Hello, TEDWomen, what's up.
(Cheering) Not good enough.
Hello, TEDWomen, what is up?
(Loud cheering) My name is Maysoon Zayid, and I am not drunk, but the doctor who delivered me was.
He cut my mom six different times in six different directions, suffocating poor little me in the process.
As a result, I have cerebral palsy, which means I shake all the time.
Look.
It's exhausting.
I'm like Shakira, Shakira meets Muhammad Ali.
(Laughter) CP is not genetic.
It's not a birth defect.
You can't catch it.
No one put a curse on my mother's uterus, and I didn't get it because my parents are first cousins, which they are.
(Laughter) It only happens from accidents, like what happened to me on my birth day.
Now, I must warn you, I'm not inspirational.
(Laughter) And I don't want anyone in this room to feel bad for me, because at some point in your life, you have dreamt of being disabled.
Come on a journey with me.
It's Christmas Eve, you're at the mall, you're driving around in circles looking for parking, and what do you see?
Sixteen empty handicapped spaces.
(Laughter) And you're like, "God, can't I just be a little disabled?"
(Laughter) Also, I've got to tell you, I've got 99 problems, and palsy is just one.
(Laughter) If there was an Oppression Olympics, I would win the gold medal.
I'm Palestinian, Muslim, I'm female, I'm disabled, and I live in New Jersey.
(Laughter) (Applause) If you don't feel better about yourself, maybe you should.
(Laughter) Cliffside Park, New Jersey is my hometown.
I have always loved the fact that my hood and my affliction share the same initials.
I also love the fact that if I wanted to walk from my house to New York City, I could.
A lot of people with CP don't walk, but my parents didn't believe in "can't."
My father's mantra was, "You can do it, yes you can can."
(Laughter) So, if my three older sisters were mopping, I was mopping.
If my three older sisters went to public school, my parents would sue the school system and guarantee that I went too, and if we didn't all get A's, we all got my mother's slipper.
(Laughter) My father taught me how to walk when I was five years old by placing my heels on his feet and just walking.
Another tactic that he used is he would dangle a dollar bill in front of me and have me chase it.
(Laughter) My inner stripper was very strong.
(Laughter) Yeah.
No, by the first day of kindergarten, I was walking like a champ who had been punched one too many times.
(Laughter) Growing up, there were only six Arabs in my town, and they were all my family.
(Laughter) Now there are 20 Arabs in town, and they are still all my family.
(Laughter) I don't think anyone even noticed we weren't Italian.
(Laughter) (Applause) This was before 9/11 and before politicians thought it was appropriate to use "I hate Muslims" as a campaign slogan.
The people that I grew up with had no problem with my faith.
They did, however, seem very concerned that I would starve to death during Ramadan.
I would explain to them that I have enough fat to live off of for three whole months, so fasting from sunrise to sunset is a piece of cake.
(Laughter) I have tap-danced on Broadway.
Yeah, on Broadway.
It's crazy.
(Applause) My parents couldn't afford physical therapy, so they sent me to dancing school.
I learned how to dance in heels, which means I can walk in heels.
And I'm from Jersey, and we are really concerned with being chic, so if my friends wore heels, so did I.
And when my friends went and spent their summer vacations on the Jersey Shore, I did not.
I spent my summers in a war zone, because my parents were afraid that if we didn't go back to Palestine every single summer, we'd grow up to be Madonna.
(Laughter) Summer vacations often consisted of my father trying to heal me, so I drank deer's milk, I had hot cups on my back, I was dunked in the Dead Sea, and I remember the water burning my eyes and thinking, "It's working!
It's working!"
(Laughter) But one miracle cure we did find was yoga.
I have to tell you, it's very boring, but before I did yoga, I was a stand-up comedian who can't stand up.
And now I can stand on my head.
My parents reinforced this notion that I could do anything, that no dream was impossible, and my dream was to be on the daytime soap opera "General Hospital."
(Laughter) I went to college during affirmative action and got a sweet scholarship to ASU, Arizona State University, because I fit every single quota.
(Laughter) I was like the pet lemur of the theater department.
Everybody loved me.
