Japan Today

Here
and
Now

opinions

A nation exhausted: The neuroscience of why Americans are tuning out politics

18 Comments
By Arash Javanbakht
Image: iStock/Nastco

“I am definitely not following the news anymore,” one patient told me when I asked about her political news consumption in the weeks before the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

This conversation happened around the time I talked with a local TV channel about why we saw fewer political yard signs during this year’s election season, compared with past ones.

I am a psychiatrist who studies and treats fear and anxiety. One of my main mental health recommendations to my patients during the 2016 and 2020 election cycles was to reduce their political news consumption. I also tried to convince them that the five hours a day they spent watching cable news was only leaving them helpless and terrified.

Over the past couple of years, though, I have noticed a change: Many of my patients say they either have tuned out or are too exhausted to do more than a brief read of political news or watch one hour of their favorite political show.

Research supports my clinical experience: A Pew research study from 2020 showed that 66% of Americans were worn out by political stress. Interestingly, those who are not following the news feel that same news fatigue at an even higher percentage of 73%. In 2023, 8 out of 10 Americans described U.S. politics with negative words like “divisive,” “corrupt,” “messy” and “polarized.”

In my view, three major factors have led Americans to exhaustion and burnout with U.S. politics.

-- The politics of fear

In my 2023 book, “AFRAID: Understanding the Purpose of Fear, and Harnessing the Power of Anxiety,” I discuss how American politicians and major news media have found an ally in fear: a very strong emotion that can be used to grab our attention, keeping us in the tribal dividing lines and making us follow, click, tap, watch and donate.

Over the past few decades, many people have felt a strong push for tribalism, an “us vs. them” way of seeing the world, turning Americans against one another. This has led to a point where we are not just in disagreement with each other. We hate, cancel, block and attack those who disagree with us.

-- People live in information bubbles

It can feel like Fox News and MSNBC commentators are talking about Americas from two different planets. The same is true when it comes to different social media feeds.

Many people are part of social media communities that are closed to the world outside their homes and familiar social circles. Based on people’s political views and what they search for or watch and read, social media algorithms feed them content where everybody talks and thinks alike. If you hear about the other side, it is only about their worst attributes and behavior.

The disconnect is so wide that people are not even able to comprehend the thinking of those from other perspectives and find their logic or political beliefs unfathomable.

Many Americans have gotten to the point of believing that the other half of Americans are, at best, unintelligent and stupid; and at worst, immoral and evil.

-- People’s political opinions have become their identities

There was a time in American politics where two politicians or two neighbors could disagree, but still believe that the other person was fundamentally good.

Over time, and more so since the early 2000s, this ability to connect despite political beliefs has decreased.

The majority of both Democrats and Republicans said in a 2022 Pew Research survey that someone’s political ideas are an indicator of their morality and character.

This 2022 Pew survey also shows that partisan animosity extends to judgments about character: 72% of Republicans and 63% of Democrats said they believe members of the opposing party are more “immoral” than other Americans.

This is evident in day-to-day conversations of members of both political tribes: “How can I be friends with someone who wants to kill babies,” or “How can I talk to someone who is OK with women dying in a corner of a clinic parking lot”. We can no longer see someone’s political affiliation in the context of their humanity at large.

What psychology and neuroscience say

Fear as a deeply ingrained survival mechanism takes priority over other brain functions.

Fear guides your memories, feelings, attention and thoughts, and can cause you to keep watching, scrolling and reading to monitor this perceived threat. Positive or neutral news could then become uninteresting because it is not important in your survival response. That has been the key to a person’s deep engagement with the fear-based political news.

But too much fear does not keep someone engaged forever. That is because of another survival mechanism – what’s called “learned helplessness.”

In 1967, American psychologist Martin Seligman exposed two groups of dogs to painful shocks. Dogs in group 1 could stop the shock by pressing a lever, which they quickly learned to do. But the dogs in group 2 learned that they could not control when the shock starts and stops.

Then, both groups were placed in a box divided into two halves by a small barrier, and shock was applied to only one side of the box. Dogs in group 1 – who had learned how to stop the shocks in the earlier experiment – quickly learned to jump over the barrier to the shock-free side. But dogs in group 2 did not even attempt to do so. They had learned there is no point in trying.

