How our political animosity and contempt help create the very things that upset us
Extreme emotions lead to extreme beliefs (and extreme beliefs lead to extreme emotions)
The following is an excerpt from Zach Elwood’s books Defusing American Anger (written for all Americans) and How Contempt Destroys Democracy (written for a liberal audience). This excerpt comes after several sections that define the problem of toxic political polarization and examine the complexity of our political divides. I also have a piece where I’m compiling more research related to this dynamic.
Earlier, when defining toxic polarization, I said that belief polarization (a growing apart of beliefs) can be seen as a separate thing from affective polarization (an increase in negative views of each other).
One way to see that these are separate aspects is by imagining these two people:
Someone with extreme, passionate political beliefs — but who engages in respectful ways with their political opponents.
And conversely: someone with moderate, centrist political beliefs — but who treats anyone who disagrees with them with much contempt.
This helps us see that what one believes and how one views and engages with one’s opponents are separate dimensions.
But it’s also true that these things are, in the real world, intimately connected. Our emotions can shift our beliefs and, vice versa, our beliefs can shift our emotions.
Our dislike of the other group, our fear of them and anger at them, can make us have more extreme and hardened positions on issues. When we see the political landscape as largely “good versus evil,” and when more issues come to be morally charged, we’ll feel more of a need to take aggressive, righteous stances on issues. This impulse will amplify the other side’s dislike and make them form more extreme positions, which makes us dislike them more, and so on.
We may also feel an instinct to choose positions that are opposite of the people we dislike. After all, nobody wants to be like the “bad guys.” This can help explain why we so often become polarized around issues — including issues that seem quite trivial, and serious issues where many of us would have expected more unity and coming-together.
We can also feel an emotional desire to want to see the “bad guys” lose. There can be a schadenfreude aspect. When we dislike people, we don’t like to see them get their way — even in cases where them getting their way may not affect us much. This can help explain why we so often feel the need to fight hard against our political opponents — even about things that don’t seem that important. In extreme cases, we may even find ourselves fighting for things that hurt our own self-interest.
These various points help us see an important truth about conflict: Our animosity can help create the extreme beliefs that upset us.
A paper by Christoph Nguyen and colleagues was titled “The impact of emotions on polarization.” Summarizing some of the research done in that area, they wrote:
Anger can increase issue polarization because it leads to decreased cognitive processing…and greater reliance on pre-existing beliefs and heuristics.
Basically, anger makes us less smart, and more likely to rely on our biases — and that includes our biases against people and groups. Our emotions skew our thinking and beliefs.
A 1967 paper by Robert Abelson and James Miller was titled “Negative persuasion via personal insult.” It showed that when subjects were insulted during a discussion, that “increased the extremity of [their] initial attitude position,” in a type of boomerang effect. Our hurt feelings and animosity can make us cling more tightly to our beliefs, or even amplify them.
A 2022 paper by James Wu and colleagues examined how the anxiety created by polarization makes people less likely to change their minds. They also examined how that stubbornness can in turn create more polarization: one of the many ways polarization operates in a feedback loop.
I think one of the most important papers for understanding polarization dynamics is a 2020 paper by James Druckman and colleagues titled “Affective polarization, local contexts, and public opinion in America.” They found that the more political animosity people had, the more likely they were to have more extreme stances on how to respond to Covid: either being for a very strict response to Covid or wanting very little response. They showed that high animosity preceded extreme stances, which suggested that animosity was influencing beliefs (and not the other way around).
I reached out to Druckman via email, and he summarized his views on how animosity influences our political beliefs:
Our theory is that as affective polarization increases for someone, they become more likely to align their beliefs with those of party elites. Party elites tend to be more ideologically polarized and thus the more affectively polarized follow cues, and that leads them to become more polarized on issues (as was the case with COVID-19 policies).
In other work, we find this holds across various policy domains, support for political compromise, and norms. For example, those who are more affectively polarized are more likely to oppose checks and balances when their party holds power but then flip to support them when their party is in the opposition. It is similar to policies; they are more protective of their policy and thus become more extreme.
We can find supporting evidence of these dynamics playing out for various issues. To take one example: A Cato Institute survey found that in 2014, roughly 27% of Democrats said that immigration should be increased. That rose sharply over the following years, reaching 47% in 2021 — an increase of 20 points in seven years! What accounts for that? It’s likely that Democrats’ perceptions of Trump and Republicans being aggressive and cruel toward immigrants resulted in Democrats becoming substantially more pro-immigration.
This data shows why people can see liberals as contributing to polarization on the immigration issue. This chart comes from a 2023 paper.
Another likely example of this kind of dynamic: After Trump’s 2016 election, it was reported that the far-left organization Democratic Socialists of America had a significant increase in membership. What accounts for that? I’d propose it’s because we’re drawn to be the opposite of people we highly dislike.
I could reference many probable examples of this kind of thing, on the left and the right. Some percentage of Trump support is likely due to this kind of dynamic: Trump voters who see liberals as unfairly demonizing Trump and his supporters may find themselves drawn to supporting Trump. Trump himself has become an issue — and we can polarize ourselves around any issue.
The 2006 book The Anatomy of Peace describes how conflict can result in self-fulfilling prophecies. As they put it, “We begin provoking in others the very things we say we hate.” Whether it’s an interpersonal conflict or an international conflict, our contempt can induce precisely those behaviors we most dislike.
You can see this dynamic often play out online. Let’s say you’re passionately pro-choice. You know pro-choice ideas bother your “enemies” so, when you’re angry, you’ll be drawn to using that knowledge to trigger them. For example, if you were really angry you might say something like, “I’m going to go get pregnant and get an abortion just because I can. It’s my right.”
This of course isn’t something you’d actually do; you’re speaking out of anger. But it creates a perception among your “enemies” that you really are the crass liberal boogeyman that they’re afraid of.
Similarly, passionately pro-life people might say horrible, mean things about pro-choice people or about women who’ve gotten abortions — things that won’t often represent their true beliefs, or the ways they’d interact in the real world. Pro-choice people will then see those people as being the heartless, authoritarian monsters they fear.
Most of us are aware of the things that trigger our political enemies. As polarization grows, more and more people will say triggering things — and this will amplify everyone’s negative views of their political opponents.
For politically passionate people who want to achieve specific goals, hopefully these points help make the case for why reducing toxic polarization is so important. The way you reduce the scary and extreme beliefs and behaviors on the other side is, counter-intuitively, to reduce their contempt and fear. Those emotions give power to the most polarized people and views.
Toxic polarization is a powerful, self-reinforcing dynamic: a self-sustaining perpetual anger machine. Like a nuclear reaction or a hurricane forming in warm waters, once set in motion, all the elements are there for the process to ramp up and spiral out of control.
This has been an excerpt included in Zachary Elwood’s books on polarization.