What drives right wingers?

Engineering is a notoriously conservative profession. It has improved over the last decade, but I've had more than three decades before that of abuse, hostility, and an infantile lack of understanding of the basics of human functioning (NOT, I hasten to add, my current managers and team members and most of my work colleagues). 

I've come across racists, religious bigots, homophobes/transphobes, misogynists, hypocritically emotional rants against "being emotional", discomfort with anything to do with emotions (for instance, one now long former colleague thought it was important for aged care homes to focus solely on physical details, but was utterly clueless about mental and emotional wellbeing), authoritarian (almost militaristic) management, and people who think abusing people is motivating - or that others will gladly adopt targets that are harmful to themselves or their families because a particular manager likes those goals/actions that will boost the manager's KPIs. 

In a word, stupidity - or, perhaps more accurately, incompetence at being human. 

Those dinosaurs have included many right wingers - including people who have, over the years, advocated for Trumpist-style views. 

It was, therefore, no surprise to me at all to come across an article (see here) reporting that people lacking in emotional intelligence (EI) are more likely to be right wing. 

Note that what that says is: 

• NOT all people lacking in EI are on the right of the political spectrum - some will be on the left; and 
• NOT all right wingers lack EI.
  

As with all such articles, it is addressing trends. Extremist reactions along the lines of "Oh they're just saying we're all incompetent at being human" are wrong: it is saying that only some of you are. 

And it was only some right wingers / republican party supporters in the USA who participated in the attempted coup there recently, although a disturbingly large proportion of people continue to support that or even more extreme positions. 

Some of that is genuine anger at having been left behind or kicked out on the unemployment garbage heap, but some of it is due to limited EI.

I've been wondering (e.g., here, here, and here) about the flaws beneath many such extremists (and they are extremists) - including their inability to cope with the fact that the climate crisis is real and will change everyone's lives forever, and lack of EI seems to fit the bill fairly well. 

I've long had the view that parenting, teaching and peer influences are significant: if a parent lacks EI, I consider it likely they will pass that on to their children; if a teacher lacks EI, that will influence what they consider their scope of work in teaching; and if friends of children are also lacking in EI, that may contribute to that child also lacking in EI in their interactions with other people. 

The cure for this includes, in my opinion, teaching empathy - not only to children, but to parents in pre-natal classes, all teachers as part of their training, and all professionals (in ALL professions) as part of their CPD (continuing professional development).

We also need to teach critical thinking: if people can see through business propaganda (aka "advertising"), then I consider it more likely that they will also see through populist rubbish such as Trumpism, as well as being less likely to be bigots.

If people have EI, they will deal with being overwhelmed by the impacts of the climate crisis and be less likely to be denialist. 

If people have empathy, they will be more likely to have a more balanced response to globalisation - although proponents of globalisation also need to give heed to the need for re-training in advance of losing jobs and take care not to throw people out like garbage onto the unemployment pile. They too, could do with more empathy and EI.