The polarized mind in context: Interdisciplinary approaches to the psychology of political polarization.
- 1 April 2022
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Psychological Association (APA) in American Psychologist
- Vol. 77 (3), 394-408
- https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000814
Abstract
Existing research into the psychological roots of political polarization centers around two main approaches: one studying cognitive traits that predict susceptibility to holding polarized beliefs and one studying contextual influences that spread and reinforce polarized attitudes. Although both accounts have made valuable progress, political polarization is neither a purely cognitive trait nor a contextual issue. We argue that a new approach aiming to uncover interactions between cognition and context will be fruitful for understanding how polarization arises. Furthermore, recent developments in neuroimaging methods can overcome long-standing issues of measurement and ecological validity to critically help identify in which psychological processing steps-e.g., attention, semantic understanding, emotion-polarization takes hold. This interdisciplinary research agenda can thereby provide new avenues for interventions against the political polarization that plagues democracies around the world.Keywords
Funding Information
- National Institutes of Health (P20GM103645)
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