The Politics of Human Nature

It’s easy to call the entirety of our political system a bunch of crooks, and perhaps you’d be mostly right.

All things considered, they’re pretty awful. They’re all influenced by money and special interests, completely ineffective and mired in gridlock, and constantly conforming to the status quo rather than finding innovative solutions for the plight of the people they represent. I mean, what do we even pay you for?

A bunch of damn crooks.

Or so was my inclination looking from the outside in. But now I’m in a precarious place. I know just a little bit about enough to be dangerous, I suppose.

I earned my bachelors degree in Psychology, which is oddly fitting for politics as it turns out. I remember my favorite classes were in the sub-field called social psychology, often labeled as the “negative side” of the subject. It has that reputation because it’s based upon one basic premise: people are more influenced by situational factors than their internal characteristics.

People hate that because it means that you’re not as much of a unique and special individual as you think you are. Nope, it turns out 95% of us will react the same way in the same situations, even if we think we won’t.

People don’t like to hear that.

There are many infamous examples that usually involve something awful occurring in front of a group of people and not one of them doing anything to help the person in need. If you had asked these people before the event if they would step in and stop it, they would say “absolutely”! The reality is that they would have been wrong. We see this time and time again, and while terrible occurrences are the most clear examples, we exhibit similar behavior in a variety of situations in our day to day lives.

Alright, so what’s my point here?

Now having had a small taste of a political campaign, and having worked a small amount in the political and policy world, I am teeter-tottering between two world-views. In one I am a citizen looking in and disgusted by the complete ineptitude of the mass of individuals that govern our lives, and in the other I have a peek into the process of crafting law and navigating interests and personalities.

And I’m not going to lie, sometimes I encounter elected officials that I truly think are awful, but mostly they’re not. So what gives here? Do I just happen to mostly meet the smart, compassionate and dedicated ones?

I find this statistically unlikely.

So this brings me back to social psychology 101. It’s easy to blame our dysfunctional social and political systems on individuals or groups of individuals, but perhaps it’s not really them. Why do you think we give congress a depressingly low rating and yet our own representatives high ones?

We’re not fighting inept, corrupt leaders as much as we’re fighting a sick culture. Most of these leaders awoke bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, eager to tackle the complex issues that plague our society. Most were just as pissed off as we are by the dysfunction, but you know what? You have to bend to the system to get in, and once you’re in, it’s hard to get your head above water enough to realize what you’ve become.

It’s hurdle after hurdle.

You need money to get elected, period. How do you get money? You have to fundraise and the only ones who can afford to help are typically special interests. Well, I suppose you can say you’ll take their money and not be influenced, but man is that difficult after extending their kindness in your time of need.

It’s called ingratiation, another psychological phenomenon.

Alright, so you’re in office and you’ve managed to avoid being influenced by your donors. Now, it’s time to make policy that will affect the lives of people! But wait, there’s only one of you and so many problems to solve. You try your best to gather information from your constituency, but you can’t know everything and they don’t always know to come to you. Luckily for you there are policy experts from a variety of special interests that research and even draft legislation for you.

And well, they make some good points.

And oh crap, it’s already time for reelection and you haven’t even gotten 1/16th of the bills you want to pass through because they were stopped by legislative committees and powerful opposing interests. The only way to continue on with the change you wanted to accomplish is to raise more money and spend your time campaigning. And fortunately your special interest friends have your back and will help you in that endeavor, unless you didn’t give them your time or focus on their issues, and then you’re screwed.

Starting to see my point?

And that’s just the monetary aspect. Even if you managed to avoid that completely, you’d find yourself in the insanity that is partisan politics. Where the far left and the far right stand their ground so fiercely that compromise is not in their vocabulary and progress is nonexistent.

And before you know it, you’re the one who’s a part of that corrupt and inept group of individuals who govern this country. Even the most dedicated leader completely focused on avoiding the power of money and outside interests has no chance.

We need a systemic change, a cultural change. We need presidential campaigns that don’t cost a billion dollars to be competitive. We need to make the ability to influence policy accessible to the average person.

We need to do more.

So all of this reminded me of something very important that I learned in social psychology. I remember a really exasperated student asking the professor if there was any way we could prevent ourselves from following the masses and being influenced by the situations we find ourselves in.

She said yes, there is.

As it turns out, research has shown us that we’re significantly less likely to follow the crowd if we know that we’re prone to do it. We’re more likely to be the one who stops the fight, or calls the police, or stands up for the small kid when we know that we normally wouldn’t.

She said awareness is the key to changing behavior.

Alright, so here’s the deal. We can either choose to change our Facebook statuses and shake our fists at that mass of individuals governing us, or we can start to think about what are the situational factors that cause our elected officials to fall into the trap of corruption and ineffectiveness.

- How can we limit the influence of money in politics?

- How can we encourage compromise over staunch partisanship?

- How can we empower citizen input over well-funded special interests?

I’m not saying I know the answers, but I’m ready to put my thinking cap on.