“People from the Right were just hissing at me and hissing at me and that made me very nervous and it honestly kind of ruined my first speaking experience… It kind of made me realize that maybe I wasn’t going to get support from the people in the parties of the Right. I had assumed that I would just because we were in Union together.” However, “someone from the Party of the Right did come up to me and shook my hand and told me ‘good job!’ That was another thing that stood out to me” said Abigail Carpenter, the Chief Whip of the Progressive Party, recalling her first time speaking in the Yale Political Union.
Carpenter’s ambivalent experience reflects how the Yale Political Union makes an attempt to bridge political divides, yet emblemizes the tension and disagreement engendered by strong emotional attachment to political parties—a theme that is present throughout America.
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Polarization has become particularly widespread in recent years, with the members of both parties who “express very unfavorable opinions of the opposing party” doubling since 1994. There is a misconception of polarization as a solely political phenomenon, but it also involves an emotional and psychological component: affective polarization, which Professor Sean Westwood of Dartmouth describes as “an emotional attachment to a political party rather than a policy-related attachment.”
Affective polarization is increasingly and insidiously more problematic, having been rising for decades, as it creates aggression within society. Affective polarization also reaches a larger scope of individuals; “even voters entirely ignorant of the policy positions of their party can develop an emotional attachment to co-partisans and a negative view of the opposition.”
This phenomenon has only worsened as the Democratic and Republican parties have become more socially homogeneous. Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University, explains that when a person’s “partisan social identity” becomes combined with their racial, religious, or cultural identities, this mix of identities creates an emotional type of polarization that extends beyond solely parties and issues.
This is why, she writes, “a party loss generates very negative, particularly angry, emotional reactions…[driven] by a much deeper, more primal psychological reaction to group threat. Partisans are angered by a party loss because it makes them, as individuals, feel like losers too.” Partisans no longer react to reason and logic in the way that something purely political does; the emotional component makes disagreement difficult to reconcile.
Affective polarization and party attachment is dangerous, and it deeply shapes public perception of the political sphere. Citizens have a hard time thinking for themselves because of the broad nature of partisanship. Beyond simply shaping voting behavior, Princeton Professor Christopher Achen and Vanderbilt Professor Larry Bartels write, “a party constructs a conceptual viewpoint by which its voters can make sense of the political world,” which “identifies friends and enemies”
The large influence of partisanship leads to three main forms or aims of partisan rationalization, which is the phenomenon of perceiving the world in a way that lines up with our political beliefs. The first is to minimize “cognitive dissonance,” the negative feeling that one’s own beliefs don’t align with the candidates of their party; the second is “cognitive balancing,” which is not learning the views of one’s party so that they can pretend the party’s opinions match their own opinions; and the third is “partisan inference,” making assumptions about policies and people that is not based in evidence but off of party opinions.
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Yale is no exception to this national trend in political polarization. Carpenter discussed how, at Yale, as well as in much of the country, there is a sentiment among liberals that it is not their job to sway the views of those that they perceive as “too far gone.” This belief shuts down conversation between those on the Right and the Left, as those on the Left often feel that those on the Right are so morally repugnant that there is no redemptive value to communication. Carpenter finds this belief problematic and instead believes in the possibility of changing minds. She says, when “talking to a Conservative family member, I just decided to press further and have an actual conversation with them, and I ended up actually changing their opinions on the topic.”
Isha Brahmbhatt, a member of the Tory Party, has had “classmates here who I have had to split up or stop being friends with because of differences in political opinions that made them unable to respect me.” She discussed that there is party inference among Yale students, who “often [have] a view that conservatives are all…very pro-Trump, anti-immigration, white supremacist” and that people often brand all conservatives with those labels without actually talking to them about their beliefs, and, in the process, “make them feel very negative about themselves.”
According to Brahmbhatt, even certain classes at Yale are “so biased that the conversation inevitably twists one way or another and if you dissent from that consensus, you’re outcasted in some way…I’ve actually dropped classes because I felt like there’s no place for my voice to be heard at all.” She recalls taking “The Politics of American Public Policy” with Professor Jacob Hacker, who is known for having a “political agenda that [he] want[s] to impart very strongly,” and although the class was a lecture, leaving very little room for student participation, Brahmbhatt felt that he had an isolated perspective and did not make much effort to try to reconcile that.
Hacker did not respond to The Politic’s request for comment.
However, Brahmbhatt did note that she now sees more openness, at least amongst her own class as a senior because when students arrive at Yale, they come with their own prejudices. She believes that a product of being at Yale and meeting people with other perspectives who’ve grown up in different settings allows students to become more open-minded. In the case of a college campus, students are given an opportunity to grow out of polarized opinions and learn from each other—which is not as simple in the professional world where people across the divide are not often forced to interact.
On a majority liberal campus, Right leaning students find the Yale Political Union to be a safe space. Brahmbhatt considers the union to be one of the least polarized spaces on campus as its members are “subjecting [themselves] inevitably to the other side…choosing to attend those debates and to participate in that capacity, you are less polarized and are interested in genuinely discussing issues.” She told The Politic that the Political Union “is one of the few places where I feel the most comfortable on campus.”
The Yale Political Union provides a structured space to have difficult conversations across party lines. Carpenter feels that she is introduced to more new ideas with the Political Union and enjoys hearing varying beliefs and experiences to her own. However, she also described to The Politic that “there seems to be limited effect of hearing these differing beliefs.” Carpenter explained that she doesn’t think that people change their stances on social issues based on the Union. Instead, she takes away new knowledge on economic issues from speeches. John Kiely, a member of the Federalist Party and the Floor Leader of the Right, finds that people “want to stick to what their party is saying and not change their views up much.”
Conforming to one’s party certainly seems to be a prominent feature of the Union. Carpenter agrees that there is “definitely pressure within the Union to say something that your side would agree with.” She also feels a social divide between the parties, noting that “we don’t really interact with other parties. When I joined the union, I thought it would be more of a social space. I don’t think anyone would be mad at me if I went and talked to the other parties, but I definitely think that it might seem strange to intermingle.”
The tension between parties and between the Left and Right can often be intense. Reflecting upon her first speaking experience, Carpenter said, “I understand that we’re meant to disagree with each other…but [that was] the first time I realized how harsh of an environment the [Yale] Political Union can be.”
Kiely suggests that there is tension not just between the Right and Left but also throughout the Union, noting that there are “feuds between the parties on the Right… that can lead some parties to almost fight with each other…maybe even more than they even fight with the parties on the Left.”
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Ultimately, the Yale Political Union is certainly not an organization that escapes the polarization gripping both America and Yale, but its emphasis upon providing a space for all sides to share their views helps to foster a safer space where dialogue and listening is actively encouraged, a trend which should be embraced by the entire Yale community and throughout the nation.
However, the link between identity and party has grown dangerously strong, leading some students to be unreceptive to perspectives from other sides. Those in the Union are actively choosing to participate in an organization where they hear perspectives that differ from their own; yet, they rarely allow themselves to truly consider this alternate information because they are so strongly tied to their own beliefs.
A debate is supposed to be an opportunity to sway opinions; however, Union members often enter these debates knowing that no argument from the other side, no matter how compelling or accurate, could truly alter their opinions. The Yale Political Union is a step in the right direction, but in its current form is a manifestation of, not the solution to, polarization. Students must be willing to do more than listen—they must be willing to unhitch their identities from their politics to discover where their opinions firmly lie.