Mitchell Saron (Hyper polarization between political parties)<\/b><\/p>\n
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For the past decade, it seems that Americans have become substantially more politically polarized. Unfortunately, as Americans continue to indulge in social media, they will absorb news and political discourse from applications like Instagram, TikTok, and Youtube. These platforms are designed to feed users with the most polarizing content as it generates the most views and data. It is unclear how far this could divide our nation, but it has already damaged many familial relationships and friendships. In the past, friendships were not harmed due to the friction of political affiliation. Nowadays, Americans will not even consider a friendship with an individual of opposing political views.<\/p>\n
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What makes an individual align with a political party? Currently, political ties can be attributed to a person\u2019s parents or guardians, friends, political outlets, and the invasive political messages within our current social media outlets. However, on the most basic level, a person\u2019s political affiliation is contrived from their values. I think a lot of people would agree that a friendship, relationship, or marriage would not work with each party having opposing political views. With some relationships, I fully agree that not sharing a political party with a spouse can lead to an unsuccessful marriage. This is especially true when raising children with a partner as you want to both share the values that you want to bestow on your kids. Nevertheless, I think it is embarrassing that the current state of our political climate has made it taboo to have a friend with different views as yourself.<\/p>\n
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My home town has a history of being predominantly conservative, but in recent years it has become pretty split between Republican and Democratic affiliation. As a result, my high school classmates emulated this demographic as well. My friends from home have views across the political spectrum and it has never once affected the healthiness or longevity of a relationship. I think many people today consider members of the opposing political party as a threat to society, evil, or ignorant. Yet, this natural need for tribalism has been exacerbated by the media which has led to the demonizing of each political party from each side. In reality, people just have different values. For the most part, two people can like and enjoy each other’s company without having the exact same value system. These political labels merely create division that was not there in the first place.<\/p>\n
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In Buliga and MacInnis (2020), the authors yield that relationships between different political group members are usually characterized by \u201cantipathy and avoidance.\u201d In their study, they measured positive reactions such as hope of the relationship lasting, intentions to engage in friendship maintenance behaviors, and trust between members of the same and different political party. Specifically, there were four groups measured: in-group friend, potential in-group friend, out-group friend, and potential out-group friend. Ultimately, participants were most positive toward the established in-group friend, followed by potential in-group friend, then the established out-group friend, and finally the potential out-group friend. Therefore, people were more likely to be positive toward a person they had just met than an established friend due to differing political views.<\/p>\n
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I wonder how the results of this study would differ had it been conducted 20 years ago. From my point of view, it is very scary and sad that people would rather have better intentions toward a complete stranger than a recognized friend just due to a political label. Even my parents, who have been married for about 30 years, have always been on the opposite political spectrum. I grew up with my mother watching CNN in the living room while my Dad listened to Fox News in his office. Perhaps I am biased due to my upbringing, but I think there has to be a balance between natural tribalism and the hatred between our current political parties. It\u2019s natural to enjoy friendships with those that share a similar value system, but there is no reason to bias ourselves into only having relationships with those that mimic our political creeds.<\/p>\n
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Anthony Nelson (Biases and Perception)<\/b><\/p>\n
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Are we all unconsciously biased? Is there a part of us deep down that just favors familiar things more?\u00a0 The idea of in-groups and out-groups can help one understand why research has shown the answer to these questions is, yes. The most relevant way these biases can be explained would be by looking at our own country’s political divide. Especially in the past two presidential elections. In high school back in Florida it was clear to see peoples\u2019 political alignments from their clothes, and accessories to how they interacted with people in our government class. It was truly interesting to see how affiliation to certain groups can be so apparent in school when the association is strong enough.<\/p>\n
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In the paper by L.M. Hackel et al (2014) it was said that they found evidence that showed social identity can exert a top-down influence on the threshold for perceiving minds. These findings indicate that group motivations can influence mind perception. I can support this claim because personally there have been many times when I have seen on social media platforms, media outlets, etc. where people berate, insult, and assume a person’s character based solely on their political alignments. Any day you can go on Twitter and find threads of people supporting logicless statements and assumptions or undermining scientifically proven facts simply because the person who posts is either also a democrat or a republican.<\/p>\n
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I can personally say I know individuals from home who take political alignments to the extreme and claim they can’t be friends with a person with another political alignment than themselves. These types of behaviors are a bit frightening because it is said social cognitive models of person perception suggest that in-group members are more motivationally relevant to perceivers, and are thus more likely to be individuated and processed in greater depth (Brewer, 1988; Fiske & Neuberg, 1990). This will lead to cycles of disputes if no one from the opposite group will not give the time of day to the other group. This is outside of simply politics because this same feeling of animosity toward an out-group has led to horrible outcomes in human history. Whether it be racism, sexism, genocide, or homophobia these like mentioned in the paper stem from the sentiment of in-group vs out-groups.<\/p>\n
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Buliga, E., & MacInnis, C. (2020). \u201cHow do you like them now?\u201d Expected reactions upon discovering that a friend is a political out-group member. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships<\/i>, 37<\/i>(10-11), 2779-2801.<\/p>\n
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Fiske, S. T., & Neuberg, S. L. (1990). A continuum of impression formation, from<\/p>\n
category-based to individuating processes: Influences of information and motivation<\/p>\n
on attention and interpretation. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social<\/p>\n
psychology. , Vol. 23. (pp. 1 \u201374). : Academic Press.<\/p>\n
Hackel, L. M., Looser, C. E., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2014). Group membership alters the threshold for mind perception: The role of social identity, collective identification, and intergroup threat. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology<\/i>, 52<\/i>, 15-23.<\/p>\n
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