The Psychology of Politics

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast. And you're out there and you live in the U.S. or Canada, do you want to get inspirational text messages from me directly to your phone? Text me right now, 512-580-9305. Once again, 512-580-9305. Today, we're going to be talking about the psychology of politics and why it can be so intense and so polarizing, especially right now. And before we dive into it, let me be very clear on this. I have no dog in this fight. I do not believe in or support either side in any way, and I will never tell you what to do or what to believe in in your life.

0:49There is nothing that I want to talk less about than politics, but I am very intrigued by psychology, and I love to watch all the psychological factors that are at play in politics. In fact, this is how little I want to do in politics. I got an email from a listener the other day saying that somehow political ads were playing on my show from both candidates. I have no clue how it happened. Mind you, they're not read by me, even though I very clearly and specifically said absolutely no political ads on my podcast. Somehow they slipped through the cracks and I wasn't the happiest camper. In fact, a better phrase would probably be pissed because that's not what I represent.

1:32I don't ever want to push political beliefs or any beliefs onto people. and the outside world is so crazy, I want this podcast to be a place where none of that craziness leaks in here. I want this to be a safe place from the madness where people can come to learn and grow and improve their lives. And so if you heard either one of them, I apologize, that has been taken care of. I hope to God that it never happens again. But my goal for today in talking about this is to help you understand the psychology that happens behind politics because there is a lot of psychology and deeply ingrained psychological factors that end up coming up in just in politics in general.

2:17And this is why people can be so hardcore on one side or the other. And I just want to say this, I don't care who you vote for. I love you either way. And because I know that you're coming from a place of your beliefs and your morality, and I think that's a great thing. So when you look at politics just in general, we're going to go through many different aspects of psychology here. Politics is one of the most emotionally charging complex areas in human life. It affects everything from your personal freedoms to economic policies to social justice. And we might think that our political decisions are influenced by us very carefully sitting down and using reasoning and objective analysis.

2:55But in most cases, it's really not careful reasoning and objective analysis. It's more so deep psychological forces that shape how we perceive the world and how we interact with other people. And some of the psychological factors, there's many of them that are at play here. Come into your beliefs and your morals. Your tribalism comes in play here. Cognitive dissonance comes in play here. Sunken cost fallacy comes in here. Confirmation bias comes in here. Identity and self-concept comes in here and social influences and social groups. also come into play here. And so we're gonna go through many of these today.

3:30And my hope is that you can understand yourself better, but you can also understand other people and the world better when things get very heated and battles happen and this family member's fighting with this family member about politics at Thanksgiving or whatever it is there might be. So let's dive in and talk about it, okay? Try not to be triggered. I'm just gonna lay it out as it is and we'll go through it. The first thing you have to understand is all of the beliefs and perceived morality that's at play here. I'm gonna use the United States as an example because that's where I live and this is an election year.

4:06And if you haven't seen, shit's getting real wild over here. And so you have to understand that both sides believe what they believe based on their perceived values and their version of morality. And that's the first thing that we must understand. And beliefs, just so you know, are thoughts that we have thought so much that we continue to think. And we tend to think that our beliefs are absolute truth, when in reality, they're just reoccurring thoughts that we have thought so much that we believe them to be true. And those thoughts, guess where they came from everybody? They come from our childhood and mostly our parents.

4:45And one thing that I always tell people that can be a really hard pill for people to swallow is that if you were to trade places with another person who thinks completely different than you, and you are to live out every single second of their day from the moment they were born to right now in this moment, you would think and believe exactly what they do. If you had every single moment, if you had every single interaction, if you had the exact same parents, every single second was identical, you would think and believe exactly what they do. And as I said, that can be a really hard pill for most people to swallow.

5:21but it's also on the flip side of that. If they had lived every single second of your life from childhood until now, they would think and believe everything that you do as well. And so from beliefs, we really think that they're like the core of morality and the core of truth, but in reality, it's just something we've been thinking for a very long time. And when we believe something, we tend to hang out with other people who think like us, which then goes into another psychological factor, which is social groups and echo chambers. And so when you look at echo chambers, echo chambers are environments where a person only encounters information or opinions that reflect or reinforce their own.

