14 DAY TRIAL // Lately, the animosities and conflicts between groups of people have made a spectacular comeback. This was made obvious as the United States engaged in the largest social project it ever underwent in decades, the passing of the health care bill. This was just a trigger that brought to light numerous differences between various groups of people, all of which fight against each other with fervor, and without letting a single point of discussion slide. Recently, a group of experts looked at what the foundations for this behavior might be, LiveScience reports.
America is widely known for its polarization, in most aspects. If an individual rallied to a group, then there really is no way of making him or her see reason, even if it's staring them right in the face. This happens because people tend to become partisans and rally themselves to doctrines, proposals or ideas that best reflect their personality differences, moral views, and so on. But the differences in the US do not occur on the healthcare bill alone. Abortion, creationism and evolutionism, as well as the origin of the Universe and the role of deities in everyday life, are hotly-debated topics as well. Same-gender marriages are also a controversial topic.
Polarized political parties and the frantic media coverage most TV stations provide today are some of the factors promoting these animosities and which prevent people from getting along. According to the new study, it would appear that people find it difficult to find common ground, when they are bombarded with “news” about how different they are from their opponents. In other words, the media and the politicians play a critical role in preventing groups that may otherwise reconcile their view with one another's from doing so.
“People process information, and it's biased to supporting their moral ideological view. And what you end up with is these sort of radically different perceptions of fact, so that it's not like they're just arguing about morals anymore; they perceive the world completely differently,” explains University of California in Irvine (UCI) professor of psychology and social behavior Peter Ditto. “You tend to form emotional ties to the belief that you hold. And so you seek out that information, or those convictions, and those people that convey the convictions that you think you already have,” University of Buffalo in New York Department of Sociology professor Steve Hoffman concludes.