Prius or Pickup?: How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America's Great Divide

by Marc Hetherington, Jonathan Weiler

Overview

Two award-winning political scientists provide the psychological key to America’s deadlocked politics, showing that we are divided not by ideologies but something deeper: personality differences that appear in everything from politics to parenting to the workplace to TV preferences, and which would be innocuous if only we could decouple them from our noxious political debate.

What’s in your garage: a Prius or a pickup? What’s in your coffee cup: Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts? What about your pet: cat or dog? As award-winning political scholars Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler explain, even our smallest choices speak volumes about us—especially when it comes to our personalities and our politics. Liberals and conservatives seem to occupy different worlds because we have fundamentally different worldviews: systems of values that can be quickly diagnosed with a handful of simple parenting questions, but which shape our lives and decisions in the most elemental ways. If we're to overcome our seemingly intractable differences, Hetherington and Weiler show, we must first learn to master the psychological impulses that give rise to them, and to understand how politicians manipulate our mindsets for their own benefit.

Drawing on groundbreaking original research, Prius or Pickup? is an incisive, illuminating study of the fracturing of the American mind.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781328866783
Publisher:	HMH Books
Publication date:	10/09/2018
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	493,502
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

MARC HETHERINGTON and JONATHAN WEILER are coauthors of Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics, which received the 2016 Phillip Converse Award. They have been interviewed by CNN, BBC, CBC, Bloomberg TV, and dozens of other radio shows and podcasts. 

Editorial Reviews

08/13/2018
In this fascinating look at contemporary politics, political scientists Hetherington and Weiler (Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics) set out to explain what really causes the extreme political polarization seen today. They conclude that, for white Americans, it is not political ideology but underlying “worldviews” (expressed by where they live and work, which cars they buy, and even which styles of coffee they prefer) that determine their political affiliations. They find evidence of two opposing worldviews, which they call “fixed” and “fluid”: the first is more fearful of outsiders, change, and uncertainty and favors hierarchy, and the second is more welcoming of complexity, nuance, and unfamiliarity. They argue that a “marriage of worldview and party” in American politics began to develop in the 1970s as party leaders reorganized their platforms around issues, like race, that touched voters’ worldviews—a sharp departure from the mixed-worldview political parties of the past, when the overriding American political issues were taxation and government size. The authors convincingly argue that the consequences of this polarization are deep and “toxic” in a book that will interest watchers of the political landscape of recent decades. Agent: Jill Grinberg, Jill Grinberg Literary Management. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

“A fascinating way to look at the fracturing of a nation presumed to be united… [Prius or Pickup?] speaks volumes about how we divide along many fronts, not least of them political.”
—Kirkus

“An exceptionally insightful and entertaining exploration of the roots of tribalism in American (and European) society and politics, and its ominous consequences for democracy. Prius or Pickup? deserves a wide readership.” 
—Thomas E. Mann, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution

“Hetherington and Weiler hit the sweet spot in writing political science for a broad audience. Their book is authoritative, terrifically engaging, and profoundly important.”
—Larry Bartels, May Werthan Shayne Chair of Public Policy and Social Science, Vanderbilt University

“Hetherington and Weiler's use of four simple questions to explain Americans' relationship to politics and each other triggered a fundamental shift in my understanding of U.S. politics. Now they have transformed those ideas into an interesting, readable book. I highly recommend it to anyone trying to figure out what's really behind these turbulent political times.”
—Amanda Taub, Columnist, New York Times

“Hetherington and Weiler’s terrific book reveals how our political thinking is based on worldviews—outlooks which can be quickly and easily ascertained by responses to a few non-political questions. By understanding this phenomenon, hopefully we can someday alleviate the polarization that currently plagues our politics.  The fate of our democracy probably depends on our doing so!”
—John W. Dean, former Nixon White House counsel and New York Times best-selling author of Conservatives Without Conscience

“Today’s Republican voters are very afraid of what they see as a dangerous world, reveals Prius or Pickup? But who, exactly, has sought to intensify their anxiety—and to achieve what? This is the troubling question that will stay with readers of Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler’s book, whose sequel could be titled, Cui Bono? For as the authors point out, scared people are more willing to approve violations of democratic ideals. Who, then, does such fear help?”
—Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America​

From the Publisher

2018-07-31

Big data comes to the service of big generalizations about American tribes, and it speaks volumes about how we divide along many fronts, not least of them political.

As University of North Carolina-based political scientists Hetherington and Weiler (co-authors: Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics, 2009) write, if you're a conservative, you'll tend to buy an American-made truck and have a dog, whereas if you lean left, you'll have a cat and a hybrid or foreign-made passenger vehicle. The causal relationships are a little fuzzy, but a look at the amygdala shows that conservatives tend to be more certain that danger lurks just around the corner and more attuned to survival—thus the big growling vehicle and the big growling dog. Liberals, conversely, tend to think that people are inherently good and that the world is mostly a safe place. By the authors' account, most people are neither wholly conservative nor wholly liberal in their worldviews, though their positions tend to harden when confronted with someone who doesn't agree with them; there are reasons for that as well, some of them related to media diet, the subject of an engaging side discussion. The resulting "politicization of everything" plays out everywhere: If you're a lefty, you'll head to Starbucks, if a righty, to Dunkin' Donuts; if you're a Hillary Clinton voter, you'll watch tennis instead of football, if you watch sports at all. That said, there are limits: "For their part, the Redds don't watch football with the same relish anymore. They're sick and tired of the fact that everything is a political issue now and don't believe the anthem, in particular, should be one."

A fascinating way to look at the fracturing of a nation presumed to be united; it's one that offers little hope for less polarization anytime soon.

Kirkus Reviews

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