Marc Hetherington > Quotes

“There may be another reason Bleus love all these coffee and beer choices—they’re more likely to be neurotic. In personality psychology, being more neurotic includes a greater propensity to experience worry and anxiety.”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“As Anaïs Nin, or a Talmudic scholar, or any one of a number of writers over the past two hundred years who’ve been credited with the phrase once wrote, “We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“Those who liked the pages of Democratic candidates had markedly different musical tastes from those who liked the pages of Republican candidates. Some of the differences can be explained by race and region. African American musicians, such as Michael Jackson, Mary J. Blige, Alicia Keys, and Beyoncé, are favorites of Democrats but not Republicans. The fans of noted Jamaican pacifist stoner Bob Marley lean particularly strongly to the left. But Democrats are attracted to more than just performers of color. Acts as diverse as Lady Gaga, Adele, Pink Floyd, and the Beatles are also especially popular in more-liberal precincts.”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“Goodreads also found that liberals and conservatives flocked to fundamentally different types of books. Obama supporters outnumbered Romney supporters by three to one in reading books written by Jonathan Franzen, the critically acclaimed fiction author. Romney voters, by contrast, read David McCullough at a rate of two to one compared with Obama voters. McCullough, too, is highly acclaimed, having been awarded two Pulitzers during his decades-long career—but he writes popular historical nonfiction, a genre more in line with a practical-minded, fixed worldview and very different from Franzen’s style.”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“Political commentators often talk about red states and blue states, but that is misleading. In blue states, huge expanses of red usually exist across their rural counties. And, in red states, a few pockets of blue pop up where cities are located”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“When politics was centrally about the size of government and how much to tax, the resulting disagreements were about the fundamentals of governing, which, frankly, most Americans care little about. How hot can disagreements get when the details are complicated and people have little motivation to learn them?”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“Put bluntly, this study showed that partisans are willing to choose a demonstrably less qualified person to receive a scholarship, provided that person identifies with their party. And in making these decisions, partisans seem to care much more about political affiliation than race: while researchers found some racial bias reflected in the respondents’ decisions, the amount was negligible compared with the partisan bias.”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“Of the many factors that make up your worldview, one is more fundamental than any other in determining which side of the divide you gravitate toward: your perception of how dangerous the world is. Fear is perhaps our most primal instinct, after all, so it’s only logical that people’s level of fearfulness informs their outlook on life.”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“In fact, the amount of time people attend school is one of the life choices most strongly associated with worldview.”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“Another result of the recent convergence of politics and worldview is that America’s main political parties don’t just disagree on how to solve problems, they disagree on what the problems are in the first place.”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“Obama’s embrace of nuance distinguished him sharply from his GOP antagonists. Back in 2004, President George W. Bush told Senator Joe Biden, “I don’t do nuance.” Former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, a Republican, even blamed Trump’s ascendance in 2016 on precisely this penchant of Obama’s, writing in the Wall Street Journal that, “after seven years of the cool, weak and endlessly nuanced ‘no drama Obama,’ voters are looking for a strong leader who speaks in short, declarative sentences.” His remarks mirror criticisms made several years earlier by Mitt Romney, who accused the then-president of being “tentative, indecisive, timid and nuanced.” (The response of one liberal pundit shows the fluid perspective clearly: “Obama is ‘nuanced’? Yes, but can someone explain why that’s a bad thing? It’s a complex, ‘turbulent,’ and ever-changing world. Having a chief executive who appreciates and is aware of ‘nuance’ strikes me as positive.”)”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“When viewed at the state level, voting patterns obscure more than they illuminate; what really matters is population density within states. The more densely populated an area is, the more Democratic it will tend to vote.”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“The mixed are not necessarily as different from the people on the extremes as these simple categories suggest. It will come as a surprise to many that the mixed are often more like the fixed than they are like the fluid.”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“The parenting questions reveal this outlook in an indirect way. Taken literally, people’s responses to these questions tell us whether they believe children should have lots of room to follow their own path (be independent, be curious) or should instead follow directions and stay on the straight and narrow (be obedient, respect their elders). Which of these paths is best ought to depend on how dangerous people think the world is: whether they think the world is a big, beautiful place to explore, or whether it is a dangerous place that requires them to batten down the hatches.”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“Americans make these decisions not because they are Democrats or Republicans but because the same worldview that influences their political views also shapes their lifestyle choices. Yet while these choices are not explicitly political in nature, they ironically have had the effect of making party conflict more intense—and more intractable.”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“Finally, barely a soul among the fixed copped to driving a hybrid or electric car, while about 10 percent of fluid drivers said they drove these most-fuel-efficient of models. Like their choice of schools, then, the Redds’ and Bleus’ means of transportation divide them, rather than giving them something in common.”