Social Psychology: It's not that difficult to change a group member's attitude

Who knew? There are experiments from the 1930s onward testing the will of people when faced with a rigged experiment or placed in groups. Terms such as groupthink appeared. This was difficult material for me to accept, as I have lived the past 50 years in a culture I was not born into. I have resisted conforming in a quiet way. In work type of situations I did in fact become part of the group. My training lumped me with my kind against "engineers" and "business types" to achieve results in my field of science. It was also useful in job interviews. Every job I got was due to a link to the interviewer, we were equals. However, with things like politics and religion, I never made any waves in a group of strangers. Just get on with what we were doing and don't bring it up. I never had to change my attitude for a group. In any test of psychology I would be the outlier.

As it happens, this one area of  behavior where the right and left are equally susceptible to group pressure. You might be a libertarian, hang out with liberals and appreciate personal freedoms. Then global warming comes up. You have not had the time to read the books to find out 1) is it warming? and 2) what are the predictions? Those are separate problems, you realize. You went to college. But it has become dogma in your group. So you just accept that. The election comes up and you do not make any complaints against a political candidate that places climate high on the agenda. Although sexual minorities and freedoms as well as your suspicious attitude to "big government" may be more strongly part of your thinking. And the cute girl in the group is a liberal. You start tolerating climate change as a big topic, as well as the health and exercise attitude you share. You and your partner are building a better planet with healthier people.

The field is social psychology. It is possible to look at the individuals, it is even possible to use neurobiology and other experiments. But still, it is an empirical field. You can measure the activity of groups with polls and tests of groups in lab settings. You measure trends. This causes that. You don't entirely know why. Conformity, response to strong leaders, obedience, all these things can be measured. As it turns out, rank in your gang also matters. It is easier to influence a low ranking member.

Want more? Try the Richardson book. Not the best book on the topic, but easy to read for the layman.  The rest of the classic books are rather dated. Wikipedia will go a long way with Milgram. See also the entry for the man there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

Polling: less and less meaningful, except more indpendents

A poll this week by Gallup discovered a shift in 2021 to the Republican side, from Democrats and independents. I did not find it meaningful. I think it is a reflection of disappointment toward Biden and Democrats in the Senate. Or, the entire poll number could be related to mask and vaccine mandates. I have a book that explains that when they call people on the phone for polls, only the events in the past couple of weeks are on the mind of most people. This holds even more for people disinterested in politics but interested just enough to show up to vote.

Suppose we ran an election now. Trump vs. Biden. The pandemic and mandates are a momentary issue. Centrists may have changed their minds after voting for Biden. But, I seriously doubt there is any major change if there are the same two candidates. Here is the current graph on Trump. It may be that hatred of Biden has increased, though, so for that reason there may be more Republicans.

But the Democrats and Republicans do not matter when voters hate the parties and hate congress, that has these two parties and does not seem to be do anything. Young people are hard to recruit for either party. This would be a great time to introduce a third party. Except, our system seems to favor two parties, not a coalition of parties. But our two party system took us to a divided congress, and without 60 votes, nothing will pass in the senate. Excepting Mitch McConnel judicial candidates.

The independents do not have any deep interest in politics. I think the party members vote by party and the independents by gut feel for a candidate. They are not going to vote for Trump but will only reluctantly vote for Biden. 

But the topic was polls. I say ignore the polls until there are actual candidates running. For president look at the states that have been borderline: Wisconsin, Georgia, PA and Arizona. Arizona may be lost, but Trump will not carry PA and WI. We will get a Democrat in 2024 but with a Republican congress. If we are in a stalemate, that is the one I prefer. Unless of course in 2 years Congress strips a president of his powers. Then we are in trouble in 2025.

I only wanted to address polling this time. The voting rights is a bigger problem. 

The Politics of Us and Them

 I was interested in conspiracy theories before, so I made a note of this book earlier.

The book moves onto politics near the end. Though there is some discussion of QAnon type of trends there, the book really does outline how voters in general work. The strong belief in matters that are largely fake or falsified by the right wing press (but not interesting, which the conspiracies are) the behavior is exactly the same as in believing conspiracies carried out by your opponents. The right wing voters believe in a world of their dreams that just is not what we have. By denying climate change, for example, we can just carry on as before. That is the conservatism, no change wanted.

The white working classes that voted for Trump really don't care about policy. It's an us an them game for them. Anyone who does not fall into the white American Christian camp is pretty much "them." Also politicians and lawyers, as well as scientists are them. So the populist simply needs to be in some manner connected to the large group of uneducated voters to capture them. Apparently there was a large shift of white working class Democrats to the Republican party in the Obama years. It was not so much to do with policy but a fear of "them" taking over. They feared for their "way of life."

Theoretically it could happen on the left as well. Many left wingers are not that educated either. But in recent times it has not. Vietnam and hippies are long gone.

Acts of destruction to Democrats all over the country are another phenomenon of this US and THEM thinking. There is no holding back Trump voters. This will not stop till well past 2025. Maybe never.

The dissatisfaction of grid locked Washington is not going to end anytime soon. There was a brief period of GOP senators and congress people being critical of Trump, but now they are back to voting no on every bill that comes up. Important bills, backed by well over half the voters, will not come up for a vote. We will be doing well just to pass the budget yearly.

Is it a country of a bunch of countries?

 The US was initially 13 states, and they were fairly independent. There was not even a common currency at the start. The current Supreme Court seems to think of the states as countries. This explains their decisions on voting rights, gerrymandering and abortion.

The Red States quickly realized, once Trump was gone, that the movement to the right had lost momentum. The solution was to increase state rights and reject mandates from Biden.

All this reminds me of a book by Kurt Vonnegut called Slapstick. It had a crumbled USA and kings in Michigan and Oklahoma. King of Florida DeSantis is making his own army now.

Major changes happened to the the US after the Civil War. Several amendments guaranteed the right to vote. The constitution allowed amendments, so eventually we got women to vote and an income tax. Congress gained power. The court is now trying to hold it back. A liberal court could easily expand federal power. Those things are in the amendments, not so much the Constitution.