Review and Reflection of “Good Reasonable People” by Keith Payne.

Keith Payne set out to better understand the people he loved, his family, whom he didn’t see eye to eye with when it came to politics.  This is part of what makes “Good Reasonable People” unique among recent books about the divide in the United States.  It wasn’t so much that he wanted to explore the divide, as it was that his quest to understand and love his family turned into a book project.  

Right on the first page, Payne shows his humanity and humility – “I though the pandemic would help bring Americans closer together, the way that in the movies alien invaders cause all humankind to band together against a common enemy.  But in this virus, we were facing the biggest alien threat of our lifetimes, and people were already making it a topic of partisan bickering and finger-pointing.” (pg. ix).  

So much of this book is focused on what I consider to be the key to dealing with our divisions – being able to see the humanity in others.  So much of our society is most concerned with which team you identify with, which has Payne points out – “There is a simplicity to it…There’s a certainty about right and wrong that comes from feeling you have God on your side.” (Pg. xiii). 

Yes, this is what I have also been talking about.  Our addiction to being right causes us to be blinded to the humanity of the other right in front of us.  When we are focused on who is right and who is wrong, we can’t see the humanity of others or ourselves.  We get caught up in an abstract world of ideas and arguments, making us less human.  And as Payne rightfully states – “Decades of research have found that dehumanizing words and images are a strong predictor that political violence is around the corner…We have a history of extraordinary political violence.” (Pg. xiii-xiv).

One of the keys to dealing with this can be summed up by a statement that Payne makes – “But to me, essentializing theories ultimately leave us disappointed, because there is no liberal mind or conservative mind.  There are only human minds trying to make sense of the circumstances in which they find themselves.” (Pg. xx)

Chapter one focuses on the roots of our division.  Payne grew up in rural Kentucky.  Here’s a statement that blew me away.  He is writing about his time in school, which had a heavy identity of being on the border between North and South.  But they were clearly Southerners.  Payne said, “Learning about these things animated our grade school minds more than other history topics.  Maybe it was because we still felt the presence of the Civil War in our daily lives.” (Pg. 10).  And this is an essential understanding.   I grew up in Western NY.  The Civil War was a topic in school, but it was not a main focus.  It did not have the center of attention.  I happened a long time ago and since NY didn’t see any direct action on its land, it happened far away – at least to our young lives.  Part of the challenge of our divide as a nation is that we have never actually fully dealt with the Civil War.  Yes, the fighting ended, but the war continued and in many ways, it still does.  When I drive through the South, I’m still shocked to see large Confederate battle flags waving along the highways.  I’ve been to Stone Mountain and was sickened by this monument to the Confederacy that is shaped like an outdoor cathedral to the religion of the Confederacy complete with the trinity of the South carved on the side of the mountain – Lee, Jackson, and Davis.  

I don’t think of myself as a Northerner.  I think of myself as American who happens to be from the mid-Atlantic region of the country.  

Payne spends time talking about his hometown and the challenging past it holds – what it highlights and chooses to remember and what it has decided to intentionally forget.   “My town, like America itself, has always been conflicted about who exactly we are.” (Pg. 20).  Indeed.  I think this is the conflict that America has been having since the very beginning and has been especially a key focus since the end of the Cold War when we no longer had an external enemy (the Soviet Union), to help us define who we are based on who we are not.  And so, we turned inward to find enemies.  

Chapter two moves us to what Payne calls the Psychological Immune System.  The title of the chapter is honest – “Why you can’t reason with them.” (Pg. 23).  According to Payne, “This chapter explores how people reason flexibility in defense of the ideas and identities that are important to them.”  (Pg. 25).  

This all stems from what he calls the psychological immune system.  In order words, when something happens that we feel threatened by, we will blame, deny, or do anything else to protect ourselves.  “The basic observation that people use motivated reasoning to protect their psychological well-being is one of the most consistent findings in all of psychology.  Motivated reasoning is usually seen as a flaw in human rationality, because it makes us logically inconsistent and sometimes intellectually dishonest.” (Pg. 28).  

But here’s the reality – “Life is complex enough that we can find a justification for nearly any position we want to hold.  And for every contradiction, we can find a reason why it’s not really a contradiction, because the cases are different in some way.  The mental gymnastics that people perform are not an aberration but a normal part of the way people think.”  (Pg. 28). 

