The campaign has been all about irreconcilable differences — on health care, on spending and climate, on who’s a lunatic and who’s a tyrant. Political handicappers expect at best a divided government, and at worst a paralyzed, feuding one: “Survivor: Washington, D.C.,” with gavels and filibusters in place of bonfires and tribal headbands.
But recent research suggests that several strong but subtle psychological factors will be pushing Democrats and Republicans in an unexpected direction — toward engagement instead of name-calling and nastiness. These forces, rooted in the nature of personal identity and the rhythm of one-on-one interaction, are present when any antagonists meet; they can blunt even sharp ideological differences.
“We’ve done a good job of documenting how harshly humans treat their enemies throughout evolution,” said Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of “Born to be Good” (Norton, 2009). “But we also have evidence of an early shift in human evolution to hypersociality — a default orientation toward trust, toward sharing resources, toward forgiveness.”
Without putting aside their differences, he went on, humans have a “profound capacity through which vicious adversaries can form alliances.”
Political insiders are skeptical that this will happen soon, especially if some of the strongest opponents of the president are elected. “These candidates believe they’re being sent to undo what’s been done,” said Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster and consultant. “They don’t even want to be seen” dealing with opponents.
Still, people tend to exaggerate their differences with opponents to begin with, research suggests, especially in the company of fellow partisans. In small groups organized around a cause, for instance, members are prone to one-up one another; the most extreme tend to rise the most quickly, making the group look more radical than it is.
For this and other reasons — including media coverage of the political fringes — Americans as a rule overestimate the policy differences between so-called red and blue voters.
A series of recent studies demonstrates how quickly large differences can be put aside, under some circumstances. In one, a team of psychologists had a group of college students who scored very high on measures of patriotism read and critique an essay titled “Beyond the Rhetoric: Understanding the Recent Terrorist Attacks in Context,” which argued that the 9/11 attacks were partly a response to American policy in the Middle East.
The students judged the report harshly — unless, prompted by the researchers, they had first described a memory that they were proud of. This group, flush with the image of having acted with grace or courage, was significantly more open to at least considering the case spelled out in the essay than those who had recounted a memory of having failed to exhibit their most prized personal quality.
Confronting an opposing political view is a threat to identity, but “if you remind people of what they value in some other domain of their life, it lessens the pain,” said the lead author, Geoffrey L. Cohen, a social psychologist at Stanford. “It opens them up to information that they might not otherwise consider.”
Psychologists draw out these memories in the lab by asking people to describe a personal strength and an occasion when it was on display. But daily life is full of triggers too, whether in an unexpected call from an old friend, a question from a child or an evocative sight — one’s family portrait, say, propped up under the desk lamp as a reminder of what matters most.
The effect of such affirmations seems especially pronounced in people who boast strong convictions. In a follow-up experiment, the research team had supporters of abortion-rights act out a negotiation with an opponent on an abortion bill. Again, participants who were prompted to recall a treasured memory beforehand were more open to seeking areas of agreement and more respectful of their opposite’s position than those not so prompted.
And most fair-minded of all were participants who recalled such a memory and also reaffirmed their beliefs on abortion rights before the role-playing. “This is contrary to what many assume,” Dr. Cohen said. “But the combination of the two made for the greatest distance traveled to meet an adversary, to look for a middle ground.”
Private values — memories, affirmations — may well have played a role in some historic compromises. During the negotiations in 1978 to achieve what would become the Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt, the Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin, appeared ready to walk away. President Jimmy Carter, who coordinated the talks, made a personal visit to Mr. Begin, bringing him autographed photographs of the meeting, addressed to each of the prime minister’s eight grandchildren.
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