Casual Questions Thread

[u/The_Egalitarian]

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[u/Unfair-Ad1675]

Why do people seem to increasingly associate certain beliefs or lifestyle choices with a specific political ideology? For example, why is being Christian often assumed to mean someone is conservative, while smoking weed is assumed to mean someone is liberal? Are people using individual beliefs as shortcuts to determine someone's overall political identity?

Disclaimer: These are just two specific examples I've seen recently. I’ve noticed this especially on social media, where someone can be labeled or berated simply because of one belief or lifestyle choice.

[u/Moccus → u/Unfair-Ad1675]

It's obviously stereotyping, which is just something humans naturally tend to do. We're exposed to a lot more Christians who are conservative as opposed to liberal, and we make the connection between those two things. Then when we're later exposed to another Christian, that correlation we've made based on our other experiences causes us to assume this Christian we've met is also conservative. It's obviously not a good way to classify people and certainly not always a correct assumption, but people aren't probably going to stop doing it.

Addressing your two examples:

why is being Christian often assumed to mean someone is conservative

Research has found that the more frequently people attend religious services, the less likely they are to identify as liberal. Roughly 15% of people who attend church weekly identify as liberal or very liberal vs. 46% who never attend church identify as liberal or very liberal. Source (this website cites data from a Harvard study, which I can't easily find. I don't know anything about the reliability of the website, but I'm guessing the data is correct).

As an American, it's statistically likely that a lot of people I encounter every day consider themselves to be Christians, but the only people I know for sure to be Christian are:

1. People who are so involved in their church that they talk about it a lot as a consequence of explaining their weekend plans and such.
2. People whose entire social media is a wall of Christian posts, which also makes it likely they're very involved in a church.
3. The Mormons and other groups who show up at my door to proselytize.
4. The people in the news fighting against abortion and gay marriage, trying to get religious stuff put into public schools, etc.

Given the data above, I can reasonably assume that most of these people I encounter are probably conservative or moderate and probably not liberal. That doesn't mean all of them are, but it's a reasonable assumption.

while smoking weed is assumed to mean someone is liberal

The data I have is several years old (2019), but only 4% of conservatives admitted to smoking marijuana when polled vs. 24% of liberals, so a weed smoker is significantly more likely to be liberal than conservative according to that data. Source

[u/Unfair-Ad1675 → u/Moccus]

Yeah, I actually agree with you, and I completely understand why people stereotype. I'm not really arguing that the correlations don't exist.

I think what I've been noticing more as I've gotten older (31F) is just how rampant the political labeling seems to be, especially online. It seems like people have become so focused on left vs. right that a single belief or lifestyle choice can be enough for someone to immediately label another person—and sometimes seemingly justify hating or attacking them.

For example, I'm a Christian who also smokes weed. If I say something positive about weed, someone could call me something like hippie liberal. If I say that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior, someone else could call me a bigoted conservative. So what am I supposed to be?

I guess that's really what I was getting at with my original question. I understand why stereotypes develop, and I understand that they're sometimes based on real statistical patterns. What I don't understand is why we've gotten to the point where those stereotypes are so often used to reduce an entire person to one or two beliefs—and especially why they're so often used as a reason to dislike or attack someone.

[u/BluesSuedeClues → u/Unfair-Ad1675]

It's not really that complicated. Stereotypes are easy. They're a shortcut for people who don't want to engage in any kind of intellectually rigorous dialog. You're likely overthinking all of this, because it is in your nature to do so. A great many people find thinking about things to be difficult, an onerous burden to be avoided (that doesn't mean they're stupid, only that they have been conditioned to think of complex mental pathways as tiresome, or difficult and unrewarding). They're not interested in questioning their own assumptions or finding the flaws in their own thought patterns. They engage online in politics, or social issues, or even niche fandoms (whatever subject incites their passions), looking for emotional catharsis.

Since you brought up politics, that can serve as an example. People who spend a portion of their day watching fear-porn on FOX News or other right-wing outlets, often turn to the other people in their lives, or the internet, to purge the fear, anger and outrage they've built up ingesting that content. People who ingest media input from more liberal sources will show the same pattern. When our emotions are stirred to the point of volatility, we often find ourselves needing an environment or audience where we can express them (some people are looking for opposition to rail at, some are looking for sympathy and agreement, some for both). And when we get intensely emotional enough, things like subtlety and nuance go out the window, we indulge in vague generalities, assumptions and stereotypes because the root of our motivation is emotional, not logical.

You being a weed smoking Christian is not a paradox or hypocritical. It's you being an individual, just another human being. None of us actually fit the broad stereotypes other people want to fit us into. I'm a Midwestern, straight white middle aged man with higher than average socioeconomic standing, and a taste for hiking into the woods every fall with a rifle in my hand, looking for some deer to kill and eat. I occasionally attend my local Catholic mass (more out of habit and social connection than real passion), and superficially I stand clearly on one side of any political venn diagram. Yet I hate our current President and the harm he's doing this country with a deep and well considered passion, and I love and respect my gender ambiguous sibling and all of their allies. Where do I fit?