5/5/2023 0 Comments Kessen iii paradox![]() ![]() Even people who agree with the side being pushed upon the populace lose faith in their own side when they feel agreement is forced. Divisive figures like Donald Trump weren’t the cause of our disagreements they were the symptoms of forced agreement. ![]() We’ve increasingly responded to our divisions by trying to bludgeon the other side into some kind of forced agreement. In the place of potentially solid ground, forced agreement provides a psychologically contaminated, shifting sand upon which it is hard to build anything lasting. Ironically, in forcing agreement, we cut off the actual potential for genuine, meaningful agreement to grow. And this interferes with our ability to come to anything like real common ground. If I believe you said you agreed with vaccine mandates only because you were forced to, I don’t trust your stated belief. Second, people who observe the forced agreement believe it is artificial, something our lab calls informational contamination. People don’t like their freedom being taken away, and pressure to agree does exactly that. This is what psychologists call reactance. First, even if people comply, they are really upset at being told what to do. But while pressure creates superficial agreement, it also causes two other things to happen simultaneously. If you try and force people to agree, it generally works. As Stanley Milgram’s and Solomon Asch’s classic research taught us, to a surprising degree, people comply with social pressure. Research sheds some light on why this is the case. We want everyone to agree with us about religion, so we force people to say only one point of view.īut this kind of forced agreement, even when done with good motives, is a disaster for society. We want everyone to agree with us about vaccines, so we force everyone to say the same thing. Often, we feel so strongly that we want agreement that we put in top-down pressures to force agreement. However, ironically, this desire for agreement-when given a too-exalted place-can undermine the very thing it is trying to create. There is nothing wrong with wanting to belong to a group. ![]() There is nothing wrong with wanting to get along. ![]() These motives to agree with others are often healthy. We want to fit in and agreement is one of the main ways we do that. Thus, it is hardly surprising that psychological research shows we have a fundamental need to belong. That’s why people love words like “together” and “unity” and hate words like “torn asunder” and “divorce.” Our ideal worlds are generally not populated with separation from others. To see why that is, let’s start with a psychological fact: Disagreement bothers us. How do we get out of this quagmire? Psychology research suggests a somewhat surprising answer to our dilemma: The way out of our polarized society is to stop caring so much about polarization. Lots of Americans are looking around and wondering “why the heck are all these groups shouting at each other all the time?” Americans have taken note: Recent polls show that polarization is consistently listed as a main concern among the U.S. In most scientific studies of worldwide increases in polarization, the United States ranks at or near the top. The country is as polarized as it has been for a long, long time. In case you hadn’t noticed, America is a bit of a mess right now. ![]()
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