This experiment has been replicated in different forms with other animals and humans with the same conclusion: When people feel they cannot control the painful or scary situation, they just give up. During such experiences, the brain’s fear region – called the amygdala – is hyperactive. Meanwhile, emotion-regulating brain areas like the prefrontal cortex decrease in activity under these circumstances.

Learned helplessness also means the brain mechanisms commonly involved in regulating anxiety and depression don’t function as well.

When working with patients who have suffered from long periods of intense anxiety, fear, trauma and exhaustion, I see learned helplessness showing up in the form of depression, loss of motivation, fatigue and lack of engagement with the world around them.

The COVID-19 pandemic, more than a decade of intense political stress, polarizing social media and wars across the world, as well as public disillusionment with U.S. politics and media, have led, I believe, to many people experiencing burnout and learned helplessness.

If you feel politically exhausted, you are not the problem. Feel free to tune out from the noise.

Arash Javanbakht is Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Wayne State University.

The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.

© The Conversation

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

18 Comments
Login to comment

We need an election system that is capable of kicking polarizing figures to the curb.

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

But too much fear does not keep someone engaged forever. That is because of another survival mechanism – what’s called “learned helplessness.”

What the article fails to mention is this is an outcome desired by the neo-liberal order, summarized by Margaret Thatcher in her phrase 'There Is No Alternative' (TINA).

Media and politics have been bought and paid for by corporations and all that is needed is for them to manufacture a fake consent for their policies.

https://chomsky.info/consent01/

3 ( +3 / -0 )

pre-internet, people weren’t waterboarded daily by loud ranting by obsessive-compulsive dunces. your vote was something you kept to yourself and you could slip away from the under-educated and the 50% below the median iq.

now, they’re a demographic.

the internet changed that. fools with phones are an attack on the senses.

george carlin was right - be very afraid of large groups of stupid people.

democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting what to have for dinner, or 51 stupid people and 49 non-stupid people deciding the path of all 100 people.

4 ( +5 / -1 )

Who would blame people from turning off.

24/7, 52 weeks a year for 4 years.

Like what country has such an incessant brain-hole drilling election campaign that goes on and on and on?

Are Americans so dull that they can't garner their thoughts, analyze and make a decision in a few months?

Why do they need a daily matinee scheduled in for 4 years?

As Peter N above alluded to it's all enhanced by the digital world - but the circuitry was all in place decades before.

A pantomime at best.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

If the political threads on this site are a representative example of the internet in general, you can't blame them for zoning out.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

pre-internet, people weren’t waterboarded daily by loud ranting by obsessive-compulsive dunces. your vote was something you kept to yourself and you could slip away from the under-educated and the 50% below the median iq.

now, they’re a demographic.

I rather fear it's worse than that: they're a majority.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

I wonder if the media, (including Japan today) try to chase a fanbase, or eyeballs, sponsors. The left push against the right, the right push against the left, and like a bell curve they both try to squeeze the middle out, by not truly reflecting the more nuanced, non biased centric voices. Or should that be a non Partisan or biased opinion. The center giving the news on the A) and B) side are then squashed, ridicules by side A and B. Basically the left and right don’t want that nuanced voice. It also doesn’t help when media go on a doom loop, and hyperbolic language. America is good for that. A shooter of a ceo is a terrorist but a shooter at a school is a shooter. When did the word worry change to anxiety all the time,? Non stop looking for the next shiny war to report on.There is no profit, or advertising revenue in “today 99.99% of people had a boring day. They all arrived at work safely. “nobody was murdered” or today Nobody died of polio today or today there were no airplane crashes. Add on 24 hours news/political news and your fed 99% negatives, the news should come with a health warning. Now we might need to embrace boredom and value it more rather than giving them our eyeballs.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Peter NeilToday  07:53 am JST

pre-internet, people weren’t waterboarded daily by loud ranting by obsessive-compulsive dunces. your vote was something you kept to yourself and you could slip away from the under-educated and the 50% below the median iq.

now, they’re a demographic.

the internet changed that. fools with phones are an attack on the senses.

george carlin was right - be very afraid of large groups of stupid people.

democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting what to have for dinner, or 51 stupid people and 49 non-stupid people deciding the path of all 100 people.

