Polarisation is a health issue.
From hesitancy and non-compliance to protests and U-turns, polarisation is at the heart of many public health issues, policy debates and proposals for legislative change.
This wave of the MHP Polarisation Tracker, produced in partnership with Cambridge University Political Psychology Lab, set out to establish the extent of polarisation on health issues in the UK. It arrives at a moment when the conditions for that polarisation to take hold are firmly in place.
Dissatisfaction with the Labour Government is running high: just 13% of people believe the Government is doing a good job on healthcare. Meanwhile, many contested health issues are high on the media and political agenda, creating a landscape in which disagreement is both more likely and more charged.
Polarisation also erodes trust, not just in a single institution or party, but in the system itself. Our work has shown that more than a third of people are now ‘Super Distrusters’, who are highly suspicious of all officialsources of information and expertise.
The consequences of polarisation for health are profound. As mistrust and hostility towards those we disagree with intensifies, it becomes easier to assume that people with different views are not simply reaching different conclusions from the same evidence but are acting out of ignorance, bad faith or malice.
Lower trust leads to lower rates of compliance with medical advice and higher rates of vaccine hesitancy.
This shift in how we perceive disagreement has a direct effect on how we talk about our bodies: hostility towards perceived outgroups emboldens people to treat others’ health as a matter of public comment rather than private experience. Health, usually an intimate and personal domain, can become a political statement.
At the policy level, the effects are equally corrosive. Polarisation undermines effective policymaking in two distinct ways: it erodes the conditions for compromise, and it shifts the basis of disagreement from evidence to partisanship. Accountability suffers too, as when credit and blame are awarded on tribal rather than rational lines, the normal incentives for good performance break down.
Polarisation’s harmful effects on public health can be reduced by effective communication, but any effective strategy starts with a deep understanding of how audiences really see the world.
We hope the results of this edition of the Polarisation Tracker will challenge assumptions about attitudes to some health issues, and support organisations in the health sphere to communicate more effectively.
Download the report here.
