Secret #64: Moral Outrage with Kurt Gray
Are you ready to unravel the hidden psychology of moral outrage and discover practical tools for turning intense conflict into genuine understanding? In this eye-opening episode of Life’s Dirty Little Secrets, social psychologist and author Dr. Kurt Gray joins the hosts to reveal how our sense of right and wrong shapes everything from social media disputes to personal relationships and political division.
Together, we unpack why humans are so deeply wired for moral outrage, the evolutionary forces that keep us alert to wrongdoing, and how our brains quickly flip people from friends to foes. Dr. Gray explores why liberals and conservatives clash over who is vulnerable, explains the fundamental attribution error, and digs into how social media intensifies group anger.
Most importantly, you will learn actionable techniques for shifting from outrage to curiosity, building empathy, and connecting through storytelling both at home and in society. If you want to break free from cycles of blame and find new ways to listen, this episode will empower you to have braver, more transformative conversations one story at a time.
Highlights:
Psychological roots of moral outrage
Harm perception in political disagreements
Overcoming conflict through curiosity
Impact of social media echo chambers
Building empathy with personal storytelling
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 "Purpose of Moral Outrage"
03:19 Origins of Human Morality
09:31 "Perpetrator vs. Victim Perception"
12:27 "Fight-or-Flight Conflict Response"
15:24 Curiosity, Safety, and Connection
17:19 "Understanding Dreams Within Conflict"
22:44 "Family Disagreements Rooted in Love"
26:44 Divergent Views on Vulnerability
27:45 Evolving Political Identity Perspectives
34:27 "Connecting Beyond Media Soundbites"
36:21 Tax Debate: Trust vs. Government
42:22 Avoiding Nazis in Moral Debates
45:45 "Daryl Davis: Bridging Divides"
47:09 "Empathy-Building Through Story Exchange"
50:00 Encouraging Open Dialogue
More about Kurt Gray:
Read Kurt’s books
The Mind Club: Who thinks, what feels, and why it matters. With Danile M. Wegner.
Kurt is currently the Weary Foundation Endowed Chair in the Social Psychology of Polarization and Misinformation at the Ohio State University, where he directs the Deepest Beliefs Lab and the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding. He was appointed to lead the university’s newly established Collaborative for the Science of Polarization and Misinformation (C-SPAM), a pioneering position within the institution. Kurt received his PhD from Harvard University.
Kurt publishes innovative work in high-impact journals and has received millions in funding across agencies and foundations. For scientific impact, Kurt has received the Janet Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Research, the Sage Young Scholar Award, and the Theoretical Innovation Award. For teaching, he has received the Psi Chi Undergraduate Teaching award. His work on bridging divides won The Grand Prize for Best Paper at the FRANK Public Interest and Communication Conference.
Follow us on Facebook @lifesdirtylittlesecretspodcast and on Instagram @lifesdirtylittlesecrets
Reach out and let us know you are listening and what you would like to hear on the show - email:lifesdirtylittlesecretspodcast@gmail.com
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Secret #64: Moral Outrage with Kurt Gray
[00:00:00]
[00:00:00]
[00:00:40] Introduction to the Podcast and Guest
[00:00:40] Chris McCurry: Hello, and welcome to Life's Dirty Little Secrets. I'm Chris McCray.
[00:00:47] Emma Waddington: I'm Emma Waddington, and today we're speaking to Dr. Kurt Gray, who is the Weary Foundation endowed chair in the social psychology department at the Ohio State University, where he serves as the inaugural director [00:01:00] of the Collaborative on the science of Polarization and misinformation. He also directs the deepest beliefs lab, which explores the psychology of morality, politics, religion, and ai. Dr. Gray is the author of the new book, outraged. Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and how to Find Common Ground. Published in January this year, a fantastic book. His research reveals something fascinating, whether you're liberal or conservative, religious or secular. All of our moral judgments from reactions to infidelity to political disagreements, stem from the same psychological root perceptions of harm.
[00:01:38] This insight offers a path forward for understanding each other even when we profoundly disagree. Welcome to the podcast, Kurt.
[00:01:45] Kurt Gray: Thanks so much for having me.
[00:01:47] Emma Waddington: Yeah, we're delighted to have you.
[00:01:48] Understanding Moral Outrage
[00:01:50] Emma Waddington: And I thought let's kick off with well, with something that connects us all as humans, we've all felt that surge of moral outrage. When we witness what we perceive as wrongdoing, I thought maybe we could start to [00:02:00] talk talking about what is it, what is mal moral outrage, and why are we all so wired to experience it so intensely?
[00:02:09] Kurt Gray: Well, I think. Moral outrage is something that in some ways, knees, no definition because we all feel it, right? It's the kind of anger in the pit of our stomach, this
[00:02:20] desire to punish someone we see as doing something wrong.
[00:02:25] Evolutionary Roots of Morality
[00:02:25] Kurt Gray: And the reason that we feel it so easily across so many situations is because it's so important for our species, for our groups, and moral outrage. At least historically, you know, when we lived in small tribes, very functional because when we saw someone doing something bad, it allowed us to come together as a group and kind of kick them out of the group. You know, that bad person, that murderer, that betrayer and, you know, reestablish our moral norms.
[00:02:58] And so it's a very functional [00:03:00] thing in evolution.
[00:03:01] Emma Waddington: Yeah. And why, why? So help me understand that a bit better. Why is it so important that we were able to sort of cast someone as morally wrong when we were in these small communities? Why was it important for our sort of safety?
[00:03:18] Kurt Gray: It's a great question and I think it gets it to the, the, the really big question about the ultimate cause of why we have morality in the first
[00:03:27] place. Know we're, we're pretty unique as a species. You know, if you look at your cat or your dog, right? Maybe they have some kind of proto moral sense, but not like humans. And that's because we live in really tight groups where we have to coordinate and depend on each other to succeed, right? Each of us individually. You know, pretty weak as a, as a individual. And so we need to work together. But what that means is, is when we live in tribes and we all need to work together, if [00:04:00] someone is a bad cooperator, someone, you know, takes advantage of us, steals harms, especially someone else that would really endanger our success as a group. In total. And so what we need to do is we need to find a way, one, to get angry enough to, to, to do something about it at that bad person in our group. And that doing something is usually of a punishment or exile, things like this. So again, it's really adaptive to have a moral sense and to have a sense of moral outrage when someone, you know, violates our moral sensibility.