I did all the less-than-intelligent kids' homework, I got A's in all of my classes, A's in all of their classes.
(Laughter) Every time I did a scene from "The Glass Menagerie," my professors would weep.
But I never got cast.
Finally, my senior year, ASU decided to do a show called "They Dance Real Slow in Jackson."
It's a play about a girl with CP.
I was a girl with CP.
So I start shouting from the rooftops, "I'm finally going to get a part!
I have cerebral palsy!
Free at last!
Free at last!
Thank God almighty, I'm free at last!"
I didn't get the part.
(Laughter) Sherry Brown got the part.
I went racing to the head of the theater department crying hysterically, like someone shot my cat, to ask her why, and she said it was because they didn't think I could do the stunts.
I said, "Excuse me, if I can't do the stunts, neither can the character."
(Laughter) (Applause) This was a part that I was literally born to play they gave it to a non-palsy actress.
College was imitating life.
Hollywood has a sordid history of casting able-bodied actors to play disabled onscreen.
Upon graduating, I moved back home, and my first acting gig was as an extra on a daytime soap opera.
My dream was coming true.
And I knew that I would be promoted from "Diner Diner" to "Wacky Best Friend" in no time.
(Laughter) But instead, I remained a glorified piece of furniture that you could only recognize from the back of my head, and it became clear to me that casting directors didn't hire fluffy, ethnic, disabled actors.
They only hired perfect people.
But there were exceptions to the rule.
I grew up watching Whoopi Goldberg, Roseanne Barr, Ellen, and all of these women had one thing in common: they were comedians.
So I became a comic.
(Laughter) (Applause) My first gig was driving famous comics from New York City to shows in New Jersey, and I'll never forget the face of the first comic I ever drove when he realized that he was speeding down the New Jersey Turnpike with a chick with CP driving him.
(Laughter) I've performed in clubs all over America, and I've also performed in Arabic in the Middle East, uncensored and uncovered.
(Laughter) Some people say I'm the first stand-up comic in the Arab world.
I never like to claim first, but I do know that they never heard that nasty little rumor that women aren't funny, and they find us hysterical.
(Laughter) In 2003, my brother from another mother and father Dean Obeidallah and I started the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival, now in its 10th year.
Our goal was to change the negative image of Arab-Americans in media, while also reminding casting directors that South Asian and Arab are not synonymous.
(Laughter) Mainstreaming Arabs was much, much easier than conquering the challenge against the stigma against disability.
My big break came in 2010.
I was invited to be a guest on the cable news show "Countdown with Keith Olbermann."
I walked in looking like I was going to the prom, and they shuffle me into a studio and seat me on a spinning, rolling chair.
(Laughter) So I looked at the stage manager and I'm like, "Excuse me, can I have another chair?"
And she looked at me and she went, "Five, four, three, two ..."
And we were live, right?
So I had to grip onto the anchor's desk so that I wouldn't roll off the screen during the segment, and when the interview was over, I was livid.
I had finally gotten my chance and I blew it, and I knew I would never get invited back.
But not only did Mr. Olbermann invite me back, he made me a full-time contributor, and he taped down my chair.
(Laughter) (Applause) One fun fact I learned while on the air with Keith Olbermann was that humans on the Internet are scumbags.
(Laughter) People say children are cruel, but I was never made fun of as a child or an adult.
Suddenly, my disability on the world wide web is fair game.
I would look at clips online and see comments like, "Yo, why's she tweakin'?"
"Yo, is she retarded?"
And my favorite, "Poor Gumby-mouth terrorist.
What does she suffer from?
We should really pray for her."
One commenter even suggested that I add my disability to my credits: screenwriter, comedian, palsy.
Disability is as visual as race.
If a wheelchair user can't play Beyoncé, then Beyoncé can't play a wheelchair user.
The disabled are the largest — Yeah, clap for that, man.
Come on.
(Applause) People with disabilities are the largest minority in the world, and we are the most underrepresented in entertainment.
The doctors said that I wouldn't walk, but I am here in front of you.
However, if I grew up with social media, I don't think I would be.
I hope that together, we can create more positive images of disability in the media and in everyday life.
