Monday, February 5, 2007

Emotion and polarization

A recent article in Psychology Today delves into the psychological basis of political sympathies -- how upbringing, personality, and emotion govern where we fall on the political spectrum. The majority of the studies cited point to favorable views of liberals -- open, tolerant, creative, educated -- and rather less favorable conclusions about conservatives. (In one, those who at age three were judged by their teachers to be "easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable" tended to lean rightward later on.) This raises the natural question -- which the writer, Jay Dixit, considers -- of whether the social science studies were themselves politically motivated (or even governed by emotion?).

One study I found more interesting than those in the general trend:

University of Arizona psychologist Jeff Greenberg argues that some ideological shifts can be explained by terror management theory (TMT), which holds that heightened fear of death motivates people to defend their world views. TMT predicts that images like the destruction of the World Trade Center should make liberals more liberal and conservatives more conservative.

It's interesting to square this with two observations about the world as it appeared to change shortly after Sep. 11. One was the rush on books about Islam and the Arab world in American bookstores. Perhaps US citizens thirsted not only for knowledge for its own sake but a confirmation or substantiation of their own political views. ("I think Islame is a tolerant and peaceful belief system ... but I need more examples.")

Also, although politics in this country were polarized in the wake of the contested 2000 election, they became dramatically more so after the attacks, and especially once the Administration linked terror with Iraq and began the run-up to war -- normally a time when countries pull together. These events brought emotion to the fore and motivated a great deal of cohesion: cohesion at the two political poles.

Posted by Evan Hughes at 09:30 AM

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