← Outrage Overload: Rethinking politics, division, and media
Outrage Overload: Rethinking politics, division, and media
Outrage Overload x The Politics Guys: Deconstructing Polarization
00:40:06
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- [00:04]
A
Welcome to Outrage Overload, a science podcast about outrage and lowering the temperature.
- [00:15]
B
To me it's much more. I mean, I study political institutions and incentives and to me, when you look at the incentive structure, it's for the most part about not so much getting people outraged, but capturing their attention. And outrage is fantastic at doing that. And so honestly, if happiness and light led to clicks, donations, engagement, we'd see a ton of that.
- [00:40]
A
Regular listeners know that earlier this year this show joined the Democracy Group, a curated network of podcasts dedicated to examining the health of our democracy, civil discourse and civic engagement. Today we are doing a special crossover episode with one of our stellar network colleagues, Michael Baranowski, host of the Politics Guys. Michael is a political scientist and professor whose work focuses on international relations, political institutions, and how states respond to crisis and conflict. If you aren't familiar with his show, it's a great resource where a bipartisan team analyzes current events without the usual shouting and partisan spin. In this conversation, Michael and I pull back the curtain on the outrage industry. We break down the cognitive biases that make us susceptible to manipulation, how our own clicks feed the ecosystem, and practical evidence based ways we can break the cycle. But before we dive into that conversation, let's take a quick look behind the curtain of how you're hearing this. Right now, the media landscape is consolidating faster than ever. When massive conglomerates and billionaire controlled networks dominate the distribution channels, public debate thins out, information gets optimized for outrage, or worse, reshaped by political and regulatory pressure. Outrage Overload is completely independent. We don't have a corporate cushion or a partisan billionaire backing us. We rely entirely on you. If you value non partisan science based analysis that respects your intelligence, join our community, head over to outrageoverload.net Contribute where you can buy us a copy of support via PayPal or upgrade to a paid substack subscription. Your support keeps this ecosystem free and independent. And that independence is exactly what allows us to look objectively at what's coming next. We're skipping the usual warmups and going straight into the meat of how the attention economy shapes media behavior. Picking up right at the start of our deep dive here is Michael Baranowski.
- [02:38]
B
So with that out of the way, I thought we could get into maybe the sort of things that people often misunderstand. Now, you've had a lot of folks in Outrage Overload who study how Americans, how they see the other side. And when people are asked to describe their political opponents, the enemy, I suppose, as we often see them now or so many do. How accurate are they and what surprised you the most when you really dug into the research and talked to folks about this?
- [03:10]
C
Yeah, yeah, we definitely have this misperception about the other side. You know, one of my first guests was Peter Ditto. When I asked him this question, like, well, do we, do we see them as, you know, more extreme than they really are? Do we see them as disliking us more than they really are? And I just had this whole list of things and his answer was yes, yes, we see all of those. We do all of those things. And so yeah, there's definitely that. That's a truth about it. I mean, we have to admit that there are differences. It's not like a Kumbaya thing. We'll all come together and everything will be great. But you know, we definitely misperceive many things, particularly in the sort of animosity the other side might have. For us, that's one of the big ones. And we're off by quite a bit. And you know, ironically, it's sort of the more you pay attention to politics, the more that's true. So yeah, and I think for me the biggest surprise of all of it, and we'll probably talk more about this as we go, is just how hard it is to recognize it when you're sort of being a party to it.
- [04:04]
B
And I think one thing that surprises a lot of folks is that there's this assumption that knowledge, that more information can fix this sort of thing. I mean, there's the. But, but you know, when I, what I used to tell students is there's a difference between ignorance and irrationality. And ignorance, you can, you can help out with more information, but irrational views about, well, they oftentimes can actually be hardened. Because it seems to me that so much of the information diet that people who are very active in politics get is very much a one sided sort of. Well, really plays into their confirmation bias. At least that's my take. What do you think?
