On May 5, 1789, the French Revolution began with a meeting of the legislative assembly. No one knows exactly why, but during that gathering those who sided with the King—the nobility—sat to his right. Instead, those who opposed the King—the middle class and peasants—sat to his left. From that point on, politics has been defined by this right-left division.
Over two hundred years later, we still use spatial terms when describing politics. We refer to conservatives as “right-wing” and “right-leaning” and liberals as “left-wing” and “left-leaning.” And what about moderates? We use terms like “middle-of-the-road” and “centrist” to associate them with the middle.
So clearly this right-left metaphor for politics has been around for quite a while. But why?
Chances are, this metaphor persisted all this time because we find it helpful. In general, metaphors are beneficial because they take something complex and abstract (like political ideology) and connect it with something simple and concrete (like right and left sides).
But metaphors do more than just help us comprehend things. They actually change the way we think about a concept on an unconscious level. For example, the spatial metaphor of up and down has often been used in religious texts when talking about divine (up) versus evil (down). As a result, people process the word “god” faster when it’s presented in their upper visual field. And they process “devil” faster when it’s in their lower visual field. The point is, once a spatial metaphor becomes ingrained in our brain, it alters how we process and respond to information in ways we don’t even realize.
So back to the topic of politics. What this means is that on an unconscious level, our brains automatically associate conservative things with the right side and liberal things with our left side.
To see this in action, let’s look at a study conducted by a team of international researchers. In it, participants were seated in front of a computer screen and shown words or political party acronyms one at a time. Some of the words and acronyms were associated with the liberal party, some with the conservative party, and some were neutral (government, elections poll). For each trial, participants had to press one button if the word was liberal and another button if it was conservative (and no button if it was neutral).
Pretty simple so far—but here’s where the researchers got crafty. Sometimes the word appeared on the right side of the screen; other times that…
