(Source: MIRS.news, Published 08/06/2024) (LOUISVILLE) - The phrase “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” may have new applications in politics, according to molecular biologist John Medina, who said sharing personal information between groups in disagreement, like opposing political parties, can serve to limit political polarization.  

Medina, also a research consultant, bestselling author and professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington School of Medicine, spoke during the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) about “interpersonal distance,” or the idea that people are more likely to launch attacks at others when they feel less close to them, whether physically or psychologically.  

He was referring to attacks aimed specifically at another person’s “thymotic motivations,” or their desire for personal recognition and acknowledgment of their worth and significance, which Medina said is what drives the difference between a policy disagreement and an ideological attack.  

“It’s not that I’m right and you’re wrong,” he said. “It’s that I’m right and you’re evil . . . One is simply a discussion. The other is an attack on somebody's thymotic motivation . . . And if you attack somebody's thymotic motivation, you are attacking their worth, and from the brain perspective, their ability to survive another day.” 

Medina said the ability to launch these thymotic attacks in politics is based on several factors, including the physical distance from an opponent, the temporal distance (known as the generation gap), the social distance (economic, racial or sex-based differences) and the interpersonal distance, or the willingness to interact with a person.  

“The more interpersonal distance existing between you and a colleague, the more likely you are . . . to think of that colleague in abstract, objective, distant mental representations,” he said. “So if you don’t spend a whole lot of time with them… you can objectify them, and in fact, you can give them all kinds of characteristics that they might not have.”  

While factors like physical distance or generational differences aren’t as easy to close, Medina said interpersonal distance can be shortened by exchanging personal information, or simply getting to know one another.  

Medina referenced a Pennsylvania experiment that took students from two Pittsburgh and Philadelphia business schools and assigned them to two groups ahead of a contract negotiation exercise.  

Group A went into the negotiations process knowing nothing about each other, Medina said, while Group B exchanged personal information prior to negotiating, including pictures of themselves and biographical information. 

“They sent pictures of their freaking pets to their opponents, whom they were going to have to enter into a sham negotiation with,” he said.  

In Group B, the impasse rate during negotiations ended up being much lower than that of Group A - at six percent to 29 percent.  

“It’s simply because they got to know each other,” he said, “and they couldn’t attack their thymotic motivations.”  

Medina said he sees cases where opponents aren’t interacting the most at the federal level, “where they might interact for a period of time and then they go home and fundraise, but they never spend any time getting to know each other on a routine basis.”  

While he said there are some cases where it's beneficial to remain cold or aloof in politics, it’s never helpful to be menacing.  

“You can be as inviting as you like or as stoic as you like, but what you can't be is threatening,” he said. "That universally does not work.”