[00:04:40] Chris McCurry: And, and there seems to be something about it where it just feels good. I mean, there's, there's almost something self-reinforcing about that. Like you get a dopamine hit from being morally outraged. So it's, it's deeply wired.
[00:04:57] Kurt Gray: So deep, so deep, and it does feel, [00:05:00] you know, this idea of righteousness, I mean, right in inherent in that word is the sense of right. You know, it feels right to get angry and to reestablish our, you know, moral boundaries at the same time. Right. The. The. genesis of our moral outrage are feelings of harm of threat. And so it's really a double-edged sword because when we see someone doing something bad, right, we get, we get outrage, but part of that feeling is a sense of threat or fear that motivates us to get angry. And so it feels good when we do something about it, but the initial trigger is often a sense of danger.
[00:05:45] Chris McCurry: So we, we feel threatened, which is aversive. We take action, which. Shifts that, and that's, that's very reinforcing. That's what, what, you know, what we would call negative reinforcement or we're, we're [00:06:00] eliminating that, that aversive feeling, and then everything gets reinforced
[00:06:06] Kurt Gray: That's right. And especially when it's in a group, right? If you think back to medieval times, you know, everyone's standing around as the bad person gets beheaded or right. Like, we're like, yay. You know, vengeance justice. I mean, it's dark. But I, we can argue whether, hmm.
[00:06:24] Chris McCurry: Medieval times.
[00:06:25] Kurt Gray: Yeah, exactly right. We can argue whether it's any darker than social media today, but there is a sense of almost bloodlust, right, that we
[00:06:33] want. We want the wrongs righted, and I think that's been with us for a long time.
[00:06:39] Emma Waddington: Could you say that moral outrage is almost like fear, but wearing a mask, like we protect ourselves with the moral outrage, we protect that place that feels quite scared and vulnerable with the moral outrage.
[00:06:54] Kurt Gray: I think that's right.
[00:06:55] I think that's right. I mean, you know when I write about this in the book, that we have to think [00:07:00] about who we are as people, right? The deepest question is about human nature and so many of us in modern, so. Society, we have this illusion that we evolved as predators, that we should be comfortable, right?
[00:07:15] That we should feel safe all the time. Except we, we almost never feel safe, right? We evolved more as prey. You know, if, if we're with a wild animal, we're the one usually that feels afraid and so, right. This like pervasive sense of fear that we feel right. That is what motivates our moral outrage. And I like this idea of a mask, but it's a mask that we all wear
[00:07:40] in our species, right?
[00:07:41] Like moral outrage felt individually is not that useful, but felt collectively. Get your pitchfork, get your torches, and then you do something about it.
[00:07:51] Emma Waddington: Yeah.
[00:07:52] The Bias in Moral Outrage
[00:07:57] Emma Waddington: And I love what you talk about in the book, this idea that when we are morally outraged towards someone, we [00:08:00] often, there's a bias against them in terms of the way we might see or think of them. We start to see them in sort of negative ways. We don't give them the benefit of the doubt. I mean, I see that in couples all the time.
[00:08:13] You know, we can be morally outraged in relationships fairly regularly. And in the split second you go from somebody who is, you know, you're in love with and you care deeply about to someone you might feel deep, feel deep disgust towards, for example. And I always find that incredible. That switch, that ability to switch.
[00:08:33] And I love what you talk about in the book that that ability to unfortunately start to see people as less than when we feel morally outraged by them. I wonder if you could tell us a bit more about that. 'cause I found that so, so powerful to read like that bias.
[00:08:51] Conflict and Perception in Relationships
[00:08:51] Kurt Gray: Yeah, and it's so important to understand because conflict is just all around us, and I have a. Collaborator and colleague, [00:09:00] and he works, you know, in, in very conflict ridden situations. And his name's John Sarro and he says, conflict flattens people.
[00:09:10] You take the richness of others, you know their humanity and you flatten them. And my work
[00:09:16] reveals that we flatten them in a very particular way. And that is we see them as perpetrators
[00:09:23] and we often see ourselves. As victims of their wrongness. So in couples, it's exactly the case, right? You always do this,
[00:09:31] you're thoughtless, you're hurting me, and I'm, you know, I'm just trying to live my life.
[00:09:36] And all I do is feel pain because of your terrible actions. And so the flattening is really about perpetrator versus victim, and it's always us or our, you know. Preferred side. That's, that's the victim. And the reason that we flatten people in this way is because, you know, our feelings of pain or fear are so obvious [00:10:00] to us, right? Because they're in our own minds. But the feelings that of fear or pain that people on the other side, right? Our spouse for instance, or people on the other side of the aisle might be feeling, it's harder for us to. To understand, right? We have to work and overcome our own feelings of fear, of victimhood to really appreciate that they might be feeling the same way. And it's that kind of deep asymmetry in like our own fear versus that of others that entrenches our views of like, I'm the victim and you're the perpetrator, and I refuse to think otherwise.
[00:10:37] Emma Waddington: Yeah, it's so powerful.
[00:10:40] Chris McCurry: It's, and it's like that bias, I forget the, the name of it you, you would know, but where. If I act like a jerk, it's because I'm having a bad day. If you act like a jerk, it's because you're a jerk.
[00:10:56] Kurt Gray: That's right. Yeah. It's called the, the fundamental attribution [00:11:00] Error.
[00:11:00] It's a pretty wordy wordy title, but it's so Right, right. Like. You know, if you drive anywhere, you know, when you cut someone off in traffic, it's because you are righteous and in a hurry. Right? You're just doing the best you can and if they cut you off, it's not right.
