This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantam.
Most of us think of moral convictions as a good thing.
We have national parks and drunk driving laws because people in the past had moral convictions and acted on them.
These threads of moral conviction are deeply sewn into the fabric of our nation, shaping policy and culture across generations.
This Social Security measure gives at least some protection to 50 millions of our citizens who will reap direct benefits through unemployment compensation.
General secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, open this gate, tear down this wall.
But new research suggests these moral convictions can be a double edged sword in the context of a democracy.
When we are convinced something is morally correct, it becomes difficult for us to hear views that clash with ours, difficult to have conversations with people who disagree with us, and difficult to make compromises.
This week on hidden brain, we bring you the latest in our series featuring counterintuitive ideas about the state of the world in 2020.
As an election campaign raiders around us, we ask, can our moral convictions keep us from actually achieving our moral convictions?
There are many things about this years us presidential election that feel unprecedented.
But this pandemic year campaign is also part of a long through line of hotly contested political struggles.
There have been many times in recent decades where people have felt that the stakes of a political or policy battle were high and that the outcome could affect our nation's trajectory in profound ways.
Researchers have tried to understand how american voters come to their views on contentious issues.
They find that many Americans seem to see political questions not just in terms of policy, but as a test of their moral principles.
In other words, we're not just talking about the environment or immigration or guns.
Were debating right from wrong.
Psychologist Linda Skitka has studied the effects of moral conviction in politics and its effects on democracy.
Linda Skitka, welcome to hidden brain.