victimized. You can still be a target of crime or something like that. And so I think this pattern is really useful for explaining things like Black Lives Matter. That's a very progressive cause because progressives highlight the kind of, if you are a Black person, you're more likely to be victimized in all sorts of ways in society, live less long, be the target of crime. But if you're more powerful, if you're a corporate leader, you're less likely to be victimized as a whole.

31:29But I think for conservatives, they're, let's say, against affirmative action because they're like, look, it doesn't matter if you're black or white. If you don't get into college, despite the fact that you've got good grades, you're going to be upset about that. And so let's try to keep the playing field even in a sense in terms of it doesn't matter if you're white or black, it just matters what your grades are. And so you can see this kind of like questions of victimization are really wrapped into all sorts of hot button issues. And I think this helps explain it, at least as a first pass. That's really interesting how you were showing how the one side looks at it more as a group and the other side looks at it more as an individual.

32:05It's an interesting perspective and a more macro impact that it has. Another macro thing that I discovered in the book is this concept of moral typecasting where victims are seen as either innocent, where victims really are seen as innocent and villains are blameworthy. And this really reminded me of a conversation I was having with Wendy Smith and Marianne Lewis, who you might know, who wrote a book on both and thinking. And the way I want to approach this is this moral typecasting really gets into black and white thinking or either or thinking that fuels moral conflicts, why is both and thinking such a more powerful way to address them?

32:52So the roots of moral typecasting come from the very kind of core of our moral judgments. And so if you think about a typical moral or immoral act, like a theft, one person is taking money from another person. Now, if one person was taking money from themselves, that they were the same person. They're just buying things, right? It's not immoral anymore. Or think of something moral like rescuing someone who's drowning in a river. That's an amazing deed that you can do, right? It helps one person helping another. But now let's say that you're rescuing yourself in a river. Well, now you're just going swimming, right?

33:30And so there's this real tendency within our understanding of the moral world that the person doing the moral act, like the villain, let's say, when it comes to immorality, is not the same as the victim. They're different people. They're either or. And so what is true for a kind of specific moral act, like theft or murder or abuse, we generalize more broadly and we typecast people as either generally more villains or as generally more victims, right? We see someone like an orphan as 100 % a victim. And even if they do a bad thing, we're like, well, they had a really tough life. and let's excuse them their sins.

34:08But a victim, or sorry, a villain, someone who's done really evil things, we never think of their inner pain. We just think of the evil that they've done. And so we really split the world into kind of either or villains or victims. And thinking, yes, and thinking is hard to do, especially when it comes to morality, because we're so vested in this idea that these people over here are victims and these people over there are villains. But I think I try to encourage people just to move off a kind of either or of 100 % to 0%. Like even if you're willing to say, and maybe in your own kind of arguments about morality too, right?

34:49No one wants to think of themselves as 100 % the villain, obviously. But could you think of yourself as 1 % the villain and 99 % the victim in some kind of argument with a parent or a spouse or a coworker? I mean, just moving us off this kind of absolute certainty about the moral world, about who's a victim and who's a villain, I think goes a long way to opening us up for conversations. If you can say, well, I feel like you're mostly at fault, but I guess I am at fault a little bit. Well, now that opens the door to more understanding and more conversation. And so I think moving us off of typecasting is really important to do when we're trying to engage across differences.

35:31And I think you described this really well in the book. I'm just going to read it because I think this would benefit the audience. You write, I often see moral typecasting at the playground with my kids. As soon as one kid gets in trouble, they immediately emphasize some injury or emotional trauma caused by another kid. I doubt they recognize this is a strategy. Instead, they are embracing a moral reflex. Then you write, sometimes our typecasting is deployed intentionally and maliciously. Enter governments, et cetera. And you then go into one of the most famous and successful false flag operations was implemented by Heinrich Himmler in 1939 when he ordered a small group of German soldiers to disguise themselves in Polish uniforms, seize a radio station, and then bragged about their attack, which allowed Hitler to argue that innocent Germans were victims of Polish ethnic aggression.