6:07So if you look at social media platforms, right, they have these things called algorithms. Algorithms are designed to show users content that they're most likely to engage with, which means that if you have a specific or anybody else out there, any person has a specific political belief and they happen to watch a video the entire from start to finish on this political stance, they're more likely to see more of those videos and less of the other side. So they only see their beliefs and they never really see any opinions from the other side. And because of the fact that that's what they engage with is what they believe, they tend to see more of it and it deepens their beliefs.

6:48Also, what we tend to do is because of that, we tend to create things that are called social groups and social circles, which is where people tend to form social groups with other people who share their political beliefs, which turns into another echo chamber. And we will be right back. And now back to the show. Now, the question is, why would we tend to create social groups that only believe the same things we believe? Well, it brings in another psychological factor here, which is something called the confirmation bias. We seek information that fits our beliefs. So we tend to hang out with people who confirm our beliefs.

7:29That's why it's called the confirmation bias. We also, with the confirmation bias, tend to seek out information that confirms what we already believe. And we tend to ignore and dismiss information that contradicts what we believe. So in politics, confirmation bias leads to people surrounding themselves with news sources, with social media feeds, with social groups, with conversations that reinforce their political views, which is why people can get so wrapped up and so hardcore in one political view. So, you know, for example, if someone strongly believes that their political party has the best, let's say, economic policies, they'll be more likely to read articles that support this view and less likely to engage with the studies or reports that might actually challenge it.

8:19So confirmation bias not only reinforces political beliefs, but it also makes it way more difficult for people to change their views, even when faced with substantial evidence that could be complete opposite. And this can be really detrimental to people because that means that what tends to happen when someone plants their flag on the ground and says, this is who I am, this is what I believe, and they start engaging with those content, they start on Instagram or TikTok or LinkedIn or whatever it is it might be, they get more of that information, then they read only what they believe and they get more of that information, and then they only hang out with people who believe what they believe, and they get more of that information, It just strengthens their beliefs to make them think that those beliefs are absolute truth, which make it seem like everybody else who doesn't believe the same thing that I believe is insane because look at what's going on in my life.

9:07And so it means when you look at all of these, people who have a really strong belief system and they hang out with those types of people rarely meet other people who have different ideas or beliefs. And this in turn, they can start to think that those that don't think like me or don't think like us, because I'm surrounding myself with the us, with the other people who think exactly like me, if you don't fit in with us, then you must be other. And if you are other, you equate to enemy, which brings us to our next psychological factor, which is tribalism. So tribalism is group identity. Tribalism refers to our instinctual tendency as humans to form groups based off of a shared identity, belief system, values, and people always want to feel part of a group, whether it's politics, whether it's a religious belief, whether it's sports teams, whether it's being an outcast.

10:07Everyone wants to feel like they fit in somewhere and it's built into our psychological circuitry. You know, sure, it makes us feel like a sense of community and support. But the problem with that is tribalism tends to reinforce the us versus them mentality. Us versus them mentality basically means people view their group, the us, as superior and those that are outside of the group, the others, as fundamentally wrong or even threatening. So the other side actually tends to be viewed as dangerous, which is why you can see so many people saying, well, that political view is dangerous and that political side is dangerous and they're dangerous and dangerous is because they're actually seen as enemy.

10:56We need to protect ourself from enemy. That's tribalism. It's deeply rooted in human evolution. You know, in our early history, a hundred thousand, a million years ago, two million years ago, whenever it was, you know, historians will all say something different. In our early history, being a part of a group was absolutely essential for survival. Whether it was hunting, whether it was protection, sharing resources and over time that's what kept us alive but now in modern day it evolved into psychological mechanism that drives loyalty to one specific group and then make us view anyone outside of that group as enemy and once again this could be politics this could be sports i mean you've i went to the super bowl when it was the eagles versus the chief playing before it even started there was a fist fight because people are, it's like the us versus them mentality, right?

