The psychological traits that shape your political beliefs
Every human being is different from another. But, when it comes to how we perceive world and cope with lack of certainty, or feeling of ambiguity, we can be categorized into groups. In the video, Dr Dannagal G. Young, explains how these traits form our political beliefs, and how they can be exploited by media an politics.
Questions:
1. Which one of the two trait sets, presented in the video, do you see in yourself? Maybe a mix of both?
2. Have you ever felt that, media try to manipulate your emotions?
3. Do you have an impression that nowadays, mass media divide societies around the world?
Comments
Hi! I probably perceive myself as a mix of both. I spend a lot of my time between two groups of people - liberals and conservatives. These people are always trying to have reasonable opinions about reality and I appreciated it very much. This constant experience taught me to place value on both sides of never-ending discussions.
Have you ever felt that media try to manipulate your emotions?
I think it is a common experience, especially nowadays, in times of chaos and social restlessness. It is hard to differentiate between noise and signals. Currently, I try to spend less time on the news and focus on the description of events after they happened rather than listening to speculation about the future.
Do you have an impression that nowadays, mass media divide societies around the world?
I think that it is a reasonable opinion to have. It makes me incredibly sad when I think of it. All the people and families that are divided because of the variety of political views. Mass media have added their three peas.
2. Every time I turn on TVP xD Every media is trying to manipulate, but there is at least a workshop behind it. TVP is insolent in what it does and has society for idiots.
3. Many media outlets dictate their point of view, but some, the names of which I will no longer refer to, intentionally try to incite disagreement among people. This is very dangerous for society and highly unethical, given that this TV station is funded by citizens. It is completely different when a listed company does something similar.
Unfortunately, division between radical worldviews is proceeding. It is sad that even families struggle with this issue - people who are supposed to be close to each other, simply drift apart because of their beliefs. Hopefully, this process is to be stopped, it can lead to catastrophic consequences.
It is interesting that you spend a lot of time among both conservative and liberal people. Since I have similiar expercience, I would say that, for me, it is not easy as it requires a lot of focus to extract reasonable parts from both viewpoints.
Hopefully, reason and ability to dialogue will triumph in the future.
I think that I'm one of the exceptions, because in my personal life I prioritize order and predictability, but I have liberal social and political views. I think that you can predict someone's view based on these traits, but I think that there would be a lot of exceptions, so I think that we should take other traits in consideration.
2. Have you ever felt that, media try to manipulate your emotions?
Of course, I think that this is what media mainly do. In perfect world media would be objective and only inform people about certain events, but it's impossible, because these media are owned by someone and it's very likely that they will try to impose their beliefs on others.
3. Do you have an impression that nowadays, mass media divide societies around the world?
I think they can both help to connect people and to divide them. Like with almost every other thing they can be used for good or for evil, depending on who is using them.