0:00

Today. Show is brought to you by T

0:02

Mobile for business. This

0:05

is hidden brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. We

0:09

typically divide the United States

0:11

into to political categories: conservative

0:13

democrat folk blocked off at

0:15

every door and liberal. The

0:18

Republicans are not serious. Finding

0:20

common ground between these two groups a

0:23

that or less a loser reaching across

0:25

the aisle far lacked, Radical Bay has

0:27

become increasingly rare because we keep trying

0:30

to find a way to win without

0:32

help from across the aisle. This is

0:34

true, not just in a metaphorical sense.

0:36

In one study, researchers looked at more

0:39

than fourteen hundred hours of time I've

0:41

said it covered on Cspan on Cspan

0:43

to settle com door to the hour

0:46

after hour of hearing something, roads and

0:48

bridges and Air Committee markup. Session

0:50

Congress is a very important pillar

0:52

testimony used on Xl Transcanada resolutions.

0:54

The Clerk or color or. After

0:58

all these hours watching, Cspan researchers

1:01

concluded that since the nineteen Nineties,

1:03

Democrats and Republicans in the Us

1:06

Senate have physically cross the aisle

1:08

less and less to interact with

1:10

opposing colleagues. That means

1:13

senators are staying with their like minded

1:15

colleagues. Not. Just in the legislation

1:17

they trying to pass. But. Also,

1:19

by literally steering clear of

1:21

the carpeted pathway that splits

1:23

the senate floor. Today

1:28

we continue our us to point to

1:30

a series by taking a few steps

1:32

back and looking at the challenge of

1:35

political division through a new lens. We

1:37

hope he will provide a new way

1:39

to understand the people sitting across from

1:41

us at the dinner table. People

1:43

don't seem to dislike somebody just for being

1:45

a member of the other side. They're concerned

1:48

that somebody is going to talk to them

1:50

about politics. And if somebody is going to

1:52

talk to you about politics, of course, he'd

1:54

rather talk to somebody of your own side.

1:57

this week on hidden brain why the division you

1:59

hear about all the time in our politics might

2:02

not be what really divides us. Support

2:25

for Hidden Brain comes from Visit Williamsburg. In

2:28

Williamsburg, Virginia, you're free to live

2:30

life at your pace. That

2:32

means whether you're a foodie, a

2:34

golfer, a history buff, a

2:37

shopaholic, an outdoor enthusiast or

2:39

a thrill seeker, you'll

2:41

find exactly what you're looking for and

2:43

more. Plan your visit

2:45

to Williamsburg today at your

2:48

pace. Support

2:56

for Hidden Brain comes from Discover. With

2:58

24-7 US-based live customer service

3:00

from Discover, everyone has the

3:03

option to talk to a real person anytime,

3:05

day or night. Yes, you heard that

3:07

right. You can talk to a

3:09

human on the Discover customer service team anytime.

3:12

So the next time you have a question about your

3:14

credit card, call 1-800-Discover to get the

3:17

service you deserve. Limitation supply.

3:20

See terms at

3:22

discover.com/credit card. This

3:27

year, Dell Technologies wants to help you do

3:30

amazing things with their best tech. For a

3:32

limited time only, save on select next gen

3:34

PCs like the XPS 13 Plus where you

3:36

can make the everyday easier with Windows 11.

3:39

Plus curate your dream setup with

3:41

great deals on select monitors, mice

3:43

and more must have electronics and

3:45

accessories. When you shop online at

3:48

dell.com/deals, you'll have access to leading

3:50

edge technology to match your forward

3:52

thinking spirit and free shipping on

3:54

everything. Again, that's dell.com/deals. Thanks.

4:02

Yana Krupnikov is a political scientist at

4:04

the University of Michigan. She

4:07

studies a subject we hear about a lot, the

4:09

bitter political divide in the United States.

4:12

But Yana has a counterintuitive thesis.

4:15

She thinks the real fault line

4:17

in America is actually not between

4:19

Republicans and Democrats. Yana

4:22

Krupnikov, welcome to Hidden Brain. Thank

4:25

you for having me. I want

4:27

to play your clip, Yana, from a

4:29

CNN program titled, Welcome to the Fractured

4:32

States of America. The

4:34

number of parents who would be unhappy if

4:36

their child married someone of a different political

4:38

party, that number has exploded over the last

4:40

several decades, from 4% in 1960

4:42

to 35% of Republicans and 45% of Democrats in 2018. Yana,

4:48

you have a critique of this notion of

4:50

a fractured country, but I want you to

4:52

start by laying out the conventional wisdom first.

4:55

What are we all told about the state of

4:57

political polarization in the United States? A

5:00

lot of what we're told about

5:02

the state of political polarization is

5:04

that polarization has increased quite vastly

5:06

over potentially the last decade. What's

5:09

interesting about this polarization is that

5:11

there's a twofold approach here.

5:14

So on the one hand, polarization can

5:16

be ideological, but on the other hand,

5:18

it can be affective. An

5:21

affective polarization is the sense of

5:23

disliking somebody just because they're a

5:25

member of the other party, without

5:28

their issues, without their positions, just

5:30

because they belong to this opposing

5:32

group. So when we

5:34

talk about Democrats not wanting their

5:36

child to marry a Republican or

5:39

Republicans not wanting their child to

5:41

marry a Democrat, we're talking often

5:43

about this idea of affect, this

5:45

sense of dislike, this antipathy for the

5:48

other side. And there's this tremendous

5:50

kind of pattern showing

5:53

increases in this level of antipathy,

5:56

that people who are from one party

5:58

just dislike the other party. much

6:00

more than they did in years past. And

6:04

some of this is almost to an

6:06

extreme. I mean, some people have even

6:08

asked whether ordinary Americans see their political

6:10

opponents as even fully human. Indeed.

6:13

There's actually a lot of examples of

6:15

this antipathy. There's research suggesting

6:18

that people wouldn't want somebody to, as

6:20

I just said, marry somebody from the

6:22

other party, that they wouldn't want to

6:24

hire somebody from the opposing party, that

6:27

they don't see that their party is

6:29

human, that they might actually want

6:31

to do something that would make life

6:33

for somebody from the opposing party much worse.

