The other is that leftists, well, think harder, have a greater capacity for what the political scientist Philip Tetlock of the University of Pennsylvania calls “integrative complexity.” In one study conservatives and liberals, when asked about the causes of poverty, both tended toward personal attributions (“They’re poor because they’re lazy”). But only if they had to make snap judgments. Give people more time, and liberals shifted toward situational explanations (“Wait, things are stacked against the poor”). In other words, conservatives start gut and stay gut; liberals go from gut to head.34
