Perception and Popularity Contests (Week 6)
'The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.' - Karl Marx
Politicians are careful students of the psychological art of shaping perception. Lawyers win or lose by the characterisation of facts at trial and so do politicians live or die by the perceptions of the court of public opinion. In particular, the nature of politics is deeply affected by the phenomenon of ‘ingroup’ perception where individuals identify positively with other members of a perceived ‘ingroup’. John Turner has suggested that we find leaders most persuasive when we believe that they share our own ingroup morals and objectives.*
There are many means by which politicians can ingratiate themselves into constituent ingroups. For one, any baby kissed on the campaign trail has experienced the ‘contact hypothesis’ at work. Politicians know that even minimal personal contact with voters can generate positive emotional connections. More broadly, politicians often express empathy with one social subgroup or another to imply fellow feeling and thus ingroup membership. A prominent Australian example is the pandering of the major parties to the wants and worries of working families.
There are many means by which politicians can ingratiate themselves into constituent ingroups. For one, any baby kissed on the campaign trail has experienced the ‘contact hypothesis’ at work. Politicians know that even minimal personal contact with voters can generate positive emotional connections. More broadly, politicians often express empathy with one social subgroup or another to imply fellow feeling and thus ingroup membership. A prominent Australian example is the pandering of the major parties to the wants and worries of working families.
Voters also rate the personal characteristics of individual politicians against the standards of their ingroup. They are not always fair in making such evaluations. Julia Gillard has become keenly aware of just how personal the judgements that they face from voters can become. Part of her trouble in the polls comes from a vague public suspicion that lingers around her atheism, her childlessness and her de facto relationship. However, these characteristics are hardly out of step with the population at large. Our religious affiliation and participation have gradually fallen over time. Our birth rate spiked dramatically in the past five years but over Julia's lifetime more and more women have had fewer or no children. Most dramatically, our 'crude marriage rate' is as low as during the Great Depression.
Julia’s lifestyle may be rendered suspect because it prevents voters taking a superficial read of her values. Scott Stephens, the ABC's online Religion and Ethics editor, suggested in a recent forum that we do not want deep morality from our politicians. We seek merely some easily digested sample of their guiding values. If the Prime Minister was married with kids, we could assume that she held ‘family values’, whatever they may be. Further, the success of the working families paradigm may lead voters to self-stereotype to that ingroup even when they are not parents. Voters often tend to identify with social groups which they aspire to join, so perhaps they hope to have little working families of their own some day.
The working families cliche is a relatively benign facet of the recent resurgence of ‘us and them’ politics in both Australia and the United States. Voters are not only encouraged to identify with an ingroup, but to reject a supposedly polarised outgroup. Such political framing inspired the vitriolic and ad hominem carbon tax debate. The practice may also operate to entrench inequality. When the majority are led to think of themselves to the exclusion of others, there is no political support for minority causes.
Though I could not attend the tutorial, my ticket considered the risk that needs of minorities could also be overlooked in the justice system. That system is comprised of the overlapping responsibilities of many agencies from the police to the Director of Public Prosecutions and the courts themselves. Each agency has an economic incentive to focus on achieving its own organisational priorities. At a systems level, vulnerable defendants such as the homeless or those from non-English-speaking backgrounds risk slipping through the holes of the Swiss Cheese model.Of course, the justice system attempts to minimise such a risk through services such as Legal Aid.
It is perhaps naive to expect that the political system could be modified to protect against the parochialism of individuals caring only about ‘hip pocket politics’. However, I would have liked to ask Kate Reynolds whether our political discourse could be improved to increase awareness of the cumulative effect of policy decisions throughout Australia and over time. This might entail the integration of immediate concerns of individuals with higher order goals such as sustainability. The ASPIRe model of organisational creativity through diversity seemed like it might be a little impractical to apply within our informal political culture. However, the government could have surely improved the tone of the carbon tax debate had it communicated its vision more clearly.
* John Turner, 'Explaining the Nature of Power: a three-process theory' (2005) 32 European Journal of Social Psychology 1.