[00:11:16] It's because they intended. That's, I think that's the crazy thing when someone harms us, we infer that they're doing it intentionally and then that. Licenses us to retaliate, right? To feel really angry, even if it's like our spouse and we know they love us. We know they generally want the best for us, but this asymmetry, this fundamental attribution error, you know, at least all sorts of bad outcomes.
[00:11:42] Emma Waddington: And I, I was also noting something else you mentioned in another conversation that, you know, it takes 0.5 of a second for our amygdala sort of to switch on and to hijack our brain, but it takes over 20 minutes for that system to calm down. That is a long [00:12:00] time. That is a long time
[00:12:03] for this
[00:12:03] Chris McCurry: a lot of you,
[00:12:05] Emma Waddington: Yes.
[00:12:05] Chris McCurry: a lot of mistakes in 20
[00:12:07] minutes.
[00:12:08] Emma Waddington: Yes.
[00:12:08] Kurt Gray: Yeah, exactly. And we do, right? This is what, you know, I often think about this marital advice that's trotted out, and it's like never go to bed angry and.
[00:12:19] Emma Waddington: Yeah, yeah,
[00:12:20] Kurt Gray: terrible, right? Like at
[00:12:22] the end of the day, you're exhausted, you're outraged,
[00:12:24] right? You get your fight or flight, and that's exactly when you're gonna say terribly mean things. That's gonna make everyone feel like a victim. And so sometimes the only thing you can do if you're feeling this way, is just to walk away from a conflict and have a conversation about it. Later, you know,
[00:12:42] and so it's quite an asymmetry like a, yeah. Fifth of a second to get adrenalized ready to fight or
[00:12:48] flight.
[00:12:49] 20 minutes to calm down.
[00:12:50] Emma Waddington: Yeah. Apparently it was St. Paul who gave that advice, so it came from the Catholic church not to go to bed angry, which I [00:13:00] always. I heard that from John Gottman. He said it once and I thought, oh, wow. Gosh, that's lasted a long time as a piece of advice. That's, I don't find particularly helpful, both personally and in my relationships.
[00:13:11] Chris McCurry: I'm not sure St. Paul was ever married.
[00:13:14] Emma Waddington: Exactly.
[00:13:15] Kurt Gray: Yeah. Right.
[00:13:17] Chris McCurry: Well, he did say it, it is better to marry than to burn. But
[00:13:21] Emma Waddington: if it was Saint Paul. I probably should have fact checked this, but it was definitely one of the, it was definitely a saint in the Catholic Church.
[00:13:29] Chris McCurry: We'll get him walls.
[00:13:30] Emma Waddington: We'll find out. Yeah. Okay. Email, somebody will tell us. But yeah, it's, it's, I'm regularly reminded of it personally and I regularly talk about it with my couples that really, this is real.
[00:13:42] Your brain has been hijacked. You are seeing your partner as the villain. It's not that you're seeing things as they are. You are wearing these tinted glasses that, you know, our nervous system, our very old limbic system has in place in order to keep you protected. But you know, don't [00:14:00] be confused and, but it's an incredible urge, isn't it?
[00:14:03] To just go for it. You feel empowered, you feel righteous,
[00:14:09] Kurt Gray: Right. And underneath it again, right, is a sense of like victimhood, right?
[00:14:12] Emma Waddington: Yeah.
[00:14:13] Kurt Gray: They're taking advantage of me. And
[00:14:15] so I see this with my kids too, right? I have two girls and when they fight, you know, each of them is aggrieved, each of them is harmed in some way. 'cause they say terrible things to each other and then they're both crying at the end and they both feel like, well she did this to me.
[00:14:29] And you know, so it's like watching moral conflict and society unfold on such a micro scale, you know,
[00:14:36] in, in my living room and. You know, no matter the scale, it's the same processes. We're talking liberals and conservatives
[00:14:43] or family members. It's the same
[00:14:45] feelings.
[00:14:45] Emma Waddington: so true.
[00:14:46] Curiosity as an Antidote to Outrage
[00:14:48] Emma Waddington: Our previous guest a couple of weeks ago James Cordova, he talked about reaching through the dragon that when you're in conflict you gotta reach through the dragon. And it's almost like curiosity is the antidote [00:15:00] to outrage. If you can find yourself in a place where you can be curious about the other person's perspective, like you talk about in the book then that's incredible because that will help to shut.
[00:15:12] Nervous down to calm it down and to be open to a different perspective. And that's not easy reaching through a dragon. It's quite scary.
[00:15:22] Kurt Gray: It's not easy. Right, and, and the like, the curiosity or
[00:15:26] exploration. And, and fear and kind of hunkering down are really opposite, right? Like the, the, the way you get someone to be willing to explore and use the curiosity is to feel safe. But if in that moment you don't feel safe, it's hard. And so I think part of when, you know, when I talk to groups about how do you connect across differences. You know, the question is, well, how do you do it when you're feeling threatened? And so the way you do it really is practice, right? You need to, you need to make it a practice in your life of [00:16:00] having these conversations, of being curious and wondering what the other person's perspective is. Um, and so that means sitting down on the subway, asking people about their stories. And that's really it, right? As you say, the perspective, like wondering, not. Not what someone's thinking about this issue, right? Like you're like, how could you think this about, you know, or doing the dishes or like that thing you said to me, or like the person you voted for. It's more about the stories underneath that, right? Like how did you grow up? How did you come to, to kind of like have your worldview that you did, right? Those are the questions we need to ask about. You know, taking someone who's been flattened and expanding them back to three dimensions.
[00:16:42] Emma Waddington: yeah. Actually the Gottman's have an intervention called Dreams Within Conflict. And they do that with, with couples and they, they basically say that, you know, underneath every conflict there's a dream. There's something very, very important [00:17:00] to us. And we need to discover what that is for our partner.
[00:17:03] So the governments talk about these perpetual issues, you'll find yourself having the same argument with your partner for the rest of your life. In fact, one of the jokes is, you know, choose the partner with whom your, you are able to have the same conversation. So choose the conversation over your partner, 'cause you will be having it again and again.
