{"id":2130,"date":"2017-05-23T18:48:08","date_gmt":"2017-05-23T17:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/discursive\/?page_id=2130"},"modified":"2017-05-23T18:52:41","modified_gmt":"2017-05-23T17:52:41","slug":"transcript-of-podcast-the-psychology-of-brexit","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/discursive\/transcript-of-podcast-the-psychology-of-brexit\/","title":{"rendered":"Transcript of podcast: The psychology of Brexit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Podcast-\u00a0<\/u>The Psychology of Brexit<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

The audio for this podcast can be found here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hello and welcome to the first episode of Discussions in Tunbridge wells, the new podcast produced by the Salomons Centre for Applied Psychology in Kent. My name is John McGowan and I\u2019m a clinical Psychologist, I\u2019m joined by two colleagues both also clinical psychologists Angela Gilchrist and Rachel Terry.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now some of you may know us from our blog \u2018Discursive of Tunbridge wells\u2019 where we and guest bloggers write about a range of subjects related mainly to mental health and the NHS. For those of you who don\u2019t know us, we are a postgraduate centre in Canterbury Christ Church University, in Kent, UK, primarily specialising in training clinical psychologists and psychological therapists. We also conduct a range of research looking at different aspects of health, wellbeing and disability.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this podcast series we are going to be discussing many issues that we cover in our blog: mental health in the NHS, issues like that. Our aim though is to access a wider range of contributions and provide some interesting debates around some of this stuff.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We are starting today with a very topical issue. We do sometimes try and offer a psychological take on what\u2019s going on in politics and at the time of recording in the UK at least there is one issue that is eclipsing all others: the EU referendum. Do we stay in or do we leave?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The polls at the moment in the UK are quite balanced but no one really knows how it\u2019s going to go. What\u2019s a lot clearer though is that the UK public feel very under informed about the issues even after months of campaigning. So it seems to me at this point that in this and a bunch of other areas we\u2019ve had some quite interesting shifts in the way we think about politics in the last 2 or 3 years in Britain and America. It makes me wonder what\u2019s going on here. Angela you\u2019ve been involved in politics, you\u2019ve been involved in Psychology for a number of years, sort us out!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela<\/strong><\/p>\n

I do think there is something quite extraordinary going on, it seems to me that the world has always been in a tumultuous place, but it\u2019s in a highly precipitous place at the moment I would say. Things are becoming increasingly polarised in the western democracy. There\u2019s a shift away from the centre to the extremes. If you think of somebody like Donald Trump who has the possibility of becoming president of the world\u2019s most powerful country. That is a really scary proposition for me\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

John<\/strong><\/p>\n

Terrifying! Not just for you.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela<\/strong><\/p>\n

One wonders how that has happened. How has such an extreme figure been able to get to that point? I think it\u2019s something about people feeling very very threatened in times of economic difficulty.<\/strong><\/p>\n

John<\/strong><\/p>\n

It does seem clear that a number of things have changed and there does seem to be a loss of trust in traditional structures. Perhaps not for everybody but for some people, and in economic tough times. There\u2019s a lot of inequality. I recently heard a speaker talking about the EU referendum, felt that resentment towards structures was perhaps driven by, increasing inequality which is something that both Britain an America really have. Though of course we see these kind of insurgences across the whole of Europe. What do you think about that Rachel?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rachel<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well it\u2019s making me think we should remain in Europe, and one the reasons for that is that it is a bit of a buffer for the potential for us having more extreme governments, it\u2019s either extreme left wing or right wing. If we\u2019re bound by certain European rules, for example employment law, human rights. I feel it\u2019s very important that we remain in Europe for that reason<\/strong><\/p>\n