6:36

So there are a lot

6:38

of these almost non-political examples

6:40

of places where partisanship and dislike

6:43

for the other side has quite profoundly affected the

6:45

way we see the world and the way we

6:47

see other people. So

6:49

we're told Americans don't want to live next to

6:51

one another, political partisans, that is. They

6:54

can't bear to talk to one another. Of course, they don't

6:56

want their children marrying people from the other party. You

6:59

conducted a survey some years ago when

7:01

you drilled down specifically on the marriage

7:03

question. What was the hunt you

7:05

were exploring? And what did you ask? So

7:08

the way we looked at the marriage question

7:10

happened during these conversations

7:12

I had with my

7:14

co-authors, John Barry Ryan and Samara

7:16

Clark. And so we

7:18

were talking about this marriage question

7:21

that something about it seemed quite

7:23

unusual to us. You

7:25

are in a survey, you're being asked whether

7:27

you want your child to marry somebody from

7:29

the other party, but that's really

7:31

all you know about this person. All

7:34

you know about them is that they are a Republican

7:36

or that they are a Democrat. And

7:39

that's all you know about them. One,

7:41

you can't really put that person into context.

7:44

But the other thing you might think about them is

7:46

essentially, if they're telling

7:49

me this person's partisanship, that

7:52

person's partisanship is probably something

7:54

that's really really important to

7:56

them. So if I was

7:58

inviting you to meet one of my... friends and

8:01

we had just a brief moment and I

8:03

used that brief moment to tell you you're

8:05

gonna meet my friend she likes cats. You

8:08

might imagine that you're about to meet

8:10

somebody who is essentially gonna talk non-stop

8:12

about cats. That's the only thing I

8:14

shared with you about this person. And

8:18

so what if this is what's happening

8:20

in a survey? What if when people

8:22

are asked about this hypothetical in-law and

8:24

the only thing they know about this

8:26

person is that they're a member of

8:28

the opposing party? What if

8:30

they're imagining somebody who will literally

8:32

talk about politics for

8:34

every dinner from now on as

8:37

their in-law? And

8:39

what did you find when you actually asked

8:41

Americans this question? How did you tweak the

8:43

question and what did you find? So what

8:45

we ended up doing is we amended

8:48

the question a bit. We

8:50

basically added a qualification. We

8:52

told people that

8:55

this future in-law, this hypothetical in-law,

8:57

was actually never really

9:00

going to talk about politics. They

9:02

might be from the other parties but

9:04

they were never actually going to discuss

9:06

anything political. And so we

9:09

ran an experiment in which people were

9:11

randomly assigned to either a group in

9:13

which they got asked the normal question,

9:15

how happy would you be if your

9:17

child married somebody from the opposing party,

9:20

versus a question in which they were told

9:22

how happy would you be if your child

9:24

married somebody from an opposing party, but this

9:27

person was never going to talk about politics.

9:30

And what we found is significant

9:32

differences in people's preferences for the

9:34

other side. Once people were told

9:36

that their child's future spouse was

9:39

actually not really going to talk

9:41

about politics, their animosity

9:43

toward the other side quite

9:46

profoundly decreased. In

9:49

other words, if I was a Republican parent, the

9:51

thing that I might be most worried about is

9:53

not that my child is going to marry a

9:55

Democrat, my child's going to marry a Democrat who's

9:57

going to talk politics all the time. the

10:00

reassurance that politics was not going to come

10:02

up all the time, my

10:04

feelings about my future democratic

10:07

son-in-law or daughter-in-law changed quite

10:09

profoundly. Exactly.

10:13

In theory, what people were

10:15

concerned about is essentially politics

10:17

coming up in their day-to-day

10:20

lives. They actually were

10:22

not as concerned about the opposing

10:24

partisanship component of it. To

10:31

better understand how this played out

10:33

in people's lives, Yana and her

10:35

colleagues ran the study again but

10:37

changed whether the hypothetical new daughter

10:39

or son-in-law talked about politics frequently,

10:42

occasionally, or rarely. They

10:45

found that what people cared about the

10:47

most was not whether a future son-in-law

10:49

or daughter-in-law had different politics but

10:52

how much the future in-law wanted

10:54

to talk about politics. People

10:57

don't seem to dislike somebody just for being a

10:59

member of the other side. They're

11:02

concerned that somebody is going to talk to

11:04

them about politics. If somebody

11:06

is going to talk to you about politics, of course,

11:08

you'd rather talk to somebody of your own side. If

11:11

that's going to be part of your life at

11:13

every dinner, certainly, of course, you wouldn't want

11:15

it to be contentious. The

11:17

key aspect there is conversations,

11:19

not necessarily partisanship. I'm

11:22

thinking of a clip from Saturday Night Live

11:24

that I think your research speaks to. It's

11:26

actually about a wedding celebration and

11:29

the celebration is interrupted by the character known

11:31

as Debbie Downer. I'm not my baby. Yeah,

11:33

even that potatoes look like it. What happened?

11:36

After we eat, I vote we get a lime

11:38

tanner. Oh, yeah. Hey,

11:40

speaking of voting, how do you guys

11:42

feel about Trump? What

11:50

do you think, Yana? Do you think that clip speaks to your

11:52

thesis? I think it speaks to the

11:54

thesis quite profoundly. I think

11:57

actually that is exactly what

11:59

people are. are quite worried about.

12:02

You're having kind of a nice celebration. Somebody

12:05

comes in for whom politics is

12:07

incredibly important, who is essentially going

12:09

to change the conversation to that

12:11

particular bend. So

12:14

imagine that every dinner,

12:17

you're now incredibly tense, trying

12:19

to figure out, is there

12:21

something political that's going to

12:23

happen here? I think that's

12:25

what people are deeply concerned about. Imagine

12:29

sitting at dinner with friends and family. Someone

12:32

mentions a tweet from Trump. Everyone

12:34

freezes. Will this become an

12:37

argument? Yana's data

12:39

suggests that if the people around your

12:41

table were a cross-section of America, most

12:44

would prefer to change the topic.

12:47

But some people would get super excited. It's

12:50

these people who would also be really upset

12:52

if a child of theirs were to marry

12:55

someone from the other party. There

13:00

certainly is a group of people who

13:03

are, in fact, effectively

13:05

polarized. No matter

13:07

how we describe this in law, they

13:10

are displeased with their

13:12

child marrying somebody of the opposing

13:14

side. I would bet that

13:17

even if we told them, politics will

13:19

literally never come up ever, ever, ever.

