Beyond Pride and Prejudice: Can Insights from Relationship Psychology Improve Our Politics?

The divide between American liberals and conservatives is growing wider and more vitriolic, and it's not clear how these trends might reverse. This presentation adopts the vantage point of relationship psychology to offer new insight into the causes and nature of our surging polarization. It considers the overlap between (1) the key elements of Americans' political relationship today and (2) the most toxic marriage that relationship psychologists could concoct. Leveraging insights from moral psychology and cognitive science, the presentation suggests that inculcating a struggling family metaphor can mitigate the worst elements of our partisan divide, and, ultimately, help to cultivate a more constructive politics.