Perhaps if there were more positive images, it would foster less hate on the Internet.
Or maybe not.
Maybe it still takes a village to teach our children well.
My crooked journey has taken me to some very spectacular places.
I got to walk the red carpet flanked by soap diva Susan Lucci and the iconic Loreen Arbus.
I got to act in a movie with Adam Sandler and work with my idol, the amazing Dave Matthews.
I toured the world as a headliner on Arabs Gone Wild.
I was a delegate representing the great state of New Jersey at the 2008 DNC.
And I founded Maysoon's Kids, a charity that hopes to give Palestinian refugee children a sliver of the chance my parents gave me.
But the one moment that stands out the most was when I got -- before this moment -- (Laughter) (Applause) But the one moment that stands out the most was when I got to perform for the man who floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee, has Parkinson's and shakes just like me, Muhammad Ali.
(Applause) (Applause ends) It was the only time that my father ever saw me perform live, and I dedicate this talk to his memory.
(Arabic) Allah yerhamak yaba.
(English) My name is Maysoon Zayid, and if I can can, you can can.
(Cheering) (Applause)
I've actually been waiting by the phone for a call from TED for years.
And in fact, in 2000, I was ready to talk about eBay, but no call.
In 2003, I was ready to do a talk about the Skoll Foundation and social entrepreneurship.
No call.
In 2004, I started Participant Productions and we had a really good first year, and no call.
And finally, I get a call last year, and then I have to go up after J.J. Abrams.
(Laughter) You've got a cruel sense of humor, TED.
(Laughter) When I first moved to Hollywood from Silicon Valley, I had some misgivings.
But I found that there were some advantages to being in Hollywood.
(Laughter) And, in fact, some advantages to owning your own media company.
And I also found that Hollywood and Silicon Valley have a lot more in common than I would have dreamed.
Hollywood has its sex symbols, and the Valley has its sex symbols.
(Laughter) Hollywood has its rivalries, and the Valley has its rivalries.
Hollywood gathers around power tables, and the Valley gathers around power tables.
So it turned out there was a lot more in common than I would have dreamed.
But I'm actually here today to tell a story.
And part of it is a personal story.
When Chris invited me to speak, he said, people think of you as a bit of an enigma, and they want to know what drives you a bit.
And what really drives me is a vision of the future that I think we all share.
It's a world of peace and prosperity and sustainability.
And when we heard a lot of the presentations over the last couple of days, Ed Wilson and the pictures of James Nachtwey, I think we all realized how far we have to go to get to this new version of humanity that I like to call "Humanity 2.0."
And it's also something that resides in each of us, to close what I think are the two big calamities in the world today.
One is the gap in opportunity -- this gap that President Clinton last night called uneven, unfair and unsustainable -- and, out of that, comes poverty and illiteracy and disease and all these evils that we see around us.
But perhaps the other, bigger gap is what we call the hope gap.
And someone, at some point, came up with this very bad idea that an ordinary individual couldn't make a difference in the world.
And I think that's just a horrible thing.
And so chapter one really begins today, with all of us, because within each of us is the power to equal those opportunity gaps and to close the hope gaps.
And if the men and women of TED can't make a difference in the world, I don't know who can.
And for me, a lot of this started when I was younger and my family used to go camping in upstate New York.
And there really wasn't much to do there for the summer, except get beaten up by my sister or read books.
And so I used to read authors like James Michener and James Clavell and Ayn Rand.
And their stories made the world seem a very small and interconnected place.
And it struck me that if I could write stories that were about this world as being small and interconnected, that maybe I could get people interested in the issues that affected us all, and maybe engage them to make a difference.
I didn't think that was necessarily the best way to make a living, so I decided to go on a path to become financially independent, so I could write these stories as quickly as I could.
I then had a bit of a wake-up call when I was 14.
And my dad came home one day and announced that he had cancer, and it looked pretty bad.
And what he said was, he wasn't so much afraid that he might die, but that he hadn't done the things that he wanted to with his life.
And knock on wood, he's still alive today, many years later.
But for a young man that made a real impression on me, that one never knows how much time one really has.
