By Christina Christodoulou

The United States must moderate the divisive political ideologies that have polarized our communities and fractured our national identity. The days of compromise and tolerance are long gone, while anger and hostility have become an all-too-common response to complicated issues. Our nation has always benefitted from opposing views, campaigns and debates as we strive to form a more perfect nation. And it wasn’t long ago when a mutual respect existed between political leaders as a sense of duty to our shared ideals transcended political affiliation. Today, however, it seems that such a sense of common purpose has been eroded as the division between sides has become the new political standard.

From a psychological perspective, the boundary between in-group and out-group has become both sharper and smaller-scale – a dangerous combination in the context of preserving unity and peace. A shared American identity with common goals is no longer unifying our diverse population. Instead, the ’us’ versus ‘them’ identity has come to define what is commonly regarded as two Americas, each seeing the other as sharing little or nothing in common.

The process of in-group and out-group development occurs when people gravitate towards those who are more similar to them and fail to attend to those who aren’t. People tend to reserve their limited cognitive resources for those who are included in their in-group by paying more attention to them, ascribing more complex characteristics to them and taking more time to learn about their unique identities. On the other hand, when people make judgments about an out-group member, fewer cognitive resources are expended and more surface level and general traits are ascribed to them.

This behavioral function, however, does not fully explain the loss of the American identity or the current culture of division between groups and the surge in violence the nation has witnessed. The psychological process which creates an inability or unwillingness to attribute human qualities to a member of the out-group is known as dehumanization. On a small scale, those who are dehumanized are often judged according to simplifying and degrading stereotypes.

What becomes particularly dangerous is when dehumanization systematically evolves on a larger scale and causes the out-group to be perceived as a threat. When a group is dehumanized in this way, its members tend to be perceived as lacking any admirable or redeemable human qualities. Years of research have exposed this form of dehumanization as a key ingredient of violence.

When an individual or group is dehumanized, their human identity is ignored and they are afforded no empathy or compassion. They come to be considered threats to in-group functioning and wellbeing who need to be neutralized, thereby justifying feelings of hatred and acts of violence. Leaders need to understand this mechanism to preserve group unity and enhance positive growth.

Political campaigns have always relied on pithy catch phrases to grab the eye of the audience and the imagination of the electorate. But this age of social media along with the culture of endless scrolling may have paved the way for voters’ continuously shortening attention span to rely on the opinions of fewer and more extreme sources.  Instead of tuning into a 90-minute debate, for example, people often depend on focused messages and polarized narratives that are increasingly generated by computer algorithms. To effectively maintain voters’ limited attention, words and phrases that break monotonous scrolling to grab people’s attention become stronger and more extreme. In today’s fractured social climate, politicians use words such as ‘animals’, ‘threats’, and ‘‘existential’ to gain voter attention and draw a clear distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’.

Political campaigns are taking advantage of people’s most primitive tendencies and, in the process, manipulating human consciousness by sharpening in-group boundaries and attributing dehumanizing judgements to out-groups. The 20^th century witnessed the horrors of such dehumanization when WWII Germany reshaped what it meant to be human. During the Holocaust, Hitler drew on propaganda to illustrate members of the out-group as ‘pests’ that would infect German ‘purity’. Nearly a century later, American politics are coming dangerously close to the very rhetoric that shaped one of humanity’s darkest times. Dehumanization and the hateful behaviors it creates is a relatively straightforward and extremely dangerous process, yet it is one that global leaders and media outlets don’t pay nearly enough attention to.

The response to today’s destructive division should be simple – stop blaming the out-group for every shortcoming, reestablish a sense of humanity and reunite all Americans under the umbrella of one identity. In the absence of a sufficient response, it is likely that each side will continue to feel threatened by the other, both in the context of personal identity and collective safety. Hence, the underlying root of the problem will grow deeper and the nation will be at risk of destructive civil unrest. For this reason, the next several weeks of this critical Presidential campaign are critical to the future of the United States. Dehumanization legitimizes hatred and rationalizes violence. Its consequences of dehumanization, which legitimizes hatred and rationalizes violence, are too great to neglect in favor of polling results or electoral victories.

The political narrative needs to be tempered and dehumanizing rhetoric must be removed from political campaigns and media reporting so that the bridge of humanity, across the political spectrum and between communities, can be rebuilt. As a result, the American people will be much better equipped to approach future elections and real crises with open and clear minds. Our American goals cannot be achieved while our political process and ever sensationalizing media continue to distort individual perceptions and fragment our communities for their own personal gain. Our leaders must understand this human process, fight the urge to dehumanize their opposition and help restore American unity.

Christina Christodoulou, MA, Social Cognition; MA, I/O Psychology; PhD Candidate, I/O Psychology