36:30which he then claimed was the reason he had no choice but to attack Poland and then invaded. Wow. I mean, I just show that because it goes all the way from the playground to huge global implications of even the start of World War II. So I think that's a really vivid example. Did you want to add anything more onto that? I tried to write it as best I could in the book, But I do think it's, as you say, it's interesting, like how much this might apply from very small interactions between people to, as you say, the start of the Second World War. I think whenever we're confronted with what seems like a legitimate victim, it shapes and bends our perceptions around it.

37:19Right. Seeing those who might have harmed that victim as villains and seeing those victims as blameless. And so I think we need to be in some sense on guard a little bit and think more rationally and critically about who are the victims that we see. And are they really, you know, the most victims that we perceive and think more critically, right? The false flag operations is a great example, right? They were not real victims in a sense, right? They were German soldiers killing other Germans meant to look like Polish folks. But it was enough of a cover for Hitler to start the Second World War. But I think we need to be a little more critical, obviously, things like this.

37:59Absolutely. Kurt, I want to jump to chapter nine. And in it, you talk about competitive victimhood, where people prioritize their own suffering over others, which is really just mind boggling to me. How does this dynamic entrench conflicts that we find ourselves in? I mean, to go back to the point about to have pain as certainty, right, your own pain, it just makes sense, right, that if you feel victimized, if you feel like you're suffering, that pain looms larger than other people's pains. Each of us is trapped within our own minds. We are minds in a sense. And so when we're minds who are suffering, it just expands to fill our whole consciousness.

38:41And so it makes sense that we anchor so heavily on our own suffering. But I think we can really get into trouble. Competitive victimhood here is where I feel like I'm suffering, but maybe you feel like you're suffering too, because maybe I've harmed you in the past or there's some legitimate suffering that you've had. And now it's a competition, right? It's a competition to see who's the most victim rather than acknowledging, look, we both suffered. Let's try to move past this. Let's try to understand that we're both in pain and can we find a way forward? it's not often what happens right what happens is you say look i'm the true victim here you're the villain and then they'll say well no i'm the victim and you're the villain and then we get caught in the cycle that can last up to millennia even with some kind of the most intractable conflicts like in the middle east right we're really arguing about who the victim and who the villain is and even if there's legitimate kind of villainy and victimhood on both sides right we just make the world black versus white.

39:40And I think this can really entrench our conflicts in everyday life too, right? If you're so convinced that you're the victim and every time that you have a chance to showcase your victimhood, you take it, then it's hard to have kind of relationships and the kind of conciliance processes that can make people come together after they've been pushed apart. Thank you for sharing that, Kurt. And I now want to go to part three of your book, which is bridging moral divides. And as I was going through the book, I couldn't help but feel the commonality in your body of work and what the late Emile Bruneau was studying.

40:18And as we think about bridging moral divides, Emile really spent a lot of time looking at dehumanization and how do we humanize the other side? How does that humanization help us find common ground? Great question. And Emil was clearly a leader in this space before it was so popular. He was really insightful in forward thinking. Dehumanization has been held up across so many conflicts as being really terrible, right? When you think that someone is less than you, less than human, it licenses you to harm them, to put them in camps, to deport them, whatever. It licenses you to treat them as something less than human.

41:04And so the way that we bridge divides across our kind of great political divisions is by allowing us to see the humanity in the other side. And our sense of humanness is ultimately grounded in two senses. One, which is that people are rational, right? We think of human beings as rational, being above animals, thinking, being thoughtful, but then also having a kind of emotional core of care and concern and these like feelings that of love and so forth and so if we want to see the other side as human we need to see them as rational and as caring and as vulnerable and so it turns out that the way you can do that to go back to our earlier conversation is to think about telling stories especially stories about harm.

41:56If I tell you, look, the reason I have this particular opinion when it comes to guns or abortion or taxes is because I'm worried about suffering. I'm worried about my family. And I think that this position on these issues will help protect them. Well, now you know that I care about my family. And you also know that I like am grounding my views in this kind of rational sense of protecting myself from harm, right? We can all understand the rationality of kind of self-protection. And so together, right, I think these things are really furnished by telling these stories of harm. And that is a good way to reduce dehumanization.

