Editor’s note: This essay was adapted from a talk given by Arthur C. Brooks at the Deseret News 175th Anniversary Gala on September 24, 2025.
A decade ago, when I was running the American Enterprise Institute — a think tank in Washington, D.C. — I read an article in a psychology journal that really shocked me. It was about something called motive attribution asymmetry. That’s a fancy set of words for a very simple concept. It’s when there’s an implacable hostility and conflict between two people or two groups, and it’s motivated by the fact that both sides believe that they love and that the other side hates.
Now, it’s impossible that two sides could both simultaneously love and hate. But that error is incredibly common. The article shocked me because it showed that the United States was going into a period where the motive attribution asymmetry phenomenon was as acute in America as it is between Palestinians and Israelis in the Middle East. I thought, “That can’t be right. I know people don’t get along politically, but is it really that bad?” Well, yes. That dark cloud was coming and it’s upon us today.
I travel around and give talks for a living, and I’ll talk to any group about any subject because I’m interested in ideas. I talk to people all across the political spectrum. And the night after I read that article in 2014, I was in New Hampshire giving a speech to 600 conservative tea party activists, and I thought I would test out if motive attribution asymmetry was actually happening among us. I came a little early to my engagement, and I always like to do that so I can get a kind of a lay of the land. There were 15 speakers: me and 14 presidential candidates. I thought to myself, “Why did God call me here?” God called me to say something that nobody else can say. I was listening to the political candidates who were all vying for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination on the Republican ticket. They were telling their audience that they were right and that the liberals who weren’t among them are stupid and evil and hate this country. Red meat for this audience.
I thought to myself, “Why did God call me here?” God called me to say something that nobody else can say, and that could be anything, because I don’t need any votes. I silently prayed, crossed myself and started my prepared speech about economic policy or something lost in the sands of time. But in the middle, I stopped and I said, “My friends, you have been hearing from all these presidential candidates that you’re right and the people who aren’t here don’t love America. Maybe I actually agree with you on many political ideas. But I want you to think about those people that the politicians have been talking about. Those are your neighbors. Those people are your family. Those people aren’t stupid and evil. They’re just American citizens who happen to disagree with you on politics. And if your job is to convince them, which it should be, well, news flash, nobody has ever been convinced by hearing that they’re stupid and evil. Nobody can be insulted into being convinced.”
That was not an applause line. But there was applause that came right after when a lady in the audience yelled: “Actually, they are stupid and evil.” She repudiated me. I didn’t take it personally. It was a joke. Not a very funny one, but it was a joke nonetheless. That took me, in my mind, to Seattle, where I grew up. Seattle is the most secular, most left wing city in the United States. My father was a college professor. My mother was an artist. And when that lady yelled that out, she was insulting my mother, and I took it personally. Now, I didn’t happen to agree with my mother on politics. I was the odd man out. Our home was like that old sitcom “Family Ties.” I was Alex Keaton growing up. My mother, at one point, was so worried about my dangerous capitalist ideology that she asked, “I want you to know that we will love you either way: Have you been voting for Republicans?”
Those are your neighbors. Those people are your family. Those people aren’t stupid and evil. They’re just American citizens who happen to disagree with you on politics.
That is where I come from. But that’s not the point. The point is, nobody has the right to say that my mother is stupid and evil because of how she votes. And in that moment, motive attribution asymmetry came into view for me because I realized what we need to do as Americans in this political moment when we are so divided.
We need to stand up to the people with whom we agree. You want to fix America? Let’s stop standing up to the people with whom we disagree, which is a waste of time, and start standing up to the people with whom we agree on behalf of those with whom we disagree, who are Americans just like us. That’s how we love our enemies.
Disgust + anger = contempt
Polarization in this country is the fruit of motive attribution asymmetry, to be sure. And a lot of people will blame anger. We’re so angry, if you turn on cable TV and listen to a talking head show, you’ll see a lot of anger, for sure. Wind them up and they debate. But anger isn’t the problem. I am a behavioral scientist, and I assure you that anger is a hot emotion produced in the limbic system of the brain, saying: “I care what you think and I want it to change.” Believe it or not, divorce and anger are uncorrelated. The hot emotion of anger doesn’t predict divorce. It’s another emotion that enters into anger that actually makes us polarized and turns us against each other: disgust.