So I set out in a hurry.
I studied engineering.
I started a couple of businesses that I thought would be the ticket to financial freedom.
One of those businesses was a computer rental business called Micros on the Move, which is very well named, because people kept stealing the computers.
(Laughter) So I figured I needed to learn a little bit more about business, so I went to Stanford Business School and studied there.
And while I was there, I made friends with a fellow named Pierre Omidyar, who is here today.
And Pierre, I apologize for this.
This is a photo from the old days.
And just after I'd graduated, Pierre came to me with this idea to help people buy and sell things online with each other.
And with the wisdom of my Stanford degree, I said, "Pierre, what a stupid idea."
(Laughter) And needless to say, I was right.
(Laughter) But right after that, Pierre -- in '96, Pierre and I left our full-time jobs to build eBay as a company.
And the rest of that story, you know.
The company went public two years later and is today one of the best known companies in the world.
Hundreds of millions of people use it in hundreds of countries, and so on.
But for me, personally, it was a real change.
I went from living in a house with five guys in Palo Alto and living off their leftovers, to all of a sudden having all kinds of resources.
And I wanted to figure out how I could take the blessing of these resources and share it with the world.
And around that time, I met John Gardner, who is a remarkable man.
He was the architect of the Great Society programs under Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s.
And I asked him what he felt was the best thing I could do, or anyone could do, to make a difference in the long-term issues facing humanity.
And John said, "Bet on good people doing good things.
Bet on good people doing good things."
And that really resonated with me.
I started a foundation to bet on these good people doing good things.
These leading, innovative, nonprofit folks, who are using business skills in a very leveraged way to solve social problems.
People today we call social entrepreneurs.
And to put a face on it, people like Muhammad Yunus, who started the Grameen Bank, has lifted 100 million people plus out of poverty around the world, won the Nobel Peace Prize.
But there's also a lot of people that you don't know.
Folks like Ann Cotton, who started a group called CAMFED in Africa, because she felt girls' education was lagging.
And she started it about 10 years ago, and today, she educates over a quarter million African girls.
And somebody like Dr. Victoria Hale, who started the world's first nonprofit pharmaceutical company, and whose first drug will be fighting visceral leishmaniasis, also known as black fever.
And by 2010, she hopes to eliminate this disease, which is really a scourge in the developing world.
And so this is one way to bet on good people doing good things.
And a lot of this comes together in a philosophy of change that I find really is powerful.
It's what we call, "Invest, connect and celebrate."
And invest: if you see good people doing good things, invest in them.
Invest in their organizations, or in business.
Invest in these folks.
Connecting them together through conferences -- like a TED -- brings so many powerful connections, or through the World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship that my foundation does at Oxford every year.
And celebrate them: tell their stories, because not only are there good people doing good work, but their stories can help close these gaps of hope.
And it was this last part of the mission, the celebrate part, that really got me back to thinking when I was a kid and wanted to tell stories to get people involved in the issues that affect us all.
And a light bulb went off, which was, first, that I didn't actually have to do the writing myself, I could find writers.
And then the next light bulb was, better than just writing, what about film and TV, to get out to people in a big way?
And I thought about the films that inspired me, films like "Gandhi" and "Schindler's List."
And I wondered who was doing these kinds of films today.
And there really wasn't a specific company that was focused on the public interest.
So, in 2003, I started to make my way around Los Angeles to talk about the idea of a pro-social media company and I was met with a lot of encouragement.
One of the lines of encouragement that I heard over and over was, "The streets of Hollywood are littered with the carcasses of people like you, who think you're going to come to this town and make movies."
And then of course, there was the other adage.
"The surest way to become a millionaire is to start by being a billionaire and go into the movie business."
(Laughter) Undeterred, in January of 2004, I started Participant Productions with the vision to be a global media company focused on the public interest.
And our mission is to produce entertainment that creates and inspires social change.
And we don't just want people to see our movies and say, that was fun, and forget about it.
We want them to actually get involved in the issues.
In 2005, we launched our first slate of films, "Murder Ball," "North Country," "Syriana" and "Good Night and Good Luck."