42:37But agreed, any way we can reduce dehumanization, I think, the better. And I want to touch on an aspect of this, since you brought up the stories again, and how we tell them. I recently interviewed Alison Woodbrooks, episode 563, for the listeners, I'm sure Allison, and she teaches really the science of conversation. And as she and I were really getting into our discussion, we were talking about how intentional listening is something that is going to the wayside. And that when we intentionally listen, we're either really hearing someone or we're telling them that they don't matter. And when I think about you talking about, one of Emil's legacies was the storytelling.

43:22I think one of his was also this power of intentional listening to transform conflict. How do you suggest we learn from this, both him and Allison, how we can become more intentional about how we listen to others to reduce outrage and foster understanding? I work with an organization called Essential Partners. One of the leaders of this organization, his name is John Sarouf. And he's actually on the ground having these kind of like really difficult conversations across really big divides. And I interviewed him for the book and trying to figure out like, what are the ways that we can better talk with others across differences?

44:07And he also brings up this idea of intention, right? Purpose is primary, I think he also says. And intention and purpose are the same thing. You want to make people know that your purpose is understanding and not winning. And I think that's where we often go wrong when it comes to conversations about morality. We try to win, right? I'm going to step in there. I'm going to throw some facts at you. And then all of a sudden you're going to be like, oh, you know what? Wow. You really gave me those right facts. And I guess I'm wrong. I guess I'll just give up my view on abortion, right? This never happened in the history of conversations about morality, right?

44:44No one ever just admits that they're wrong about their deepest held convictions. And so when you're having these conversations, you need to go in with the intention to understand. And that means often asking questions, first and foremost, not repeating talking points, not throwing facts at people. Being like, how did you come to this understanding? I'm trying to understand you. When I talk to John, he literally uses the word understand like four times in one sentence, right? If you're trying to invite someone to share their beliefs, say, I don't know if you feel comfortable sharing right now, but I'd love to understand what you're thinking and just get a sense of really where you're coming from.

45:21I want to understand your views and the stories you have behind this. And so, again, the intention is to understand and to explore their experience and not to try to win. And so I fully agree that when you make someone aware that your intention, the primary purpose is understanding, it goes a long way to having better conversations. And it really is a core lesson. And I hope some political leaders and media figures are listening to our discussion because intentional actions can either stoke or reduce outrage because intentionality really does play into leadership when it comes to fostering unity, especially in the divided society and world that we find ourselves in.

46:06So Kurt, I wanted to ask you one last question on this theme of intentional. It has to do with fostering mattering through vulnerability. You emphasize the power of vulnerability and bridging divides. Do you think being intentional about showing vulnerability helps people feel that their experiences and fears matter? Yes. Ideally, people would have a kind of core intention to showcase their vulnerability to others, to make people aware that they too, right, are worried about the world, are feeling threatened, worried about harms. It makes those on the other side aware that you are concerned about threats, right?

46:48That you have the same kind of harm-based mind that they do. It's very hard though, especially if you're worried about getting attacked by the other side to be vulnerable. At the end of the day, I think we have many animal impulses and so bearing your neck to someone you think is going to bite it, nerve wracking. And so I think what you need to do to allow or facilitate this kind of vulnerability is to connect with someone as a human being before you talk about politics, before you showcase those stories that ground your beliefs, Right. And so, again, it comes back to asking questions and understand where someone comes from and who they are, how they grew up.

47:25Right. What kind of work they do, how they how they think about the world. And so I think once you ask those questions, then it allows you to be at a place where you can be vulnerable and where, you know, they can be vulnerable and you can be vulnerable back. And so I think we need to think of these conversations not as just something that, like, happens immediately. right? Like we're going to talk about politics and like the 22nd mark, and then we're going to feel like we bridge devise at the 42nd mark, something that takes longer to unfold, maybe 20 minutes, right? And go at it like slowly, carefully, and obliquely once we've established that we too are both human beings and we have deeply human concerns.

48:04So I think vulnerability is incredibly important, but it just takes a little while until you feel comfortable. So we spent a lot of time today talking about politicians and larger implications of this. I wanted to take this down to families, individuals, friendships. How can individuals apply the lessons that we're discussing today to resolve personal conflicts? Great question. And that's a lot of what the book's about. I mean, politics kind of generate headlines, but I think what I'm really interested in is getting people to have better conversations and better relationships with their friends and their coworkers and their family members.

