3.5 Recognize the signs of closed-mindedness and open-mindedness that you should watch out for.

3.2 Practice radical open-mindedness

Nonethel ess, scholars have begun to iden-tify procedures that can potentially mitigate political sectarianism. These in clude efforts to help Americans comprehend opposing partisans regardless of their level of agree-ment, such as by focusing on commonalities rather than differences (e.g., “we’re all Amer-icans”; SM) or communicating in the moral language of the other side (e.g., when liberals frame the consequences of climate change in terms of sanctity violations; SM).

Is motivated partisan cognition bipartisan?The extent to which each side exhibits motivated partisan (or biased) cognition is a focus of ongoing debate. Some scholars argue for symmetry (SM). For example, a recent meta-analysis demonstrates equivalent levels of motivated partisan cognition across 51 experiments investigating the tenden cy to evaluate otherwise identical in-formation more favorably when it supports versus challenges one’s political beliefs or allegiances (14). In an illu strative experiment, liberals and conservatives viewed a film clip of a political demonstration in which protestors clashed with police. Despite view-ing the identical clip, liberals rated the protesters as more violent when they believed it was an anti-abortion protest (a conservative cause) rather than a gay-rights protest (a liberal cause), whereas conservatives exhibited the opposite pattern (SM). Other scholars argue for asymmetry. For example, some evidence suggests that, relative to Democrats, Republicans have a higher need for order and greater trust in their gut-level intuitions. Such tendencies appear to motivate them to favor explana-tions that are straightforward and intuitive rather than complex and abstract, even when the latter types of explanation might be more accurate (15) (SM). Such findings are representative of the existing evidence, but conclusions remain tentative.

It doesn't seem to conventional-minded people that they're conventional-minded. It just seems to them that they're right. Indeed, they tend to be particularly sure of it.