And much to my surprise, they were noticed.
We ended up with 11 Oscar nominations for these films.
And it turned out to be a pretty good year for this guy.
Perhaps more importantly, tens of thousands of people joined the advocacy programs and the activism programs that we created to go around the movies.
And we had an online component of that, our community sect called Participate.net.
But with our social sector partners, like the ACLU and PBS and the Sierra Club and the NRDC, once people saw the film, there was actually something they could do to make a difference.
One of these films in particular, called "North Country," was actually kind of a box office disaster.
But it was a film that starred Charlize Theron and it was about women's rights, women's empowerment, domestic violence and so on.
And we released the film at the same time that the Congress was debating the renewal of the Violence Against Women Act.
And with screenings on the Hill, and discussions, and with our social sector partners, like the National Organization of Women, the film was widely credited with influencing the successful renewal of the act.
And that to me, spoke volumes, because it's -- the film started about a true-life story about a woman who was harassed, sued her employer, led to a landmark case that led to the Equal Opportunity Act, and the Violence Against Women Act and others.
And then the movie about this person doing these things, then led to this greater renewal.
And so again, it goes back to betting on good people doing good things.
Speaking of which, our fellow TEDster, Al -- I first saw Al do his slide show presentation on global warming in May of 2005.
At that point, I thought I knew something about global warming.
I thought it was a 30 to 50 year problem.
And after we saw his slide show, it became clear that it was much more urgent.
And so right afterwards, I met backstage with Al, and with Lawrence Bender, who was there, and Laurie David, and Davis Guggenheim, who was running documentaries for Participant at the time.
And with Al's blessing, we decided on the spot to turn it into a film, because we felt that we could get the message out there far more quickly than having Al go around the world, speaking to audiences of 100 or 200 at a time.
And you know, there's another adage in Hollywood, that nobody knows nothing about anything.
And I really thought this was going to be a straight-to-PBS charitable initiative.
And so it was a great shock to all of us when the film really captured the public interest, and today is mandatory viewing in schools in England and Scotland, and most of Scandinavia.
We've sent 50,000 DVDs to high school teachers in the U.S.
and it's really changed the debate on global warming.
It was also a pretty good year for this guy.
We now call Al the George Clooney of global warming.
(Laughter) And for Participant, this is just the start.
Everything we do looks at the major issues in the world.
And we have 10 films in production right now, and dozens others in development.
I'll quickly talk about a few coming up.
One is "Charlie Wilson's War," with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.
And it's the true story of Congressman Charlie Wilson, and how he funded the Taliban to fight the Russians in Afghanistan.
And we're also doing a movie called "The Kite Runner," based on the book "The Kite Runner," also about Afghanistan.
And we think once people see these films, they'll have a much better understanding of that part of the world and the Middle East in general.
We premiered a film called "The Chicago 10" at Sundance this year.
It's based on the protesters at the Democratic Convention in 1968, Abby Hoffman and crew, and, again, a story about a small group of individuals who did make change in the world.
And a documentary that we're doing on Jimmy Carter and his Mid-East peace efforts over the years.
And in particular, we've been following him on his recent book tour, which, as many of you know, has been very non-controversial -- (Laughter) -- which is really bad for getting people to come see a movie.
In closing, I'd like to say that everybody has the opportunity to make change in their own way.
And all the people in this room have done so through their business lives, or their philanthropic work, or their other interests.
And one thing that I've learned is that there's never one right way to make change.
One can do it as a tech person, or as a finance person, or a nonprofit person, or as an entertainment person, but every one of us is all of those things and more.
And I believe if we do these things, we can close the opportunity gaps, we can close the hope gaps.
And I can imagine, if we do this, the headlines in 10 years might read something like these: "New AIDS Cases in Africa Fall to Zero," "U.S. Imports its Last Barrel of Oil" -- (Applause) -- "Israelis and Palestinians Celebrate 10 Years of Peaceful Coexistence."
(Applause) And I like this one, "Snow Has Returned to Kilimanjaro."
(Laughter) And finally, an eBay listing for one well-traveled slide show, now obsolete, museum piece.
