Unpolarize Yourself

Life is better outside the polarized rabbit hole

I first started spending a lot of my time looking at public opinion data in 2017. Spend enough time looking at that sort of data, and it becomes part of the background embedded in your brain. One of the things that has become embedded in my brain is just how polarized we Americans are when it comes to politics.

Maybe that sounds like a “duh, obviously” observation. But I didn’t realize or expect that polarization would be as deep, as persistent, and as two-sided as it is.

In 2017 I came at the problem as a data scientist, but also clearly locked into one side of the political spectrum. I looked at Donald Trump and saw only bad things:

• someone with whom I had personal policy disagreements on most major issues

• someone who seemed to be both naive and uncurious about how government worked and how he could get things done

• a self-serving salesman who would lie and mislead to accomplish things for his own benefit

Those things struck me at the time as obvious truths.

And while I knew there were many Americans who agreed with President Trump on major issues (the first bullet), I assumed that once they saw his crazy actions, they would change their mind and would come around to my side on the second and third bullets.

That is not what happened. In fact, polarization mostly increased. For instance, in libertarian-leaning Montana, many people voted for Trump in 2016 and had mixed feelings about him when he first came into office. But by 2020, their affection for him grew and their reservations mostly disappeared.

I saw similar patterns on the left, and over time I realized I wasn’t immune to it. “Trump derangement syndrome” — in which people get intensely angry about a policy or approach because it was tied to Donald Trump — was (and is) real. If I’m being honest, it’s something that afflicted me for the first few years of Trump’s first presidency.¹

In surveys, we’ve seen that this sort of polarization affects a huge percentage of Americans on both the right and the left. Tying a completely unknown policy to Donald Trump immediately makes it polarizing. Let’s imagine a vague, nondescript piece of legislation called the “Improve America’s Waterways Act” and try to gauge how people feel about it. And we’ll ask about it in two different ways.

First: Do you support the Improve America’s Waterways Act? Most people would not register an opinion.

Second: Do you support Donald Trump’s Improve America’s Waterways Act? Suddenly 40% of the population passionately supports the bill and 40% is passionately opposed.

Even (fake, Grok-generated) kids are polarized

The Elephant and the Rider

Jonathan Haidt’s “the elephant and the rider” metaphor is one I think of regularly. In Haidt’s metaphor, our brain has an elephant and a rider. The elephant is the quick, gut-level decision-maker, while the rider is the informed, rational guide. We tend to think that the rider is the one running the show, but more often the elephant is the one in control. We think that the rider is thinking quite rationally about Donald Trump’s Improve America’s Waterways Act, but in reality it’s the elephant making a quick decision based on whether or not someone likes Donald Trump. Then the rider will (subconsciously!) make up some sort of argument about their deep moral stance on waterways.

Haidt’s research indicates that most of us think that the rider is making a rational choice, but usually what’s actually happening is that our elephant makes a gut-level decision, then the rider fills in a post hoc justification. We believe that the rider is deciding, but in fact the rider is just trying to justify the elephant’s actions.

To explain this with a slightly more real-world example, first imagine yourself as a liberal. President Trump announces Operation Warp Speed. As a liberal who can’t stand Trump, your elephant says this is a terrible idea (even though you don’t know what it entails), then your rider fills in a justification (it’s a waste of money, it may lead to an ineffective vaccine, it will wind up in the pockets of Trump’s friends).

Next, imagine yourself as a conservative. President Biden signs the Inflation Reduction Act. As a conservative who can’t stand Biden, your elephant says this is a terrible idea (even though you don’t know what it entails), then your rider fills in a justification (this will be wasteful government spending and include the most outlandish DEI requirements).

In either case, the person evaluating the policy doesn’t read the fine print; the best case scenario is that they read/watch/listen to stories in which the reporter shares their attitudes. The elephant is in control.

This is societally bad, and it’s also bad for us as individuals. If I have an immediate negative reaction to anything Trump does, it hurts me as a person:

• intellectually, it hobbles me and means I’m not looking at the full picture and coming to conclusions in an open-minded or rational manner

• interpersonally, it means I’m inclined to discount the 40%+ of the population that will almost always align on the opposite side

• psychologically, it makes me resentful and angry

• politically, it makes me less effective, because I’m much less able to get my head around the mindset of people who disagree with me

Values, Effectiveness, Integrity

Polarization is a huge challenge in the U.S. It makes us angry, divided, and largely resistant to new ideas and evidence that don’t line up with our preconceptions.

Polarization is exacerbated by the current media landscape, where most media is either demonstrably left-leaning or demonstrably right-leaning, and where the most extreme voices tend to be amplified on social media.

You can counter this by consciously seeking to allow the rider to be in control as much as possible.²

One way to do this is to try to disentangle the characteristics of political leaders and their policies. Evaluate politicians separately on three different axes: their policy values, their effectiveness, and their personal integrity. Look separately at these three characteristics: someone may have very different values from me (e.g., because they want abortion to be illegal, or they don’t care about facilitating innovation and growth) but is effective in getting things done and has a high level of personal integrity.

By explicitly disentangling values, effectiveness, and integrity, you can move away from the “Trump good/Trump bad” mentality that many of us have built up over the past eight plus years.

If you do this with an open mind, it should be the case that your evaluations for any given leader are mostly independent of one another. Mitch McConnell has policy values that are largely different from mine; his effectiveness is extraordinary; I think he has often brought less personal integrity than I would want in a Senate leader.³ Unlike McConnell, Lyndon Johnson had policy values that mostly align with mine; Johnson’s effectiveness (high) and personal integrity (spotty) had many parallels with McConnell. One Senate legend (and President) mostly agreed with me on the issues, one Senate legend mostly disagrees, but on the two other dimensions they are (were) quite similar.

Noah Smith is probably my favorite newsletter writer, and I’m consistently impressed by his ability to make independent judgments and not fall into the trap of polarized thinking. Like me, he is ideologically center-left and voted for Kamala Harris in 2024; I suspect he would also (like me) rate President Trump poorly on personal integrity. Yet Smith shows an impressive ability to evaluate different policies on their merits. He is not a fan of Donald Trump, but that does not lead him into the “everything Trump does is bad” rabbit hole.

Eight years ago, I was in that rabbit hole. Being there was quite a negative experience, both intellectually and emotionally. Today, I’m able to look at things a lot more even-handedly: most people whose views are different from mine are well-intentioned, both Republicans and Democrats have merits and challenges, and I’m not going to rush to judgment on a hot topic just based on whose name is attached to it.

If you’re in that rabbit hole today, I would encourage you to look around. Look for the good in the other side, try to read or listen to some non-inflammatory opinions with an open mind, and see if you can learn a few things. Life outside the polarized rabbit hole is a whole lot better.

1. My strong feelings (and polarization) in part led to me starting a company, so there are certainly some silver linings.

2. Reading about spirituality and different thought patterns has been helpful for me in this journey. In addition to Jonathan Haidt, I would recommend The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, The Inner Game of Tennis, books by Robert Wright, Eckhardt Tolle, Thich Nhat Than, as well as books on how different groups of people think differently (WEIRDest People in the World, Geography of Thought, Mindware). And I am a big proponent of reading books by people who disagree with you on specific issues.

3. Most notably in his effective but cynical and (in my opinion) hypocritical handling of Supreme Court nomination votes.