This paper addresses two central debates in political psychology. The first examines the tension between elite manipulation of the public and public constraint of elite behavior, using the American healthcare debate as a primary case study. It argues that anti-government ideology—reinforced by media, partisan framing, and deep cultural traditions—makes voters susceptible to manipulation, yet mobilized public opinion also limits what politicians can achieve. The second question considers the psychological factors enabling political elites to direct mass violence, including authoritarian personality, groupthink, scapegoating, and diffusion of responsibility. Drawing on historical examples from Nazi Germany, the American South, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda, the paper concludes that both psychological predispositions and long-standing historical hatreds must be understood together to explain mass atrocities.
A central debate within political psychology concerns, when framed in extreme terms, the extent to which political elites can and do manipulate the general public, as opposed to the extent to which they must pander to the preferences of the mass public. Framed more modestly, this debate pits the view that the mass public is mainly responsive to elite initiatives against the view that elites' actions are strongly constrained by the public's preferences.
The American voter is often described as credulous and easily manipulated. At the same time, American politicians are said to simply wish to get elected, pandering to voter prejudices and watching opinion polls rather than exercising true leadership. How can both of these sentiments be accurate? An excellent example of how both of these seemingly contradictory concepts are manifested in the American system of government is seen in the healthcare debate. Despite the widespread popularity and relatively successful implementation of universal access to healthcare in most of the world's democracies, the American public appears fearful of a so-called "government takeover" of the healthcare system. The American healthcare system is more expensive, yet provides less comprehensive access to care than most major developed democracies.
The resistance to reform in America seems rooted in the idea that government is innately "bad." Yet while hatred of big government has a long-standing historical tradition within the United States, America has passed landmark government legislation in the past, such as welfare programs, food stamp programs, and Medicare. These programs, especially recently, have provided necessary assistance to people in dire straits and have become more popular over time. Americans seem willing to embrace government policies once those policies are taken for granted as part of everyday life, but remain afraid of government in the abstract. This reflexive anti-government sentiment, however, has allowed the American public's opinions to be easily manipulated by politicians. The resistance to government intervention is partially cultural, and politicians are able to fan the flames of anti-government rage to draw support for their reelection campaigns while simultaneously pandering to the insurance industry groups that fund them.
The idea that people are, in a sense, "born into" their political parties also applies to attitudes toward government. Since the Reagan Revolution in particular, Americans as a whole have been deeply suspicious of government intervention. Anti-government ideals have become a kind of dogma, even in the absence of factual evidence that government intervention will produce a negative result. Americans are less formally party-affiliated than before, but Hyman's notion that "a man is born into his political party" may be translated in contemporary terms as follows: people hold onto the ideological sentiments they heard articulated when they were young—such as the idea that government is the source of all their problems—and they respond readily to rhetoric that restates such ideas.
This phenomenon suggests that people are more controlled by, rather than in control of, the political process—especially if they rely upon news outlets like Fox News for information. Fox News is owned by a powerful right-wing media figure, Rupert Murdoch, whose outlets are dedicated to promoting corporate interests. Fox gave such prominent coverage to the anti-government, and carefully orchestrated, town halls and Tea Party events protesting healthcare reform that these voices appeared to represent "America" as a whole, rather than a specific party or interest group.
If politicians deploy anti-government ideological sentiment in their speeches, they are more likely to be reelected. If they use such ideology to frame particular issues that are confusing and ambiguous, they can more easily rally support for their causes. For example, people who are unhappy with their healthcare coverage, who have been denied insurance because of pre-existing conditions, or who pay high premiums without receiving employer-sponsored coverage might otherwise be open to the idea of a single-payer healthcare system. But if a shift away from private insurance is framed as "bad government telling you what doctors you can see and what procedures you can have" rather than as expanding choice, Americans prove highly responsive to anti-government, pro-individualistic rhetoric. Framing effects of this kind are well documented in political psychology and demonstrate how elite messaging shapes mass preferences.
Once the public is mobilized in a coherent fashion, politicians seem unwilling or unable to change public opinion, despite the availability of new media tools like the Internet. While the Internet has been effective in mobilizing a neutral public and rallying support during election campaigns, using new media to actually change public opinion appears to be more difficult—or is something that politicians are simply unwilling to attempt.
The level of popular, manipulated anti-government sentiment does, however, affect politicians in return. Healthcare reform supporters, fearful of alienating voters, have taken more conservative approaches to avoid appearing socialist and losing constituent support. This dynamic illustrates how inflammatory rhetoric can shift popular opinion, and yet how popular opinion, once mobilized, can in turn constrain the policy efforts of risk-averse politicians. Healthcare is such a complex issue that few people fully understand it, making the public especially susceptible to simplifying manipulation.
"Milgram, groupthink, and scapegoating in atrocities"
"Lynching, Jim Crow, and legitimized systemic violence"
After World War II, many theorists suggested that some societies were uniquely conformist in their orientation. It was said that Germans had a particularly authoritarian mindset, and that combined with widespread anti-Semitism, this produced a toxic combination. However, the examples of the American South, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda all indicate that there is nothing historically unique about scapegoating. The national histories of these nations may differ, and the names and psychologies of their leaders may vary, but genocide has not vanished with the defeat of the Axis powers. So long as a polarizing view of a group defined as beyond the pale of humanity exists within a society, the conditions for mass atrocity remain. Understanding this requires holding both psychological predispositions and structural historical forces in view simultaneously—neither alone is sufficient.
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