It's more and other than the internet, but yeah that plays a big role.

After all, it was Russian cyberhacking that put trump into the WH in 2016 (I saw the virus), and now Muskrat with his 'X' has allowed that hateful blabbermouth geek spew his crap again - never mind the $ behind the lies.

But even before that there were these moronic talk shows on AM mayhem radio sassing off about 'liberals', Muslims, Blacks, etc. Yeah, Rubbish Limberger - I'm talking to YOU. When he died I read that he got that 'job' at age 16, and he never matured a day beyond it. TV was glorifying war with that 24/7 1991 Gulf War coverage, yippy-yi-yay! There was the constant obsession about that damn OJ Simpson trial. The screaming geek head of the NRA panicked so many people, now any punkazz can buy a machine gun no questions asked.

Now everybody and everything just SCREAMS at you, in your face all the time. I honestly enjoyed one of the greatest natural events of a lifetime this past April, the total solar eclipse in North America but you wouldn't believe all the ridiculous bullcrap people from the left and right were blogging about that. Always somebody playing Chicken Little, a party pooper, trying to spoil the fun.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

media is a business, not an altruistic endeavor, except for sites like propublica.

clicks, baby!

4 ( +4 / -0 )

Two year presidential elections are too long, too intense.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

media is a business, not an altruistic endeavor, except for sites like propublica.

clicks, baby!

Yes ProPublica is the real deal amongst all the podcasting grifters and right wing/neolib corporate mouthpieces.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

Stop blaming social media for all social ills. It is just a reflection of society. Admittedly, a pretty messed up society.

News, particularly political news, is sensationalised, anxiety-inducing, and pushed to extremes to attract attention.

Even on JT we regularly get told of the 57 ways we are killing the planet every waking day. Yet much of the world is still green, and there is very little most of us can do about it anyway.

If you feel that this is starting to affect your day-to-day life, if you get more angry more quickly, if you feel on edge, take a break from news.

Read a book. Dig the garden. Watch a movie. If you have 5 hours to watch cable news during the day, get a job.

Concentrate on stuff you have some control over - your day-to-day life.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

GBR48Today 09:58 am JST

In the past, the village idiot could go shouting down the street. Now the village idiot can scream right in your living room and people nod along.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

Media and politics have been bought and paid for by corporations and all that is needed is for them to manufacture a fake consent for their policies.

LOL

You beat me to it

Nice

Not one word in this mush that corporations control over 90% of what we see hear and read, and that they are the ones pushing the fear.

Why is it every post from “the conversation” seems straight out of INGSOC

0 ( +2 / -2 )

GBR48Today  09:58 am JST

Stop blaming social media for all social ills. It is just a reflection of society. Admittedly, a pretty messed up society.

Even on JT we regularly get told of the 57 ways we are killing the planet every waking day…

thanks for making my point. :)

2 ( +2 / -0 )

TaiwanIsNotChina has it right. In the past every town could boast one or two wingnuts who might stand up on a soapbox (literally) and spout nonsense in the public square. Most of the town could ignore them, and life would go on as normal. Now those odd wingnuts find each other on the internet and appear more numerous, as if hundreds of them are now speaking in the public square. Algorithms feed vast audiences of viewers the angro-tainment that results, the wingnuts garner thousands of views and suddenly you have Wingnuts On Parade. Their wingnut ideas take on an aura of legitimacy they would never have had in a pre-Internet age. That's how we've been "blessed" with the likes of Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, JFK Jr, and of course Donald Trump.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Even on JT we regularly get told of the 57 ways we are killing the planet every waking day…

No one is forcing people to read articles that they don't like.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Algorithms feed vast audiences of viewers the angro-tainment

One of worst types you come across is the ‘liberal/conservative tears’ mongers. Absolute trash appealing to teenagers and stunted adults.

There’s certainly money in it but unfortunately people into this are allowed to vote.

In the Internet age in particular, there is a fair debate about whether universal suffrage is a good idea.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Login to leave a comment

Facebook users

Use your Facebook account to login or register with JapanToday. By doing so, you will also receive an email inviting you to receive our news alerts.

Facebook Connect

Login with your JapanToday account

User registration

Articles, Offers & Useful Resources

A mix of what's trending on our other sites