- [04:46]
C
Yeah, I mean, confirmation bias is one you hear a lot. There's also motivated reasoning comes into this a lot too. And again, Peter Ditto talks about sort of moral motivated reasoning, which is even sort of more powerful. And so when our politics are involved, and particularly when we start seeing our side as sort of the righteous side, then we apply that filter to the information that we're taking in and we don't even always realize we're doing that. And so again, it's kind of a challenge because we think we're more informed. But We've really done a lot of filtering on that information. And you could go as far as saying, like, how dangerous is this information for my side or my identity even? Rather than how true is it? Right. And we don't really know we're doing that, but that's a big filter that we're using there, or a way that we're looking at information. So if it's threatening to our side, we'll tend to do a lot of rationalization to sort of explain why it's not inaccurate or something, or there's something not quite right about it. And it creates this feedback loop where we take the information in and we filter it through that lens that gives us even a stronger sentiment of that, oh, we're right. We're on the righteous side, because we keep doing that selective perception of it, and it just kind of becomes a negative cycle where the wall we're sort of putting up to protect our identity and our. And our view of how we want the world to be becomes just more and more powerful.
- [06:13]
B
I think we talk a lot about misunderstanding other people, their viewpoints and their motives, and that's huge, for sure. But it also seems to me that there's another kind of misunderstanding we maybe talk about a little bit less, and that's misunderstanding the system itself. Things like expecting that a president can essentially be the CEO of the country and act accordingly, or not understanding that just because you have a majority in the Senate doesn't mean that you can just do whatever you want, you know, or even more than that, just the whole constitutionally designed system of checks and balances and why that's actually a good thing. And we don't talk about that as much as those other kinds of understandings, but it seems to me that those are also incredibly important. And I'm wondering, what do you think is kind of driving this lack of understanding, and why don't we hear more about it?
- [07:11]
C
Yeah, I mean. Yeah, I mean, I love this question because a lot of people think there's sort of a magic silver bullet to all these things, right? And we'll just fix them all. But these are challenging problems. I mean, one is clearly you can speak about sort of a weak civics education, and there's probably a lot of room for improvement there. But, you know, that's not everything. You know, there's more to it than that. I think our media environment, we're fragmented, as we talked about. We kind of go in our own silos that, you know, helps us in those silos. You know, we're not going to get a physics, a civics lesson, right? We're going to get, you know, someone's holding up a sign saying I want this thing to happen, you know, like, okay, that's great, you're holding up the sign. How does that actually happen? Do you understand what, what's involved in making that happen? And they typically don't. And then, and then in reality also, our political system is kind of complicated and non intuitive, right. And so there's a little bit of a heavy lift to really understand all this stuff. And then even getting back to the why, why was it built that way? That seems weird, right? And then so, so it, I think all of those things play in and a big piece in our modern media environment is short attention spans and all that. Again, nobody wants a civics lesson. They'd much rather be told, you know, here's a thing to get mad about, right.
- [08:21]
B
It always was striking to me because part of sort of a yearly or semester long or ritual was during one exam I would almost always ask the standard essay question, how does it explain how a bill becomes a law? And these were college students, so already higher than average education, that sort of thing. And they'd heard me talk about it in class. Presumably they were awake for part of it at least and had read about it. And still I would read through these answers and say like, my God, if this is. And it would blow my mind. There's so much that they missed. And so it really brought home to me how difficult it is to try. Like you said, when, when people come in and just say, well, we can just fix it. The problem is the evil folks on the other side. But, but it's like people don't know. It'd be like going in and saying, well, you know, we want to remodel this house. Well, that's a load bearing wall. We don't need to worry about load bearing walls. Let's just knock this sucker down and we're good to go. And, and I think that makes it so much harder because you're right, it's complex, it's boring stuff. But the thing is, is just like with housing systems, I mean electrical, plumbing, these things are awfully important. And if you don't understand them and you just start KN down, well, you're going to be in for a lot of grief. And a lot of people I think just don't really appreciate that.