13:22

They would still be displeased that their

13:24

child married somebody of the opposing party.

13:26

These people struck us as being

13:29

what we would term unconditionally polarized.

13:31

They were sort of polarized

13:35

exactly in the sense of

13:37

hating somebody just because they are from

13:39

the other side. And

13:41

as we dove into this question further,

13:45

we wanted to investigate exactly

13:47

what contributes to this

13:49

unconditional polarization. What correlates with somebody

13:51

disliking somebody just from being a

13:54

member of the other side, which

13:56

led us to this idea of

13:58

certain people being deeply involved in

14:00

politics, people for whom

14:03

politics has become so profoundly important

14:05

that it is something beyond just

14:07

an interest in politics. So,

14:10

as you say, the deeply involved care a

14:12

lot about politics, like Debbie Downer, they want

14:14

to talk about politics, even to people who want

14:16

to talk about something else. But

14:18

you make a remarkable claim. You say the

14:21

central fault line today in the United States

14:23

might not be between Republicans and Democrats, but

14:26

between people who are deeply involved

14:28

in politics and everybody else. What

14:30

do you mean by that? When we

14:33

think about deep involvement, we

14:36

think of somebody for whom politics is

14:38

front and center. It is something

14:40

that they think about on a daily

14:42

basis. It's something that they think about actually

14:44

probably on an hourly basis. It

14:47

is something that is a center

14:49

to the way that they view

14:51

the world. And

14:55

so John Ryan and I, in describing

14:57

these people and thinking about these people,

15:00

conceive of them as being quite different

15:02

from actually the majority of Americans and

15:04

the majority of people. We see the

15:07

fault line is how centrally you view

15:09

politics to the world, how

15:11

much attention you pay to politics,

15:14

how you interpret political events,

15:17

how much of an

15:19

impact you believe that politics has

15:22

in your life. And

15:25

we see it as a fault

15:27

line in the sense that for

15:29

people who are deeply involved, politics

15:31

is of such profound importance that

15:34

it dominates the world

15:36

perspective. It dominates how they view

15:39

others. It dominates what they do

15:41

with their day. And

15:44

we see that as being profoundly

15:46

different from a large group of

15:48

Americans for whom politics is less

15:50

important and for whom politics

15:52

seems more as something that is happening

15:54

on the side, something that is potentially

15:56

troubling, something that is potentially problematic, But

15:59

something that's not. They don't necessarily want to think

16:01

about all that much. I.

16:08

Want to spend some time? Talking about the characteristics

16:10

of the people you describe is deeply involved

16:13

because of course, it's one thing to say:

16:15

this is a distinct group. would you go

16:17

further than that? Through a series of surveys

16:19

and experiments involving thousands of Americans, you find

16:22

the deeply involved have a set a very

16:24

distinct characteristics and the force identifier is something

16:26

that you hinted at a second ago. These

16:28

are people who spend a lot of time

16:31

on politics. Yes,

16:33

When we think about the deeply

16:35

involved, we think about a set

16:37

of psychological characteristics that lead somebody

16:39

to serve. really care about politics

16:42

to think about at a time.

16:44

In fact, for a research we

16:46

began with the psychology of people

16:48

who are are fans of things

16:50

and one of the things that

16:52

emerges when you think about something

16:54

being important to you is type

16:57

why would you spend time on

16:59

something that's not important? see you.

17:01

Obviously what makes this. A particularly

17:03

unique moment for these people is now

17:05

you actually can spend a tremendous amount

17:08

of time and politics. You

17:10

can basically wake up, you can

17:12

unlock your phone, you can immediately

17:14

started scrolling through the news, and

17:16

you can basically be connected to

17:18

politics for your entire day. Another

17:24

trade of the deeply involved on

17:26

both sides of the political spectrum

17:28

is that they're interested in mine

17:30

her political developments. B C Deep

17:32

significance in events that may or

17:35

may not be important Things to

17:37

Twenty Seventeen For example, when former

17:39

President Donald Trump posted the single

17:41

word confess or costs Se or

17:43

coffees see all V S E

17:45

Se on Twitter. The. Social media

17:48

site now known as X The Cafe to

17:50

a that mercurial a Nice presents a sentence

17:52

fragment with one of the bus words stayed

17:54

up without explanation for hours And hours and

17:56

hours. And then as dawn broke the presence

17:59

only delivers it. and wrote, quote, who can

18:01

figure out the true meaning of kofefe? Yana,

18:04

I remember watching the story and getting

18:06

a laugh out of it, but I

18:08

also remember people going on about how

18:10

the tweet might reflect a neurodegenerative disorder

18:12

in the president. They took this

18:14

really, really seriously. And

18:16

I think that is sort of profound. The

18:19

kofifi tweet is in some sense, I

18:21

think a profound example

18:23

of deep involvement. This

18:26

thing happened, this thing that is ostensibly

18:28

ridiculous, right? It's obviously a typo.

18:32

But it becomes something that

18:34

is of import to people. There

18:38

are people who are anxious that they

18:40

missed this tweet. There are people wondering

18:42

what this tweet means. And

18:44

as people think about it more, especially people

18:46

who are deeply engaged in politics, they

18:48

start to make more and more connections, right,

18:51

to political events. Is this something meaningful?