48:45I mean, I think everything we talked about can be applied here, but really think about when you're having a disagreement with someone, what are the harms that they're seeing? What are the harms that they're feeling? Who are the victims that they're focused on? And who are the victims that you're focused on? And if you really think through these kind of questions of harm and victimization and their perceptions and how those perceptions might differ from your perceptions, I think it's a powerful tool for allowing you to find common ground for understanding them. If your partner really feels they've been mistreated or victimized by something that you said, but you feel the same because of something else that happened earlier, right?

49:31Showcasing those, right? Not in a way to win again, but as a way to understand each other provides you a way to connect and make it obvious that you're both concerned about the same things, right? Both concerned about protecting yourself and really uplifting the other, ideally in a relationship. And so I think, again, if someone gets upset, if someone gets morally outraged, think about what harms are they seeing? And if you feel that way, think about what harms are you seeing? And then the way you can make sense of those is by discussing them and the stories that you feel that connect to those harms.

50:07And I wanted to end today by going to the closing of the book where you talk about moral humility is something that you're striving for more people to have. Can you describe moral humility and why you want this to be a key takeaway for listeners. So we often talk about humility or intellectual humility in the classes that I teach and the kind of like circles that I run in universities. And I do think it's important for us to recognize that maybe we don't know everything, right, about how the world works and that learning is something that we need to do every day. But I also think we need to have some moral humility.

50:45And it can seem like, in some sense, an oxymoron, right? Because part of being morally convicted on an issue is thinking that we know the truth, right? Like we're like committed to our moral feelings, right? To the judgments that we make. But again, from like 100 % convicted to 99 % or 98 % is actually a really big jump, even though it's very small, right? It's big to go from 100 % to not 100%. And what I mean more humility, it just means that maybe you don't know everything think about a moral issue. Maybe there's something to learn from someone who maybe disagrees with you. Maybe they have an aspect of the truth that you maybe didn't think about the first time, right, you thought about that issue.

51:26And when I listen to people who have different moral opinions, when I come away from those conversations, I'm seldom thinking like, oh, I guess I was wrong, right? I still hold fast on my moral convictions, but I do think, oh, I learned something interesting about people on the other side. And I think that's important for all of us to learn something and to have some moral humility as we move forward with our lives and with the current political moment. Okay, now I'm going to just end on this because it's the last sentence in your book. It's true that many of us today are outraged, but most of us want to be less outraged.

52:04And understanding the truth about our moral minds will help. Well, Kurt, thank you for bringing this book to the world and helping people see the truth about their moral minds. If people want to learn more about you and your work, where's the best place for them to go? I guess I'm on LinkedIn. I've got a lab website, Deepest Beliefs Lab, but we have a sub stack that we should post more in, but it's Moral Understanding Newsletter and Moral Understanding Substack. So you can find us there and we'll post kind of fresh insights irregularly. Kurt, thank you so much for coming on today. and congratulations again on your book.

52:43Thanks very much for having me. And that's a wrap. Thank you so much for joining me today on Passion Struck with Dr. Kurt Gray. I hope this conversation gave you a deeper understanding of not only why we experience moral outrage, but how we can channel that emotion toward empathy, bridge building, and meaningful action. Kurt's work offers a powerful reminder. We all want to matter. We all want to be seen as good. And when we understand that moral fights are often rooted in perceived harm and identity, we can stop yelling across the divide and start listening for common ground. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with a friend or a colleague who could benefit from its insights.

53:23Spread the ripple of intentional living. And also, if you truly love the episode, please consider giving us a five-star rating and review. They bring more people into the Passion Start community. If you're not already following the show, make sure you hit that subscribe button. We have an incredible lineup coming up, including next Tuesday's episode with organizational psychologist and bestselling author Tasha Yurek, where we'll explore how to build radical self-awareness to unlock personal and professional transformation. I'm saying I just have to get through this day, right? It's okay if I just survive today.

53:55I'm not even going to set the bar at thriving. But don't we all deserve more than to get by every day and to survive and say, well, at least I made it through the day. I feel so strongly about that because I think with the amount of change and challenge that we're all facing, many of us have unintentionally lowered the bar. As always, you can find links to today's topics, Dr. Gray's new book, and other resources in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Until next time, live intentionally, lead with purpose, and stay passionstruck. See you next week.

54:37Thank you.