- [09:38]
C
Yeah, for sure. And I think like you say, there's the whole creating how does the bill become a law piece. But then there's even more to that because now you have a law. How does that, like how does the law isn't self enforcing so how does the law sort of work in practice? And what happens now that you have a law? And all of that stuff gets complicated. And I think our American system in particular, you know, is really built on this idea that you need coalitions to make things happen, you know, with, with the sort of checks and balances idea and all these other aspects of it. It was built that way that you would build these coalitions because that's kind of how we started a bunch of little independent. They weren't even states yet, a bunch of little independent colonies that didn't agree about much and they're going to have to try to form this government somehow. And it was, you know, they didn't even like each other, a lot of them. Right. And so they kind of. It was kind of based around that model and we've lost touch with that in a lot of ways because you know, social media and we want our quick results and all that. We think, yeah, there should be able to just some place I can just do this one thing and it'll mag. Fix all these problems. And even the idea of, you know, building coalitions and compromise has all become sort of bad words. Like they're all like, oh, I'm. The word compromise means I'm sort of compromising some moral important part of my identity. And you know, but it's like as long as you hold that I did a whole episode on this in 2024 kind of leading up to the presidential election, then that I called America on the knife's edge because if we both only where basically, you know, as an electorate, we sort of just sort of magically want the other the opposing views to sort of just go away. If they would just go away, everything would be great. But it's like that's not really realistic when it's half the country.
- [11:12]
A
Right.
- [11:14]
B
You know, one thing I really appreciate about outrage overload is your commitment to lowering the temperature and explaining why that's a good thing. But I think there are some instances where, you know, some things genuinely are outrageous. I mean, when you see massive corruption or like horrific cruelty, real abuses of power. And I think it can be really challenging to try to find a way to draw the line between justified outrage and sort of performative. Well, not even performative outrage that is sort of created and foisted on us. And what do you think about how we navigate that tension or try to at least.
- [11:54]
C
Yeah, you Know, we've had Kurt Gray, who is a moral psychologist on this several times, and he's got a whole new world that kind of. About moral psychology that kind of surpasses or supersedes a lot of the John Haidt sort of work. And, you know, he has a book out you can read about called. Called Outrage, with an exclamation point, of course. And yeah, so we talk about that a lot that, you know, and that's one reason why so. So outrage has a purpose, as you say. Right. I mean, sort of historically and even going back, like, I don't know, people. There's some people aren't super bought into the whole evolutionary psychology thing, but you could at least understand the idea of it, that outrage even, you know, was something that was probably maybe invent early on to kind of keep norms within tribes and so on. Right. So when somebody was out of line or something was happening out of line, we would get outraged about it and we would sort of bring it back to norms. And we still see that. Right. I mean, you're in it. You're. Something's going on. Somebody's polluting your local river, and we all get kind of mad about it and we go talk to, you know, we write petitions and we do these things, and that can be. It definitely serves that purpose. Right? It serves a purpose in that way. And. But. And the reason why I talk about why one of the show's title is Outrage Overload, because that sort of doesn't work when you're sort of always dialed up to 11. Right. There's no place to go from there. And. Yeah. So picking out the things that we should probably be more outraged about, there's probably a lot of stuff we should be more outraged about, but we're sort of so swamped with everyday new outrages coming at us that it's very hard to do that.
- [13:23]
B
And there's this term outrage industry, and I kind of like it as a quick descriptor. But also it has this sort of conspiratorial things. There are a bunch of folks meeting in some back room, you know, how can we make them angrier? And so forth. But to me, it's much more. I mean, I study political institutions and incentives, and to me, when you look at the incentive structure, it's for the most part about not so much getting people outraged, but capturing their attention. And outrage is fantastic at doing that. And so, honestly, if happiness and light led to clicks, donations, engagement, we'd see a ton of that. So I think for the most Part, most of the media and most commentaries don't really care about outrage in and of itself. There are some exceptions when there are truly outrageous things, but for the most part, it's really just all about capturing attention in an increasingly fractured environment. I think, at least I don't know what you think about that.
- [14:18]
C
Yeah, I mean, for sure, those incentives drive certainly a huge part of it, particularly in social media and even in traditional media. The likes and click and attention revenue model creates a lot of this. I would say the one place where that may be a little bit different is in the political elite landscape itself, because politicians have kind of figured out that if I can keep people riled up and mad at the other side, it makes my life easier. I can campaign on that. I don't have to really worry about my policies. I won't be held accountable to my policies. As long as I get on and people hear me saying how bad the other side is, they'll sort of ignore what I do. And we, we sort of see this in the numbers. Right. My constituents will mostly ignore what I actually do as long as I sound like I'm hostile to the other side. So I think from that end, it has become part of a strategy like just keep them all mad at each other and again, probably water flow downhill kind of model. But they know it works, so they keep doing it and we're the ones that can stop it.
