Is Psychology the Key to Defusing Politics?

As politics in many countries become increasingly strained, we need to focus on understanding people.

Source: Mikhail Nilov/Pexels

Psychology researchers have long explored topics related to politics; however, historically, psychology academics have been perceived—correctly, at least in the U.S—to be overwhelmingly liberal politically. (See here, here, and here.) (This may not be true internationally; Bilewicz and colleagues reported data suggesting that such a claim “seems American-centric.”) Perhaps, for this reason, mainstream political discourse in the U.S. has generally not included psychology researchers and academics.

More recently, however, as disinformation seeped into, and then started to drown, much of social media, what psychology researchers have to offer is urgently needed. And pundits, writers, and thinkers on the right are listening, too. Some examples:

• On the center-right podcast The Bulwark, Peter Wehner, a writer who served in three Republican administrations, told guest host Mona Charen that he had learned more from psychologists about American politics than from political scientists—“much more than I ever imagined and I think this is particularly true in this era that we’re in. I think human psychology explains an enormous amount of what’s going on and if we don’t understand that aspect of human behavior, human psychology, so much of what’s happening just can’t be parsed; it can’t be understood.”
• The Politicology podcast, hosted by former Republican and Lincoln Project co-founder Ron Steslow, has started to include social scientists, including psychologist Catherine Sanderson, in discussions about U.S. and global politics.
• Conservative writer Bill Kristol, on The Bulwark podcast, although not directly mentioning psychology research, described to host Charlie Sykes the psychological phenomena that affect the citizens of a country as it gives way to authoritarianism. Specifically, he noted that “[a]uthoritarians on their way up as they seek to seize power and seize more power, they depend on a kind of exhaustion by their opponents.” (Indeed, soon after this podcast episode aired, Charlie Sykes posted a related article on "political exhaustion.")

A Focus on Emotions, Thoughts, and Behavior

More liberal media also embrace a psychological viewpoint. In one recent example, Molly Jong-Fast, the liberal co-host of the left-leaning podcast The New Abnormal interviewed journalist and historian Anne Applebaum whose work has focused on Eastern Europe. Applebaum explained, “One of the things that somebody like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is trying to achieve is… apathy. He wants people to say ‘Oh my god, it’s all so awful, I can’t do anything… You know I can’t watch TV anymore, I hate politics. I can’t follow it’… But actually, it’s that apathy that’s good for them, it’s good for the extremists.” But, she reminds us, “[T]here are always things you can do. You can always join a political party or you can run for office or you can work on a campaign or you can join or give money [to organizations]… You may feel despairing or pessimistic but there’s no use to it. You might as well work for some kind of change.”

Although she doesn’t cite psychology research directly, Applebaum’s statement is essentially the definition of psychology. She talks about the emotion of apathy, the thought that “I can’t do anything,” the decision to do something anyway, and then the behavior that choice led to.

This apathy to which Applebaum refers is related to the exhaustion that Kristol and Sykes reference, and both help explain why Wehner turns to psychologists and why Politicology turns to Sanderson. In our last post, we talked about informational learned helplessness and the ways in which misinformation can lead us to just give up. We cited Peter Pomerantsev’s work and the concept of “censorship by noise” in which disinformation and its evil twin, malinformation, are overwhelming, and can fuel the triumph of autocracy over democracy.

A Little Understanding

We argue that psychology research must be part of mainstream political discourse—from Twitter spats to podcast-pundit arguments to think-tank discussions to policy considerations at the highest levels. It is not a coincidence that this piece is being published on the eve of January 6, 2022, just one year after one of the most politically divisive days in American history. As we now understand, what happened that day happened, in part, because of rampant misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. It happened, in part, because of informational learned helplessness and censorship by noise. And now we understand that, if people are going to solve the political problem that is the United States of America, we need to understand these concepts and, even more important, we need to understand each other better than we do. Psychology can help us do that. As The Dells remind us, we all just need “a little understanding.”