ScienceDaily: The Psychology Behind Why Politics Can Get So Heated — and How to Show Up Differently

“Politics represent our personal beliefs, morals, and ideals — meaning that we tend to see our ideology as a part of our identity. “When political views are challenged, the brain becomes active in regions associated with personal identity, threat response, and emotions,” explains Kristi Phillips, a licensed psychologist in Minnesota. “[That] can make people feel like the core of who they are as an individual is being attacked.”

Issues and policies often become tied to the people who represent them, such as political leaders. This means we don’t always “fight” fair. “Oftentimes, the politics gets conflated with the people who are the figureheads of those politics,” says Vaile Wright, senior director of healthcare innovation for the American Psychological Association. “So, you end up in circular arguments where nobody can ‘win’ because you’re no longer talking about the actual policies.”

In other words, we tend to not discuss ideas because we can’t see past the figureheads who proposed or implemented the policy — which means that if we don’t like the person behind the policy, we tend to have a negative association with the policy/issue as well. “That’s where it just becomes this back-and-forth, and it turns into attacks on the other person — and people can walk away with hurt feelings, feeling misunderstood, feeling attacked,” she adds.`

Some Insights From This Article

• Why are political debates or any debate in general becoming so heated? More so these days especially through online platforms we see increasing hostility for disagreement on opinions, especially those that are social/political in nature.

• Researchers think that the reason we get so heated over these kinds of debates is due to the increasing personalization of values and beliefs. Oftentimes the fallacy of ad hominem has become more or less reality as we are associated a person’s beliefs with who they are. The negativity of certain beliefs and positions a person may hold often get translated to the person who holds those positions as well.

• With the increasing platform of debate coming from online, this issue is even more magnified where it is easier to depersonalize someone including yourself.

Are there any ways where we can overcome this negativity?

Full article is here!

#Debates #Politics #Emotions