[00:17:22] And so it's not really about finding the solution, it's more about understanding and solving the moment, this moment as we're having this conversation, as opposed to fixing it forever. And the, the idea of the dreams within conflict is that you want to be curious and understand what is underneath this, why is this so important?
[00:17:40] Be it how we discipline the kids, or, you know, moving to Seattle or you know, not buying a house. Versus buying a house. What is it? What's underneath this? For you. And as we deepen our understanding about our partners, we open to the possibility of being influenced.
[00:17:58] Kurt Gray: Mm-hmm.
[00:17:59] Mm-hmm.
[00:17:59] Emma Waddington: you know, [00:18:00] that's the journey in couples therapy.
[00:18:02] And it, what you were saying was just reminding me of that, but really that curiosity to go deeper,
[00:18:08] Kurt Gray: I love
[00:18:08] that. mean, it's especially. Makes sense in couples, right? Because you have this dream together. But even in something like politics, you know, I think of a Martin Luther King Jr. Speech of I Have a Dream or Right. The founding fathers who dreamed of a country that was so different than what had been envisioned at the time.
[00:18:27] Right? There's always these, these interdependencies in our lives. We're in it together and we're better off at work too. You know, if we all get along and, and we, and we find a path forward and not getting on getting along together in a Pollyanna sense, but really kind of working through our conflict so that we can. Be, be better together. And I think one of the things thinking about what, what you said is, is having the kind of courage and feeling uncomfortable enough to say that you might [00:19:00] be a little bit to blame too.
[00:19:02] And that's probably the hardest thing to ever admit,
[00:19:05] right? Just to be
[00:19:06] like, you know, my daughters too.
[00:19:08] They're fighting. It's like, did you think that maybe sticking your tongue out at your sister, right. Or in a couple, like, did you think that maybe snapping at your spouse like that, that could be a reason why. So we tend to feel like we're a hundred percent the, the victim, but even if we're, we think we're only 99% of the victim, that 1% is a huge change.
[00:19:31] Just admitting there's like a little bit of our own
[00:19:33] false in there.
[00:19:37] Chris McCurry: Well, it may be the case that we're never gonna be comfortable with doing that. And we need to do that.
[00:19:43] So part part of it is, you know, being able to be uncomfortable and do the necessary thing. 'cause if you're waiting around for it to be a, to be comfortable, it's probably never gonna happen.
[00:19:57] Kurt Gray: Right,
[00:19:57] and, and when I, you
[00:19:58] Practicing Moral Conversations
[00:19:58] Kurt Gray: know, reminds me of this class that I teach and I get. College seniors to have really challenging moral conversations about some of the most contentious topics today.
[00:20:11] And many people think, well, you know, kids can't do this. And they can, they're, they're amazing at it and they want to do it. But like you say, you have to get over this sense of discomfort. And so a lot of the class is just separating out this flight or flight feeling. It's like bad feeling in the pit of your stomach of like, I don't, you know, I, I don't like the feeling here from the good parts, the, you know, living the dreams of having these conversations.
[00:20:38] So I tell students, all right, well, almost mindfully, you know, think of your discomfort. It's okay. You can feel that way. Put it slightly aside. And you can still engage in this conversation. And we, again, we practice it every week, talk about abortion or immigration or euthanasia or racism. These are really tough things, and after a while, people get used to it. [00:21:00] Right. You still feel bad, but you just think it's not, it's not diagnostic, it's not, you know, the, the truth of this whole situation.
[00:21:07] Emma Waddington: That is so cool. It reminds me of another conversation we had. I dunno if you've heard of the book, conflict Resilience. Bob Boone was talking. They and Joelle Salinas came on the podcast and they talked about exactly that, that it's a muscle we need to keep using, we need to practice getting more resilient at having conflict.
[00:21:25] They argued that actually we're getting worse at the ability to sit with very strong different opinions because we just don't connect, we don't talk about it enough, and that you have to build that tolerance, that muscle of sitting. With somebody who you don't agree with and get comfortable with feeling that discomfort of, you know, not agreeing.
[00:21:47] And I think like something we also talk about a lot in couples therapy is understanding somebody's perspective is not the same as agreeing. Like just because you can understand where they're coming from, even if it's [00:22:00] so far from where you would come from or what you would do, doesn't mean you agree with them.
[00:22:06] It's not the same.
[00:22:08] Kurt Gray: Exactly right. Exactly right. And you know, we, we frequently have really different worldviews when it comes to, let's say, politics. So think of, I do a lot of studies on, on religion and conflict and. You know, if you are a secular atheist, you have a very different worldview than someone who's a, a concerted evangelical person. But you can still understand how believing in God and Jesus and salvation right, can motivate all sorts of different things. And so when I grew up, my family in Nebraska, you know, they used to pray for my soul because I wasn't baptized and. I wasn't worried about burning on a lake of fire. But they were, and so, you know, we [00:23:00] disagree about it, but I can see that their actions were really motivated by love, and I could understand where they were coming from.
[00:23:06] And so we'd still disagree, for instance, about all sorts of moral issues, but, but I know, at least for me, they were coming from a place of love and compassion and so. Again, sitting with this discomfort of like, knowing that we share this dream of, of each of us and the family being better off, but knowing that we maybe disagreed about how to get there was tough, but I think important to, to wrap your head around.
[00:23:32] Emma Waddington: Yeah, absolutely. I like that. And I like that you, even though you didn't agree, you could see it as a gesture of care and love,
[00:23:40] Kurt Gray: Eventually, right. Again,
[00:23:41] when it first, when, you know, when we first argued about it, like, oh wow, we're so different and, and let's, let's have a showdown. But then, you know, you sit down. This is why it's so good to be in person, to be honest, instead of on social media.
[00:23:54] You sit down, you have some biscuits and gravy, you know, you like figure it [00:24:00] out.
[00:24:00] You can't just, you know, send them away or close your app or whatever. So I think this is why it's good to kind of be in real life, in meat space, as they say, and really have to figure it out.