- [15:18]
B
Well, I think even for politicians who might not want to go in that direction, so much is pushing them that way that they almost have to. Once so many people do it that way, then they almost have to opt in just as a matter of political survival. And I think there are plenty of folks in Congress, not plenty, but certainly more than a few who find this incredibly distasteful. But just say, well, this is just how politics works, and I am simply
- [15:44]
C
playing the game 100%. And I think we should also note that there are folks that are trying to do better at this. You know, you sort of have the Spencer Cox as sort of a model of trying to do less of this and trying to create an environment where, you know, they did. They ran some ads where, you know, they had the two candidates come on and say, you know, hey, this guy's got terrible policies, but, like, he's a good person and he's a father and he's, you know, got kids and this kind of stuff, and they sort of did that kind of thing in these ad campaigns. And I think that's a good place to start. If we were holding or even just looking at legislative performance, like how many bills did they actually put forward? And this kind of stuff rather than how many times they got on TV somewhere. If we held our legislators to that kind of thing and we started voting out these people and we started taking action, you know that a lot of that's on us to change our, our behavior and our, and, and, and to opt out of this kind of behavior. But are this kind of. Yeah. What we see online, what we see from our, from our politicians and of course what we see on tv. But it's, it's challenging because like you say, it's the, the, the gravity to suck you in is pretty powerful.
- [16:51]
B
Well, I think especially with the rise of small dollar fundraising and campaigns, when you think about the sort of messages that are going to appeal to someone, it's not going to be some sort of nuanced institutional explanation of here's my 12 point plan to do XYZ. It's going to be, hey, they're coming for you and everything and everyone you love act now. That is going to bring people in in a big way. And so that again is just another, that's largely a technological environment change. That just sort of, that sort of biases toward more outrage, it seems to me.
- [17:25]
C
Yeah, I mean, I've had some of these conversations with folks in nonprofit space that isn't politically, isn't political, you know, like animal rescue and stuff like that. Right. And it's the same thing. You're not gonna, you know, you want to get people to get motivated to do something. You're going to show the starving dog. Right. Like, and you could argue that that's very outrage driven media. Right. I mean, you're definitely trying to get me outraged about the fact that somebody's letting this dog starve. And you tell those people not to do that anymore and they're going to be like, well that's the tool that we have. Like we're, that's what we're going to do. So you see the same thing in the political world, for sure.
- [18:00]
B
Yeah.
- [18:01]
C
So you're right. I mean there's, Wait, now you're making me say maybe there's no solution to this. But no, I think a lot of it is us just getting more realistic about it and are understanding the, you know, the consequences of letting this keep spiraling. I mean, that's what has to get out there more that this doesn't end well. Like, we know historically this doesn't end well if you let this animosity continue to spiral. Like this, you know, like I talk about how we've been telling ourselves the other side is evil, you know, for so long, we believe it now. Right. And that, and we know that opens up all kinds of bad potential bad behavior. Right. We become more open to non democratic things. We even, you know, that can even, and obviously it starts heading potentially to even violence. Right. We start seeing violence as a reasonable. These people are threats to our existence and therefore what are we going to do? But violence, it makes sense like it's justified. And so that's, to me, I think that's why it's different than some of these other things is we have to understand that this doesn't end well and the consequences are so much to not seeking the peace here to some degree.
- [19:04]
B
Well, it's interesting, we find villains everywhere, but when you ask almost, I'd say well over 99% of people it's, are you the villain in this story? No, of course, no. You know, I'm the hero. We know that. But you know, we can't all be the heroes. Someone's got to be the heavy. And that means, you know, it could be you. But anyway, so I think what a lot of folks on, especially on the left would say is, listen, if you want to understand outrage and the media outrage system, you got to look at the right, you know, with the Gingrich revolution essentially trying to destroy trust in Congress to break the Democratic stranglehold on it, which they'd had for generations before that, literally. And then you see Fox News and a bunch of other outlets that honestly make Fox look like, you know, almost left wing sometimes. And so I think a lot of folks on the left to say, listen, this outrage is kind of asymmetric. And so I don't want to lower the temperature because if we lower the temperature, that's essentially disarming and ceding that ground, that very effective ground to the right. Now, the left, the left would sort of, the right would say the exact same thing about the left. But what are your thoughts on that?
- [20:09]
C
Yeah, I'm really, really glad you, you brought this up because, you know, this is a debate or a conversation that goes on a lot kind of in this whole bridge building movement, like, are we part of the problem kind of thing, like in some way. Right. But you know, I'll, I'll point to Danigal G. Young has a book called Irony and Outrage that I can, you know, that might be a good, good thing to take a look at. But, and I'll be using some of that for, to answer this question. But. So there's truth to that. Right? So there's some truth to that. Right. But it's a lot more symmetric than people actually think. Right. Because while the, you know, the left doesn't have a Rush Limbaugh type, I mean, when they try to do that or a Sean Hannity or whatever, when they've tried it, it hasn't worked. It doesn't land with the left. And there's a bunch of science about sort of the reasons why these different traits, these different psychological traits and ways to ways of cognition about why that is. But then the right would also say the left controls the vast majority of popular media. And within that, there's plenty of outrage targeting in the style that the left appreciates. Right. And that's comedy and satire and sort of the cerebral kind of Rachel Maddow style stuff that seems like it's not it doesn't sound like Rush Limbaugh. They're not yelling, but they're achieving some of the same things. So there's an asymmetry in style, for sure, but that doesn't necessarily reflect asymmetry in sort of function or ultimate goals. Right. So both of that outraged, both of it is sort of an outrage delivery system that's just tuned for the audience they're trying to speak to. So, you know, the left's version feels less like outrage because it's kind of wrapped in this kind of smart humor and stuff like, and satire and things like that. But it's really achieving some of the same end. So I think we underestimate how much outrage media there is targeted to the left. And it's very effective stuff. Right. It works. And because it's not shouting, so we don't see it quite the same way. So, yeah. And we could definitely talk more about some of those, you know, underlying psychological properties, if we're interested in that. But suffice to say that there, you know, generally, and again, we have to be really careful painting with broad brushes and all that. But generally, conservatives gravitate toward, you know, a sort of that sort of emotionally stuff that like a Rush Limbaugh will do. And people on the left tend to gravitate towards irony and satire and this kind of smirky knowledge kind of stuff.
- [22:35]
B
And there's some, in some ways, I think you make a case that that might actually be less productive because it's not just saying that kind of snarky, sarcastic sort of thing. It's not just saying you're wrong, it's saying you're wrong. And also you're stupid.
- [22:50]
C
Exactly.
- [22:50]
B
And you know, obviously that's a big critique of the left, at least, especially the progressive left among a lot of folks on the right. And I think there's really something there. I mean, the manner in which you express outrage can make a real difference. And if it's just, well, this is wrong. Well, that's one thing, but this is wrong. And you are an evil moron. That's a whole other level. And to me, that's a big problem with some of that. I enjoy some of this stuff, but. But I understand how toxic it can be in, you know, two. Two great quantities.
- [23:26]
C
Well, exactly. They're both achieving kind of the same idea because, I mean, Rush Limbaugh style stuff does the same thing. I mean, he just sort of tells you they're stupid, right? He doesn't sort of sneak it in and snark. He just comes out and says it. So they both kind of achieve the same thing. Like we're the smart ones surrounded by dangerous idiots, basically, Right?
- [23:44]
B
Yeah, yeah, exactly. But, you know, I wonder too, the extent to which people use outrage as sort of a signaling device to say, hey, I am serious about politics. Because if you're not, if you're not, how's it going? If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention. Right. I think. Or something along those lines. And I think that's a problem because I think you can be deeply engaged without having outrage be your default reaction to everything. But I think for a lot of folks, they can't make that separation. No, this is. If I'm serious about politics, am mad all the time.
- [24:21]
C
Yeah, it's definitely difficult. And if you think about what people were mad about 15 years ago, and they were probably just as mad all the time. Right. But now you're saying, well, these new things are way worse. And I'm. But I'm still about the same amount of mad. You know, it's like, so clearly this has sort of been a problem just keeping that level at the max all the time. But yeah, there's definitely an aspect of it that, that there's this sort of signaling level for sure. Like, it's true. It's like tribal nature. Right. I'm going to show them a good member of the tribe and being outraged, being adequately outraged, too. Like, sufficiently outraged. Right. Is a big factor in that.
- [24:57]
B
And you know, social media obviously is a huge part of this. But of course, it's important to point out that American politics has been full of outrage from the beginning. I think back to not that I was around for it. But the 1800 presidential election, I mean the Jefferson camp, says Adams, he has this hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of, of a man nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman. And Adam shoots back and says Jefferson's a mean spirited, low lived fellow, the son of a half breed Indian squaw sired by a Virginia mulatto father. I mean like, whoa, there's a lot of this stuff, I mean, going way back to the beginning, these revered. Right. Framers. But man, that's some gutter politics. And so I think folks might wonder, you know, what's genuinely new about what we're seeing today compared to, well, the presidential campaign of 1800. What do you think the significant differences are here?
- [25:54]
C
Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's a great point. I mean you can go back even farther than that, right? I mean printing press and all the things that happen with that. But, but yeah, so, so the idea of outrage and dirty, nasty politics and all that is definitely not new. The idea of media challenging media environments is not new. And yeah, there's been a whole wave of this and there's a great book that kind of talks about a lot of this. The Outrage Machine by Tobias Rose Stockwell. And, but, but yeah, I think if you look at some of the substantial differences. Significant differences with what? With the media environment, particular social media that we have now, an online environment, there's, there's of course one is just the speed and spread of, of information. Right. So that's one obvious one. Right. Stuff gets out there way faster and you know, the whole, lots of research shows that sort of misinformation spreads faster and sticks more powerfully than accurate information. So we know that's a big factor in it. And even trying to do all these, all these ways of trying to interventions to try to counteract that, you know, it's really challenging because it's already out there by the time the intervention happens and all this kind of stuff. So it's all, there's that side of it, the other piece that's a big piece here. And Jonathan Stray is a great source to sort of learn about these kinds of things, the tech and social cohesion work and some of the other work that they're doing. But another big piece of it is just the ability to create this sort of false consensus idea, right. Where it's really easy to create your filter bubbles now or, and again, I don't even like filter bubble. It's you know, an information silo type thing. It's your sort of information environment. And it's really easy to create that in a way that didn't exist before. If you look, you know, back when these sort of rural or even suburban kind of environments, these are very heterodox environments. And you saw the people you saw locally and that's who you connected with. And so if you were. Had a really extreme view, somebody in that network's gonna be like, dude, you're kind of off the rocker over here, right? This is like someone's gonna call you out on that. And there's. But there's gonna be. But they're also gonna be very tolerant of people with these heterodox views. Cause that's kind of what they ran into all the time. And they sort of lived with that. Like, oh yeah, I agree with you on these three things. And I don't about these three things. And I just like that's cool. Like that's just how it is. Like we differ on these things. And it was not the kind of, it wasn't the kind of identity and connection and you would like I say you'd get that was just the environment. That's not the way it is now. Because I can selectively just go build whatever network of connections I want and I can very easily isolate in that to the point where again, you talked before about everybody sort of thinks they're the normal one. That's even true of like flat earthers. They see themselves as the objective observer with the facts. And when other people get the facts, they'll come around and see that, you know, the earth has always been flat. And you guys are living in this fantasy world. But so the point of that is that it's really easy to build that in social media. And it can have this. The false consensus idea is you can build something in a telegram group or something like that. Very extreme stuff. Like I don't even go into. I'm to a point now where that media, even the more extreme media that you mentioned before, the kind of. Some of the right wing, that's even too neutral for me, that's too soft for me. So I'm now building something even more extreme on telegram. But it has this perception that it's a very popular belief because everybody in the telegram group is there. It's a big telegram group, it's got millions of people in it. So millions of people see this the right way. So I'm in the majority. This is the majority view. And I create this idea of that because it Looks that way. I could not do that without social media because I could not go find those millions of people that have that really extreme view. They weren't in my neighborhood. I might have found one other one or something. Right. But I wouldn't have been able to build this big image of a hugely popular idea. So I think that's a big piece of social media that we often just don't see, that it lets us create these very isolated information silos.
- [29:40]
B
Yeah. I feel like maybe these days the four most dangerous words in English language are do your own research. Because you mentioned, you know, a confirmation bias. And it's so easy to pick, cherry pick those sort of things where you get to the point where. And that's. I feel it's even more dangerous because you say, well, no, I have data, I have information. But the thing is, most people don't understand that doing your own research does not necessarily mean just haphazardly looking around the Internet for stuff that agrees with you. And glomming onto that research, like anything else, is a skill that needs to be learned and developed. This is maybe coming from a biased perspective, someone who taught research methods for a lot of years, but it actually is a fairly technical skill to understand a lot of these things. And I would always tell students, the first thing you should do going into any research is to remind yourself all the time that everyone is biased, including me. And the question isn't if I'm biased or if they're biased, but to understand how. And you need to start with yourself with that. And so many people just eliminate what I see as that critically important first step is saying, what are my biases?
- [30:49]
C
Yeah. And again, it's a challenge because it's very hard to detect your own biases. Right. You don't see them as biases. To me, they're just like common sense. Like, everybody must see it that way. And so that can be a big challenge. But, yeah, as a. You know, it is one of the most scary things when I see folks and I've seen the kinds of things, you know, the way that they do quote, unquote, research, and when they talk about, oh, I'm gonna go do more research, I'm like, oh, that scares me if I know what that really means.
- [31:15]
B
Exactly. But I think, you know, getting into what people can do in some way, I almost feel it's like, I love potato chips and pretzels and late night snacking, and I could stand to lose, let's say, five to seven pounds. I'll be charitable myself. And I know what I need to do. This is not that comple. Just don't snack after dinner. It's fairly straightforward, but yet I feel it's the same way with this sort of outrage environments we expose ourselves to. We all know what we should be doing. We shouldn't be living on our phones. We shouldn't be just automatically responding to every hot take with a hot take of our own. Yet it's advice that's straightforward but incredibly difficult. I know you've talked to a lot of people who come to similar conclusions about what we need to do. What sort of ways based on the folks you've talked to. I mean, are there better ways to try to go about this and not completely fail like I do with, you know, after dinner potato chips?
- [32:19]
C
Yeah, well, you know, it's. It's an area that I really try to spend, spend a lot of time in because I feel like in many ways I'm more connected to the average person with my little show than a lot of the academics are and a lot of the sort of. Even practitioners, you know, sometimes that kind of. They almost live in their own little. Everybody wants to. People have already bought into sort of the bridge building. The folks that get involved in. A lot of those have already bought into it. And so that's different than the average person who often viscerally reacts to it like that doesn't sound good. Why would I do that? Why would I want to talk to these people that I think are evil and have bad intentions and that kind of thing? And I think that's a place where figuring out how to. What I spend a lot of time trying to do is talk about it more in a selfish way in the sense that. Because a lot of people see it as why would I help that other person if I did this? Right. But you know, all the things that I try to talk about, all the ways it's better for you. And even if you want to be an advocate and you want to try to get that person to change their views and want to persuade them, you know, you're not going to do that very well if you don't even understand their fears and their concerns and this kind of thing. Right. So there's that aspect of it that, you know, for the most successful advocates understand their adversaries, you know, and understand their fears and concerns. And so that's one aspect of it. But then there's. Yeah, all the mental health side of it, it that try to make, I try to make it a little bit more of a of a, you know, you're helping yourself more than you don't, you know, you don't think of it as you're helping somebody, you're being charitable to someone else. You're doing this for yourself. And, but it could still be hard because people do really resist it because you know, as you know, you've been having these conversations for a long time. It can be challenging and it's hard and it's mentally, it's, it's a cognitive load to do it, you know, and, and yeah, why would I do that when I could just still see them as bad and yeah, have another bag of chips. But a lot of it is easier than you think. Like you even said put your phone down, things like that, right? You know, start time blocking or something or find ways to, to get off the phone from when you go to bed. Especially like it's a really bad time to be doom scrolling at bedtime. But. And it sounds easy but like, but I like my doom scrolling but. But you really don't. Your body doesn't like it. But yeah, so. But it seems trite to tell people stuff like that or even just box breathing and some basic meditation and stuff like that. Again, it, it sounds trite and people kind of get turned off to it maybe because it seems too easy.
