The Psychology of Polarization: Affective Division and the Collapse of Civic Empathy

We often talk about polarization in terms of ideology - left versus right, conservative versus progressive. But what if the deeper divide isn’t political at all? What if it’s emotional?

This paper explores polarization not as a battle of beliefs, but as a breakdown of empathy. Drawing from social psychology, neuroscience, and public emotion research, I argue that what we’re seeing is a shift from disagreement to disdain—fueled not by ideas, but by identity, threat perception, and emotional reinforcement.

At the center of this paper is the concept of affective polarization—a growing tendency to view those on the “other side” not just as wrong, but as morally threatening or emotionally intolerable. It’s a process that disengages our empathy, fractures our relationships, and hardens our social identities to the point where good-faith conversation becomes nearly impossible.

But polarization doesn’t just happen in a vacuum. It’s reinforced by platform algorithms, group narratives, and even our brain’s wiring to detect threat. Over time, this can lead to emotional burnout, cognitive rigidity, and what I describe in the paper as a collapse of civic empathy—the emotional capacity to care about others across lines of difference.

This paper doesn’t stop at diagnosis. It offers a framework for response, centered around emotional regulation, narrative reframing, and the deliberate cultivation of empathy as a civic norm. It’s an invitation to rethink polarization not just as a social problem, but as a psychological one. And to ask: what would it take to restore emotional integrity in public life?

If this work speaks to what you’ve been observing—in your communities, classrooms, conversations—I invite you to read and reflect.

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