[00:24:14] Differences in Liberal and Conservative Views
[00:24:14] Chris McCurry: Some of your research, I know looking at the differences between conservatives and liberals. What, what that even means. You mentioned at one point that liberals tend to magnify the, the victim predator thing, whereas conservatives tend to minimize that to see everyone, that everyone can be harmed.
[00:24:37] Am I getting that correct?
[00:24:39] Kurt Gray: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. We can,
[00:24:42] Chris McCurry: Is
[00:24:43] Kurt Gray: in my work, pardon?
[00:24:45] Chris McCurry: No, please go ahead. You were gonna say in your work.
[00:24:47] Kurt Gray: Yeah, so I'll maybe I'll, I'll kind of zoom a little, a little further out and then dial back in, which is that right? All our moral judgments hinge upon perceptions of harm, right? So we get [00:25:00] outrage when we see. You know, a kid that gets beaten by their angry stepfather or a dog getting kicked.
[00:25:07] Those are really uncontroversial things because we all agree that kids and dogs are vulnerable to pain. But where we get a lot of differences in society is when we disagree about who or what is most vulnerable to suffering or harm. And so. We've studied this in the lab on big surveys, and it turns out liberals and conservatives, they disagree about the vulnerability to harm of things like the environment.
[00:25:34] Liberals, you know, are more sensitive to kind of the environment being harmed. And
[00:25:41] Understanding Vulnerability Perceptions
[00:25:42] Kurt Gray: we disagree about how vulnerable the powerful are like police to harm. Conservatives are higher there than our, our liberals. And so this explains all sorts of kind of hot button issues. And the kind of overarching pattern that you were talking about is that what progressives [00:26:00] or liberals really do is they see a big difference in vulnerability between. People who are relatively more marginalized or othered as you might call them, and people who are relatively more powerful. So for liberals, there's this huge gulf between, let's say, a, a poor black family and a white police officer or an immigrant. Or versus a corporate leader, right? Those are the kind of worlds apart. Whereas if you're conservative, the difference in vulnerability between those things is is much smaller in their minds. So between undocumented immigrant and A CEO, there's some difference for sure in their minds, right? But that's much closer. And so this is why you get something like blue Lives or Matter for conservatives or All Lives Matter, right?
[00:26:51] Because they're like, well, let's think of the. The threat that we all might face or the police officers might face. But progressives think, well, it's really Black Lives matter, right? [00:27:00] 'cause black, black folks are marginalized and they're very vulnerable to harm and police that they think are are oppressors rather than victims. And so, because you get these differences, you get these, these hugely different moral positions, but it's not because liberals and conservatives have different minds. Because they make different assumptions about vulnerability and once you understand that, you can see each other, you know, our humanity. We just have different worldviews here and we don't kind of fundamentally different disagree about morality per se.
[00:27:34] Conservative and Progressive Worldviews
[00:27:34] Chris McCurry: And And do you think that's shifting at all that conservatives were maybe starting to have a bigger gap?
[00:27:43] Kurt Gray: It's a good question. I, mean, I I think the conservative ethos, at least let's say classically, is really about individual rights and kind of like individualism. We're all [00:28:00] created equal. It doesn't matter how we're born or the groups we belong to, we can still kind of work hard and succeed and flourish. And so progressives are more really about group identity traditionally. but but I almost see a, a reversal these days, and especially in light of modern incidents, right? That, that conservatives are likely to focus on how especially kind of white men often, you know, It's It's worse than it used to be in a really large sense for for white men in the eyes of conservatives, right?
[00:28:34] So if you are a conservative man without a college degree, or white man without a college degree, right, you have way less buying power. Your wages have stayed stagnant, right? You, you're relatively more disenfranchised. And so the disagreement here. It comes down to like, you know, progressives saying, well, it's still worse to be, let's say a person of color in American society, whereas a conservative might see, well, you're, you know, it's, [00:29:00] it's much worse than it used to be for a white man.
[00:29:02] And so you get these competing narratives of victimhood and disadvantage that are really clashing in society today.
[00:29:12] Emma Waddington: Yeah, so it's.
[00:29:13] Chris McCurry: And, and, and, and in terms of the perpetrator's sign is, is that shifting?
[00:29:22] Kurt Gray: Right.
[00:29:22] Moral Typecasting and Its Impact
[00:29:28] Kurt Gray: And so, you know, we talked a little bit about this. I think I, we didn't use the name of Moral Typecasting, right? And it's the idea that if one person's the victim, the other person has to be the villain. And if I feel like. The victim. Then the other side is the villain. And so it's really entrenches our conflict, right?
[00:29:41] Because progressives will say, well, these, you know, rich white folks, they are really the villain. So think of Brian Thompson, the United Healthcare, CEO, right? Who is assassinated by Lui. Anoni, right? He sees, you know, he's
[00:29:58] got a kid.
[00:29:59] Chris McCurry: allegedly a [00:30:00] six.
[00:30:00] Kurt Gray: Right, allegedly assassinated. That's right. The court case is ongoing, but if it was, even if it was true right then, I think many progressives will say, well, sure he did it, but he was justified.
[00:30:13] He was still righteous because this healthcare, CEO was a villain, a perpetrator who harmed so many millions of Americans through denying coverage, whereas, you know, conservatives. Extreme Conservatives committee conservatives will say, well, you know, this person. He's still a victim in the sense that, you know, he is a wife, he has kids, he had kids, and we can still care about his humanity.
[00:30:37] And so there's like really compelling narratives. You see this about Charlie Kirk Super hot button issue too, right? These competing narratives of, you know, relative power compared to other folks, versus just seeing someone you know inherently, as you know, as someone who can be victimized.
[00:30:55] Emma Waddington: Hmm. Yeah, it's really powerful, isn't it? And I guess, so [00:31:00] I would love to talk more about what do we do about this, but just in summary that it, it is, it is so inherent to being human, to find ourselves doing this moral type casting and being morally outraged. And it's so quick and it's so automatic.
[00:31:19] But it's a big problem. because it creates a lot of division.
