i started graduate school in the fall of 2018 still trying to figure out what the hell happened in the u.s. on november 9, 2016. maybe it’s my non-confrontational nature, but once my initial shock & mourning of the 2016 election passed (after a couple years of course, notwithstanding of the constant political gaslighting & worse that followed trump assuming office) i wasn’t really angry as much as i really wanted to understand why & how enough people voted for him in the places where it mattered.
& these questions followed: how could someone like donald trump — who announced his second presidential run by spewing hatred & prejudice against my own mexican community, as a mexican-american womxn myself — follow barack obama, who spread the “yes we can” ethos & a palpable hope unlike anything i’d ever seen in my then 12 years of living? was it fair of me to make negative judgments about the dispositions of those who voted for him, many of whom lived in rural areas, when i hadn’t walked a mile in their shoes as a kid from los angeles who wasn’t ever more than a block away from a starbucks or a grocery store for that matter? was my being an enthusiastic, lifelong left-winger in a blue bubble unfairly clouding my judgment of those who may have had different life experiences & circumstances than me? in other words, i wanted to understand their civic behaviors not necessarily as a person with her own political beliefs & leanings, but as a committed social psychologist.
flash forward to the fall of 2018 before starting grad school, i had just finished working at a non-profit for 2 years largely doing applied education & health equity research, work i honestly still love. but the election having happened just 2 years earlier & an admittedly deep love for politics from a young age (i was devastated when al gore eventually lost the election thanks to the electoral college in 2000 — also, i was 6), i saw my new role as an incoming social psychology ph.d. student (& my advisor’s own expertise with his postdoctoral political psychology research) as an opportunity to use social psychological theories to contribute further to understanding what happened in 2016. more than this, i saw it as an opportunity to work towards bridging the political divide that was so apparent in the last presidential election & in the years that have followed.
in my first-year graduate brown bag presentation, i presented a new idea for a line of research that hadn’t really been explored before in social psychology — understanding the decisions and behaviors of others, such as voting behaviors and political beliefs, not necessarily as a function of that person’s disposition but as a function of their situations & unique social contexts. could using this approach of “situationism,” when faced with judging an opposing behavior or belief, mitigate the negative judgments that people often make of others? & if so, can it mitigate hostility & open a path toward dialogue & cooperation, especially politically? the idea was met with largely positive feedback & excitement by the social psych area. that same year, with the help of my awesome advisor, i launched the first of several studies within this line of work to create & validate a scale measure for this new construct & understand its relation to making judgments of others with opposing viewpoints. the goal down the line was to create an intervention using this construct to help bridge the political divide & promote social harmony & cooperation between those who disagree across the political aisle.
at the end of my first year of grad school, however, i started thinking really critically about the potential dark side of understanding those with opposing viewpoints as a function of their situations. could this outlook towards others, by all means a well-intentioned construct, still create negative impact by promoting an air of condescension towards those who disagree with one’s own viewpoints? sure, it may mitigate instant & shallow judgments of others as irrational or immoral, but if those judgments absolve the person with the opposing viewpoint by painting them as someone who “just doesn’t know any better,” then this too can create very real negative impacts at an interpersonal level down the line.
not only this, but i thought further to how in its extreme form, thinking in this way could exculpate real physical, emotional, & mental harm inflicted on others when the behaviors & beliefs of one or more people committing harm are framed through the lens of situationism. in contexts where everyone knows any type & level of harm is an absolute moral no, this situational outlook can be positive, sure. but in contexts that are already ambiguous or where moral relativism is already amok, & especially in instances where scientific fact is involved, excusing differences in opinion & behavior as merely having root situational causes can promote a lord of the flies-esque nightmare. & pretty soon, my cool new idea started to feel like i’d just opened a pandora’s box that of course was kept shut for a reason.
needless to say, thinking & re-thinking & thinking some more replaced a lot of the actual research i was doing within this line of work. i read a lot of literature within philosophy & cultural anthropology to get a broader grasp of what other fields were saying about similar constructs. & i added in some constructs within moral psychology into subsequent studies to understand the moral antecedents that might flow into this situational outlook. & then, after months of reflection & modification & new data, covid-19 was declared a pandemic.