18:53

Is this something about the president? What's

18:55

going to happen next? And

18:58

the reality about politics is that a lot

19:00

of what happens in politics is

19:02

in fact a matter of life and death. But

19:05

for the deeply involved, even

19:07

typo tweets can become

19:09

something that is actually very,

19:12

very, very important. And

19:14

that sort of makes sense. If

19:16

you spend so much time with

19:18

politics, if you spend so much

19:20

time following it, you know enough

19:23

where almost everything can be

19:26

of profound importance. Where

19:28

for the president making a typo could be

19:30

a signal of kind of what's

19:32

to come, something about the political state of the

19:34

world. So for the

19:36

deeply involved, the engagement with politics kind

19:39

of contributes to the perception that

19:41

any next event could be the

19:43

event that kind of changes

19:45

everything. In other words,

19:48

the deeply involved follow politics in the

19:50

same way that some people follow a

19:52

favorite sports team or the twists

19:54

and turns in a beloved TV show. Jana

19:57

draws an analogy between people who are deeply involved in

19:59

the media and the media involved in politics and

20:02

fans of the sci-fi show Doctor

20:04

Who. Multiple

20:07

actors have portrayed the doctor in the television

20:09

show and for years fans

20:11

have argued obsessively about

20:14

which actor is the best

20:16

doctor. With the exception of the very bottom slot

20:18

which we'll get to in a second I don't

20:21

think there is a bad version

20:23

of the doctor. What's the

20:26

connection between Doctor Who aficionados

20:28

and politics, Yana? So

20:31

Doctor Who I think is a

20:33

really interesting kind of example because

20:35

in some sense to have a

20:38

favorite doctor who you have to

20:40

be a fan of the show. Because one of

20:42

the beautiful things about Doctor Who is everyone gets

20:44

to have their doctor your pick does not have

20:46

to be anyone else's you do not have to

20:48

rank them the way anyone else does. Somebody

20:50

who does not have a favorite doctor who is is

20:52

probably not a huge fan of the show or maybe

20:54

a more peripheral fan of the show. And

20:57

so what your criticism is when

20:59

you criticize somebody's favorite doctor pick

21:02

is that they are

21:04

involved but they are involved in the

21:06

wrong way. So starting at

21:09

the bottom Colin

21:11

Baker. When we read research

21:13

on this sort of support

21:15

for the doctor the psychology

21:18

seemed almost similar to politics

21:20

of course with much lower stakes.

21:23

But there's the sense that somebody could

21:26

be on your political side but

21:29

they could be on your political side

21:31

in not exactly the right way. And

21:35

there is going to be something frustrating to

21:37

somebody who is deeply involved that this person

21:39

is coming so close

21:41

to getting it but

21:44

is actually not there. There's

21:52

another connection between Doctor Who fans

21:55

and political fanatics. Neither

21:57

can stop talking about their obsession. When

22:01

we come back, how journalists favor

22:03

the zealous voices of the deeply

22:05

involved. You're listening to Hidden Brain.

22:08

I'm Shankar Vedanta. The

22:20

Enhanced American Express Business Gold Card is

22:22

designed to take your business further. It's

22:25

packed with benefits like 4x

22:27

points that adapt to your top 2 eligible spending

22:29

categories every month on up to $150,000 in purchases

22:31

per year. And

22:34

up to $395 in annual statement

22:36

credits on eligible purchases at select

22:39

business merchants. The Amex Business Gold

22:41

Card. Now smarter and more flexible.

22:44

That's the powerful backing of American

22:46

Express. Terms apply. Learn more at

22:48

americanexpress.com/ businessgoldcard. Now

22:52

is the time to embrace a new wave of workers.

22:54

Every day your team grows younger, more digital and

22:57

more drawn to entirely new ways of working. Which

22:59

means you need flexible solutions to connect them

23:01

where business gets done. T-Mobile for

23:04

Business was born digital. With America's largest

23:06

5G network, we can make it easier

23:08

to work together from virtually anywhere. Your

23:10

team may be changing, but with the

23:12

right tech, it can be more productive

23:14

than ever before. Get started

23:16

at t-mobile.com/now. This

23:26

is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Political

23:31

scientist Yana Krupnikov argues that most

23:33

Americans are not seeing the defining

23:35

political thought line in the country.

23:38

It's not Republican versus Democrat, but the

23:40

gap between people who live, breathe and

23:42

talk politics all the time and those

23:44

for whom politics is a small part

23:46

of their lives. The

23:50

deeply involved spend lots of time

23:52

learning about politics, thinking about politics.

23:55

But they also do one other thing that

23:57

the less engaged rarely do. Yada,

24:00

you say the most defining feature of the

24:02

people who are deeply involved in politics

24:04

is something you call expression.

24:07

What do you mean by that? When

24:10

we think about expression, we

24:12

mean the desire to communicate

24:15

politics. We mean the

24:17

desire to not just

24:20

speak about information

24:23

or speak about

24:25

ways that you might change

24:27

politics, but really expressing your

24:29

own beliefs and feelings about

24:31

politics. Really speaking

24:34

your mind in the sense of

24:37

something happens and you

24:39

immediately want to tell others how you

24:41

felt about it, whether it was good,

24:43

how it made you think. But

24:46

it's the idea of essentially expressing

24:48

your views, expressing what others should

24:51

do, just literally talking about what

24:53

politics means to you. Now,

24:56

social media, you argue, is an important

24:58

part of the story. How so?

25:01

Well, in the past, if I wanted to

25:03

talk to somebody about politics, I would have

25:06

to find a person to literally talk about

25:08

politics too. Maybe

25:12

I couldn't find somebody to talk about politics too

25:14

that day, and so I just

25:18

wouldn't get to talk about it. Or

25:21

maybe I found a friend and I just

25:24

told them all about my political feelings and

25:26

they just didn't really care. But

25:30

now, if I can go

25:32

to Twitter and I

25:34

can type a political opinion. I

25:36

just changed the channel from Trump Town Hall

25:38

to Biden Town Hall and immediately fell asleep.

25:41

There is a high probability that a number

25:44

of people will chime in. Oh my God,

25:46

it was so boring. We need to support Trump 100%.

25:49

And potentially a lot of them might tell me that I'm

25:51

right. It was like listening to Grandpa. It

25:53

tapes Biden Town Hall to help him fall

25:55

asleep. And certainly, because it's Twitter, it's possible

25:57

that a bunch of people will also chime

26:00

in and tell me that I am a terrible person. I'm

26:02

pretty sure America could do with a domestic. I'd

26:04

have my ballot for Joe Biden. Is the role

26:06

of government to entertain its people or to protect

26:08

them? But

26:12

at least there will be somebody who

26:14

allows me that expression. You

26:21

have a story about social media from your

26:23

own life that isn't about politics, but

26:25

it says so much about how many

26:27

of us, I think, engage with politics.

26:30

Can you tell me the story of your

26:32

toddler and the plane trip? Yes.

