What is it about?
Whether you’re liberal or conservative, how pain-sensitive you are may predict some of your moral and political views. What we found was that higher sensitivity to physical pain predicts greater support for moral and political views typically endorsed by one’s ideological opponent. Specifically, among liberal Americans, the more pain-sensitive they are, the more inclined they are to hold conservative moral views, to support conservative politicians, to favor Trump in the 2020 election, to have more conservative attitudes toward contentious political issues. Conservatives show the mirroring pattern. These “cross-aisle” effects of pain sensitivity are robust and different from people’s intuitions. Indeed, they are often diametrically opposite to people’s intuitions. People expect more pain-sensitive individuals to show greater support for the moral and political views of their ideological allies. But what we consistently find is that more pain-sensitive individuals show greater support for the moral and political views of their ideological opponents.
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Why is it important?
We live in a time of exacerbating political polarization. Bridging the ideological divide is hard. Although some strategies have been found effective for interpersonal persuasion and interaction across the aisle, little is known about what intrapersonal attributes predict which individuals are more inclined to support their ideological opponent’s views. Our findings reveal a low-level attribute—sensitivity to physical pain—that robustly predicts individual variations in support for moral and political views typically favored by one’s ideological opponent.
Perspectives
As a reader, I always wondered how the researchers came up with their idea. So here's my true story behind this work: I’m very sensitive to physical pain. Every time I go to the dentist, I request freezing before they do even the most regular dental cleaning. One time, after the freezing procedure, I was sitting there thinking, “This does feel much better. But I wonder what having no sensitivity to physical pain would do to people’s moral compass. And their political attitudes. Or maybe having higher vs. lower sensitivity, how would it matter for morality and politics?” And that’s how the research idea was born.
Dr. Spike W. S. Lee
University of Toronto
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Pain sensitivity predicts support for moral and political views across the aisle., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, August 2023, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/pspa0000355.
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