Please contact Al Gore.
And I believe that, working together, we can make all of these things happen.
And I want to thank you all for having me here today.
It's been a real honor.
Thank you.
(Applause) Oh, thank you.
So you probably have the sense, as most people do, that polarization is getting worse in our country, that the divide between the left and the right is as bad as it's been in really any of our lifetimes.
But you might also reasonably wonder if research backs up your intuition.
And in a nutshell, the answer is sadly yes.
In study after study, we find that liberals and conservatives have grown further apart.
They increasingly wall themselves off in these ideological silos, consuming different news, talking only to like-minded others and more and more choosing to live in different parts of the country.
And I think that most alarming of all of it is seeing this rising animosity on both sides.
Liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, more and more they just don't like one another.
You see it in many different ways.
They don't want to befriend one another.
They don't want to date one another.
If they do, if they find out, they find each other less attractive, and they more and more don't want their children to marry someone who supports the other party, a particularly shocking statistic.
You know, in my lab, the students that I work with, we're talking about some sort of social pattern -- I'm a movie buff, and so I'm often like, what kind of movie are we in here with this pattern?
So what kind of movie are we in with political polarization?
Well, it could be a disaster movie.
It certainly seems like a disaster.
Could be a war movie.
Also fits.
But what I keep thinking is that we're in a zombie apocalypse movie.
(Laughter) Right?
You know the kind.
There's people wandering around in packs, not thinking for themselves, seized by this mob mentality trying to spread their disease and destroy society.
And you probably think, as I do, that you're the good guy in the zombie apocalypse movie, and all this hate and polarization, it's being propagated by the other people, because we're Brad Pitt, right?
Free-thinking, righteous, just trying to hold on to what we hold dear, you know, not foot soldiers in the army of the undead.
Not that.
Never that.
But here's the thing: what movie do you suppose they think they're in?
Right?
Well, they absolutely think that they're the good guys in the zombie apocalypse movie.
Right?
And you'd better believe that they think that they're Brad Pitt and that we, we are the zombies.
And who's to say that they're wrong?
I think that the truth is that we're all a part of this.
And the good side of that is that we can be a part of the solution.
So what are we going to do?
What can we do to chip away at polarization in everyday life?
What could we do to connect with and communicate with our political counterparts?
Well, these were exactly the questions that I and my colleague, Matt Feinberg, became fascinated with a few years ago, and we started doing research on this topic.
And one of the first things that we discovered that I think is really helpful for understanding polarization is to understand that the political divide in our country is undergirded by a deeper moral divide.
So one of the most robust findings in the history of political psychology is this pattern identified by Jon Haidt and Jesse Graham, psychologists, that liberals and conservatives tend to endorse different values to different degrees.
So for example, we find that liberals tend to endorse values like equality and fairness and care and protection from harm more than conservatives do.
And conservatives tend to endorse values like loyalty, patriotism, respect for authority and moral purity more than liberals do.
And Matt and I were thinking that maybe this moral divide might be helpful for understanding how it is that liberals and conservatives talk to one another and why they so often seem to talk past one another when they do.
So we conducted a study where we recruited liberals to a study where they were supposed to write a persuasive essay that would be compelling to a conservative in support of same-sex marriage.
And what we found was that liberals tended to make arguments in terms of the liberal moral values of equality and fairness.
So they said things like, "Everyone should have the right to love whoever they choose," and, "They" -- they being gay Americans -- "deserve the same equal rights as other Americans."
Overall, we found that 69 percent of liberals invoked one of the more liberal moral values in constructing their essay, and only nine percent invoked one of the more conservative moral values, even though they were supposed to be trying to persuade conservatives.
And when we studied conservatives and had them make persuasive arguments in support of making English the official language of the US, a classically conservative political position, we found that they weren't much kayla30@example.org.
59 percent of them made arguments in terms of one of the more conservative moral values, and just eight percent invoked a liberal moral value, even though they were supposed to be targeting liberals for persuasion.
Now, you can see right away why we're in trouble here.
Right?
People's moral values, they're their most deeply held beliefs.
People are willing to fight and die for their values.