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“Similarly, the 2016 CCAP asked people the desirable qualities in children questions and two questions about how much they trust others. As expected, a majority of the fluid chose the trusting response in both cases: more than half said that “most people can be trusted,” and two-thirds think that “most people try to be fair.” The fixed respondents, on the other hand, overwhelmingly chose the less trusting responses. Less than half of fixed people, apparently, think people try to be fair. Less than one-third think most people can be trusted.”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“As Putnam notes, more Americans than ever bowl, but fewer bowl in leagues. Instead Americans bowl alone, at great cost to social trust, the oil that lubricates the engine of civil society.”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“Automobile preference, it seems, follows a pattern similar to baby names. Just as Michael and David are popular names with all types of people, so, too, are Honda Accords, Ford Focuses, and Toyota Camrys. Indeed, the top five cars that YourMechanic services are exactly the same in both blue and red states and districts. But interesting differences appear beyond consensus top sellers. YourMechanic identified cars in each state and congressional district that were “unusually popular”—that is, which were overrepresented compared with the national average. So, for example, a Volkswagen Jetta is not a particularly popular car nationally, but in certain states and districts there are a lot of them. The red/blue divide manifests itself clearly when it comes to unusually popular vehicles. In the twenty-four states won by Mitt Romney in 2012, the most unusually popular car was American-made in three-quarters of them. Of the twenty-six states that Barack Obama won that year, the most unusually popular car was foreign-made more than two-thirds of the time. The Jetta is big in New Hampshire, for example. Two different Subarus, the Japanese automaker with the especially gay-friendly reputation, are unusually popular in Maine, Oregon, and Colorado. In contrast, the Chevrolet Silverado is the most unusually popular vehicle in Louisiana and Arkansas, with the Chevrolet Impala being particularly prevalent in Alabama, Tennessee, and South Carolina.”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“At this point, many American readers who identify as nonwhite or as part of an ethnic minority might find themselves confused. They are probably Democrats; as we noted a few pages back, about three-quarters of racial and ethnic minorities vote Democratic. This includes a consistent 90 percent or more of African Americans. Yet many communities of color include lots of people who value traditional family hierarchies and top-down authority. In fact, African Americans are the group most likely to have members with fixed worldviews.”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“Many partisans no longer want their kids to marry someone from the other party. They are also more likely to withhold a scholarship from a qualified person from the other party than from a qualified person of another race. Considering the intensity of America’s racial divisions, statements like these should give every reader pause.”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“Political parties themselves do not ensure polarization either—America has had them basically forever and the country hasn’t always been polarized. For political parties to be polarizing, people need to feel that particular identity intensely. The marriage between worldview and party creates polarization. Once the two have become one, people with worldviews fit into a well-established and long-standing social group—a political party—and this social identity breeds an “us versus them” mentality.”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“Based on these findings, we can make some basic generalizations about Americans’ worldviews. Worldview is essentially a spectrum, with a purely fixed outlook on one end and a purely fluid outlook on the other end. Most Americans—a bit above two-thirds of the population—sit somewhere in the middle. Across the surveys we fielded, an average of 29 percent of Americans occupy the extreme ends of the spectrum. Yet the fixed side of the spectrum has a marked numerical advantage: 42 percent of Americans fall on that side, whereas only 32 percent fall on the fluid side. The remaining”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“But if the worldviews of Latinos and Asian Americans are, like the worldviews of African Americans, more fixed than those of white Americans, this mismatch would reinforce an important truth in politics: when they are under attack, nothing matters more to people than their group identities—not even their worldviews.”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“Our hypothetical “day in the life” of a prototypical fixed-worldview family and a typically fluid one begins with both households getting ready for work and school. Out in Brentwood, James and Mary Redd have three kids, two of whom are in elementary school and one not yet school-age. In the city, Finn and Phoebe Bleu have only one child. This simplest of differences reflects a marked fertility gap between conservatives and liberals.”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“Based on these data, Time invited readers to estimate how Republican or Democratic their own diet was by asking them to choose between ten different two-dish alternatives. The ten choices included several of the following:”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“Like racial bias, partisan bias apparently occurs automatically, beyond the control of a person’s conscious thoughts.”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“Most research on ordinary citizens identifies early-childhood socialization, particularly the role of parents in a child’s life, as one of the biggest determinants of that child’s future political outlook.”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“New York is a blue state because its urban population is larger than its rural population. Ohio is the quintessential purple state—one that swings back and forth—because none of its major cities—Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati—are especially large, so it lacks the urban population base for Democrats to win regularly. Tennessee is red because its cities—Nashville and Memphis—are relatively small, and the rest of the state is rural.”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

“Evolutionary psychologists believe this tendency evolved to help humans survive in an inhospitable world where resources were scarce and intergroup competition was fierce. Because a couple of hundred thousand years is a mere blip on our evolutionary timeline, humans still have some of this primitive wiring, which manifests itself in doubts—usually harbored by the fixed more than the fluid—about people from other racial, ethnic, and religious groups.”
― Marc Hetherington, Prius Or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide