By RORY MOORE
Tiger Media Network
The American Democracy Project hosted its weekly Times Talk inside the Stouffer Lounge of Fort Hays State University on Wednesday with Nuchelle L. Chace as the speaker. Chance, an assistant professor of Psychology, shared her research on the ideological divides between people based on political views and how those divides affect their thinking.
Much of what Chance addressed dealt with how people conduct themselves regarding socio-political factors, such as masks at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Some people were like, ‘Okay, I want to exist in this space,’” she said. “’ I don’t want to get sick. Let’s wear the mask. Let’s play by the rules.’ But obviously, everybody does not necessarily feel that way.”
Nuchelle L. Chance lead the Times Talk about ideological divides. 
Chance assessed that people are divided ideologically based on morals, values, beliefs and their framework of the world. 
Chance receives responses from attendees about their preferences on subject matters. 
Attendees offer their assessment of people’s differences and tensions. 
Chance gives examples of how political divisions are heightened by ideological positions. 
Ideological divides, as Chance observes, influence how people approach issues and how they conduct themselves.
She gave an example of an incident involving a Starbucks customer being combative with a barista over her alleged bias due to a political mask she wore.
“For some, the language that might be a little bit apart from public policy to political discourse is the emotional component that is triggered in people,” Chance said. “It doesn’t have to be rooted in logic. When you start to assess people’s emotions and tamper with how they feel, you flip the switch, and at some point, you have to integrate these other factors, which feel interconnected somehow. So, there is some ideological connection, even though it might not feel practical or logical for the average person or other person.”
That ideological connection is rooted in what Chance called high-end aggression in political actions, namely the rise in vandalism, theft of yard signs and destruction of federal property.
“It speaks to something bigger at a humanistic level,” she said. “These political acts of aggression can essentially start to develop and evolve into what we’re now referring to as political terrorism in some instances.”
Upon sharing her research, Chance elaborated on how people’s conduct can be linked to their core ideology.
“What the research tells us is this could be rooted in things like people’s values, their ethics, their morals, and their ideologies,” she said. “When we talk about values, there are shared concepts that are learned from people and passed down. They regulate how we view and interact in society. We know what’s good and what’s evil, and these are the basis for how we are going to view our opinions on different topics and how issues might develop. Our opinions and views shape our values, and these can shift based on information we’re exposed to.”
She mentioned that as values become permanent over time, people are set in stone about how they view a particular thing of people.
“Ideology is a higher view of things that tie in together,” Chance said. “It could be our beliefs about persons, groups, a phenomenon, and not always based on knowledge or on sound research. There can be a strong emotional appeal when it comes to these things, but they’re how we make sense. These frameworks help us navigate the environment and the world.”
Chance’s assessment of ideological divides is laid out in groups, including how Liberals and Conservatives differ in where they stand on various issues, which pertains to her observation of the framework of humanity.
“Groups that were identifying as Conservative would hold more rigid and oppressive ideologies,” she said. “Liberals would hold flexible and equitable ideologies.”
She pointed out, however, that both groups were similar in how they treated others with opposing views based on her use of the Moral Foundations Theory.
“It’s suspected that the ideological divides are based somewhat on political identity and somewhat on morals and values,” Chance said. “So, this suggests that Liberals and Conservatives would be equally intolerant towards groups with different values, the out-group. They will intentionally use various strategies to maintain their own worldview, and that includes things like motivated information processing and defenses against the out-group.”