This statement should open any reader’s eyes and heart wide open.  And is really the sum of the argument for the entire book.  It’s also why we are wasting our time doing fact checking at the front end of any debate, news story, or conversation.  Facts don’t change minds.  We’ll just find whatever facts we need to make our argument.  And if there aren’t any, we’ll dismiss the facts that contradict our firmly held beliefs because they are more than just beliefs – they have become a part of our very identity.  

Why do we do this? “The deeper purpose is to protect our identity – the conviction that deep down, no matter how many awful things we have said or done, we are good and reasonable people.” (Pg. 31).  And this is the key to understanding ourselves and others.  Everyone believes that they, and the groups they identify with, are good reasonable people.  And we will do anything we have to protect that self-identification of being a good reasonable people and associating with other good reasonable people.  

Payne spends the second half of the chapter talking about this group identification.  “The groups that really matter…are the ones that create and sustain our sense of identity as a good and valuable person.” (Pg. 37-8). Want to know how this works?  “You can tell which groups matter by whether you feel attacked when someone insults or criticizes that group…That defensiveness is a sign that they felt personally criticized.” (Pg. 38). And where there are in-groups that we identify with, there are out-groups that are on the other side.  

The core argument here is summed up in two statements – “The first non-negotiable principle is that I am a good and reasonable person. The second principle is that My groups are good and reasonable people.” (Pg. 41).  There are a ton of implications that follow from these principles – things like we assume that if we are making an argument, it must be valid and if it comes from someone else, then we lean towards skepticism.  This also leads to cognitive dissonance, biases, and assortment of other things.  

Chapter three dives into ideologies.  Payne takes the time to talk about conservative and liberal ideology, defining it and describing it, what each value and more, which is helpful.  And it leads to this reality – “Social science research for the last sixty years has made clear again and again that the vast majority of people- including those who express strong political views – have virtually no political identity.” (Pg. 59).  How is that possible?   Simple.  “An ideology is a coherent system of ideas.” (Pg. 61).  

Payne lays out the argument showcasing a study that was done that concluded that most people “have no idea what they were talking about.”  (Pg. 60).  “Whether people took the liberal or conservative side on one issue said almost nothing about whether they took the liberal or conservative position on other issues, even issues that were logically connected.” (Pg. 61).  Most people are not ideological.  But that’s not a terrible thing.  The low level of people who are ideological is consistent with just about anything else.  There is a low level of people who are rabid fans of baseball and can tell you all sorts of information about the sport, players, history, and progression of the game.  They have thought about it and have a come up with a sort of baseball ideology – they have a consistent thought process about the sport.  Everyone else isn’t even close.  

“Most people have no ideology…What they have, instead, is group loyalties and the desire for their groups to dominate other groups.” (Pg. 65).  And because of the psychological bottom line, they will ensure “that no matter what happens, they can see themselves and their groups as good and reasonable people.” (Pg. 65).  

If you take in what Payne is saying, then you can start to see how this plays out in a variety of topics.  Because of this, I’m going to offer shorter summaries of the following chapters.  They are worth reading to dive into the topics, but for our purposes, I offer a short summary.  

Chapter four was a deep dive into history – talking about Lincoln’s map.  It’s about the amount of chalk in the soil and how it “can predict how residents vote, how they worship, and how they see the world.” (Pg. 77).  This all has to do with the soil, and where cotton was prevalent. Lincoln had a map showing the slave population of every county in the south.  The darker regions are where the slave population was highest.  The light populations are where there were few slaves.   The map also corresponds to where cotton could be grown because of the soil needed to grow it.  The border states had lower populations of slaves mostly because they had fewer cotton producing lands.  The key question for Lincoln was about how to keep these border states in the Union and not support the Confederacy.  

The chapter goes in-depth about the policies during the war and after that have generational impact and where those policies were implemented. This is about economic advantages and disadvantages over generations.  And that’s all traced back to where the soil was suitable for growing cotton.  

“The places where slavery and discrimination were the most intensive are the places where modern day White residents deny the importance of slavery and discrimination the most.  They look around at the massive levels of racial inequality and make sense of it in ways that protect their psychological bottom line.” (Pg. 103)

Chapter five takes all that we have learned so far and applies it to education and education levels, the teaching of history and how it is remembered.  Remember, the psychological bottom line is most important – we remember what will protect the belief that we are good and reasonable people.

