I

f we have ever thought that the arguments that our colleagues who stand on the opposite political axis made are so biased when criticizing our favorite politicians, but very inconsistent when they are defending their favorites for similar mistakes, we are most probably not alone.

In fact, our colleagues might feel the same about us, especially if we are very open about our political stance. Our political alignments are so strong, equivalent to embracing our religions.

Where we were born, how we were taught and with whom we interacted while growing up help us determine whether we hold liberal or conservative moral values. However, these moral values can also shift as we become older, gain life experience and move between socio-economic levels.

Drew Westen, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at Emory University, the United States, carried out a research study in which he scanned the brain reactions of Democrat and Republican supporters when they watched videos of candidates conveying messages during political campaigns and their contradicting messages as elected officials. In the same study, he also showed similar videos of non-political public figures conveying contradicting apolitical messages.

His findings were interesting. Republican supporters were very sensitive to inconsistencies conveyed by Democrat candidates such as John Kerry, while they didn’t seem to realize inconsistencies in then-president George W. Bush’s messages. Democrat supporters showed the exact opposite behavior. Participants of this study were of similar professions and educational attainment, so what was actually happening?

It turned out there was a ”neural-based motivated reasoning” — a neural reaction activating parts of brains that creates psychological defenses that neutralize inconsistencies in our favorite politicians’ messages. What’s interesting is that this reaction does not happen when we see or hear inconsistent messages from non-political public figures.

From his research, Westen proved his prediction that since motivated reasoning could automatically search for logical explanations to inconsistencies in our favorite politicians’ messages, we tend to perceive these inconsistencies as “normal”. However, as this does not happen to inconsistencies in messages from politicians from the opposite political axis, these inconsistencies become very salient to us, thus we attack them.

This finding might answer our confusion on biases related to political alignments. Motivated reasoning simply makes our brains view truth differently. No wonder we and our colleagues react differently to different messages too. Humans have been like this forever. However, in this social media era, we post where we are, what we are thinking, including — though unnecessary — which politicians we would vote for and why, often vilifying the opponents on our social media pages.

Therefore, we can discover old friends who are actually “the same” or “different” from us, whether they are a liberal or conservative. We become unnecessarily happy finding people like us or angry when finding friends with different ways of thinking.

We then label them as either our friends or enemies; then we unfriend our enemies because they are different and irrational. We end up with a bucket of friends who feed us the same information repeatedly, which soon becomes our own truth or reality. And since we only see the same stories every day, it’s easy for us to assume that what we believe is indeed what the public believes.

Without realizing it, we would be more connected through social media platforms, but after unfriending and labeling people by their political stance, we choose to live in our own smaller silos or echo-chambers. We then read different news portals, watch different movies, go to different places, send our kids to different schools and stop communicating with those holding different views except for debating with them. No wonder we become more and more polarized.

So, no, we were not polarized since the last 2014 presidential election; polarization occurs when we believe that our version of truth is the only truth.

What we can conclude from Westen’s research is that truth can be different for each person depending on a person’s point of view and how he or she rationalizes a situation.

A conservative can hold some liberal moral values, just like a liberal can hold some conservative moral values. Being open to the fact that truth differs greatly is the only key to keeping our sanity during any political years.

Besides, note that according to the 2016 National Socio-Economic Survey, only around 40 percent of Indonesians have access to an internet connection and use it to access any social media platforms. Taking this into account, if it is only based on social media posts, no political parties, be it the liberals or conservatives, can claim what the public really believes.
____________________________