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Psychology
How Psychology Can Help Heal a Divided Country
Can we avoid the cognitive traps for which we’re wired?
Posted March 16, 2021 Reviewed by Abigail Fagan
As a psychologist, I’ve been thinking a lot about the pain my fellow Americans are in—and about how psychology can help us to heal—and I keep coming back to the theme of validating emotions while also checking the facts.
To start, let’s establish some facts: Americans on both sides of the political aisle are struggling. We may be struggling with different things and we don’t have to agree about what we’re feeling, but it’s important to acknowledge that the pain on all sides is very real as a first step in taking each other seriously.
A good next step might be to recognize how hard recent events have been for so many of us. It is not partisan to agree that 2020 was hard, and agree that we’re off to a rocky start with 2021. We’re facing real, painful issues of identity and justice—like racism, sexism, environmental destruction, and loss of human life and livelihood. Even though we can debate their causes and solutions, these problems are undeniable and when we’re reminded of our shared struggles, we’re more likely to see the humanity in each other.
Which brings us to our problem: Both in therapy and out in the world, I hear common themes of black-and-white thinking and a total inability to understand the other side. Interestingly, research suggests that even though our views on the left and right aren’t that much farther apart than they ever were, we now like each other less, and that is reflected in what I see and hear. I admit, it’s sometimes hard even for me to avoid thinking in extremes when I consider what’s at stake.
But while there are some things that are unambiguously right and wrong, one common theme in therapy is to help people move away from dichotomous thinking and instead to see the world in shades of gray. A broad body of research has considered the negative impacts of extreme thinking; for example, it’s associated with alcoholism, PTSD, and personality disorders. From a psychologist's perspective, there are several reasons why dialectical thinking (i.e., being able to see that seemingly competing ideas can exist together) is preferred over all-or-nothing thinking, and the dialectical path may also be helpful in bridging our national political divide.
Let’s take a look at the psychology behind how we got here: We have two competing systems in our brain—our limbic system, which includes the amygdala and can be described as a threat monitoring system, and the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for rational thought and executive functioning. In an ideal state, we balance these two parts to create a reasonable and value-driven response to the world (in a therapeutic school called Dialectical Behavior Therapy, these two areas can be conceptualized as the “Emotional Mind” and the “Rational Mind”; the desired state of “Wise Mind” balances the two).
Critically, it’s important to understand how easy it is for leaders, peers, and media to appeal to the brain’s fear center; it’s hard-wired to keep us alive and is an easy target for political rhetoric. If we don’t regulate the fear system using the prefrontal cortex, our thoughts and decisions will be motivated by fear.
There are studies that show differences in how these brain systems work in people across the political divide, but we’re not destined to think or act a certain way. In fact, the promise of psychology is that we can use tools to develop agency over these systems of the brain. Fear-motivated individuals can learn to activate the prefrontal cortex to evaluate whether signals from the limbic system are accurate or whether we should approach something a different way. And the more we use the prefrontal cortex, the stronger it gets.
Broadly, these practices are called cognitive challenging (if you are a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy practitioner) or perhaps cognitive defusion (if you subscribe to third-wave approaches)—and they are a therapeutic method of questioning inaccurate or unhelpful thoughts and can be effectively utilized by people on both sides of the political aisle. When you’re having thoughts about politics, notice that they are just thoughts—not facts. We all develop mental shortcuts (called heuristics) that help us make snap decisions so our brains don’t expend energy debating the pros and cons of every choice: snakes are dangerous, snow is cold. The downside to these shortcuts is that we make them across every category of information and they’re frequently wrong.
A recent New York Times article addressing the Capitol riots eloquently described a psychological concept called emotional reasoning: “The sensibility is that something must be wrong,” the author writes, “because I feel it to be wrong, and I know others feel the same way.” Emotional reasoning means my emotional reaction proves something to be true, and it’s a hallmark trait of anxiety disorders. Because I’m scared, something must be scary. Because I feel pain, someone must have hurt me. I encourage us all to take a two-pronged approach to this flawed logic.
First, it’s important to validate the emotion you’re having, which means accepting the emotion without judging it. It’s sometimes helpful to ask yourself where in your body you feel the emotion, and a mindfulness practice can help develop a more intuitive inclination toward validation over time. Next, check to see if your emotional reaction fits the facts of the situation. Reevaluate the scope of the problem and see whether you can spot any judgemental or incendiary language in the reporting you’re consuming. This is a lifelong process of learning to use the rational side of your brain, and the goal is to see the degree to which our emotions are not reasonable responses to actual threats, but self-preserving responses to perceived dangers.
To practice dialectical thinking, spend time with the idea that two seemingly disparate things can be true at once—a concept that’s critical for empathy in public discourse. Start with something simple—for example, I love spending time with my partner and sometimes I want to be alone—then wade into politics. For example, my aunt can care about women’s rights and disagree with abortion. Or, my neighbor can be an immigrant and not want more immigration into the country. Of course, you may disagree—but that doesn’t make it untrue. Try to come up with some beliefs of your own that others might find incongruous.
These tools are just a start, but hopefully they shed some light on the role psychology can play in healing our divided nation. By validating our emotions and checking them against facts from reliable sources, we can hope to move away from patterns of extreme thinking and other cognitive traps to which we find ourselves so vulnerable.
