Image above: Many Americans are choosing not to engage in politics, instead burying their heads in the sand to protect their mental health. iStock/Getty Images Plus
By Arash Javanbakht, Wayne State University
“I definitely don't follow the news anymore,” one patient told me when I asked her about her political news consumption in the weeks leading up to the 2024 US presidential election.
This conversation happened while I was speaking with a local TV channel about why we're seeing fewer political signs during this year's election season than we did before.
I am a psychiatrist who studies and treats fear and anxiety. One of my main mental health recommendations to my patients during the 2016 and 2020 election cycles was to reduce their consumption of political news. I also tried to convince them that the five hours a day they spent watching satellite news was only leaving them helpless and terrified.
However, I've noticed a change over the past couple of years: Many of my patients say they've either stopped working or are too exhausted to do more than a brief read of political news or watch an hour of their favorite political show.
Research supports my clinical experience: A 2020 Pew research study showed that 66% of Americans are burned out by political stress. Interestingly, those who do not follow the news feel fatigued by the same news at a higher rate, up to 73%. In 2023, 8 in 10 Americans described US politics in negative terms such as “divisive,” “corrupt,” “chaotic,” and “polarized.”
I believe that three main factors have led Americans to exhaustion and exhaustion in dealing with American politics.
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1. The politics of fear
In my 2023 book Fear: Understanding Fear's Purpose, Harnessing the Power of Anxiety, I discuss how American politicians and major news media have found an ally in fear: an emotion so powerful that it can be used to capture our attention. , keeps us on the tribal dividing lines and makes us follow, click, tap, watch, and donate.
Over the past few decades, many people have felt a strong push toward tribalism, an “us versus them” way of seeing the world that pits Americans against each other. This has led to a point where we not only disagree with each other. We hate, cancel, ban, and attack those who disagree with us.
2. People live in information bubbles
It may seem as if Fox News and MSNBC commentators are talking about the Americas from two different planets. The same applies when it comes to different social media feeds.
Many people are part of social media communities closed off from the world outside their homes and familiar social circles. Based on people's political views and what they search, watch, and read, social media algorithms feed them content that everyone is talking and thinking alike. If you hear about the other party, it only means their worst qualities and behaviors.
The disconnect is so vast that people are unable even to understand the thinking of those from other points of view and find their logic or political beliefs unfathomable.
Many Americans have come to believe that the other half of Americans are, at best, unintelligent and stupid; At worst, immoral and evil.
3. People's political opinions become their identities
There was a time in American politics when two politicians or neighbors might disagree, but still think the other person was fundamentally good.
Over time, especially since the early 2000s, this ability to communicate despite political beliefs has diminished.
A majority of Democrats and Republicans in a 2022 Pew Research poll said someone's political ideas are an indicator of their morals and character.
The 2022 Pew poll also shows that partisan animosity extends to judgments of character: 72% of Republicans and 63% of Democrats said they believe members of the opposing party are more “unethical” than other Americans.
This is evident in daily conversations between members of the two political tribes: “How can I be friends with someone who wants to kill children,” or “How can I talk to someone who agrees with women dying in a corner of the house.” clinic parking lot.” We can no longer see someone’s political affiliation in the context of their overall humanity.
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What psychology and neuroscience say
Fear as a deeply ingrained survival mechanism takes precedence over other brain functions.
Fear directs your memories, feelings, attention, and thoughts, and can make you keep watching, scrolling, and reading to monitor this perceived threat. Positive or neutral news can become uninteresting because it is not important in your survival response. This has been the key to a person's visceral reaction to fear-based political news.
But too much fear does not keep a person engaged forever. This is due to another survival mechanism – so-called “learned helplessness”.
In 1967, American psychologist Martin Seligman subjected two groups of dogs to painful shocks. The dogs in Group 1 could stop the shock by pressing a lever, which they quickly learned to do. But the dogs in the second group learned that they could not control when the shock started and stopped.
Next, both groups were placed in a box divided in half by a small barrier, and the shock was applied to only one side of the box. The dogs in Group 1—which had learned how to stop shocks in the previous experiment—quickly learned to jump over the barrier to the shock-free side. But the dogs in the second group didn't even try to do that. They have learned that there is no point in trying.
This experiment has been repeated in various forms with other animals and humans with the same result: when people feel like they can't control a painful or scary situation, they just give up. During such experiences, the fear area of the brain – called the amygdala – is hyperactive. Meanwhile, brain areas that regulate emotion such as the prefrontal cortex decrease in activity under these conditions.
Learned helplessness also means that brain mechanisms normally involved in regulating anxiety and depression don't work as well.
When working with patients who have experienced long periods of intense anxiety, fear, trauma, and fatigue, I see learned helplessness manifest in the form of depression, loss of motivation, fatigue, and disengagement with the world around them.
The COVID-19 pandemic, more than a decade of intense political pressure, social media polarization and wars around the world, as well as general disillusionment with American politics and media, have, I believe, led many people to suffer from burnout and learned helplessness. .
If you're feeling politically exhausted, you're not the problem. Feel free to adjust out the noise.
Arash Javanbakht, associate professor of psychiatry, Wayne State University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
