When almost any event happens, people on opposing political sides reach wildly different conclusions about what actually happened. So much so that it feels like we are living in alternate realities. Steven Sloman, Professor of Cognitive and Psychological Science at Brown University, argues that in politics, we rely too much on our own sets of sacred values when we interpret political events. We need to understand the psychology that drives our political convictions, and discover how we can use consequences to bridge the gap between each of our sacred values, if we are ever to find common ground.

When a military helicopter fatally crashed into an American Airlines plane in January, President Donald Trump placed blame, without a moment’s reflection, on DEI initiatives in the military. This reflex captures the essence of what is happening today in America and in many parts of the world. Air crashes occur for complicated reasons. One must consider the possibility of pilot error, weather conditions, air traffic issues, aircraft malfunctions, and, yes, training issues. It turns out that the helicopter crew were training using night-vision goggles, and this likely had something to do with the crash. President Trump didn’t consider any of this. Rather, he jumped to a conclusion that was politically expedient. In his world, DEI is the enemy of the people, and so he blamed DEI.

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Trump’s leap of attribution is not only paradigmatic of his behavior; it’s exactly the kind of conceptual leap that most people make all the time. The world is complicated – too complicated for mere mortals to understand in any detail – and so we simplify it in all sorts of ways. For one, we use simplifying heuristics to make decisions. For instance, most people just vote for the political party that they voted for last time. This can save a lot of time and annoyance. Other tricks we use to simplify include ignoring aspects of a decision problem. We might vote for the candidate who shares our most cherished value, and just not worry about where the candidate stands on other issues.

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His decision to blame DEI was grounded in a sacred value that actions related to DEI are bad, and he takes whatever opportunity he can to further that claim.

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We have a special trick to simplify things when it comes to many decisions, especially policy-related issues. We choose based on sacred values and ignore the consequences of our choices. When attributing blame in an air disaster, the National Transportation Safety Board is extremely careful. It does a meticulous and time-consuming investigation of the state of the players and the situation at the time of the catastrophe, identifying causes only when it has solid evidence that gives it a strong degree of belief that would stand up in a court of law or in the face of skeptical scientists and engineers. It is concerned with consequences in two senses. First, it wants to be sure that its conclusions explain how the consequences of the disaster came to be. It wants an accurate causal model of what actually happened. Second, it wants to be sure that the consequences of its verdict are fair and that the actual perpetrator (human, mechanical, legal, or whatever) is identified.