New Study Finds Political Polarization Is Actually Making Americans Sick

Well+Good

The American political divide might be making people sick with worry as the election inches closer—but it could also be making people physically ill. A new study published in Nature Medicine investigates how political polarization affects health, and found that extreme political views (in both directions) were associated with known health risk factors, as well as worse physical and mental health.

Though other papers have tackled this health association before, this new publication is an aggregate study that looks at the full body of research on the topic—more than 100 other studies—making the conclusions pretty darn stark. The aggregate makes plain what many of us have already seen happening in the wellness world: The individuals who distrust doctors and Western medicine—regardless of their political affiliation—tend to forgo common-sense medical interventions, instead falling prey to anti-vaccine Covid-19 conspiracy theories and even believing sunscreen misinformation.

This phenomenon has played out over time in American politics, but as the political landscape has become increasingly polarized, researchers say that people’s health and health behaviors have gotten worse.

How political polarization is threatening health

Researchers found that the link between polarization and health exists on a few levels:

Voters who identified as more extreme than the state’s average voter were found to have worse physical and mental health, according to the study.
More polarized voters also held beliefs or engaged in behaviors that were linked with worse health—such as not getting vaccinated, not trusting or taking the advice of medical professionals, and not eating a balanced diet.
Increased polarization has gotten entangled with health advice, turning something that should be a politically neutral issue into an incendiary partisan talking point that undermines the authority of medical professionals.

In the US, health issues—like being for or against vaccines; or generally trusting health authorities, like Covid czar and former chief medical adviser to the president Dr. Anthony Fauci, whose authority continues to be a partisan issue—have become associated with political parties. However, this is not the case all over the world: One study of 67 countries found that adherence to one political party or another did not consistently correlate with mistrustful health attitudes.

At the same time, a survey of European countries showed that partisanship, once again, predicted health behaviors. So combining the insights from these two studies, the researchers concluded that the link between polarization and health is less about the actual ideology (i.e., the beliefs a person or a party has). Instead, it’s about polarization and extremity itself.

Let’s not mince words: Currently, political ideologies on the right in the US are posing an extreme risk to people’s health, whether that’s undermining affordable health care or preventing doctors from performing abortions on people in dire medical straits, which the researchers point to as health risks. The aggregate study also shows that in far-right leaning states like West Virginia and Mississippi, citizens have worse health.

But could this phenomenon be a symptom of a larger bogeyman? If we didn’t revile our political rivals so much, would we be less willing to disregard the advice of our doctors and public health experts over the words of our politicians? If there were more compromise and collaboration in politics, would our politicians be so willing to weaponize our health for power? Perhaps adverse health behaviors and outcomes are a symptom, and the real illness is polarization.

So if you find yourself hyperventilating at the prospect of the other side winning the election, let it serve as a reminder to take a deep breath, maybe go for a walk, and put your health first.