like many, my immediate concerns were no longer related to research — or to grad school for that matter — but rather to my family & friends who might be especially at risk for contracting the virus, especially those back home in california. & for those first few weeks when everything felt so new & fraught with covid-19, it felt like my research wasn’t really all that important in that moment, all things considered. if there’s anything that can bring a divided country together even a little, i thought, it must be a pandemic. so i took a small break from data but didn’t stop reflecting.
well, months later, as we know, the idea of the u.s. coming together in the midst of covid-19 was totally wrong. what’s more, whether it’s the tragic murders of george floyd, breonna taylor, ahmaud arbery, tony mcdade, elijah mcclain, & too many others magnifying centuries of systemic racial injustice towards Black and Brown communities & their intersections with class, gender, & sexuality, OR the fact that covid-19 disproportionately affects those who are already marginalized & minoritized in this country — these both highlighted & crystallized for me something i was doing but didn’t fully know i was doing.
while i was being cautious of my research’s impact & implications, i was still doing so while compartmentalizing my research identity & my own personal & political identities that care deeply about equity & justice. on its face, this compartmentalization can be seen as a positive for objectivity. but as someone who constantly fought & still fights for social justice & equity through my academic service, my mentoring, & in my personal life, i was dually approaching my research by suppressing my own very real grief, anger, shock, disgust, & sadness towards the actions & rhetoric by the current president & the people in his immediate circles — in the name of studying these issues scientifically in the most objective way possible.
but here’s the thing: objectivity in science that intends to do good while inadvertently letting structural inequities & structures fall by the wayside in research design feeds into an idealized & even potentially harmful version of science that has no ecological validity in the real world. & when i journaled & reflected about all this back in early june of this year, i realized that my reflection & trepidation about my situationism work was stemming from something i hadn’t quite put my finger on but still felt without knowing it at the time.
situationism in the current world, with so much inequity & injustice & hatred, is not always entirely functional or socially constructive, & to make it so, several boundary conditions must be in place & foundationalized that account for systemic & systematic oppression, prejudice, & marginalization. only then, can efforts to bridge partisan & societal divides truly be socially constructive & just for all, especially for those who are actively minoritized under our current structures & systems.
the last couple months i’ve been much more intentional in my research about understanding how things like situationism can be both positive & negative within individuals, & also vary by situation-specific factors. & some of these early research findings make me cautiously optimistic that people can be both less hostile towards those who hold opposing viewpoints & also be steadfast when good moral convictions in service of the greater good are necessary. i’ve also started integrating more of a structural & systemic approach to my ongoing work, starting with my comprehensive paper proposal which is my next program milestone.
but as there always is, there’s more work that needs to be done, & the most important part of this i’ve learned is that objectivity in science comes from collecting data for carefully designed studies in a way that’s unbiased, fair, & valid, & that the data analysis that follows is planned, open & transparent, & impartial. but in framing the kinds of questions & research designs that truly promote justice & good in the world, i can push for a world where Black lives matter & where immigrants are welcomed & where people can love anyone they choose to freely & without fear they will be denied healthcare or enlistment in the military or workplace rights, especially when these social justice issues are often politicized in everyday political dialogues. working toward equity & justice for those who are marginalized & minoritized by the current administration & bridging the partisan gap ought to go hand in hand. because otherwise, who am i (& we) bridging the gap for?
i started grad school in the fall of 2018 still trying to figure out what happened in the u.s. on november 9, 2016. & i went into this work not as myself, but as a social psychologist, detached from all my other identities. but if there’s anything the last couple years & especially the last few months have allowed me to reflect on, it’s that i am not myself & also a social psychologist. i am myself, a social psychologist, who is committed to egalitarianism, equity, & justice — who believes that Black Lives Matter, that immigrants are here to stay, that we should love who we love regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation, & more. it’s knowing that i can strive to build a bridge to the political divide, so long as these tenets valuing human rights & justice are not violated by anyone, especially when they are politicized.
audre lorde talked about how we must work through contradictions, within ourselves & within society, to spark creativity & promote a collaborative cohesiveness with others. at first i started this research through a duality of identities within myself. but the things i care about in my research & in life only work cohesively & for the benefit of society when i don’t view them as one or the other, but as one and the other. & so, perhaps this duality of identities isn’t really much of a duality after all.
tentative science 