Why are they going to give that up just to agree with you on something that they don't particularly want to agree with you on anyway?
If that persuasive appeal that you're making to your Republican uncle means that he doesn't just have to change his view, he's got to change his underlying values, too, that's not going to go very far.
So what would work better?
Well, we believe it's a technique that we call moral reframing, and we've studied it in a series of experiments.
In one of these experiments, we recruited liberals and conservatives to a study where they read one of three essays before having their environmental attitudes surveyed.
And the first of these essays was a relatively conventional pro-environmental essay that invoked the liberal values of care and protection from harm.
It said things like, "In many important ways we are causing real harm to the places we live in," and, "It is essential that we take steps now to prevent further destruction from being done to our Earth."
Another group of participants were assigned to read a really different essay that was designed to tap into the conservative value of moral purity.
It was a pro-environmental essay as well, and it said things like, "Keeping our forests, drinking water, and skies pure is of vital importance."
"We should regard the pollution of the places we live in to be disgusting."
And, "Reducing pollution can help us preserve what is pure and beautiful about the places we live."
And then we had a third group that were assigned to read just a nonpolitical essay.
It was just a comparison group so we could get a baseline.
And what we found when we surveyed people about their environmental attitudes afterwards, we found that liberals, it didn't matter what essay they read.
They tended to have highly pro-environmental attitudes regardless.
Liberals are on board for environmental protection.
Conservatives, however, were significantly more supportive of progressive environmental policies and environmental protection if they had read the moral purity essay than if they read one of the other two essays.
We even found that conservatives who read the moral purity essay were significantly more likely to say that they believed in global warming and were concerned about global warming, even though this essay didn't even mention global warming.
That's just a related environmental issue.
But that's how robust this moral reframing effect was.
And we've studied this on a whole slew of different political issues.
So if you want to move conservatives on issues like same-sex marriage or national health insurance, it helps to tie these liberal political issues to conservative values like patriotism and moral purity.
And we studied it the other way, too.
If you want to move liberals to the right on conservative policy issues like military spending and making English the official language of the US, you're going to be more persuasive if you tie those conservative policy issues to liberal moral values like equality and fairness.
All these studies have the same clear message: if you want to persuade someone on some policy, it's helpful to connect that policy to their underlying moral values.
And when you say it like that it seems really obvious.
Right?
Like, why did we come here tonight?
Why -- (Laughter) It's incredibly intuitive.
And even though it is, it's something we really struggle to do.
You know, it turns out that when we go to persuade somebody on a political issue, we talk like we're speaking into a mirror.
We don't persuade so much as we rehearse our own reasons for why we believe some sort of political position.
We kept saying when we were designing these reframed moral arguments, "Empathy and respect, empathy and respect."
If you can tap into that, you can connect and you might be able to persuade somebody in this country.
So thinking again about what movie we're in, maybe I got carried away before.
Maybe it's not a zombie apocalypse movie.
Maybe instead it's a buddy cop movie.
(Laughter) Just roll with it, just go with it please.
(Laughter) You know the kind: there's a white cop and a black cop, or maybe a messy cop and an organized cop.
Whatever it is, they don't get along because of this difference.
But in the end, when they have to come together and they cooperate, the solidarity that they feel, it's greater because of that gulf that they had to cross.
Right?
And remember that in these movies, it's usually worst in the second act when our leads are further apart than ever before.
And so maybe that's where we are in this country, late in the second act of a buddy cop movie -- (Laughter) torn apart but about to come back together.
It sounds good, but if we want it to happen, I think the responsibility is going to start with us.
So this is my call to you: let's put this country back together.
Let's do it despite the politicians and the media and Facebook and Twitter and Congressional redistricting and all of it, all the things that divide us.
Let's do it because it's right.
And let's do it because this hate and contempt that flows through all of us every day makes us ugly and it corrupts us, and it threatens the very fabric of our society.
We owe it to one another and our country to reach out and try to connect.
We can't afford to hate them any longer, and we can't afford to let them hate us either.
Empathy and respect.
Empathy and respect.
If you think about it, it's the very least that we owe our fellow citizens.
Thank you.
(Applause)