26:36

So my daughter and

26:39

I were on a flight, and my husband was there as well. My

26:42

daughter was about 1 and 1.5 at the time. It

26:44

was a seven-hour flight. My

26:47

daughter was basically being herself. She was being

26:49

a 1 and 1.5-year-old. And

26:52

into this flight, I started

26:54

noticing this woman ahead of us

26:56

would constantly just turn every time

26:58

my daughter would make a slight

27:01

noise. And

27:03

this frustrated me.

27:05

This made me quite upset. And

27:07

it's this feeling of, am I doing a

27:09

terrible job? Am I a terrible parent? Why

27:12

does this woman keep turning around? Is my

27:14

kid being this bad? And

27:16

so I did it. The first thing that

27:18

came to my mind, I

27:20

paid for internet so I could go to

27:22

Twitter. I

27:25

tweeted about the fact that I'm on this

27:27

flight and this woman keeps turning around and

27:29

just looking at my daughter. And

27:32

the thing is, I want to emphasize here that it

27:35

was pretty safe for me to tweet that. I

27:37

knew pretty much what my network was like.

27:40

Immediately, the replies kept

27:43

pouring in, telling me that it was definitely

27:45

not me, that it was definitely her. In

27:49

fact, I think it was one of the most

27:51

engaged tweets. I don't get

27:53

that much engagement when I tweet about my research.

27:56

And in that moment, there's a

27:59

two things happened. The first,

28:01

I felt really good. It

28:04

was actually very good to have this social

28:06

support from a bunch of internet people. The

28:09

second thing is that it made

28:11

me just much angrier at this woman because

28:14

it was this kind of feeling of all

28:18

these people on the internet think

28:20

that you're a wrong airplane lady

28:22

and they're telling me that I am

28:24

right. Eventually,

28:28

the seven hour flight was over. The

28:31

plane landed and Yana's husband took his phone

28:33

off airplane mode and went online where

28:36

he saw his wife's post and all the responses.

28:40

And he was actually really surprised.

28:44

He did not notice the woman even though she

28:46

was actually more in his eyesight than mine. He

28:49

did not see her turning around at any point.

28:52

He thought everything had gone really well.

28:55

And it was a sort of a

28:57

notable moment. I

28:59

had had this moment and yet here was

29:01

somebody sitting next to me who

29:04

had no idea what I was talking about. He

29:07

didn't notice anything at all. And

29:10

I can see the really wonderful metaphor

29:12

here with the way our politics unfolds

29:14

on social media and the way so

29:16

many of us engage with politics on

29:19

social media. But there's also

29:21

something of a mystery here. You

29:23

say that the people who are

29:25

deeply involved are a minority of

29:27

all Americans. So why is

29:30

it, Yana, that we feel like we hear

29:32

their voices all the time? We

29:34

hear the deeply involved because they're

29:37

actually very loud. And

29:39

I don't mean that they're necessarily

29:41

screaming. But I

29:43

mean that in the sense that they

29:45

are more likely to occupy our social

29:48

media feeds. Their voices

29:50

are more likely to be

29:53

talking about politics. So it

29:55

seems like they're everywhere because whenever we encounter

29:57

politics, it is quite often the voices of

29:59

our voices. of these people who are

30:01

very, very deeply involved. And

30:03

so if you're constantly seeing

30:06

these posts about politics, you might

30:08

not realize that they are from

30:10

a very small set of

30:12

people. Or you might

30:14

think to yourself, well, I guess I'm the

30:16

odd person out. I never talk about politics,

30:19

but I guess everyone else is. And

30:22

so you kind of come to this idea that

30:25

the politically involved are

30:27

much more around us than they actually

30:30

are in numbers. Jana,

30:32

you also make the case that one

30:34

reason we hear the voices of the

30:37

deeply involved everywhere is because

30:39

journalists have a deep affinity for

30:41

the voices of the deeply involved.

30:43

Why is this? If

30:46

we think about what media

30:48

coverage includes, it's a lot

30:50

of conflict. And the

30:52

deeply involved are kind of readily there

30:55

to provide the conflict. They're

30:57

going to be the people who can be

30:59

most critical of the other side. They're going

31:01

to be the people who are going to

31:03

talk most passionately about politics. And so it

31:05

sort of follows that journalists

31:08

are going to be heavily drawn to

31:10

people who are deeply involved. And so

31:12

part and parcel of this coverage is

31:14

actually coverage of political polarization.

31:18

If journalists are drawn to coverage

31:20

of political polarization, then

31:22

they are almost, by definition, going

31:25

to be drawn to the voices

31:27

of the deeply involved. And so

31:29

they come to dominate these stories

31:31

as examples of just how terrible

31:33

partisan relations are. Jana

31:36

has run studies with hundreds of journalists across

31:38

the United States. She

31:40

has asked them the marriage question we discussed

31:42

earlier. How many Americans would

31:45

be unhappy if that child

31:47

married someone from the opposing

31:49

political party? And what

31:51

we found is that journalists

31:53

vastly overestimated this level

31:55

of polarization. They believe that

31:58

something like half of Americans would

32:00

be quite profoundly polarized.

32:03

When it is actually not the case, when we look

32:05

over our sample, it was a

32:08

tremendous kind of difference between what journalists

32:10

suspected was the case and what actually

32:13

was the case in our sample. Many

32:16

journalists also have a love affair with social

32:19

media, particularly X, also known

32:21

by its former name, Twitter. What

32:24

do they see when they get on their feeds? The

32:26

people who love to talk about politics. There's

32:29

this fascinating work by scholar Shannon McGregor

32:31

that shows that journalists are often turning

32:33

to Twitter as a gauge of public

32:36

opinion. Well, if the deeply

32:38

involved are much more likely

32:40

to express themselves on Twitter, and if

32:42

journalists are looking to Twitter for

32:45

stories for public opinion, they

32:47

are certainly having a higher probability

32:49

of landing on the opinions of

32:51

the deeply involved and then elevating

32:53

those perceptions to stories

32:55

on polarization, of stories of

32:57

discord, of stories of violence. There's

33:05

a fact that many journalists themselves live

33:08

and work in communities

33:10

of deep involvement in politics, play a role

33:13

in this as well. I'm thinking of journalists

33:15

certainly within the Washington Beltway. They're

33:17

embedded in communities and neighborhoods where lots of

33:19

their friends and neighbors are probably

33:21

among the ranks of the deeply involved. I

33:24

would think that it does. When I

33:26

think of myself, for example,

33:28

when I log on to Twitter, I'm in

33:30

a network of people who are deeply involved

33:33

in politics. And so

33:35

often, it's almost difficult

33:37

for me to remember that

33:39

there are all these people in

33:41

my own survey data for whom

33:44

politics is actually much, much less

33:46

important. And I

33:48

imagine for journalists, it actually must be

33:50

exacerbated. They're also

33:52

in these kinds of networks. They're often

33:54

in networks with other journalists. So

33:57

essentially, there's constantly somebody there.