[00:31:24] The Role of Social Media in Division
[00:31:24] Emma Waddington: Um, do you think we're seeing more division do you think it's just that we're talking more about the division?
[00:31:33] Kurt Gray: I think we are seeing more division, and I think that's because. In large part social media allows us to have different information ecosystems. I was on a plane coming back home from Florida not too long after after Charlie Kirk's assassination and just watching the people next to me on their Twitter feed, it was so angry, you know, it was so angry.
[00:31:59] And then they tune [00:32:00] into. Cable news, and it was so angry, you know, and on both sides. And so there's no common facts that we seem to share anymore, and these ecosystems get us so angry, feeling so victimized and so righteous in our outrage. I think we, we used to obviously have that feeling because it's human, but when we all tune into the same, you know, three news stations, N-B-C-A-B-C, or CBS, right?
[00:32:26] We like had some common facts and so I think it is worse than, than it used to be, but I think it's not insurmountable. Right? I think there's
[00:32:32] ways we can move forward.
[00:32:34] Emma Waddington: Yeah.
[00:32:36] Chris McCurry: That's good to know.
[00:32:37] Emma Waddington: it? Yeah. And that echo chamber, right? That we do seek to be valid and light and we listen to the same things and the same people. It's really quite a stretch to, to go beyond our perspective. Because it does, you know, if we are feeling threatened, like you're saying, and I think, that social media adds to that threat.
[00:32:57] Like you can get so much information [00:33:00] that validates your fears and your worries and, you know, perpetrates, you know, your community as a victim. And it just reinforces our view.
[00:33:10] Kurt Gray: yeah, it's easy to feel afraid. Yeah,
[00:33:13] Emma Waddington: Yeah.
[00:33:13] Strategies for Bridging Divides
[00:33:13] Chris McCurry: let's, talk about what we do about this. 'cause you know, I'm reminded of this. I'm reminded of the saying, if we keep doing what we're doing, we're gonna end up where we're going.
[00:33:22] Kurt Gray: That's a good saying. Yeah. Well, I think. One thing to do to figure out how to move forward is you can just ask people, you know, sometimes we have these like intuitions in our minds that, that we already know what the right answer is. And so we designed some studies to test this. You know, we asked people, well, what did you do in a conversation with a political opponent to really respect each other and move forward?
[00:33:52] And people say, well, I want the facts. Gimme the facts, you know, that, that we all share. And, and then we can move forward and have [00:34:00] a, a reasonable conversation. And so then in our studies, we say, well, here are the facts that you wanted. And people say. Those are not the right facts. Those are not real facts. Uh, and and so it turns out there's not facts that we all share. And so
[00:34:15] this
[00:34:15] intuition that, you know, we just want the facts leads us astray, right? Because we, in conversations, we throw facts like ammunition at the other side. Right. Like I heard this on Fox News, I heard this on M-S-N-B-C. You know, I read this and so we're throwing these kind of factoids, these sound bites at each other and and we're just
[00:34:36] keeping the conflict going, right?
[00:34:38] The Power of Personal Stories
[00:34:38] Kurt Gray: We're at su, such a superficial level, and what we need to do to move forward is we need to connect with each other as. People as humans. And what that means is uncovering and sharing our personal experiences, our stories, and so we have so much research on the power [00:35:00] of sharing personal experiences and stories, and that's really where we move forward.
[00:35:07] Emma Waddington: Yeah.
[00:35:07] Kurt Gray: say, look, I, I know we're both, you know, on social media. I know we're both watching cable news. Let's put that aside for a second. And I would just love to know where you personally are coming from when it comes to your feelings about immigration, right? Like, what are your own personal experiences?
[00:35:27] How were you raised and, and I think once we kind of get into those personal experiences, we become more human to each other.
[00:35:36] Emma Waddington: Yeah. Yeah, and this is, I guess what, what, what's really driving, you know, the reason why I was so keen to have this conversation is that it, it is really important for us to start listening to each other instead of finding ourselves always in these morally outrage positions, because a lot of these problems that we have in the world need.[00:36:00]
[00:36:00] Lots of perspectives to solve them. Like there's no one answer. Otherwise we wouldn't have them. Like, we need to get better at listening and coming up with you know, more collaborative ideas. So I think this is why we're having this conversation and then why it's so important what you do.
[00:36:16] Kurt Gray: And you, you can always, you can always learn, right? Like I was, I was at an event some months ago talking with someone who was more conservative. I grew up in Canada and I. I had this idea that like, of course we all want higher taxes, and of course we all want single payer healthcare system. And to, to disagree, you know, is to be kind of selfish. Especially if you make enough money that you can afford all these things. And the, the woman I shared the stage with, she grew up in the south and she says, well, the reason that. You know, I'm against higher taxes isn't because I, I hate poor people, you know? Oh, it's a stereotype. Many progressives think it's just because I don't trust the government to spend [00:37:00] the money
[00:37:00] in ways
[00:37:01] Are good. Right. And
[00:37:03] there's all sorts of instances of government waste or, you know, she's like, I don't want the government to spend all this much on defense. I'd rather donate to my church and my town and help the people who need help, right? I'd rather, you know, do it at a smaller scale and I hadn't really appreciated that argument. Not, not really intuitively, and you know, I thanked her for that perspective. At the end of the day, I'm still gonna, I think, vote for higher taxes, you know, my Canadian miss in inside of me. But now I don't see her, you know, as a monster for voting for lower taxes in that way. And so I think we, we can always learn, and this is not in the book, but I, I, I try to live it in my life, which is, is have. The pause is what I like to think of it. And so after someone shares their experiences and the stories, my first impulse is to say, yeah, but. [00:38:00] My dad used to say like, yeah, but, and he used to have like a little, like a pretend bunny. Like it's a ya but it's a ya, but, right. Like, I would be so quick to interrupt with.
