https://nordot.app/1236983938789131189
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics-makes-people-rethink-taste-101232531.html
Families were divided, brother fought brother, children denounced parents, everyone was a spy:’ anyone from a country with a civil war or Stalin/Mao type-purge in its 19th or 20th history would have heard such laments at home or at school while growing up.
Warnings from history often go unheeded, however: More recently, political polarisation has reached such a nadir that some on social media have been advocating shunning even next-of-kin who vote for the other or ‘wrong’ side in recent elections in Argentina, Spain and the US.
It might be hard to believe, but ideological tribalism gets even pettier, with some people even revising their opinion of a favourite brand of chocolate upon finding out it is also liked by those perceived as political opponents.
It sounds like a joke. But it is not – not according to a survey by researchers at Linköping University in Sweden, who asked over 800 people to rank “eight well-known chocolate brands” and then give their “political stance.”
When people were told that “political opponents” liked a whichever brand of chocolate then that brand was deemed “significantly less appealing” by them in a second-round survey,
“People distance themselves not just from out-group partisans or policies but also from completely neutral and apolitical consumer products that have been ‘contaminated’ simply by being preferred by the political out-group,” the researchers said, in a paper published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
And it is not just with candy that people could be kinder or, wispa it, risk ending up chocolonely.
When it came to clothes, they were found more to maketh men change their minds than merely “maketh the man,” as the quote from Hamlet goes.
First, the researchers had around 600 people give their views on various outfits worn by people whose heads or faces were hidden in photos.
After outlining their views on Swedish politics and its array of parties across the left-right spectrum, the identities of those wearing the clothes were revealed.All were politicians, and yes, some participants revised their take on outfits they liked at first if they found it had been worn by a politician they weren’t too keen on.
