This blog post is written on September 11, 2024, a day after
the first Trump-Harris televised debate. Private and public speculation
has been frenzied and frantic. Some have suggested or implied that the
fate of America, even of the planet, will be determined by the presidential
election—“the most important election in our history.” Democrat and
Republican partisans are employing every influence trick to nudge, scare, or
bludgeon you to vote their way.
I am not in that business. Rather, I have a modest
suggestion that is easier said than done: think, really think, for
yourself. Since neither you nor I have the time or expertise to parse
every essential detail required to make the best voting decision, I limit
myself to briefly discussing two related topics.
First, let’s consider an often mentioned but rarely
practiced mental activity – mindfulness. Our simple working definition is
mindfulness as your being aware of what is happening to you internally and
externally. For instance, when you see a Harris or Trump advertisement do
you reflexively nod or shake your head, smile or snarl? If your
response precedes any point that the advertisement proffers, you are not being
mindful. Of course, you can justify your affirming or negating reflex by
indicating – correctly – that the ad is meant to get your vote independent of
its truth value. You can justify that instinctive, mindless agreement or
disagreement with any bit of information about Trump or Harris, regardless of
its source or validity. As you may have experienced, many family or
friend feuds have their origins in the affirming or negating reflex that makes
any political discussion useless and/or contentious.
Why the absence of rationality? Chang, J., Kuo, C.,
Huang, C. et al. (2018) approach the issue indirectly by considering both
reactive and proactive cognitive control mechanisms. The former refers to
thought that is “top-down” in the sense that our preexisting thoughts overwhelm
our interpretation of present information such that they stifle the incoming
information. The latter is the opposite – bottom-up - in the sense that
incoming information is processed before preexisting thoughts significantly
impact it. The study in question found that high mindfulness
individuals were able to evidence adaptive reactive and proactive cognitive
control whereas low mindfulness ones relied excessively on proactive
control.
This finding leads us to a second often-mentioned concept –
confirmation bias. As you probably know, confirmation bias causes us
preferentially to seek information that reinforces our current beliefs and to
avoid information that contradicts them. That is, confirmation bias is
exclusively top-down/proactive.
Mindfulness, then, is most often an advantage in virtually
all mentation. Do you tend toward mindfulness? Psychologists would
like to be able to differentiate those who do from those who do not.
Toward that end, Altizer, Ferrell, and Natale (2020) investigated mindfulness
and personality types. They concluded that mindfulness was more prominent
in “well-adjusted” persons, since they are inclined to cope adequately with
stress. Similarly, mindfulness tended to be higher in ambitious persons,
but only those whose ambition included a high level of positive human
relationships. The Altizer group proposed that mindfulness was less
present in overly cautious, defensive, and excitable persons.
What does all this say regarding the Harris-Trump
election? The obvious conclusions are that we would do well to be as
mindfully open-minded as possible, and by refraining insofar as possible from
confirmation bias. You can facilitate those processes by:
1. Taking
a deep, stress-reducing breath when confronted with election ads and other
influencers, animate or inanimate.
2. Considering how your election attitudes are affecting your personal well-being, your interpersonal relationships, your descendants, and the welfare of our nation. Given that today is one more sad remembrance of the 9-11 tragedy, we all should be mindful that goverment leadership and policies literally have life and death consequences.
3. Trying to reduce your defensiveness.
4. Voting
according to policies rather than personalities.
A final point about which I never have seen research, but that deserves it: selective mindfulness. By that I mean being attentive and rational about one feature of reality and not about another closely related feature. Applying the idea to the election, that would concern being mindful about a democrat or republican, but failing to be so about the opposite-party candidate. Please think about whether selective mindfulness or MINDLESSNESS applies to you, and about how it could influence how you decide to vote.
Altizer, C. C., Ferrell, B. T., & Natale, A. N. (2020). Mindfulness and personality: More natural for some than others and how it matters. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/cpb0000189
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