Why is a Second Amendment supporter much more likely than not to favor restrictions on abortion, when guns and fetuses are completely different things? The answer, of course, is that both opinions have a common source in the psyche. They are both particular expressions of a general cast of mind.
Well, Robert Caldiani has done a lot of work on “persuasion,” and one thing that is important is that if you like someone that wants to convince you about something, the sell is a lot easier (duh!?!?), so no matter the rational and intuitional correlates that Derb refers to, the fact that person X & Y are friends, and X & Y agree on Z, means that Y is much more likely to go along with X on position point A if X is hard-core about it. More starkly stated, a Blue State American will be more easily convinced about the non-looniness of immigration reform by Roy Beck than Sam Francis. A Red State American is going to be less hostile to an illegal alien amnesty coming from G. W. Bush than if Bill Clinton tried to sell them on it. As they say, Nixon could make peace with China because he had the Cold War bonafides.
(the reverse principle works, which is why Frontpage Mazine enjoys trying to connect The Left to Nazism)
Posted by razib at 12:42 PM