John<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes and I suppose our group here would probably qualify as being pretty heavily \u2018Remain\u2019 group. We work in university by definition people who are high educational level, or fairly high educational, working in the university its fairly highly educated high school group. All the evidence seems to suggest that those people are considerably more likely to want to stay in and also far more relaxed about the \u2018Leave\u2019 campaign\u2019s big issue which has been immigration. If you\u2019re highly educated immigration is a good thing. It\u2019s people who come to work in your department or work in your company. We get trainees here from all across Europe and that\u2019s marvellous for us. Listen, if your educational level is lower and you live out in somewhere like east Kent which is within our patch, we serve the NHS in east Kent, those things may feel like a lot more of a threat. There may be a reality to that threat both from other parts of Europe and indeed form other parts of the UK really.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rachel<\/strong><\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t want to minimise the reality of that but I think that the Brexit campaign and previous government campaigns in the UK have been quite successful at perhaps putting problems onto migrants and immigration rather than elsewhere. Perhaps government policy in terms of problems we\u2019re having, financial problems and so on I think it\u2019s easy to externalise those problems and blame immigration when there might be more closer to home issues that might be relevant.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think that\u2019s true and I think for me who\u2019s come from a different country, in fact came here in 2002 to work on the NHS. I responded to an advertisement overseas which suggested that clinical psychology was a national shortage occupation and the NHS at the time was desperate to get psychologists from overseas into service. I suppose what\u2019s interesting for me as well as highly offensive is the realisation that probably 50% of the population here doesn\u2019t like the idea of immigrants and sees those of us who\u2019ve come from overseas as takers who are here to sponge from the system and that\u2019s really hurtful when you\u2019ve come here to bring skills and are in a highly skilled occupation that bears a lot of responsibility. We are contributing to the arena in that way. I think what\u2019s characteristic of this particular campaign is that the facts have not meant a lot to the public even though the public keep calling for the facts and saying to the politicians, we don\u2019t know what to believe, we don\u2019t know what to go on. When they are presented with facts they ignore them. This isn\u2019t peculiar to this particular political campaign; it\u2019s something that humans do. We are not rational beings; we are far more driven by our emotions than we are by the facts so it\u2019s much easier in a time of difficulty to suggest that our difficulties are created by foreigners and to make people very \u2018other\u2019, rather than to own up to the fact that a lot of these difficulties are home grown.<\/strong><\/p>\n

John<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I mean the issue of the NHS being able to survive without people coming into the country, I read a very interesting piece on The Conversation blog about this the other day, and it\u2019s kind of laughable really that the NHS could really function without really large amounts of people with all sorts of different skill sets coming in from abroad. I suppose the out campaigns are talking about point systems and things like that. Those are all quite political arguments you were moving onto something that seems to me to be a lot more psychological which is\u2026 \u00a0I wrote an article about the Scottish referendum a couple of years ago and in that I said it\u2019s not necessarily a huge surprise that politicians invite us in to a very simplistic place, especially when we\u2019re faced with a binary choice like this, you know one thing is bad and one thing is good. You know there\u2019s an over statement of the badness of the other side. I think what is psychologically interesting at this point is why seem a bit more in a position to respond to it. I gather Donald Trump\u2019s favourability numbers have gone down somewhat, something of a relief to me, since the Orlando shooting. But none the less they are an alarming large number of people who are ready to vote for something that almost seems like a parody of the simplistic campaign.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a parody of what a western democracy is really supposed to be about.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

John<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s almost like a you couldn\u2019t make this kind of stuff up really. The question is, you were talking about a collapse of confidence and a need for scapegoating and I think that\u2019s where it\u2019s worth thinking about what\u2019s going on, at least some people, they may be perfectly reasonable arguments for Brexit, I wouldn\u2019t want to lump everyone in. In fact I don\u2019t particularly go for those arguments but there\u2019s something about scapegoating, you know, a psychological process of maybe perhaps being able to see, wanting to see things, some of us anyway, as a lot more polarised and a lot more black and white and being perhaps finding candidates that are offering these broad and simplistic solutions a lot more appealing.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well I think the more threatened people feel, the more extreme things are likely to become.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rachel<\/strong><\/p>\n

Or the more dissatisfied people become.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela<\/strong><\/p>\n

Or the more dissatisfied and you know it\u2019s also ben interesting in the last couple of days to see how the present government has responded to that, because clearly the present government has started to feel very threatened by the possibility of a Brexit. Yesterday we had Osbourne\u2019s highly, highly punitive suggestion of an emergency budget and so on\u2026..<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rachel<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a worry with David Cameron\u2019s spearheading \u00a0the remain campaign that people may identify dissatisfaction with the current government and therefore be anti-remain because that\u2019s the way of expressing their dissatisfaction I think. I agree with you that at the moment the government are kind of resorting to coercion tactics to try and get people to vote for remain, which is threatening there will be tax increases, if we vote to leave. There is a sense of desperation now isn\u2019t there?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela<\/strong><\/p>\n

Absolutely, it\u2019s clear that the prime minister called the referendum because he was confident that he could win it hand down, he\u2019s clearly not so confident today. So we are seeing some fairly desperate tactics I think in the last week to try and keep more people in the \u00a0remain camp.<\/strong><\/p>\n

John<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of overstatement I think in these things. The interesting thing is why we are more convinced by it. So clearly we associate it with both campaigns. There was quote I read recently by Matthew d\u2019Ancona in the Guardian he\u2019s quite a right wing journalist but I think he is very well worth paying attention to. This is the quote \u2018We have not sunk to the level of Donald Trump\u2019s promise to build a wall, but what the leave campaign promises to share with those proposed Republican Presidential nominee is a bogus simplicity. The most famous wall of the 20th<\/sup> Century symbolised the division of the western world into democracy and totalitarian regimes. The most famous wall of the 21st<\/sup> century so far is Trump\u2019s Mexican wall has yet to be built but already symbolises a more subtle but equally important division in modern politics between those who are willing to confront and can see the nuance of problems of government and those who think or say they think but such intricacies are excuses and pretext for delay\u2019\u00a0 That seems to me to be almost the very definition of a very simplistic Populism. Airy, \u00a0broad solutions, you know, Scottish nationalism etc, I wouldn\u2019t want to necessarily lump them fully in with Donald Trump, though,\u00a0 I don\u2019t agree with Donald Trump\u2019s \u2018We\u2019ll sort it by sorting it\u2019. But we seem to be finding it more appealing in a circumstance where certain measure of confidence has collapsed.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela<\/strong><\/p>\n

