We are the Cause of Political Polarization
Segregation, segregation of differing ideology is what we’ve created in the United States and in the world we know it as, and it has been transpiring for too long. Political polarization has plagued our country, where we can call out certain news channels on their biases and that we can see trends in the people we meet, and from only meeting them for a brief few minutes, you can usually get the gist of their political view. On the news, we see targeted points of view that give us the news we wish to see. For example, for those with left wing political views, we see the advocacy of the protests of racial matters like Black Lives Matter (BLM). On the other hand, while right wing views find news sources that oppose the protests/riots with statistics like, “That violence led to $775 million in insured losses at the time, or more than $1.4 billion in today’s dollars” (Manskar). As for the other way around, right wing political viewers seek out justice and good from the capitol protest/riot while the left wing sees it as an injustice and an attack on the U.S. The question at hand is, where do these polarizing political views come from? The answer is a lot closer than most would believe. Of the US population, everyone is guaranteed to face bias, and this comes from all the things we created, standardized, innovated, were for, and pushed against. Our lives have been decided by over 200 years of biases building up to be the country we now see it as today. In the present day, popular biases are as simple as things like the media & parenting, while there’s other more complicated biases like psychology and the schooling system. There’s been arguments that would say that people are more engulfed within data and history that they see extremism and more radical/polarizing points of view to be an answer to today’s problems. All in all, their case would be that there’s so much data put throughout the world that no bias could be present, but so many people like to listen to more of what they think is right and they’ll follow that narrative.
Psychology is the foundation of so much within the world of technology, schooling, activism, and the entire world. Although the study of psychology wasn’t always present, the use of it was. To start, psychology is divided into subcategories to further enhance the general knowledge of certain topics and ways of thinking that led up to those topics; “Political Psychology is an attempt to gather the substantial, but nowadays scattered, academic production within a field” (Parra). The lens of a psychologist has been so cluttered with information about topics like this that they’ve created a subcategory to focus on political psychology. Political Psychology depicts the trends of cultures and thoughts and expresses the differences that everyone and every culture has. The importance of this matter is that when people think of politics, they see their view, and the view that is argued against it. While that could be the case, people usually fail to think of how that idea came to be their own, where they heard it from, the credibility of their source, and whether it is a valid point of view or if they’ve over/underlooked the argument. To think that politics has an entire subcategory of its own is fascinating in the sense that the future we make can be watered down to a neurological and psychological science. With this being said, of a study being based on the differences of everyone, how do people come together into a divide of the major 2 political beliefs? In addition, political psychology is through the use of everyday tactics like, “narrative, writing and speech, psychoanalysis, and subjectivity to demonstrate how representations of voice in modern narrative reveal complicated and sometimes contradictory notions of personal identity” (Thomas). Ways that we talk, communicate, learn, and read are the ways that we digest political psychology. The use of these literary and psychological tools are what brings people of differing cultures together. This explains how people that differ in belief can come together under well-structured tactics like a bold speech that gives someone an encouraging stance, yet making them sound knowledgeable and a safe candidate. This depicts how our choices in not only politics, but in other standpoints of psychology, people can believe their individualism and then continue to take the side of a larger group that doesn’t truly align with them. When it comes into perspective about how political psychology is so big, that it’s become part of our daily lives, it gives a new meaning to how something so untalked about can be so impactful. Lastly, the consequences of political polarization stem behaviors like, “political polarization is a problem for societies, as it stimulates overconfidence, intolerance, and – through the process of motivated reasoning – irrational beliefs” (Van Prooijen). The political divide creates a polarization in not only the political section of society, but the social section as well. With the increase of differing views, as well as the increased “overconfidence” in their belief and the “intolerance” towards what others believe, it only brews poor outcomes. This being said, it shows how the creation and evolution of the political spectrum has caused us to become more divided among the general public. Examples of politics in history failing would be cities and empires like Rome, once a republic, shifted its politics into a dictatorship and then fell apart due to the instability. As a result of human psychology and the mixing of politics, they create a breeding ground to extremist views and radical decisions to be made.
A large part of the world today is the media, a place people look toward to receive the weather, news stories, updates in the stock market, celebrities, friends, and more. The issue with media and the news is that people rather pick off specific stories and news pieces that suit them and will stick with that narrative. There’s many news/media outlets that are available for anyone in the US to watch and each one tends to have its flaws or biases. To begin, people find specific news networks to get their information from because, “people have ample opportunity to engage in selective exposure, the selection of information matching their beliefs” (Stroud). When given the opportunity, people will most commonly progress towards the information that sides with them. The biases of the media push audiences to think one way or another and it brings people together in ideology regardless of personal beliefs, which creates an echo chamber. Secondly, the speed and the efficiency of news, regardless whether it’s truthful or not, can spread like wildfire when stated, “Over 30 million users, between 2015 and 2017, shared the IRA’s Facebook and Instagram posts with their friends and family, liking, reacting to, and commenting on them along the way” (The IRA, Social Media and Political). Media has the ability to spread information to millions in just a small time span. The influence that media outlets have on people is unprecedented in the spreading of information. This explains how so many people can come together with similar or the same idea even from differing viewpoints because the sources of information they receive overlap, giving a bias to the public, that being the same news being their main source of information. With the post receiving 30 million views, people don’t realize the significance of that number. 30 million people is approximately equivalent to an eleventh of the population of the United States. As a result, one simple source of media and information can have a very large impact on the total population and their thoughts. Finally, social media has influences on what we see, where they narrow down what we want to see using filters and censors; “we increasingly live in online filter bubbles that only expose us to the ideas we already agree with. This is consistent with a broader psychological literature on confirmation bias” (De-Wit, Sanders, & Brick). The information presented shows that when people go onto social media, they see more of what they have already searched for and less for things they normally wouldn’t look for. The issue with this, is since people can’t see what they aren’t looking for, they won’t be able to think upon that topic, making them vulnerable to knowing less than the full picture. The media has both the ability to spread information like wildfire, yet also has the ability to limit what people see so they only see what they wish to view. This creates a very big hole in the spread of information and misinformation. Overall, the media leads the public in lots of information and with the biases of echo chambers within media, as well as the filters and censors, it only strengthens the polarization of the United States.
