Article archive / November 1, 2016
Originally published: . Volume 7, No. 11. Source pages: 2.
We may be having the strangest election and two of the strangest candidates for U.S. President ever. But what is interesting to me about the selection process is our large social system that created this situation.
Several lines of research indicate that the U.S. is more “polarized” now than in many decades. Last month in Personality & Social Bulletin, Jean Twenge and her team found that more Americans today express polarized political views. Pew Research has been following this same phenomenon.
“Republicans and Democrats are more divided along ideological lines – and partisan antipathy is deeper and more extensive – than at any point in the last two decades,” says Pew. Today, 92% of Republicans are to the right of the median Democrat, and 94% of Democrats are to the left of the median Republican.
The actual differences of opinion are not all that great actually, and there are lots of Independents, but most of us are firmly dug in to having our red or blue cool-aid.
The natural tendency for us to form into two political, attitude-based groups has been studied by William James, Eysenck, more recently Haidt, and many others. We’ve even found odd things like the finding that red states score higher on conscientiousness and blue states higher on openness. There are the bug theories––that it all has to do with parasites. I do suspect an evolutionary element, because the right-left, red-blue group characteristic is found across cultures and time.
Two things to consider about polarization. When a group pumps up through this process, the dynamics–called by some “over-boundaried”– reduce information flow, problem-solving and other factors. The group becomes less effective and so less productive. It can become more like a committee, and we know what means:
If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it. – Charles Kettering
A committee is a group that keeps minutes and loses hours. – Milton Berle
If Columbus had an advisory committee he would probably still be at the dock. –Arthur Goldberg
If you see a snake, just kill it – don't appoint a committee on snakes. –Ross Perot
Another thing we might notice, suggested by embedded group theory, is that as subgroups become polarized, and thick-headed, the parent group becomes “under-boundaried” and so less effective.
I believe we are seeing that, with the breaking down of certain moral behavior in places that I would not have expected. We have problems in effectiveness in the SSA, VA, Congress, etc., and symptoms like $20T in debt, failing healthcare system, and a toxic environment.
This is something psychology can help with––raising the level of insight about large group dynamics, taking on group amnesia and blind spots, finding ways to increase group level critical-thinking. We can help solve problems that continue to stump others.
Psychological science is home for this type of effort. Psychology has the most of any discipline to offer for making the unconscious, conscious, for connecting the dots, for using empirical methods. We can help with “mass psychology,” as Bertrand Russell called it over a half century ago, saying it was the next leap in civilization’s advancement, and critical to our survival.
And all we have to do is stay clear of politics, self-interest and self- deception. It might help also to tap our ruby slippers together and say, “There’s no place like home.”
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.