Partisans make poor citizens

By Robin Lauermann

We like to promote the value of voting. But that is not the primary purpose of democracy. Rather, it is to promote deliberation that produces broader perspectives and more considered answers to our problems. Exercising the rights of our representative democracy - voting, free speech, etc. - is valuable only inasmuch as it produces said deliberation.

Alexis de Toqueville noted that "liberty is an arduous apprenticeship." If you wish to assert your rights, you must respect the responsibilities that come with them. Electronic and social media only magnify these concerns.

Raise your hand if you are tired of stump speeches, political ads, and robo-calls. Listening to the doom, gloom, and vilification presented by the campaigns this cycle has been deeply disappointing. The trouble is that some citizens take them as useful sources of information without understanding the issues or verifying claims. This problem arises for two particularly important reasons.

Partisanship, a person's attachment to a political party, is an emotional perspective, even for independents who lean one way or the other. Certainly emotions are an essential part of our being, but they should not guide important decisions. And while some scholars have found that partisan labels provide a rational shortcut to understanding politics, that is not the focus of contemporary partisanship.

Emotional partisanship is compounded by selective perception, our tendency to pay attention only to the sources that reinforce what we already believe. Study upon study reveals that public opinion is shaped by this force, not by open interaction with multiple perspectives.

More than 40 years ago, Murray Edelman identified the role of symbolic politics in influencing the public through perceptions of "malevolent and benevolent forces." My research over the past decade on people's evaluations of their representatives confirms that this is still a driving force. While we can't expect citizens to become experts on every issue or policy, such symbolic responses don't make for informed perspectives.

The problems our society faces are complex, and they require nuanced solutions. For example, policies that assume poverty is solely the result of circumstances beyond a person's control - or, conversely, solely the fault of the poor - will miss the root causes. Like a physician who misdiagnoses an illness and prescribes the wrong treatment, voters and officials who are blinded by ideology will not effectively address our social and economic infirmities.

The skills of appropriate citizenship can help us deal with this. One constructive skill is critical thinking, which resists our strong natural tendency to reject whatever doesn't suit our current sensibilities. Critical thinking, as defined by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, is "a habit of mind characterized by the comprehensive exploration of issues, ideas, artifacts, and events before accepting or formulating an opinion or conclusion."

Voters who practice such thinking can listen to multiple perspectives, identify valid evidence, and make considered decisions that produce better results. That's a far cry from the conflict that arises from emotional partisanship and selective perception.

Another important citizenship skill is information literacy, which the same group defines as "the ability to know when there is a need for information" and "to identify, locate, evaluate, and effectively and responsibly use and share that information for the problem at hand." It's hard to evaluate a problem or a potential solution without valid sources of evidence. Relying on campaign ads, interest group e-mails, or social media postings without considering other sources leads us down a very problematic road.

Here are two challenges for voters this Election Day. First, read something complimentary about a candidate you do not plan to vote for, and push yourself to see the strengths in his or her perspective. No current candidate's election would presage the ultimate ruin of our country.

Second, don't forward, e-mail, or post information on Facebook or Twitter without checking a reputable source for its accuracy.

To do less is a disservice to the values this country was founded on; to do less is to help keep us mired in conflict and paralysis.