Absolutely, what\u2019s interesting for me is I grew up in South Africa during the apartheid years; I was a witness to all of those events. It\u2019s very interesting to me that some of the things we\u2019re hearing now are very similar to things I heard during that era in SA. The presence of the bogie man, making the immigrant very \u2018other\u2019. In SA of course the black man was the immigrant even though obviously black people were indigenous to SA, but they were almost regarded as foreigners. The government at the time wished to banish them all to so called \u2018Homeland\u2019 and so on. There were very similar patterns in people\u2019s thoughts and conversations, they\u2019re very different, they\u2019re not the same as us, they don\u2019t have the same cultures, the same standards, we\u2019ll be swamped, we won\u2019t be able to get health care, we won\u2019t be able to stop the numbers increasing. People are very reluctant to look at the reality of the facts, and very reluctant to ask themselves \u2018Is this logically true?\u2019 Isn\u2019t there a way of us all living together and sharing and caring for one another?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rachel<\/strong><\/p>\n

For me the bit about identity as well, I think the Brexit campaign has been more successful at tapping into this issue of British identity and if we exit we\u2019ll be maintaining our British-ness and we\u2019ll have much more control. Whereas if we stay in Europe we\u2019ll be subject to their laws, we will lose our British-ness which they play on as being so great and being weakened by being in Europe. So I think identity is a key component to this debate. The stay campaign needs to do more to highlight the role of European identity and UK being part of Europe not just separate.<\/strong><\/p>\n

John<\/strong><\/p>\n

I went to a talk recently by someone from the LSE, a public information talk and he was making a point that the Brits have always been rather reluctant EU members. And I think there is something in that. I suppose that I think the real fascinating bit is that social psychology would suggest to us, and I wouldn\u2019t lump everyone in the Brexit campaign in this, the \u00a0notion of simplistic scapegoats\u00a0 and particularly strong feelings around immigration do tend to intensify at periods of economic recession. It\u2019s well worth thinking about why that should be and certainly we\u2019re all clinical psychologists here a lot of the clinical ways that we understand people would suggest that when emotion is intensified people tend to go into more black and white ways of thinking. Cognitive behaviour therapy, black and white thinking it\u2019s hard to hold the fact that actually the effect of immigration are quite complicated, they fall differentially on different people, but it\u2019s not like there\u2019s a fixed pool of jobs. People who come to our country create more demand for our services; economically contribute in all sorts of ways and the overwhelming evidence \u00a0suggests that people coming from the EU are actually not hanging around on benefits but contributing hugely to the economy. But it\u2019s hard to keep that nuance, certainly in the Scottish referendum, where the things I was thinking about were psychoanalytic theories and the notions of Melanie Klein. I\u2019m a psychoanalytic kind of guy and the notion of \u00a0Melanie Klein was the paranoid schizoid position. For want of a better way of describing it is really not being able to hold this complexity in good and bad within a single person. \u00a0So you get, Bernie Sanders supporters who are demonising Hillary Clinton as the worst thing ever. I hope some of them are going to vote for her, God I really hope so. Occasionally you read about the more extreme things about the European Union, it\u2019s totalitarian, it\u2019s dominant, we want to get our country back, like our country is lost. It\u2019s a huge overstatement, it being too much to hold the middle position and I\u2019m saying that the politicians, to an extent, invite us into that. Some are more prepared to do that in an ugly way than others. Donald Trump is prepared to do it in an incredibly ugly and utterly straightforward and transparent way.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s one way of looking at it but there are also evolutionary ways of looking at it. We could suggest that we are very threat sensitive as a species. We are designed to respond quickly to threat and that is so as to keep us alive as a species so that we keep propagating on the planet, so in a sense we are responding to a very ancient reptilian brain which kind of tells us if there\u2019s danger do something about it, move out the way, take action, whatever. That\u2019s almost contrary to thinking.<\/strong><\/p>\n

John<\/strong><\/p>\n

I guess you\u2019re saying, one of the very few things that I\u2019ve read about the psychological take on the EU referendum was that little piece about Daniel Kahneman the philosopher\/ psychologist in the Telegraph where obviously quite a lot of people are in quite an angry place\u00a0 but he was pointing out something broader about the biases that we bring to the table. We\u2019re not rational beings; we jump without having all the information in all sorts of ways really.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rachel<\/strong><\/p>\n