34:00

reinforcing your view of what

34:03

is important and what

34:05

politics looks like and what the world looks

34:07

like. And so in that

34:09

sense, it is a perspective of

34:11

the world that is actually

34:14

completely in line with the world

34:17

you see around you. But

34:20

the world you see around you may not

34:22

necessarily be reflective of a large group of

34:25

people. One of the

34:27

most troubling things I took away from

34:29

your work is how privilege might intersect

34:31

with political involvement. So the person working

34:34

three jobs to make ends meet, it's

34:36

probably not the person who really cares

34:38

that the president was up at night

34:41

tweeting made-up words. Many

34:43

working parents, you know, they might be

34:45

too exhausted with work and childcare to

34:47

be up in arms about the latest

34:49

brouhaha on Twitter. So when we privilege

34:51

the voices of the deeply involved, at

34:53

some level, are we also privileging the

34:56

voices of the privileged? I

34:59

think there are two ways to look at it. On

35:01

the one hand, I think there is

35:04

a certain privilege to not following politics,

35:06

where you sort of feel so comfortable

35:08

about your state in the country that

35:10

you don't necessarily care who wins. But

35:13

I think there's another privilege, and that

35:15

is spending a lot of time following

35:17

politics. I

35:20

feel like I have a tremendous amount of

35:22

privilege in my job that I can check

35:24

in and see what's happening on the news,

35:27

that I'm afforded the flexibility to do

35:29

so, that I can follow a debate

35:31

or that I can follow a congressional

35:33

hearing, for example, if I so chose.

35:36

But when I think about kind

35:38

of the world of people who

35:40

are working hourly jobs, who are

35:42

single parents, who are basically living

35:44

kind of paycheck to paycheck, politics

35:47

may not be something they just

35:49

have time for. Spending

35:52

a lot of time figuring out

35:55

the latest presidential tweet is

35:58

not necessarily going be something

36:00

that when they have downtime, they're

36:02

going to be able to do.

36:04

They probably rather spend time with

36:06

their kids or their families. So

36:09

I think there is certainly a privilege

36:12

to actually being able to

36:14

spend the time on politics

36:16

that I think a lot of people in this country just don't

36:18

have. How

36:22

do people who are deeply involved in politics affect

36:25

our larger discourse, our

36:27

ability to find solutions and make compromises?

36:30

That's when we come back. You're listening to

36:32

Hidden Brain. I'm Shird Harbidee. Support

36:46

for Hidden Brain comes from BetterHelp. One

36:48

common misconception about relationships is that they

36:51

have to be easy to be right.

36:54

The truth is, the best relationships happen when

36:56

both people put in the time, love and

36:58

commitment to make them great. Like

37:01

scheduling regular calls with a long-distance friend,

37:03

adapting to a partner's love language, or

37:05

reconciling your values with a parent. Sometimes

37:08

you need a little support to

37:11

navigate the not-so-easy parts of your

37:13

relationships. And that's where therapy can

37:15

help. BetterHelp offers convenient,

37:17

affordable online therapy that comes

37:19

to you. Start the

37:22

process in minutes and switch therapists

37:24

anytime. Give your relationship

37:26

some love with BetterHelp. Visit

37:29

betterhelp.com/Hidden today to get 10%

37:31

off your first month. That's

37:34

BetterHelp, help.com/Hidden.

37:43

It's easy to get distracted by

37:45

email alerts, texts and phone calls.

37:49

Our psychologist Gloria Mark says there's

37:51

another source of distraction that's just

37:53

as insidious. Self-interruptions.

38:00

the number of external

38:02

interruptions goes down in

38:05

the next hour, the number of self

38:08

interruptions goes up. So

38:11

it's almost as if people want

38:13

to maintain this level of interruptions

38:16

and if you're not being interrupted

38:19

by something external to yourself, then

38:21

you use self interrupt. Learn

38:25

how to rebuild your attention span in our

38:27

recent episode, Finding Focus. You

38:30

can find it right now in the spot cast feed or

38:33

on our website hiddenbrain.org.

38:45

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

38:48

People who are deeply involved in politics

38:51

have strong convictions. They

38:53

talk about politics all the time because they are

38:55

worried about the state of the country, the

38:57

economy. They care. They

39:00

believe that if they can only get other Americans to

39:02

care as much as they do, we

39:04

would all be better off. Are

39:06

they succeeding? University

39:09

of Michigan political scientist, Yana Krupnikov

39:11

studies the deeply involved and how

39:13

their outsized role in politics and

39:16

media coverage shapes our

39:18

understanding of partisanship in the United States.

39:24

Yana, people who are deeply involved in

39:26

politics want to engage people who are

39:28

not involved because they want to affect

39:30

change. They want others to see the

39:32

importance of political issues and political causes.

39:35

Aren't they effective at doing this? So

39:38

I think the the goals of the

39:40

deeply involved are actually coming from a

39:42

good place. If you

39:44

are looking over the spectrum

39:46

of politics and you see

39:49

things happening in front of you

39:51

that you think are horrifying and

39:53

terrible and problematic, you

39:55

want other people to know about this. You want

39:58

other people to know that They

40:00

should be anxious and they should be

40:02

afraid and bad things could be coming.

