Today, young adults feel disillusioned by the government and are already hardened along political lines- many political scientists report this as unprecedented and unexpected. They have started believing that partisanship and personal identity are synonymous. The boundaries between self and the group have blurred at an exponential rate– leading to political polarization and a fall in trust, cooperation, and tolerance. There has been a shift in attitude from stating that I believe in ‘X’ to 'I am an ‘X.’ Now more than ever,our society is made up of violently opposing groups, ignorantly being the face of tribalism and cultural warfare. Political beliefs are no longer a larger part of a youngster’s values, but the whole value system itself.
Adolescents are emotionally labile and still under cognitive development, which leads them to react in risky, impulsive ways. Risk assessment is especially poor and dangerous when decisions against an outgroup member might amplify due to peer egging. Since there is an inherent need to belong to a relatable peer group, emotional contagion quickly takes form. It is easy for a 19-year-old to believe that his/her decisions will particularly make a huge difference in the world and ends start to justify the means. Problem-solving and perspective-taking are under development till the mid-20s and take place through an interaction of genes and the environment. When itchy explorers start to see different viewpoints and gain real-life exposure, the impulsivity and a need to ‘revolutionize’ the world and other people start to fade away. However, fast-paced homogeneity due to the internet may have delayed the onset of this maturation.
A large part of a young adult’s developmental trajectory is finding out who they are and creating an ‘I' identity. Till the early 2000s, it was easy to create a unique persona with expensive clothing but, the recent economic transformation has turned luxury clothing into an everyday commodity. Therefore, we have started depending more on certain beliefs to maintain our supposed integrity, leading to an overemphasis on group identity and party politics. This phenomenon has penetrated academics, ideology, and personal values. From scientific disciplines to choice of friendships, every social phenomenon has a political undertone. Academic discussions revolve around uninformed policy deconstruction. Simple curiosity to find out ‘whys’ are rarer to find, and demolishing every argument by the outgroup has become the sole objective.
This kind of political theatre has invariably led to two distinct classes: Us and Them. These boundaries are exacerbated due to social media usage with young adults being at the top of the consumption hierarchy. The internet creates echo chambers that reinforce fixed, anchor beliefs and keep an imperfect philosophy isolated, far away from criticism and rationality. Teenagers and young adults are very likely to make friends and foes on the internet based on how similar their belief structures are and search for information that confirms their held beliefs―a tendency formally known as confirmation bias. Therefore, if any user seems dangerous to a rigid order of thinking, they are simply shunned off or ‘ghosted’. This strangely resembles peanut allergies- if a child does not eat peanuts till middle childhood, their body develops a mechanism to avoid it. Similarly, showing people a different perspective leads the brain to perceive it as a threat. Most of us have peanut allergies today- ‘THEMS’ or outgroup members activate an aversive response and tend to decrease empathy and understanding, and symbolize danger. This strong polarized view of others and high clustering of ingroup members also activates emotional responses, creating momentum for affective polarization. The social identity theory by Henri Tajfel accurately demonstrates this bilateral connotation of Us Vs Them.
In a book by Hetherington and Rudolphin, the authors discuss the growing mistrust between opposing groups and its adverse effects on society. They report that people have almost no trust in the opposing government or its supporters. This is in stark contrast to the 1960s wherein people were less polarized in their opinion and managed to find a middle ground. This kind of affective polarization diminishes trust in the government and outgroup members. It creates an emotional bubble made of two halves: love, warmth, and cooperation for the ingroup and hate, dislike, contempt for the outgroup. These emotions lead to an identity-protective cognition, which only operates to look for data that maintains their coherent identity and keeps it intact. Therefore, identity does not define values, but fixed values define identity in this social discourse. In that sense, scientific testing backfires due to motivated reasoning and constructive criticism takes a back seat.
Institutions around us are supposed to counteract this tribe mentality by maintaining social contact between dissimilar people and establishing mutual trust. However, the iGen spends most of their time in web-based interactions which could serve as a breeding ground for homogenous and misinformed discussions. Fixed beliefs can have grave consequences in our everyday lives and society as a whole. Young adults are the future of society and have the potential to discover, change, and contribute immensely to science. We should aim to revive that collective industriousness and put it to good use.
Swaranjali Sharma