[00:38:09] Yeah. But, and so every time I get someone's perspective now I, I just take it, I count on my mind, you know, like five, just to let their story be there and, and feel validated. And I say thank you and then I can follow up maybe with my own perspective. Not a negation, not a yeah. But, but you know, thanks for sharing that. Here's where I'm coming from, right? It's very different than saying, but, and so I think that's what something we can all learn, that we can all take away from, you know, this discussion is just at least pause once you get someone's story for a moment before you share your own story. So it's not a rebuttal, right?
[00:38:45] It's instead it's just taking turns.
[00:38:49] Emma Waddington: And it reminds me that, I mean, one of our most basic needs is to be heard. So often what we're doing when we're talking is we are wanting to be heard, when we get [00:39:00] in these sort of tussles where we wanna be, right, and we're throwing facts or we're trying to persuade, no one's actually listening. Like they're just, you know, firing water guns at each other.
[00:39:12] It's actually being very receptive to each other. And so that need to be heard isn't gonna be met, and we'll be getting more and more frustrated, and then the conversation will end badly. But if we recognize that we have that need, perhaps we can change exactly the, how you're saying, the way we speak to each other learn to be better listeners.
[00:39:31] Kurt Gray: Because if we're better listeners then, then we will be letter better listened to.
[00:39:37] Um.
[00:39:38] Real-Life Examples of Connection
[00:39:38] Kurt Gray: I, I mean, I can share a story from, from how this is so effective and and I say before I get into the story, like, you know, this is happening with you because you feel like wiggly, right? Not to use a kind of kid term, right?
[00:39:52] When someone's talking and you just like start vibrating, you know, your butt starts moving in your chair and you just like, can't, you know this like feeling a little bit [00:40:00] of
[00:40:00] outrage, a little bit of you wanna share your story, right? Like, you just like start vibrating. Like that's. Your internal cue. I mean, when your partner shares something you disagree with, right?
[00:40:09] That you just need to
[00:40:10] take a breath and just root root your butt to your chair. But the, the story, and I was rooted for this for this conversation 'cause I was in an Uber. So I get in the Uber I'm taking to the airport. And I was mostly looking forward to just zoning out and calming down, uh, after, you know, some exciting experiences in, in work and at home. And I get into the Uber and the Uber driver says, you know, where are we going airport? Okay. What do you do? I say, I'm a professor. What do you profess? I study morality in politics. He says, basically, hold my beer. If you study morality in politics, have I got, you know, something for you? I'm a Christian Nationalist, but not the typical kind he says. So I could have said, okay, thanks [00:41:00] and just put on my headphones and zoned out. But, you know, I study this and I'm curious, and I've, and I've never met a Christian nationalist, let alone an atypical one. So I tell him that, and I, and I ask him, right, and this is the key to bridging these divides in your life, you know, in your relationships, is I ask him, well, what does that mean to you? Right? What does it mean to be a atypical Christian nationalist? And so he tells me for 20 minutes. What this means to him. He tells me what he thinks about the government, the church, the family, and I'm asking clarification questions. There's no yts, right? I'm just asking. Oh, interesting. Like, so if you mean this does, does it imply this, like where does this come from?
[00:41:42] How does this connect with this? Right. Really trying to get a sense of, of how he thought about it in his mind. And I, and I got a good sense. And so 20 minutes later we're getting close to the airport and then we start talking about abortion like you do, right? It's contentious topic, let's make, we're contentious still. [00:42:00] And he is pro-life and he's getting increasingly agitated. You can seem kind of like jitter a little bit. And he says, well, anyone who's pro-choice, in my mind is like the Gestapo, you know, basically agreeing with, with Nazi death camps. That's pretty extreme position. But you know, if you're, if you have a conversation long enough about morality and politics, eventually someone will bring up the Nazis. It's a, it's an eventuality. It's true. It's called Godwin's Law. And I stop the conversation and I say, you know, hold up. Right. We're having like a good faith conversation about morality and politics. I teach a class on this and one thing you can't do in a good faith conversation is bring up the Nazis. Right? It's not fair. And the half of America whose pro-choice does not believe you know that they're doing that because the Nazis, right? Whatever the [00:43:00] causal chain is, in his mind, I'm just like, it's not true. And what he does is something that. People almost never do in conversations, and he says, you know what? I'm sorry I take it back. Right? Those two words are almost never uttered when it comes to conversations about morality. And the reason he felt confident and comfortable enough to say that is because I spent 20 minutes listening and understanding where he was coming from. He felt heard, he felt listened to, not agreed with.
[00:43:32] Right, but he felt heard and so he says, I'm sorry. The reason I, you know, have this belief is because I think it's a slippery slope. He doesn't say it like this, but that's what he meant. And that if you don't. Care about the sanctity of life when it comes to fetuses. You won't care about the sanctity of life in other cases, right?
[00:43:51] When it comes to other places, other people. And I said, that's a reasonable, you know, viewpoint, but you just can't call people [00:44:00] Nazis. And he says, yeah, you're right. And so at the end of that conversation, we both felt understood more and, and I think, here's the crux for me, right? He felt understood. The people are like, well, what does it do for me?
[00:44:10] I listened to. I ask questions for half an hour and how does that help you know him, see you as a human being, but it does, right? Because he knows I'm a progressive academic for the most part. And now he comes away from this conversation thinking that progressive academics are not. All terrible, sinful, you know, evil Nazis basically, right? And so giving someone this grace, you know, moving forward, allows 'em to realize that the other side's not so bad. And so we can come together more when you ask those questions, when you have that understanding, when you give people space. And so it's a really positive experience for me, and I think for him as well.
[00:44:49] Emma Waddington: What a brilliant story.
[00:44:53] Chris McCurry: And so in keeping with what you were saying before about narratives, stories, personal stories are so much better.[00:45:00]
[00:45:01] Kurt Gray: Right. And so, you know, would I have beer with him later? I don't know, but, but I'd be open to it. You know, like I, I understand that he's a good person. And I also understand that he probably, you know, I disagree with him on many cases, but, but it, you know, there's an example of Darrell Davis, I don't know if you've talked about him before.
[00:45:23] He's, he, you know, every time I, I, you know, tell about these conversations or tell him my research folks bring up this idea of like, well, isn't it a betrayal?
