Politics and its bitter daily controversies are now part of the media and even our lives with the same capacity for penetration as football or the tabloid press. Until very recently, Politics was not the main topic in the media, now it is almost always.
In it next study, still in preprint, it is suggested that being subjected to the daily ups and downs of politics, which forces us to position ourselves, polarizes us, disappoints us, makes us hate certain actors or show unbreakable adhesions to surf the cognitive dissonance, finally, acts as a stressor, evokes negative emotions and negatively affects our health.
Politics and psychological well-being
In the two experiments carried out in the cited study, more than a thousand Americans were asked to keep a diary for 14 or 21 days. At the end of each day, they had to record the political story they had thought about most that day and their emotional reactions. They were also asked to report other more general details about their psychological and physical well-being and their motivation to take any political action.
Next, an example of a person's 14-day diary. The blue line marks how negative your emotional response to politics was that day; Here, high means more negative, low means more positive. The dashed red line is a general measure of the person's psychological well-being. We can see that the two lines appear to move in a similar way. On the 4th and 8th, when they weren't thinking about politics, they felt pretty good, all things considered. On days with big political news, not so much.
In other words: politics can really ruin your day. In this study, Democrats and liberals had more negative emotional reactions to politics than Republicans and conservatives, but it's difficult to discern how much of that is about partisanship and how much is just about the specific content of political news on the days it was running. they are measuring.
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Politics has taken on a leading role in our daily lives, which also pushes us to have more opinions about it, to attend more protests and to try to change what is established, but this overexposure also negatively affects our psychological well-being. How, then, can one be committed to politics without suffering for it?
Many of the subjects reported using some type of strategy to deal with their negative emotions, such as “cognitive reappraisal” (for example, reminding oneself that a situation is not as bad as it seems, or that even bad situations can have negative parts). good) “distraction” (disconnecting from distressing conversations or changing the channel to disturbing news) or “expressive suppression” (hiding your emotions from others in daily life)
It is understandable that people often try to regulate their politically induced emotions; and successfully regulating these emotions through cognitive strategies predicted greater well-being, but also a weaker motivation to act. Although people can protect themselves from the emotional impact of politics, commonly used regulation strategies appear to reduce action.
The distraction is the most relevant technique, since it is linked to news evasion. In the first study, subjects reported trying to distract themselves from politics 80 percent of the days. Those who did so felt better, reporting lower levels of negative emotion. In the second study, subjects reported trying to distract themselves on 56 percent of the days, compared to the first.
But successfully distracting oneself from politics also, unsurprisingly, reduced subjects' interest in undertaking any form of political action: attending a protest, volunteering for a campaign, donating to a candidate, calling their senators, etc In other words, political news may make you miserable, but that misery can go a long way toward prompting you to do something about it. That finding was consistent among Democrats, Republicans and independents.
To examine whether an alternative approach to one's emotions could avoid this commitment, we measured the emotional acceptance in one of the experiments (i.e., accepting one's emotions without trying to change them) and it was found that successful acceptance predicted greater daily well-being, but not an impediment to political action.
Overall, this research highlights how politics can be a chronic stressor in people's daily lives, underscoring the far-reaching influence that politicians have beyond the formal powers they have been given.
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The news
Daily political controversies stress us and worsen our health
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.