Economy
What Makes Them Tick: Inside The Mind Of The Abbott Government
*Satire: Leunig”s Abbott ( leunig.com.au ; used with permission ). Says Lissa Johnson: “Exploiting ISIS for all it’s worth, then, is Tony Abbott’s best hope. The “death cult” refrain no doubt helps. Although Australians are at greater risk of death from falling off a ladder or out of bed, a cult is far more scary. And better on which to build stereotypes.”
If the Abbott Government was an individual, he would be a psychopath. And you wonder why they’re frightened of science! Clinicial psychologist Dr Lissa Johnson explains.
Decades of research in political psychology has opened a window onto the psychological heart of politics. The Abbott Government embodies the conservative psyche in pasquinade form.
With a prime minister who threatens to shirt-front the Russian president, a finance minister who calls the opposition leader a girlie-man and a government advisor for whom “Abos”, “darkies” “muzzies”, “chinky-poos” and “whores” rolls comfortably off the tongue, it is little wonder people are asking what goes on in the minds of our politicians.
For different reasons, academic psychologists have been asking the same question for some time.
They say that it takes 20 years for knowledge in academic psychology to make its way into the public domain. If that is the case, the political psychology literature is just coming of age.
Thanks to an invigoration in 2003 of research that had been gathering steam in the 1990s and before, we now know with considerable clarity what separates the left psychologically from the right. And the picture is revealing.
Political vaudeville aside, the Abbott Government offers a vivid case study in conservative psychology that breathes life into the very definition of conservatism.
In the political psychology literature conservatism is defined in two parts, resting on the pillars of equality and change: accepting versus rejecting inequality and advocating versus resisting social change.
By this definition, the conservative position on any issue involves promotion of inequality and resistance to change. Where conservative change is sought it is typically in the direction of inequality, winding back historical egalitarian change.
As a case study, the Abbott Government illustrates not only these two principles, but also their psychological building blocks, identified in a vast number of studies from institutions around the world. These studies, emanating from the likes of Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, NYU, UCLA and countless other universities, have been replicated time and again by different researchers using different measures (self-report, implicit tests, peer-ratings, behavioural indices) and different methods (correlational, experimental and longitudinal). In short, a reliable body of research.
One consistent finding in this literature is that conservatism involves a cognitive tendency known as the need for cognitive closure. This entails an impetus to arrive at fixed and firm answers to complex questions, motivated by the drive to resolve uncertainty and ambiguity. It manifests in seizing and freezing on opinions and ideas, or swiftly and resolutely reaching final conclusions on complicated topics, which then remain closed to further review.
Our government’s policy on climate change, for instance, comes to mind. As does its haste to pass legislation without debate.
The conservative need for cognitive closure is broadly rooted in a personality style that psychologists call “closed-minded” or often simply “closed”. It involves low levels the personality trait Openness to Experience, which is widely accepted as one of the five core dimensions of personality.
People low on Openness prefer certainty, order, structure, the familiar, predictability, simplicity, and sticking with the tried and true. They dislike change, complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity, novelty and flexibility. They are less intellectually curious than their more open counterparts, disinclined to examine their own ideas and views, and as a result are often suspicious of science and the arts. They also tend to dislike new experiences, frequently including but not limited to foreign people, culture and food.
Our government’s distaste for science ministers and asylum seekers, then, makes sense.
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In a world of increasing egalitarianism the conservative position can make for a hard sell. Politicians with an agenda as conservative as the Abbott Government’s can’t to go to the polls wearing their manifesto on their sleeves. “We promise to preserve and intensify privilege, entrench disadvantage and wind back egalitarian change, putting a halt to its further spread.”
As a result, in order to gain power conservative political parties are compelled to sugar-coat their agenda to be palatable in a putatively egalitarian world. A conservative stock-in-trade to this end is what political scientists call ‘legitmising myths’, or ideologies that justify discrimination against disadvantaged groups.
Legitimising myths typically appeal to fear, which increases political conservatism; scarcity, which increases competition between social groups; and stereotypes, which smooth the way for discrimination against less privileged members of a society. For instance, “Burqa-wearing women are potential terrorists who threaten our safety and our way of life” is a myth that appeals to all three.
While the Abbott Government relied more heavily on lies than myth-making on its way to the election, since gaining office Abbott and his ministers have had a crack at a few legitimising myths of their own.
They have been successful with some, for example ‘The carbon tax will cripple the economy (fear and scarcity)’. They have limped along lamely with a few, such as the ‘Budget emergency’ (fear and scarcity again) and ‘Age of entitlement’ (stereotype).
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Exploiting ISIS for all it’s worth, then, is Tony Abbott’s best hope. The “death cult” refrain no doubt helps. Although Australians are at greater risk of death from falling off a ladder or out of bed, a cult is far more scary. And better on which to build stereotypes.
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Read the full article, with full hyperlinks, New Matilda, HERE
*Lissa Johnson, http://www.lissajohnson.com.au/ Lissa is a clinical psychologist and practice principal in private practice. Her qualifications are a Bachelor of Behavioural Science with honours in psychology, a Masters degree in clinical psychology and a PhD in psychology. Prior to becoming a psychologist she graduated from a Bachelor of Arts in Media Studies with a major in Sociology. … As a clinical psychologist her expertise is in assessing and treating psychological disorders. Since the election of the Abbott Government she has become increasingly concerned that the psychological processes behind public policy in Australia are pathological, with long term adverse consequences for society.
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