40:05

But I think there is this

40:07

sense of deep

40:09

involvement that may not

40:12

necessarily translate to others. When

40:14

others see somebody who is profoundly

40:17

involved in politics, it

40:19

might send the message that to be

40:22

at all engaged, that is how you

40:24

should behave. That it's not

40:26

enough to just kind of sporadically follow

40:28

the news or to pay attention during

40:30

elections but you have to sort of

40:33

live and breathe politics and that's how

40:35

you become somebody who

40:37

is politically engaged or

40:39

knows anything political. And

40:42

I think that's tough for people. I think

40:44

for people who may not

40:46

necessarily have the time or the

40:48

strong interest, believing that

40:51

this is how political engagement

40:53

works may be kind

40:55

of a tough example to

40:57

swallow which

40:59

I think can undermine the effectiveness

41:01

of those who are politically involved

41:03

encouraging others to become more engaged

41:05

as well. So there is

41:08

a very interesting psychological theory that you are

41:10

advancing here. In some ways you are saying

41:12

that deeply involved in some ways have become

41:14

a role models of how it is to

41:16

be involved in politics. And when we look

41:18

at the deeply involved, when we turn on

41:20

cable news in the evenings and we hear

41:22

them and we turn on Twitter and we

41:24

watch sort of the debates raging on Twitter,

41:26

we think this is how if you are interested in

41:29

politics, this is how you have to be involved in

41:31

politics. And then we ask ourselves the question, do I

41:33

want to be that kind of person? And what you

41:35

are saying is for many people, the

41:37

answer might be no. Yeah.

41:40

A lot of times when we

41:42

categorize ourselves, as research and psychology

41:44

suggest, we compare ourselves to other

41:46

people and we sort of say,

41:48

am I like this person?

41:51

Am I similar to this person? In what ways

41:53

that I am different? And

41:55

I think in some sense when people compare themselves

41:57

to the deeply involved, they are obviously going to

42:00

see that they are quite different. Maybe

42:03

they're gonna think, I don't feel quite as strongly

42:06

or, you know, I vote in

42:08

these national elections, but I can't bring myself to

42:10

vote in these local elections. I just don't know

42:12

enough. And that contributes

42:14

to our self categorization as somebody who

42:17

is ostensibly non political, which is I

42:19

think a descriptor, I actually hear quite

42:21

a lot from people, I'm not political.

42:24

And I think an interesting question there becomes,

42:27

are you not political? Or are

42:29

you not deeply involved? Are

42:33

you actually entirely disengaged from

42:35

politics? Or

42:37

do you just not believe that you

42:39

have any capacity to to be part

42:41

of politics, because you don't think you

42:43

can look like the people you see

42:45

on your television screen? I'm

42:55

wondering if there's another effect here, which is that

42:57

if I'm a democrat, and I'm watching television, and

43:00

I'm seeing people who are deeply involved

43:02

in politics, who are Republicans on television,

43:05

it's reasonable almost for me to draw

43:07

the impression that all Republicans must be

43:09

like the Republicans that I see on

43:11

television. And in fact,

43:14

some research I've recently done suggests

43:16

that very point. So along with

43:18

co authors, Samara Clark, John Ryan,

43:20

Jamie Druckmann, and Matt Levendusky, we

43:23

actually asked people what they believe

43:25

the most common member of the

43:27

opposing party looks like. And

43:30

then we actually measured what people

43:32

from both parties look like. And

43:34

what we found is that people

43:36

imagine that those from the other

43:38

party were constantly talking about politics,

43:41

and that they were very extreme. But

43:44

in fact, that's not the case at all.

43:46

The sort of most common member of a

43:48

party, a person on a

43:50

survey who says they're a democrat or republican

43:53

is somebody who doesn't talk about politics all

43:55

that much, and somebody who is not all

43:57

that extreme. And so

43:59

the difference difference between what the

44:01

partisans actually look like and what

44:04

people imagine the partisans actually look

44:06

like was quite jarring. But

44:09

it's not as jarring when you think

44:11

about the partisans that you see on

44:13

Twitter, the partisans that you see on

44:15

television, the partisans you see in the

44:17

news. People

44:20

who are reasonable and dispassionate don't

44:22

necessarily make for the best political

44:24

news, especially if you want to

44:27

illustrate polarization. And

44:29

so when we see people who are quite

44:31

angry, it forms our idea of what a

44:34

partisan is and what somebody who

44:36

is political actually looks like. When

44:39

I look at the voter turnout in recent

44:41

elections, the biggest party by far might not

44:43

be the Republican Party or the Democratic Party.

44:45

It might be the party of what you

44:47

might call, please leave me out of it.

44:50

Among all Americans of voting age, about

44:52

two in five, about 40 percent, typically

44:54

don't vote. Now, this has been true

44:56

for a long time. It probably precedes

44:58

the growth and popularity of

45:00

social media. But is there

45:03

a connection between the story you tell

45:05

about this new false line and people

45:07

who are completely disengaging from politics? Well,

45:09

this is a worry of mine when I

45:12

think about deep involvement. If

45:15

we sort of communicate to people that

45:17

politics is about being angry, that

45:19

politics is about essentially,

45:22

and I don't

45:24

just mean being angry about the events we

45:26

see around us, because I think people should,

45:28

in a lot of cases, be very angry about

45:31

the political events we see around us. But

45:33

essentially, the politics is constantly about

45:37

fighting and spending a lot of time expressing

45:40

this. It might suggest to people

45:42

that they don't have what it takes to be

45:45

a part of politics. So

45:47

when we think about people essentially

45:49

disengaging, part of it might

45:51

be people sort of saying, I don't

45:54

necessarily want to be part

45:56

of this. I

45:59

don't want to be like. Partisans, I

46:01

don't necessarily want to be in a

46:03

group with these people I see around

46:05

me Jenner's

46:12

research finds that these people are not just

46:14

reluctant to get involved in politics They

46:17

feel less confident in their ability

46:19

to do so If

46:23

you think that you're non-political because you're different

46:25

from those you see in the news It

46:28

might suggest to you that your voice is

46:30

just not as worthwhile And

46:33

you might actually even start to believe that

46:35

you don't know enough to be part

46:37

of the political world You don't

46:39

know enough to actually participate Which

46:42

I think could lead to people kind of exiting out

46:44

of the process Yeah You you cite

46:46

a story that was once published in the

46:48

New York Times about a woman who decided

46:50

to set out a recent Election she decided

46:52

not to vote and she had

46:55

I believe friends or siblings Who

46:57

had very different feelings about what

46:59

happened. Tell me that story So

47:01

this story was quite interesting to us and

47:03

it was in the back of our minds

47:05

as we were working through Our

47:08

our theoretic work and it's this woman who talked

47:10

about deciding that she wasn't going to turn out

47:12

to vote And she had

47:14

these two close friends who basically started

47:17

texting her Repeatedly almost trying to shame

47:19

her into turning out and voted and

47:22

in the end she didn't vote so it was not

47:24

effective But it was

47:26

effective in her essentially stopping being friends

47:28

with these people People who

47:31

she reports actually having been friends with for

47:33

a long time I think and

47:35

the other thing that she reports that

47:37

was especially kind of sad in some

47:39

ways is that She actually

47:42

never really engaged with politics again

47:45

It was such a poor experience for

47:47

her that it led her to exit

47:49

out of politics entirely and

47:51

you can see this story I think from both sides.

