Why Words Matter in Life and Politics
If ever there were any doubt that words matter, the July assassination attempt on Donald Trump and the killing of an innocent bystander as well as the shooter provide more tragic evidence that they do. Even as the event was being reported, commentators were focusing on the connection between violent political rhetoric and violent behavior. Even before the motives of the shooter were known, some were suggesting that the attempt on Mr. Trump’s life was orchestrated by the radical left to bolster President Biden’s chances of re-election. Biden was accused of inciting violence against Mr. Trump by labeling him an existential threat to democracy even as Trump awaits trial for inciting the January 6 insurrection by urging his assembled supporters to go to the capitol and “fight like hell.”
As psychologists we are in an ideal position to understand the connection between words and behavior. Psychotherapy, after all, is the talking cure. Our patients talk, we listen and then respond with the right words at the right time to prompt reflection and suggest a new way of looking at the problem. Our words are tools of influence. We choose them carefully and use them deliberately to promote changes in the way people think and act, all in the service of helping them to achieve the goals they are asking our help to reach. Any novice therapist will tell you it’s not easy. Any seasoned therapist will tell you it’s not impossible.
In the middle of the last century, Boston psychoanalyst Grete Bibring identified five different ways that psychotherapists use words in different forms of therapy. We use words to help people abreact or express traumatic emotional material, to suggest, manipulate, clarify and interpret. All of these are ways of influencing people to change and demonstrate the power of words to heal or to hurt. We use the power of these techniques in the therapy room and live at their mercy in our daily lives.
Clarification and interpretation are considered hallmarks of insight-oriented therapy and help people to use reasoning to gain insight into their behavioral patterns and motivations. The understanding of self and others they promote paves the way for rational decision making in our personal lives and in our communal responsibilities. Suggestion and manipulation address lower levels of cognitive functioning and while they play an important role in promoting therapeutic change, they can also become the tools of the powerful to influence the behavior of the general public.
We humans are vulnerable to suggestion because we invest authority figures, particularly those with charisma, expertise and confidence, with admired qualities and the power of position that leads us to follow their instructions. We do what our doctors tell us is good for our health because they are the experts. Subjects in Stanley Milgram’s famous experiment on obedience to authority administer electric shocks to the researcher’s confederates because that’s what the professor tells them to do. It is not a far stretch to imagine that a similar dynamic is at play in the minds of voters taking direction from the political leaders they follow. When those leaders use their words to direct hate toward specific groups, it is reasonable to conclude that their followers are more likely to express hateful attitudes toward those who have been targeted.
A more subtle way of using words to influence behavior is what Bibring defined as manipulation or the intentional appeal to a person’s cherished values or important elements of their identity to shape their behavior. If you want to be a champion, you’ll eat Wheaties. If you believe in the sanctity of life, reproductive freedom, the duty to protect the earth, the right to bear arms and the list goes on, then you must vote for our candidate. And if you are a real American, a true patriot, you must not let the other side take control of the government.
Political candidates use these and other techniques to influence voter behavior. Dehumanizing the opposition with negative labels has become an all too frequent strategy to win votes and consolidate a partisan base that sees the other side as evil, dangerous or incompetent to govern. This is the work of violent rhetoric and it is on the rise together with expressed attitudes about the acceptability of violent behavior. Joe Pierre, writing in the November 6, 2022 online issue of Psychology Today, cites polls showing that the percentage of Americans condoning political violence under certain circumstances increased from 16 percent in 2010 to 23 percent in 2015 and peaked at 34 to 40 percent between 2020 and 2022.
Pierre references the work of Louisiana State University political science professor Nathan Kalmoe and professor Lilliana Mason of the University of Maryland to show the danger of what these researchers call “partisan moral disengagement” or seeing the opposition as “evil, less than human and a serious threat to the nation.” That perception of one’s political opponents shaped by violent political rhetoric together with an “aggressive personality” and “strong identification with a party” are, according to Kalmoe and Mason, the best predictors of actual violence on an individual level.
A more subtle but widespread risk factor for politically motivated violent behavior is the legitimizing effect of major political candidates’ use of prejudiced speech. Daniel Byman, writing in the April 9, 2021 online issue of Brookings, cites studies showing that such prejudiced speech “emboldens audiences to declare their own prejudices and act on them accordingly.” Hateful and prejudiced words from political elites do not create hateful attitudes, but they do give predisposed individuals permission to express and act on hateful attitudes that they previously felt a need to keep hidden.
We like to think that political violence is un-American, but as Matthew Dallek and Robert Dallek remind us in their July 16, 2024 guest essay in the New York Times, four of our 45 presidents have been murdered, and in the 20th century alone, there were at least six serious failed attempts on the lives of presidents and one on a former president. We have the dubious distinction of leading Canada, Japan, Britain, and Germany in assassination attempts on heads of government.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that we live in a culture of violence. Words did not create this culture, but when our leading politicians use violent political rhetoric, they influence predisposed individuals to violent behavior and loosen societal norms to permit the expression and, in some cases, the acting out of hateful attitudes. But psychologists know that if words can hurt, they can also heal. We rely on this simple truth every time we sit down with a patient to listen to their story and respond with words of affirmation and challenge.
If words can influence individuals to change in the therapy room, they can also influence change on the campaign trail. Rachel Kleinfeld, writing in the October 2021 issue of the Journal of Democracy, cited experiments using words from Mr. Trump and President Biden showing that “leaders’ rhetoric has the power to de-escalate and deter violence if they are willing to speak against their own side.” Not only must leaders speak against their confederates, but they must also set an example and refrain from violent speech of their own. These are important qualifications, and some political observers say that in our current climate, some candidates for office are unlikely to do so.
As psychologists, we are well equipped to understand the power of words to hurt or to heal, and when leaders use words as weapons instead of as tools for rational discussion and debate, we understand the danger. Leadership is a matter of influence, and there are few places where the sphere of influence looms larger than on the grand political stage. Yet there is a sense in which we are all leaders, each of us having the power to influence one another by our words and actions and to judge for ourselves the impact of how our would-be leaders use their words. As citizens, we can eschew violence in our own speech and actions, recognize it in the speech and actions of our political candidates and cast our votes for leaders who use their words not to hurt but to persuade, inspire and heal.