The Psychology of Political Violence - Essay Example

A combination of aggressive political rhetoric and isolation form individuals with different political ideas has created a sense of hostility directed to opposition as acceptable regardless of their political ideology. It is common for partisans to express animus and engage in discriminatory behavior towards opposing partisans. The anger towards opposing partisans are influenced by emotions that dictates what we say or do and impact our judgment. Being angry is the best way of becoming less principled and it encourage the use of cognitive shortcuts such as stereotypes or dehumanization of out-group members, making it easier to engage in violence. Such accumulated forces in our economic and social life culminates to political violence.

The social cognitive perspective also states that violent behavior is a product of the way that individual process and interpret social information. Such social cognition can be seen in the use of political propaganda where groups tend to construct mirror enemy images, which represent the other group as untrustworthy, diabolical and aggressive. The images are always dehumanizing because it represents the other group as rapacious and in that they depict the other as subhuman. For example, Mass violence such as political genocide and terrorist acts are social cognitive factors that are instigated by emotions to achieve their goals. Such acts of violence are rational expressions of a specific thought, which rationalizes bombing as a way to avenge historical injustices imposed upon their people. Similarly, the Las Vegas mass shooting that killed at least 59 people and another 527 injured may have been as a result of the desire to end Christian domination of Muslims or pay back for perceived wrongs like US support for Israel that led to domination of Palestinians. Such radical ideologies therefore shape the manner in which Muslims think and perceive actions of the United States and Christians, which can fuel political violence. Leaders are skilled in using such radical ideologies to manipulate people to fight. . According to psychologists, anger encourages such cognitive shortcuts that stereotype Muslims. When people believe it is okay to consider a group as vermin or subhuman, they will believe it is right to hurt such people. Thus, cognitive factors have influenced the decisions of most Americans that foster the social cognitive dehumanization of Muslims as out-group members.

Today, political violence in America surpass racial hostility leading to disgust, anger and contempt for opposing partisans. By examining speeches given by political leaders, it can be deduced that most of them usually invoke disgust, anger and contempt, which make their followers to devalue their opponents and respond with violence. Whites nationalists or supremacists commonly devalue their out-group. For example, the systemic racism and police violence towards black people in the US has led to movement and protests such as Black Lives Matter. Such heighten polarization leads to violence even with the people with similar pluralistic ideals.

Under normal conditions, people would obey authority figures, and this enables violence by making perpetrators attribute their actions to individuals who issued the orders. Obedience to authority has led to a number of mass killings and genocides in the United States. Individuals in a group can resist breaking rank or agree with the judgments of one of their members even when that judgment is inaccurate. Power and pressure to conform can make people to involve in violence. For example, the abuses of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and the torture of Abu Ghraib detainees in Iraq adopted abusive roles due to the premeditated sanction of their commanders. This relinquished their personal responsibility on detainees abuse and violate the UN Convention against torture. Such legitimation of abuse help in creating strong command pressures that causes political violence.

The aggressive political rhetoric and isolation form individuals with different political ideas has created a sense of hostility directed to opposition as acceptable regardless of their political ideology. It is common for partisans to express animus and engage in discriminatory behavior towards opposing partisans. The anger towards opposing partisans are influenced by emotions that dictates what we say or do and impact our judgment. Being angry is the best way of becoming less principled and it encourage the use of cognitive shortcuts such as stereotypes or dehumanization of out-group members, making it easier to engage in violence. Such accumulated forces in our economic and social life culmilates to political violence. For contemporary sociological inquiry into late-modern society, a theory of the importance of the media for culture and society is no longer an interesting possibility, but an absolute necessity. Mediatization theory applies an institutional perspective to the media and their interaction with culture and society. Mediatisation means the form and logic any medium involved in the process of communication. "Media logic" is the institutional and technological modus operandi of the media, including how media distribute material and symbolic resources and operate with the help of formal and informal rules. Media logic sees and interprets social affairs. Therefore, a medium has intrinsic physiognomies in its operation and production, which organize the process of assortment, transmission, and the reaction of information. Media logic needs to be observed because media is critical and exert a historically and atypical logic in a given historical moment. Mediatisation does not imply anything postmodern or modern. It only means the developments that happen due to a change in media and the results of those changes. For example, mediatization may mean an increase in different media, changing media environments, the new functions of digital media or the changing forms of communication and relationships between people. Thus, mediatization extends human communication, engage organizations and people and subsume institutions and social activities in their media logic. It remains to be seen as a unilateral diffusion process of media logic into social spheres such as politics, religion, and education. Mediatisation process is essential to the reflexive accumulation of consumer goods and has become more image loaded. The relationship between media texts and consumer goods weaves together with other forms of consumption, which exposes the inseparability of these two domains. Therefore, Mediatisation has led to the rise of a culture of consumption and media production. It has also increased the role of arbitrated cultural products in developing or maintaining cultural communities. We need to think more about the economic and capitalist dynamics behind the media industry.