47:53

I think the people who were trying to convince

47:55

her to vote Genuinely

47:58

wanted to see this person that engage

48:00

in politics. They genuinely believe

48:02

politics is important. They genuinely want

48:05

people to vote. But

48:08

what happened was an entirely opposing

48:10

reaction, which

48:14

sort of speaks to this idea of

48:16

how we communicate the importance of politics

48:18

to others. So there's

48:20

something deeply ironic here because, as you said,

48:22

the deeply involved, you know, are deeply involved

48:24

because they care so much. They have deep

48:26

ideals very often about what's right and what's

48:28

wrong and how to make things better. But

48:31

paradoxically, in terms of actual effectiveness,

48:34

they might not actually be getting their

48:36

way, not just because they're driving disengagement

48:38

among some people, but also because, as

48:40

you point out, the deeply engaged are

48:42

also the ones who are least interested

48:44

in compromise. So compromise is a dirty

48:46

word when it comes to the people

48:48

who are the most deeply engaged in

48:50

politics. What does it mean for

48:52

a democracy, Yana? When

48:54

the people who are in the fray, who

48:57

stay in the fray, are the ones who

48:59

say any compromise with the other side is

49:01

effectively betrayal and treason, and we are driving

49:03

out the people who might in some ways

49:05

be more amenable to compromise? Oh,

49:08

I think there are sort of two

49:10

ways to look at this. I

49:13

think one, as more and more

49:15

people who are less involved or

49:17

driven out of politics, we see

49:19

more of these people who are

49:22

deeply involved basically engaging with each

49:24

other, fully kind of convinced

49:26

of their own level of interest,

49:28

basically just reinforcing each other's views.

49:32

And then you have another half of

49:35

your electorate who's becoming less and less

49:37

and less engaged. What

49:40

are we losing in this case? Are

49:43

we losing certain voices that

49:45

could essentially be represented? Are

49:48

we changing who is being represented? Are

49:51

we essentially altering the extent

49:53

to which government can be

49:55

responsible? I think these are all

49:57

things that we should kind of think about when we think

49:59

about it. about what it means when

50:01

we give the deeply-volved so much voice.

50:13

One of the most surprising things about

50:15

your thesis, as I was reading your

50:18

work, is how many Americans think of

50:20

people who belong to their own political

50:22

party who are deeply involved. Obviously,

50:25

many Americans dislike partisans on the other side

50:27

who are deeply involved. But how do people

50:29

think about people on their own side who

50:31

are deeply involved? Certainly.

50:34

People like those on their own side who

50:37

are deeply involved a lot better than they

50:39

like those on the other side who are

50:41

deeply involved. But there

50:43

is also some sense that people

50:45

aren't necessarily all that excited about

50:47

people who are deeply involved on

50:49

their own side as well. People

50:53

who are not deeply involved don't

50:56

exactly love people who tweet about

50:58

politics even from their own side. So

51:01

certainly, certainly, I think

51:03

if we kind of truth-serum people, they

51:05

would say, well, if you're

51:08

gonna tweet about politics, please do it so

51:10

much better. But

51:12

they don't necessarily love that either.

51:15

I sense, in some ways, that there is

51:18

an irony in your work, Jana, because you've

51:20

mentioned in a couple of different ways that

51:22

you yourself might belong to the

51:24

ranks of the people who are deeply involved. You

51:27

talked about it briefly in the context of many of

51:29

your friends on social media being deeply involved. You

51:32

have a critique of the deeply involved and

51:34

sort of the effect they're having on politics.

51:36

At some level, are you also critiquing your

51:38

own life and your own approach to politics?

51:42

By my definition, I

51:44

probably am quite deeply

51:46

involved. In fact, I do, in

51:48

fact, check the news in the morning when I

51:50

wake up. In that sense, I

51:53

do think that I am critiquing my own

51:55

life in a way. I found at a

51:59

number of points. actually having to

52:01

remind myself, there are people

52:03

out there who are much

52:05

more concerned about where

52:07

their next paycheck is going to come from, whether

52:10

they have time to spend with their kids

52:12

than with the latest thing the president has

52:14

tweeted. And I think working

52:16

on this has been a

52:18

helpful reminder of this constant voice that I

52:21

should hear in my head of, this

52:24

is not real life. Yana

52:35

Kripnikov is a political scientist at the

52:38

University of Michigan. Her

52:40

book, written with her fellow political

52:42

scientist, John Barry Ryan, is called

52:44

The Other Divide, Polarization

52:47

and Disengagement in American

52:49

Politics. Yana, thank you

52:51

for joining me today on Hidden Zen. Thank

52:53

you for having me. Hidden

53:00

Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our

53:03

audio production team includes Bridget

53:05

McCarthy, Annie Murphy-Paul, Christian Wong,

53:07

Laura Corral, Ryan Katz, Autumn

53:09

Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick

53:11

Woodbury. Tara Boyle is

53:14

our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's

53:16

executive editor. Next

53:19

week, we wrap up our US 2.0

53:21

series with a dive into history. We'll

53:24

hear a fresh perspective on the man who

53:26

navigated the United States through a perilous moment

53:28

in its history, Abraham Lincoln.

53:31

We talk with NPR's Steven Skee about

53:34

the nation's 16th president and

53:36

the lessons his leadership still holds for us.

53:39

If you've missed any of the episodes in

53:41

our US 2.0 series, you can find them

53:43

in this podcast feed or on our website,

53:46

hiddenbrain.org. I'm

53:48

Shankar Vedantan. See you soon. Bye.

54:00

you