Which is one of the worries for me about the relatively right wing potentially media in this country and\u00a0 I think when people are unclear they look to what others are doing and thinking and when you\u2019ve got in media, the from page of the Sun which is very very pro Brexit, that is a worry for me, for those that\u00a0 are unsure of which way to go, they will look to what other people are doing or they\u2019ll look to others for advice and they maybe therefore influenced by The Sun or what their friends and family are voting and that\u2019s a bit of a worry for me I think.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela<\/strong><\/p>\n

That kind of makes me think as well of something like social identity theory and Tajfel. And how we tend to remain in our own group, and we are unlikely to join another group very easily unless there\u2019s some kind of common ground that can easily be identified. Actually we don\u2019t very easily find common ground with other groups and that\u2019s why is so easy to other different groups and regard them as inferior.<\/strong><\/p>\n

John<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m very aware of, well hopefully not seeing other groups as inferior, but of some of those processes in myself. I\u2019m aware that I\u2019m basically probably well disposed towards the whole notion of the EU that I can see that is has problems but I\u2019m also aware that the out campaign would probably have to go for a higher bar with me than the in campaign so I\u2019m not approaching it in a reasonable way. I think Rachel, also what you\u2019re saying is the difficulty of democracy really isn\u2019t it? I think people might vote for the things that we don\u2019t want them to vote for and they also say things that we don\u2019t want them to say, though I think, and I\u2019ve been quite influenced by you in this regard Angela, we both I think grew up in systems that were are quite closed in terms of information. You grew up in South Africa and I grew up in a very conservative and strictly religious family where there was a great deal of mistrust of things outside of that system and information is battened out, but your strong principle has been that we may not always like free information out there but in the long run it\u2019s the best thing.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela<\/strong><\/p>\n

Absolutely. If you look at what\u2019s happening in this campaign, in its early stages there was a complete paucity of real information, I think in this latter stage is the information is there and has become available because I think journalist have done quite a good job nailing politicians down and saying \u2018What do you mean by that?\u2019. \u2018What will happen if we Brexit\u2019, etc etc. but as I said earthlier, the public is reluctant to respond to the facts, they\u2019re far more likely to respond to their emotions, even when the information becomes available.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rachel<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even when the information is available both sides can present the same information in very different ways and it is quite difficult therefore of sort of make sense of and interpret it even when the information is available.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela<\/strong><\/p>\n

Absolutely, because some of it seems to be highly conflicting doesn\u2019t it, you know the remainers will say that we are better off in than out, and outers will say that we\u2019re better off out and both sides have managed to come up with things that back their particular stance but there\u2019s also a hell of a lot of spin going on and outright lies.<\/strong><\/p>\n

John<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2026on both sides!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela<\/strong><\/p>\n

Both sides, both sides have behaved very badly I think.<\/strong><\/p>\n

John<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think on that note we\u2019d better wine it down but I will say a couple of things. We\u2019ll put some thinks on our show page to The UK \u00a0in a Changing Europe Foundation, who are a network of social scientists who are trying to provide clear and unbiased information from the public and also to one of the fact checking websites, a very good one called Full fact who have been calling out some of the exaggerated claims on both sides of the argument and I do think those are well worth looking at. But before we wind up just putting aside your own feelings about how you want it to go, I just want to ask you how do you think it will go? Are we going to stay or are we going to go Angela?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think we will remain but by a whisker.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rachel<\/strong><\/p>\n

And that\u2019s shifted hasn\u2019t it Angela? I remember us having a discussion early on when you were much more confident.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Angela<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was very confident that it would be 60 in and 40 out, but I\u2019m more likely to think it\u2019ll be something like 51 in now and 49 out.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rachel<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think that it may be a Brexit actually, which I\u2019m quite anxious about.<\/strong><\/p>\n

John<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, and I agree with you, it seems to be that the poles have begun to point more solidly for leave now and I do you think we will leave. Whatever leaving actually means because that\u2019s of course the other big thing we don\u2019t know what leaving is actually going to mean and quite how involved we will get with the EU in a different way. For me it\u2019s relatively gloomy but realist note to end on.<\/strong><\/p>\n

All that really remains for me to say is that the best way to follow the podcast is to subscribe. You\u2019ll find instructions about how to do that as well as links to what we have talked about on the show page and our blog. That\u2019s blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/discursive<\/strong><\/p>\n

We are in the process of getting listed on podcast databases including iTunes and that should make it easier to find as well as that you can follow us on twitter cccuapppsy. I\u2019ll also put links to Angela and Rachel\u2019s twitter accounts on that and you can also find us on Facebook if you look for Canterbury Christ Church University Applied Psychology.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We\u2019ll be back soon and thanks for listening.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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