Chapter six looks at the same thing, this time looking at the major cultural divide in the country – rural/urban.  Payne talks about the educational difference, what community means, how diversity is seen, etc.  One interesting point is that urban settings have many third-party service operators – those that provide safety, security, and can resolve disputes.  Rural communities lack these often and have a culture of honor where people take care of their own problems.  “One of the most distinctive features of the culture of honor is the high rate of violence.” (Pg. 150). Think about this divide and how it impacts our debates on so many social issues – guns, crime, poverty, health care, etc.  

Chapter seven continues to look at the psychological bottom line and how it applies to religion.  In this chapter, Payne is looking at fundamentalist belief systems versus non-fundamentalist belief systems.  In some ways political and religious identities are interrelated and influence each other.  The biggest difference is that in religious identities you have people claiming God on their side.  And like anything else, people will find whatever they need to protect their psychological bottom line that they are on the side of good.  

Chapter eight is about conspiracy theories and why people latch onto them. Payne goes beyond just conspiracy theories though.  He also brings in social media and what gains attention.  “Moral outrage is the most powerful accelerant of all.” (Pg. 183).  What is the appeal to these things?  Conspiracy theories are not more popular now than before.  “The evidence suggests that humans have never been particularly attached to the truth.” (Pg. 185).  “People treat [misinformation and conspiracy theories] muck like other kinds of identity-relevant information, as tools they pick up and lay down as needed to defend their psychological bottom line.” (Pg. 185).  The core of this is summed up this way – “they seek out the stories they want to be told.” (Pg. 188).  

Which leads to what I said before, and what Payne gets to in this chapter – people support their politicians of choice not because of facts or truth or information.  Those are all rationalizations.  They support their political parties and politicians because of their social-group identities.  “They picked up true or false beliefs as needed to provide reasons for what they wanted to do anyway.” (Pg. 191).

Chapter nine leads us to the end of the book and Payne’s ideas on what to do going forward.  Part of this is his wake-up call to reality.  None of this is new.  Rationalization is bipartisan.  We have always been divided as a nation since the very beginning. 

So, what is Payne’s suggestions?  Stop exaggerating the differences between our side and the other side.  What drives people to support what they will has to do with fear more often than not. We are afraid of something or some group causing us harm.  That’s pretty universal.  Because most people are not ideological, it means that the average Democrat and Republican agree on more issues than disagree.  Which sounds hard to believe, but when you take out the exaggeration about the other side, you’ll find that people care about similar things.  Payne talks about how we also exaggerate “how much the other side hates us.” (Pg. 208).  

Another suggestion is one that I’ve been trying to practice – move from groups to individuals when you are talking about issues.  When an issue remains at the group level, it stays abstract.  Being right becomes what is most important.  We tend to think in terms of good/bad when it comes to groups.  But when we move issues to an individualized level, the conversation changes.  When an issue has a name, a story, loved one, then it gets complicated and messy.  There aren’t nice easy answers.  When we enflesh issues, we humanize them, and we humanize the other.  

Payne takes this further by arguing that we need to move beyond the facts.  “Sharing personal experience related to the issue, however, led partisans to respect their opponents much more.” (Pg. 211).  It’s about being heard.  Again, if we humanize issues, we can make some progress.  This is about building trust with others.  And the foundation of a society is trust.   None of this is about winning an argument. “Changing anyone’s particular beliefs amounts to persuading them to admit that they are not as good or reasonable as they thought. People actively resist changing their beliefs, especially when someone is actively trying to challenge them.” (Pg. 212).  It’s not about changing others’ beliefs. Ultimately, it’s about seeing the humanity in others.  

Which leads to Payne’s conclusion in two ways.  “The first view is as individuals doing our best to make sense of the world we are thrust into…We must see each other as opponents in a contest that matters.  The point of remembering view number one is that it allows us to fight about view number two with words and ballots rather than blood and bullets.” (Pg. 214).

Overall, I loved this book.  Payne made his arguments and brought it to a level of humanity with the stories he inserted.  He did exactly what he talked about in the book – humanized the differences.  It is well worth reading and sharing with others.