[00:45:33] To my side to try to connect. You know, these people are out to get me. Especially, you know, if you're from a marginalized group, you feel like you're really under attack. Um, and so I, I bring up this example of Darrell Davis. He's a black man, a blues musician, and he has made it his life's work to have conversations with KK, K members. To sit down and have lunch. And these are people whose express ideology is a, he as a [00:46:00] black man is less than right, is less than human. And yet by putting himself in a, in a real sense and kind of harm's way and having these conversations, he has gotten over 200 K, k, K members to hang up their robes
[00:46:17] to be deradicalized because they see the humanity in him.
[00:46:20] And not because he argues, you know, or gives them facts, but because he asks them about their stories and viewpoints and that opens space up for him to share his humanity with them. And so I think this is always the person that I wanna leave, you know, people with in their minds because here's someone who didn't have to have these conversations, and yet he did, and he made the world a better place in doing so.
[00:46:45] Narrative 4 and Empathy Building
[00:46:45] Chris McCurry: And you are involved in a program, a narrative four. Four is in the number four. We'll have a link to that in the show notes as well as your books and, and your websites, but, mm. [00:47:00] We're almost out of time, but can you speak a little bit about that program? 'cause it sounds very interesting and very.
[00:47:07] Kurt Gray: It's an incredible program, and I was just on a call with them a couple days ago. We were running some research for them, and what we found is that their program. a powerful way to build empathy, not only among adults, but among school aged kids as well. And the program, the full program has lots of components, but the core of it is very simple. And it is a story exchange. And story exchange is pretty straightforward, although it's challenging to do. And that is that I tell my story and you tell your story, but. What we do is we tell those stories back in the first person. Right? So I would tell my story to Emma and then Emma would tell that story back, using an eye [00:48:00] language, right?
[00:48:00] Like making it your own and really, you know, walking a mile in my shoes, but inhabiting, inhabiting my mind, right? And those eye stories. Have a really profound way of increasing empathy and it doesn't last forever. Obviously, we go back into our kind of. Social media milus, but it allows us to like have that personal conversation, that connection that I think allows us to give others the benefit of the doubt, right? So this story exchange, it's like fiction, right? And it's no wonder that the narrative for one of the founders is Colin McCann, a kind of Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, right? It creates a story that we are transported from our own mind into the mind of someone different than us. And it. It's really compelling.
[00:48:51] And so I would encourage people, you know, not necessarily to, to, to, to, to try it so hard because sometimes you need a [00:49:00] facilitator to make sure that it it goes over well. But I think just to be open to exploring someone else's story.
[00:49:08] Chris McCurry: And, and this has been done with high school students, is it not?
[00:49:12] Kurt Gray: That's right. Yeah. So we studied a randomized control trial or as good as you can get it in high schools with. And we found that at the end of this program, not only did they have more empathy for those who disagreed with them, but they had stronger intentions to engage in civic behavior and getting involved in their community and kind of more, you know, systemic change and investing in their community and their fellow individual.
[00:49:42] And I think that's really promising.
[00:49:45] Emma Waddington: Wow.
[00:49:45] Chris McCurry: amazing.
[00:49:46] Emma Waddington: really is amazing. Oh, what? Beautiful work. Beautiful work. Well, thank you. Thank you very much.
[00:49:54] Final Thoughts and Takeaways
[00:49:54] Chris McCurry: Final thoughts.
[00:49:58] Kurt Gray: I mean, I
[00:49:58] think my final thought is [00:50:00] when people move forward, it's just, you know, try to live this a little bit. Recognize that it is really hard and that you're gonna get the wiggles and you're gonna feel threatened when you hear someone disagreeing with you. But fight the urge to say, yeah, but, and instead ask a follow-up question. And if you can just remember that I think you're, you know, leaps ahead of where we are
[00:50:24] today.
[00:50:25] Chris McCurry: I was thinking, you know, noticing your wiggles, so you're, you're going from YBA to Ah, but
[00:50:34] Kurt Gray: Or the old improv, like Yes. And, And,
[00:50:38] where does that come from? Yes. And what makes you think that? Right.
[00:50:41] I think that
[00:50:42] Emma Waddington: Wow.
[00:50:43] Chris McCurry: And that's becoming curious.
[00:50:45] Kurt Gray: that's right.
[00:50:45] Emma Waddington: Yeah.
[00:50:46] Chris McCurry: Wonderful.
[00:50:47] Emma Waddington: Yeah. Really wonderful, really wonderful. And I think like sometimes, you know, I look at the news and I look at these sort of the polarization that we witness and you know, this conversation has [00:51:00] made me realize that we can all make a difference. know, any one of those conversations like you had in the back of the cab can change the view and can help to reconnect in small ways.
[00:51:13] But we can, we do have power, we do have influence. Others.
[00:51:20] Chris McCurry: One conversation at a time.
[00:51:22] Emma Waddington: One conversation at a time. Yeah.
[00:51:24] Kurt Gray: Mm-hmm.
[00:51:24] Emma Waddington: less wiggle at a time.
[00:51:27] Chris McCurry: Or wiggle and.
[00:51:29] Emma Waddington: Wiggle and wonderful. This has been amazing. Thank you
[00:51:34] Chris McCurry: Gray, thank you so much. We'll have information in the show notes and if there's anything else, Kurt, that you can think would be useful to have in the show notes, please let us know.
[00:51:45] Kurt Gray: Great. Thank you.
[00:51:46] Chris McCurry: Alright, thank you so much.
[00:51:48] Thanks so much for tuning into the Life's Dirty Little Secrets podcast. If you have any feedback for us or secrets for future episodes, you can email us at Life's Dirty Little [00:52:00] Secrets podcast@gmail.com. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Life's Dirty Little Secrets, or on Facebook at Life's Dirty Little Secrets podcast.
[00:52:10] We invite you to follow, rate and review us on wherever you listen to this podcast. It is the best way to get our podcast out in front of New List. We'll be back in a couple weeks with more. See you then. See you then.
