The bubble

Tom Chivers, at The Telegraph, has been reading The Righteous Mind: why good people are divided by politics and religion by Jonathan Haidt:

They asked two thousand Americans to describe their political leanings (liberal, moderate, conservative) and fill out a questionnaire about morality, one-third of the time as themselves, one-third of the time as a "typical liberal", and one-third of the time as a "typical conservative". The clear answer was: self-described conservatives and moderates were much better at predicting what other people would believe. Liberals, especially the "very liberal", were by far the worst at guessing what people would say, and especially bad at guessing what conservatives would say about issues of care or fairness. For example, most thought that conservatives would disagree with statements like "One of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenceless animal" or "Justice is the most important requirement for a society". .... [more]

Which helps explain the statement "conservatives think liberals are stupid and liberals think conservatives are evil." A conservative blogger:

...[T]he reason why conservatives understand liberals better than liberals understand conservatives is because you cannot avoid the liberal mindset in this culture even if you wanted to. It’s flipping everywhere: and you have to learn to recognize at least the basics in sheer mimetic self-defense. Contrariwise, it is exceedingly easy for liberals to ignore conservatives if they so desire; and most liberals do. Honestly, if conservatives could ignore liberals we probably would; we would, if we could, but we can’t, so we don’t. ....

Thanks to Jim Geraghty at NRO for the references.

Why liberals need conservatives, and vice versa – Telegraph Blogs