There are four basic negative emotions: anger, fear, sadness and disgust. Disgust is supposed to be relegated to pathogens. We’ve evolved the emotion of disgust that is produced by the insular cortex and the limbic system of the brain. We have a specialized organ to make us feel disgust, and that was the only thing that stood between us and the poisoning from pathogens before vaccines and antibiotics were developed. That’s what’s kept you alive and kept your ancestors alive. But when you deploy it toward other human beings, you have instant enemies. And when you mix it with anger, you get the most noxious of all human emotions that will make enemies, forever. It’s called contempt. Contempt is disgust plus anger that results in a conviction of the utter worthlessness of another human being. And that’s what American politics has become today. It’s like a large, dysfunctional marriage.
John Gottman is a social psychologist who teaches at the University of Washington and the world’s leading expert in marital reconciliation. He’s brought thousands of couples back together that were on the brink of divorce. I had heard he could tell in an hour, with 97 percent accuracy, if a couple will be in divorce proceedings within three years. And I asked him if that was true and he said no, “I can do it in half an hour.” He asks couples to discuss something contentious and looks to see if either one of the partners rolls their eyes. It seems innocent, right? But it is perceived by the other party as a sign of contempt and worthlessness. It’s almost like a physical attack. And that’s exactly how we treat each other in politics in America today. We’ve forgotten, actually, what it’s like to have a functional conversation.
The cure for contempt
Our problem is contempt and the culture of contempt is tearing us apart. People often ask, so what do you do? One solution is to be more civil to each other, or more tolerant of each other. I say, that’s nonsense. If I told you that my wife and I are civil to each other, you’d say, “You need counseling.” If I told you that my employees are tolerant of me, you’d realize I have a huge HR problem on my hands.
The solution can be found in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount recorded in the New Testament Gospel of Matthew 5:44: “Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Are you strong enough for that? Are we strong enough for that? Because that’s the medicine we need. That’s the only thing that’s going to bring our country back together again. And we need people dedicated to do that and do it in public. It’s the only way that we save this enterprise.
Now, one thing that Jesus didn’t say in the sermon is to like your enemies. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a famous sermon on this in 1957 at the Dexter Street Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, in which he says it’s significant that Jesus didn’t say to like your enemies. “Like is a sentimental something, an affectionate something. … And love is greater than like.” To love your enemies is an act of commitment. It’s an act of will. And only in that way can you redeem your enemies. This is the hardest thing you can possibly do. And it’s the best thing that we can possibly do. It’s a measure of who we are as people.
To love your enemies is an act of commitment. It’s an act of will. And only in that way can you redeem your enemies.
How are we going to do it? Let me be really practical here. What I’m not suggesting is that we start agreeing, because agreement is a kind of a mediocrity. The competition of ideas is fundamental to a free society. This country was built on competition, economic competition, political competition, ideological competition. That’s something that so many universities have forgotten. So I’m not asking you to agree. I’m not asking you to disagree less on politics. I’m asking all of us to disagree better. Let’s stop being used. Let’s stop being monetized. When we hate for political reasons, somebody’s profiting and it’s not us. We have been utterly “transactionalized” in this country by media and politicians who tell us that people who disagree with us are a danger to us and must be despised. That gets clicks and dollars and votes and attention, and we can make it stop. How? By walking away from our own side.
Following the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk in September, Utah’s Gov. Spencer Cox said what he thought was right on how we should respond to the violence — and he got attacked. A Republican got attacked by conservative politicians for that. If you’re getting attacked for talking about love, you’re doing it right. That’s the acid test. If your side is going after you because you’re proposing more love, congratulations. You’re halfway to heaven. But it feels like hell, doesn’t it?
The next thing we can do is go out and find contempt. Go running toward it with your love. Go looking for contempt and what will happen when you treat conflict as an opportunity?
Let me quote the Book of Mormon: “And it came to pass that they did go forth and did minister unto the people, … and as many as were convinced did lay down their weapons of war, and also their hatred, and the tradition of their fathers.” That’s how peace gets made, but only when you find the hatred and respond with love.
Last but not least is one of the things that we’ve forgotten and the greatest tool at our disposal: gratitude. One of the things that the right and left can agree on in America today is that this is a country in decline, that our best days are behind us, that everything’s wrong in America. You know that’s false. You know there’s a reason everybody still wants to come here. You know you’re all proud to be Americans, and we should be grateful for that. Our greatest apostolate is the gratitude that we show for the country that we love. How are we showing that gratitude? When we show that gratitude, it’s magnetic. It’s what people actually want. I’m grateful to be here in Utah. I’m grateful to be American, and I know you are, too.
This story appears in the November 2025 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.