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There are people who believe that the political polarization now afflicting the United States might finally start to subside if Americans of both parties could somehow become more empathetic. If you're one of these people, the American Political Science Review has sobering news for you.
Last week APSR—one of the alpha journals in political science—published a study[$] which found that "empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity in the electorate and in some respects even exacerbates it."
The study had two parts. In the first part, Americans who scored high on an empathy scale showed higher levels of "affective polarization"—defined as the difference between the favorability rating they gave their political party and the rating they gave the opposing party. In the second part, undergraduates were shown a news story about a controversial speaker from the opposing party visiting a college campus. Students who had scored higher on the empathy scale were more likely to applaud efforts to deny the speaker a platform.
It gets worse. These high-empathy students were also more likely to be amused by reports that students protesting the speech had injured a bystander sympathetic to the speaker. That's right: According to this study, people prone to empathy are prone to schadenfreude.
This study is urgently important—though not because it's a paradigm shifter, shedding radically new light on our predicament. As the authors note, their findings are in many ways consistent with conclusions reached by other scholars in recent years. But the view of empathy that's emerging from this growing body of work hasn't much trickled down to the public. And public understanding of it may be critical to shifting America's political polarization into reverse somewhere between here and the abyss.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday November 11 2019, @09:58PM (5 children)
Well, I guess it depends on what you think the root cause is.
All politics will always be a mess since humans are involved so the question is what system manages that best.
So, if you think the root cause of the current crop of issues is CAUSED by the stranglehold of two parties then having five parties is automatically an improvement. I tend to think it is a root cause because two entrenched parties rarely need to compromise to wield power whereas a British style parliamentary system REQUIRES it. So I'm a supporter of electoral reform like IRV.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:56AM
The IRV is an improvement, but it doesn't solve the problems, or rather it solves one set of problems and introduces another set. (They may be lesser, of course.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday November 12 2019, @04:48AM (3 children)
Actually with a Westminster type Parliamentary system, compromise depends on whether the government has a majority or minority (assuming party discipline so they vote as a block). And even with a minority, compromise doesn't have to happen. Here in Canada, we just elected a minority. No one can afford another election right now and the 4 progressive parties are united in not wanting the right wing party to form government. They'll be some compromise but not enough and the real problem is the right wingers are flipping out and making unreasonable claims on compromise, namely do it our way with just over a third of the votes or we'll break up the country.
It's hard to compromise when one side wants it all and puts all the blame for their failed policies along with economic bad luck on the other side with the politicians fanning the flames for more power.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday November 12 2019, @04:57PM (2 children)
So why can't the other 2/3 form the government instead?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday November 14 2019, @03:34AM (1 child)
They will, but the government is supposed to represent the whole country, which seems to be more split then ever
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday November 14 2019, @05:20PM
That is something that has been bothering me about U.S. politics for awhile: nobody understands how to compromise anymore. Instead now it's just about getting 50%+1 vote and just ramming through whatever you want, while telling the other 49% to go fuck themselves.
er I mean, "yay democracy"
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"