11:47So it's not just politics, it's everywhere. And this is why it's really important, I think, for people to meet other people that think differently than you. Like, I think that it's important to be around people who don't think the same as you, people who challenge your beliefs, because then it makes you see that at the same time, even though you might be very different, you're more similar than you think that you are. You know, the two sides that quote unquote hate each other are more similar than they even realize. And when they're together and you can see and meet other people, you start to think, well, man, maybe they're not as dangerous as I've made them up to be.

12:26So then we develop this tribalism and we become part of a tribe. And when we're part of a tribe long enough, it then goes into another psychological aspect. So you can see there's many different factors we're going into today. Another psychological aspect of it is the identity and self-concept. When people identify with a group of people, with an idea, with a belief, with a political party for long enough, they actually start to identify with it as who they are. So it's not like, hey, I believe in this. It's like, hey, this is who I am. This is who I am in my core. I am a Democrat. I am a Republican.

13:08And many people get locked in once they see it as their identity. And I mean locked in. There's people that can join a political party. That political party can change its beliefs fundamentally over 30 years. And even though that person doesn't believe the same thing they believed 30 years ago because their political party changed, they'll still say like, hey, I am this person. So your political party believes X 30 years ago. Now they believe Y. You'll still identify with that political party because you actually view it as part of your identity of who you are. It's happened in sports too. People are like, I'm a Bucks fan.

13:49And it's like, I am a X, Y, Z. I am, when someone says I am, and then fill in the blank, that's when you can tell they've actually started to take it on as part of their identity. And when someone strongly identifies with a political party or sports group or ideology long enough, it becomes extremely difficult to change their beliefs or their identity of themselves. Because changing their political beliefs literally feels like a threat to their sense of self. And this is why political discussions can quickly become heated and emotional. It's not necessarily because of the discussion. It's not necessarily because of the opposing beliefs.

14:31It's because questioning someone's political beliefs or their beliefs in general feels like and can be perceived as an attack on their identity. They don't realize it, but they feel like their identity is actually being attacked. It feels like a literal attack to them on who they are as a person. And that's why people get so heated. And so I want you to understand the reason why I want to do this episode, and I was very hesitant to do it because I don't want to talk about politics at all. But what I really want to talk about is I want you to understand yourself better, whether that is with politics and even outside of politics, because everything I spoke about, tribalism, echo chambers, social groups, the cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, all those things are factors that are at play in your entire lives.

15:17But I also want you to be able to understand other people as well. and to hopefully not get caught up in the hate, in the polarization, in the this side or that side, because that's the worst thing that can happen is to be divided. I want us to understand that, hey, even though there's people, you might have completely different views from someone else, you're still way more similar than you are different. And I want you to understand that there's a lot of psychology behind politics. It's incredibly complex. It involves deep-rooted instincts, deep-rooted things that are inside of us. And recognizing these psychological forces is really the first step towards us being able to think clearly, which is what I hope we can all do, is start thinking clearly by becoming aware of how tribalism and cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias and social influences and echo chambers and all of those things, we understand how they work.

16:16And we understand that, hey, this person might have different beliefs than me, but it doesn't mean they need to hate them. We can strive to try to be more open-minded and to try to be more empathetic to other people, whether it be with political discussions, ideology, sports teams. It doesn't mean that you're abandoning your deeply held values and your morals or your beliefs. I respect that, but it does mean being willing to be open to a discussion with other people, being willing to maybe question our own beliefs and assumptions and start to look at someone else's opposing viewpoints and seek out accurate information.

16:54Maybe look at what our beliefs are and say, is there another side to this coin? Versus just like simply defending our people, defending our tribe. Because ultimately, when you understand the psychology behind politics, it can help us move beyond this divisive us versus them mindset. And we can be more empathetic. We could be more thoughtful and we can stop being so divided, but also be more collaborative and essentially more anything else, just love our neighbor. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do me a favor, share it on your Instagram stories, tag me at Rob Dial Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R.

17:30I worked my ass off on really, really trying to study and go deep into today's episode. And so I hope you learned a lot about yourself and other people as well. So if you'd share it, I'd greatly appreciate it. And with that, I'm going to leave the same way I leave every single episode, make it your mission, make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you. And I hope that you have an amazing day.