’The temperature has been turned up so high:’ The psychology of political rhetoric during this chaotic moment

CATHY WURZER: Well, delegates to the RNC are obviously still talking about the assassination attempt that left the former president with a bloodied ear, one spectator dead, two injured. As the wounded former president left the stage yesterday, surrounded by Secret Service agents, he pumped his fist in the air and yelled at the crowd to "Fight, fight, fight."

In the hours after the attempted assassination, there were calls by President Biden and others, as you heard, to tone down the rhetoric. But for years now, the political news has been dominated by outrage, allegations of fake news, conspiracy theories, and charges of corruption, not to mention the violent riot at the nation's Capitol in 2021.

How did we get to this point, and how might we describe the psychology of voters in this chaotic moment? For that, we called Professor John Blanchar. He directs the Social and Political Psychology Lab at the University of Minnesota, Duluth.

Professor, thanks for taking the time.

JOHN BLANCHAR: Hi. Thanks for having me on today.

CATHY WURZER: I'm wondering, how you think political rhetoric led up to the moment that gunman fired into the Trump rally on Saturday?

JOHN BLANCHAR: Yeah, it's a great question, and one I'm sure that's on a lot of people's mind, as we've seen the moral language change in our political space over the past decade-plus. And I think it's really important to understand moral psychology to understand how people could bring themselves to do something like that.

So by nature, we're tribal creatures, and our moral sense evolved to bind us together into groups to cooperate and compete against other groups. This is normal, and it isn't necessarily a bad thing. However, when this instinct gets ramped up, and we think of the other group or other team as evil, then the situation becomes very dangerous.

This sort of Manichean mindset where people think of their side as good and the other side of evil allows people to knowingly and purposefully commit terrible and violent acts, because they think the ends justify the means. In other words, it bestows people with a feeling of moral righteousness or a license to do bad, because of their actions are towards a greater good.

CATHY WURZER: Has some of the gas on this fire been added by social media in this day and age?

JOHN BLANCHAR: Absolutely. A lot of psychologists have been studying rhetoric and language and people siloing themselves into echo chambers online on places like Facebook and Twitter or X, where the language that gets-- that is incentivized by people to use is very extreme and moralized language that evokes what we call moral outrage. Moral outrage is a blend of anger and disgust.

And what many studies show is that this engages people the most to interact, to share information, and to actually do things. And so people are incentivized to use this language because it brings them attention.

And politicians are just like that. They want to get people out of their-- off their seats into the voting booths, to donate to campaigns, to show up to rallies. And so, they're incentivized to do this language, as well.

CATHY WURZER: It goes both ways, right? I mean, post-shooting, Republicans faulted Biden's past rhetoric about Trump. Some in the left went on social media and writing that it was too bad the shooter missed. So, I mean, there's blame on both sides here, right?

JOHN BLANCHAR: Absolutely, yeah. We don't find that this is something that's specific to one side or the other. It is a dance that, unfortunately, plays out between both sides as they ramp up each other, and it becomes more and more extreme.

CATHY WURZER: Have we seen something like this in our past, because, I mean, we tend to forget our history, right? Of course, social media is something that's relatively new to the scene, but have we seen this kind of dangerous political rhetoric in the past?

JOHN BLANCHAR: I mean, I think, you can look to many different time periods and find where rhetoric gets extreme, and it encourages people to do bad things. The unfortunate thing is that this is not the first time there's been an assassination of a political leader or a presidential candidate or a sitting president. It's been a long time, thankfully, and we tend to forget that we've been in those sort of periods.

But the temperature has been just turned up so high lately that I think that, that period beforehand just seems so foreign to us. When it's actually a part of our nature, and when we feel like we're under threat, and we're convinced the other side is terrible and no good, this is what some people may bring themselves to do, because they think that it's the right thing.

CATHY WURZER: Because it is part of our nature, as you point out, and there are these calls now to try to tamp down some of the heated rhetoric, how in the world do you think that would actually happen? Can it happen?

JOHN BLANCHAR: It certainly can happen, and it's going to be easy to do. And I think it needs both sides working cooperatively with each other to come together. So much of us have just been segmented into different even pictures or understandings of the world. Really, our sense of social reality has been bifurcated or split because people know and interact with people that share their beliefs and their politics. They watch media that sends information that they want to hear back to them.

And so, I think, in many cases, it's going to take a dual effort among both parties to show that everything-- that we are not at war with each other, that, that is not an appropriate response to things. It won't work for everyone.

But what I often encourage people to do in terms of just ramping down extremism and this moral impulse to fight against the other side is to instead be curious about why other people think things different from you. To think of it as an understanding of-- as a search for-- search for a reason, other than that they're evil.

So psychologists have found that people vote for many different reasons. Being evil is not one of them. And so, if you approach interacting with people in a way that is curious, and you seek to understand why they think that they do, not necessarily try to persuade them-- that's often not a very easy thing to do, especially in one sitting-- but if you approach it in a way of being curious and trying to seek understanding, this increases trust and confidence and reduces self-righteousness.

CATHY WURZER: Words have meaning, obviously. And I'm wondering, what's the role of the media in this?

JOHN BLANCHAR: The role of media, I think, in terms of just the-- I think, in many cases, a lot of media or at least, partisan parts of media are incentivized from using this rhetoric because it gets people to watch them. It gets people angry and upset, and they know that that's what keeps viewers tuned to them.

So I think, in terms of that, they unfortunately are incentivized to do this in terms of attention and ratings, but it's not good for the situation. It's not good for people. It's not good for the country.

CATHY WURZER: All right. I wish I had more time with you, professor. Thank you so very much.

JOHN BLANCHAR: Thank you for having me.

CATHY WURZER: We've been talking to Professor John Blanchar. He's the Director of the Social and Political Psychology Lab at the University of Minnesota, Duluth.