Politics feels angrier, harsher and more tribal than it used to - but how much of the blame can be laid at the door of social media?

Rafael Behr talks to NYU Psychologist Professor Jay Van Bavel, about how our ancient group instincts collide with 'god-like' digital technology to distort what we see, reward outrage, and erode trust in democratic institutions. 

Drawing on datasets of millions of social media posts, Professor Van Bavel discusses how; a tiny minority can dominate the online political conversation; platforms can make people seem more extreme, and silence the moderate voices. He also discusses what can be done about it; from redesigning incentives and rebuilding solidarity across group lines; to the small, practical choices individuals can make to resist the pull of performative moral outrage.

Jay Van Bavel's professional website - with links to academic papers

https://www.jayvanbavel.com

Inside the funhouse mirror factory: How social media distorts perceptions of norms

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352250X24001313

How to strengthen democracy

https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2022/08/how-to-strengthen-democracy

Heineken Advert

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3a8MdloAAM&themeRefresh=1

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Rafael Behr talks to Dr. Tessa Buchanan, a former civil servant and now an academic at Cambridge’s Political Psychology Lab, about the psychology behind changing how some voters think about outsiders or immigrants, revealing why she believes attitudes aren’t always as fixed or hostile as they may seem.

From the media’s obsession with “small boats” to conflicting anxieties about national identity, Rafael and Tessa discuss how easy is it to move public opinion, and so public policy, on a topic that has dominated political debate in the UK, EU and US for almost a decade.

Links to topics mentioned in the podcast

How an authoritarianism-compatible text changes British attitudes towards EU immigration

Study from Cambridge University Political Psychology Lab

2019 YouGov survey looking at EU immigration

2024 US survey pre-Presidential election

Cambridge University Political Psychology Lab

Podcasts mentioned

Rafael Behr and Karen Stenner

https://shows.acast.com/politicsonthecouch/episodes/theauthoritatianpersonalitywithkarenstenner

Rafael Behr and Dr Lee de-Wit

https://shows.acast.com/politicsonthecouch/episodes/theleftstroublewithconnectingwithsocialonservatives

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Rafael Behr talks to Demos' CEO Polly Curtis about the urgent case for upgrading our democracy and repairing the broken relationship between citizen and state.

The conversation is loosely based around this new Demos paper released today (2 July) that sets out the challenges of the global democratic emergency, how this is threatening the political landscape in Britain and what we can do about it.

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Host Rafael Behr is joined by political scientist Prof. Michael Bang Petersen, whose research challenges the common belief that those who share misinformation are simply uninformed or gullible.

Instead, Petersen suggest that many of these individuals are politically savvy and highly motivated, not by truth, but by the usefulness of information in advancing their political goals.

The conversation also explores the concept of the "need for chaos": a psychological drive found in a significant minority who actively seek to destabilise political systems, not just support one side over another.

Petersen also talks how status anxiety, feeling stuck or left behind in a rigid social hierarchy, fuels this destructive impulse.

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A conversation between Rafael Behr and writer and broadcaster David Aaronovitch, about ripples from the pandemic that still shape politics, with a digression on the ways that Britain is not America and whether that makes 'Maga-populism' less contagious.

Links

David Aaronovitch's substack - https://davidaaronovitch.substack.com

BBC's Briefing Room presented by David Aaronovitch - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002bj77

This is a Behr and Berman podcast production

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An anniversary episode in which host Rafael Behr and producer Philip Berman look back over a tumultuous time and ponder what they have learned from putting politics on the couch.

Links to Politics on the Couch episodes discussed in this podcast

Anti-vaxxers – fear, anxiety and the psychology of misinformation

The authoritarian personality - why some voters feel drawn to populism and how to lure them away 

The Madness of King Don - a journey to the dark side of charisma, with Drew Westen

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To coincide with the launch of her new book (The Ideological Brain - A Radical Science of Susceptible Minds) Rafael Behr talks to Dr Leor Zmigrod, a political psychologist and neuroscientist, about the ingredients of dogmatic thinking, why some of us are more prone than others, and how we can protect ourselves.

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Rafael Behr talks to Paula Surridge Professor of Political Sociology about the fragmentation of support for the two big parties since Brexit, what's causing it and what it means for parties trying to maintain their voter coalitions.

Questions also covered:

1. What drives support for Reform UK, and how vulnerable is their voter base?
2. Are the Liberal Democrats benefiting from tactical voting, and can they sustain their recent gains?
3. Why the Conservative Party faces so many difficulties in defining its identity?
4. How are changing media consumption habits and voter expectations reshaping political engagement?

The discussion also touches on the impact of non-voters and the potential for electoral reform to become a more prominent issue.

This is a Rafael Behr and Philip Berman production.

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Host Rafael Behr talks to author, policy expert and podcaster Sam Freedman about his new book Failed State: Why Nothing Works and How We Fix It

Sam Freedman is a senior fellow at the Institute for Government and an Ark Schools adviser.

He writes about policy and politics for numerous outlets, including the Financial Times, Sunday Times, Guardian and New Statesman.

With his father, he runs ‘Comment is Freed’, Britain’s most popular politics Substack.

He has spent his career working in different policy-focused roles around Westminster, including as an adviser to the then opposition leader, David Cameron, and as a senior policy adviser at the Department for Education for three years, working with (friends of the podcast) Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings.

Feedspot has chosen Politics on the Couch as one of the Top 25 UK Psychology and Political Science Podcasts on the web.

https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_psychology_podcasts

https://blog.feedspot.com/political_science_podcasts

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In a week of protests, counter-protests and riots in the UK, 5000 miles away in Bangladesh student-led uprising led to 300 people being killed, the toppling of a corrupt PM and violent regime, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner being installed as head a new interim government. 

In this edition, we're talking about the violent and momentous events in Bangladesh with award-winning British-born investigative journalist David Bergman, who has been following and reporting on the country for almost 30 years. 

He's written widely about Bangladesh for The Daily Telegraph, Al Jazeera, the New York Times, and The Times. 

Between 2004 and 2017, he lived in Bangladesh, writing for several Bangladeshi newspapers, including New Age, The Daily Star and bdnews24.com.

He was forced to leave in 2017 due to his critical writing about government corruption and human rights violations.

Since then, he’s lived in London and helped found Netra News, a media platform based in Sweden that published investigative news and analysis on Bangladesh

He’s also won a Royal Television Society award for a documentary he worked on about the atrocities that took place during Bangladesh’s 1971 War of Independence. 

In the episode, David explains what happened there, what sparked it off, what’s next for the country, what we know about the next potential leader and the fascinating links between a new Labour Minister and the now deposed Bangladeshi PM and her party.

Links mentioned in the podcast

https://x.com/TheDavidBergman

https://x.com/muktadirnewage

https://x.com/nomhossain

https://x.com/taqbirhuda

https://www.facebook.com/shafiqul.alam.71216

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