+- Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum (https://www.scivillage.com)
+-- Forum: Science (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-61.html)
+--- Forum: Anthropology & Psychology (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-86.html)
+--- Thread: Fox News Or MSNBC May Be Biological, Say Evolutionary Psychologists (/thread-951.html)
Fox News Or MSNBC May Be Biological, Say Evolutionary Psychologists - C C - Jun 6, 2015
http://www.science20.com/news_articles/fox_news_or_msnbc_may_be_biological_say_evolutionary_psychologists-155897
EXCERPT: [...] Why is it that even among the people we care about most, differences in political affiliation often result in awkwardness and discomfort, and pushed far enough, can feel like a threat to the entire relationship?
The answer may lie in research conducted at UC Santa Barbara's Center for Evolutionary Psychology, where social scientists sought to understand how and why the human brain -- below the level of conscious awareness -- categorizes political parties. "We found that differences in political opinions engage the brain's evolved circuitry for tracking alliances and coalitions," said David Pietraszewski, a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute in Germany and lead author of a paper published online in the journal Cognition.
"When people express opinions that reflect the views of different political parties, our minds automatically and spontaneously assign them to rival coalitions," he continued. "As far as our brains are concerned, political affiliation is viewed more like membership in a gang or clique than as a dispassionate philosophical stance." Think biker gang, not debate club.
[...] Humans come from an evolutionary history that included conflict among groups or factions, Tooby added, and it was important for individuals to know, if a dispute were to break out, which individuals line up with "us" and which with "them." "While the world is full of social categories like athletes, plumbers, the elderly or nail-biters, only a few categories are interpreted by the mind as coalitions -- sets of individuals inclined to act together, and support each other against rivals," he said. "In the small social world of our ancestors, the political was personal."....
RE: Fox News Or MSNBC May Be Biological, Say Evolutionary Psychologists - Yazata - Jun 8, 2015
I think that's true.
It's getting a lot worse too, to the point where entire nations might fly apart into Syria-style domestic conflict. (I don't think that the United States will even exist in 2100. Certainly not in recognizable form.)
It's why I've long associated the growing hostility and hatred between Democrats and Republicans in the United States as the political equivalent of street gangs, the Crips and the Bloods, flashing their blue and red gang colors.
My experience is that it's almost impossible these days to discuss politics or current events with other people in any dispassionate or objective way. Everyone instinctively thinks of everything in terms of 'us' and 'them', in terms of identifying who the 'good guys' and 'bad guys' supposedly are. They only seem interested in whether any event that happens in the world can be spun advantageously to their 'side' in the weird video-game battle that's taking place inside their own heads.
Prior to the Second World War, Western culture tended to define 'us and them' in terms of nationality. Subsequent to that self-inflicted disaster, national identities seemed to be discredited, especially in Europe (a continent that a certain kind of American idealizes) - but people couldn't stop dividing up into good-guys and bad-guys.
So today it's seemingly politics that divides everyone. And I expect that those political divisions will end up being just as destructive to domestic peace and tranquility as nationalism was in Europe in 1939. Here in the US, our shared identity as Americans is already starting to unravel and dissappear.
This universal politicization is even happening in natural science, supposedly the most dispassionate and objective of disciplines.
I don't have a lot of hope for the future.