Parenting has had a very large impact on the younger generations' solutions to the world’s problems and their outlook on government. Starting off, parenting has had major changes between the middle of the 20th century till now when stated, “Today, 69% of children younger than 18 are living with two parents, down from 87% in 1960. A record-low 62% of children live with two married parents” (Stepler). The family unit that was once known has been degrading over time and it’s come to a point where just over two thirds of kids don’t get to have 2 parents in their lives, and that’s a significant change. The reasons behind this are endless in the sense that reasons can range from later on in life, partners saw themselves better off to harsher reasons being that parents weren’t ready for having kids. The stability of the family structure gives reason to believe that the youth of today are receiving less of a family and the attention they need that helps form them and prepare them for the world ahead of them. To add, parents have also found ways to help keep a good foundation so that they can provide for their kids; “left with the impression that if parents were cooperative, flexible and child-focused, this significantly enhanced their children's lives, regardless of the parenting arrangement” (Felhberg and Milward). Parents have pushed into the single parent environment more due to the push for more suitable lifestyles. Parents need flexibility in their parenting in order to beneficially enrich their children. The matter at hand is that single parents can only stay neutral for so long that in the long run there’ll be more stress on the parent and the kid. A single parent lifestyle for a kid would only give one parenting perspective for the child and although this can’t be aided in certain situations, usually being preventable circumstances. Lastly, government intervention has had a large impact on parenting and how people parent; “greatest positive impact on parenting were those with more generous work supports and more flexible work requirements” (Lansdale). Government intervention opens the way for a more preferable and financially stable option. Welfare has been a major factor in parents coming to the conclusion that separating is a better option than working together, which comes at the expense of the childhood of the parent’s kid(s). Most parents today take the option to be better financially off rather than taking into account the needs of their family overall, and that makes a significant impact on the kid’s rationality and overall corrupts their thought process. All in all, parenting and the evolution of decisions made while parenting in the modern day have shifted the political views and the rationality of the youth, developing them into more polarized views. Kids have been subject to less fortunate circumstances in spite of their original circumstances and not putting much thought or time into the parent’s actions.
Throughout everyone’s lives, the schooling system is a major factor in what we learn, when we learn, and how we learn. To begin, schooling is an important part of our lives and it allows us to think with more reasoning when stated, “Research has found that people with less education are more likely to be racist and hostile to people of color” (Garland). The education system is the foundation for learning for almost every person. People make obvious errors due to the lack of education they receive, but it also means that the standardized system prioritizes other topics than those more relevant in today’s world. The schooling system reuses words which embed some thoughts for key knowledge to remember in the future like when stated, “While the colonial and nationalist discourses were intended to convey divergent messages, they used the same vocabulary for important education concepts. The terms of educational discourse that are in current use have sprung from this ambivalent heritage” (Kumar). Words are reused in topics to keep a strong meaning of what something truly means, or to convey a direct message through the use of words. People learn through patterns, and because of the use of these patterns in education, we see a trend in how different bits of knowledge are perceived similarly or in the same way. To think a specific way before interpreting a topic is a very subtle and almost unnoticeable way to push ideologies one way or to question one's ideologies. To use such methods seems authoritative which few can pick up and be pushed to extremism, some may see the flaw and feel centrist, and others can follow along and take on the given path of thought. Lastly, politics have brought up controversy in schools where new topics are introduced when stated, “A vigorous wave of progressive activism has helped push the country’s culture to the left, inspiring a conservative backlash against everything from “critical race theory” to the supposed cancellation of Dr. Seuss” (Cohn). The polarizing topics have been heavy discussions in school; they aren’t taken lightly on either side of the debates. The cancellation of Dr. Seuss is a major keystone in this because many people have been given their childhood through his books and the movies made from them, and now to see that his work was filled with slander and that his past makes him worthless seems too radical to just discard. On the other hand, with critical race theory, the newer topic is brought up which both explains and educates students about race, but the controversy is how far does critical race theory go? In the past year, there’s been statues taken down and people want to actually remember their history rather than scrap so much of it till it’s unrecognizable. In summary, the education system that the US government and its citizens have constructed has pushed the sides farther apart as well as chose to expand the curriculum into politics.
Overall, the United States has been conflicted with the polarization of the public, and it’s a tough topic to combat. The polarizing views are a cause of very large social and informative structures that we use everyday, those being: Psychology, media, parenting, and the education system. The plague we wish to combat is the plague we’ve created, and it’s hard to predict what will come when the political views become too divided. Psychology is a major foundation to the other topics because of the explanation it gives to how people think, what they want, and what they’ll do to hear what they wish. Throughout the media and the education system, are using echo chambers, whether through the person teaching, or through the lessons that are brought to attention. When bringing each topic together, the common characteristic is the people within them. To separate oneself from attachment to these key parts of society would give anyone to achieve that definition of unbiasedness. That is very improbable to do, so the main way to combat both political polarization and polarization in general would be to slowly fix the systems already in place to accompany polarization and to focus more on the outcomes of more radical ideologies.
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