- [34:35]
B
But I guess there's another way to look at this. To say, okay, there are things that people can do and most of us understand those things. And so then it's on us. We are the creators or the sustainers of this system. But I think a lot of other folks might say, well listen, hold on a second. There is this system that is pushing us relentlessly in one direction. We did not create this system. We individually, you know, it was I individually. And yet you're telling me that I have to somehow summon up this force of will 24, 7, 365 to fight against this. Well, that's BS. Why don't we make some structural changes to make it easier for everyone to not engage in this constant outrage. And I really feel sympathetic to that argument. But honestly, I'm not entirely certain. I think when you press folks, well, what exactly would you have us do structurally to change things? That's a lot trickier. And I'm wondering what do you think? Are there things or is this just sort of. Does it inevitably come down to individual initiative and effort and willpower?
- [35:44]
C
Yeah, well, I think it's, you know, if we get out of this, I think it's going to be sort of coming from both Directions. Right. But a lot of it starts at the ground level. You know, a lot of it starts with us. And I don't think think you can have an environment where we can really seriously look at the structural stuff until we lower the temperature kind of at the sort of individual level a little bit. Right. And so I think it kind of goes hand in hand. And I don't have the magic answer of what these structural solutions are. I'm happy there's a lot of smart people out there that are sort of looking at some of that. And I'm encouraged that. I think that we'll see some things there. But sort of similar to a very earlier conversation talking about how difficult it is to get how a bill becomes a law, you know, any structural changes like that are really hard. And in a very divided world, you know, where things quickly become politicized for no reason, basically this thing should not be politicized, but it becomes politicized. It's very difficult to make structural change because somebody sees it as a win, lose. And it can be hard and it can be hard to get through. But yeah, I think it's gonna have to be both. We're gonna have to do some of both. We are. I mean, I'm encouraged also by the idea that a lot of people like you talked about, you're sort of feel politically homeless. And I think there's a lot of people that feel that way. I think there's a lot of people that are sort of looking like they sort of just have this intuitive sense that the system, quote unquote, is not working for me. So, I mean, and it's a little dangerous there. Cause I also worry about what changes do they want? Like, where is that going? But I also think people are open to looking at, you know, some of these structural changes, you know, but. And of course, I do get concerned about that. Cause I think a lot of things about the way the system was designed are pretty good. Like, you know, one of the big ones you see people talk about is like, oh, oh, you should get rid of the electoral college or something. Right. And you're like, okay, like, what's your alternative?
- [37:30]
B
That's true. Exactly. All the ramifications of this. Yeah.
- [37:33]
C
And how does it really happen? Even if you have a great alternative to it? Do you know how hard that is to. You know, Like, I think there's been like a few hundred times people have done. Tried to do something with the electrocollage, and they've all stalled out somewhere along in the process. So it's you know, it's not. It's. It's to do it. It's great if you come up with a great idea for what the replacement for should be great. But just realize how difficult something like that is, especially in a divided world that we're in.
- [37:56]
B
Yeah. And I'd say particularly because it's important to keep in mind that the people who would be the prime movers in changing these institutions and systems are largely the people who've benefited from the outrage industry and so forth. So you're basically telling them, well, do this against your interest, you know, to benefit the greater good. That's always going to be a tough sell. But like you, I am, I do feel at least some optimism. I mean, there are shows like yours and like mine and we have audiences, and so I think there's a real desire for this sort of thing. And I just hope that one of the silver linings from all this is that that kind of grows and we can maybe get out of constantly having to dial at 11 all the time, right?
- [38:41]
C
Yeah, for sure.
- [38:43]
B
All right. Well, with that, I think be a good place to stop. David, it's been just great talking with you.
- [38:50]
C
Yeah, it was really fun. Thanks so much, Michael. I'm really looking forward to reaction from our audiences about this.
- [38:55]
B
Definitely.
- [39:06]
A
That is it for this episode of the Outrage Overload podcast. For links to everything we talked about on this episode, go to outrage overload.net outrage overload overload is a Connors Institute podcast. The Connors Institute for Nonpartisan Research and Civic Engagement at Shippensburg University works to disseminate high quality nonpartisan information to the American public around issues of societal well being, democracy promotion, and news literacy. If you found this episode valuable, please
- [39:33]
C
share it or leave a review. It really helps.
- [39:36]
A
Thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time.
- [40:00]
B
This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.