When You Can’t Stop Being Angry at 'the Other Side'

Source: @Shanti/Twenty20

In this period of intense political polarization, with so much attention pointed at our leaders, it’s easy to think that our story, the American story, is all about them. Who is the good guy and who is the villain? In my view, this difficult time is the story of an entire country, including most individual citizens, suffering.

The American psychologist William James said that psychology is nothing if it is not practical. While there’s not one solution to our complex problems, I hope that thinking about some of what we know about human psychology will help ease your suffering in this situation.

Part of the suffering comes from anger and a feeling that the country is hurtling out of our individual control in a dangerous direction. What many on both sides share is fear and anger towards people who vote differently than we do. It feels like we are in a maniacal three-legged race for our very survival and our running partner is a dangerous moron.

At the heart of my field of social psychology is the notion, backed by decades of research, that all of us tend to blame people’s bad behavior on who they are as individuals rather than what situation they are in. If you want to know more about it, Google any of these terms: attribution theory, the fundamental attribution error, correspondence bias, or the actor-observer phenomenon.

Source: @andreyyalansky19/Twenty20

Is it true that half of the country are dangerous morons? If true, how can we live with them? How can we stomach them? How can we sleep at night if this is our reality?

Rather than facing a situation where we need to wake up enraged against our fellow citizens, we need to be able to face and understand some difficult challenges inherent in human psychology. The good news is that there is a way to get better at handling this constellation of difficult realities that we all face.

The hardest pill that we have to swallow is not that half of our fellow citizens are reckless and hateful. It’s that we are all vulnerable. Misguided and unscrupulous leaders take advantage of decades of documented research in psychology. That research tells us that human beings are all vulnerable to manipulation and—and this part is very important—we are also very, very bad at accepting our own vulnerability. We can work on getting more educated on the first part. But the second part—accepting our vulnerability—is, perhaps paradoxically or ironically, the first step to being so much less vulnerable.

Rather than being bad people, the other side is likely being manipulated by the things that are their deepest values. Values have been shown to differ by political party. Some deeply value loyalty, for instance, while others deeply value equality.

I study narrative, and one of the most important ideas I’ve ever heard expressed comes from the theory of narrative thought(1). That idea is that a good story is better than the truth. Politicians sell us good stories. It can be in their best interest (not morally but in terms of winning elections) to convince us of something that is a good story. Ask yourself what stories each candidate is proposing. If the story seems ridiculous to you, ask yourself what a well-meaning person on the other side believes about that story.

Another well-researched idea in psychology that’s important to understand here is that emotional manipulation is highly effective. If you find yourself caught in a thought loop that says, “why don’t these people understand that these are the facts?” remind yourself that facts are not what most often convinces people to vote. People vote their feelings. People vote for values.

So, no, your neighbors are not so much rejecting the clear facts in the case; they are moved by what for them is the larger emotional picture and the way they’ve been convinced by expert storytelling and expert influence.

No, your neighbors don’t want to make terrible choices. Your neighbors are vulnerable. You are vulnerable. Those are hard truths, but I think they are less difficult to live with than the idea that your neighbors, your uncle, and your mom are very bad people.