Political psychological rationalization

Political psychological rationalization (PPR) is a phenomenon seen in political warfare and election campaign rhetoric, meant to displace a perceived fault, short coming, mistake, or problem from one political actor, and attach it to another political actor, generally an opponent. While not truly rationalization in the context of psychology—where a problem, short coming, mistake, or fault is justified and allowed to endure—PPR maintains the negative connotation of the original flaw, transfers that connotation to a target actor, and then seeks to destroy the flaw (and consequently the actor) through association with said flaw, but with a political purpose and focus. Political psychological rationalization exploits a number of psychological principles to manipulate the perceptions of different actors including groupthink, cognitive dissonance, and other forms of psychological manipulation. An example of PPR would be "Candidate A" accusing "Candidate B" of having an onerous tax policy for not cutting taxes while Candidate A had already raised taxes previously in his or her career, but having accused Candidate B of having an onerous tax policy is seen as being in favor of cutting taxes. Use of PPR can also run the risk of backfiring against the broadcaster if knowledge of hypocritical behavior on the part of the displacing political actor becomes known. In cases where this has happened, the original negative association can become reoriented back to the initiating political actor. As tool of political warfare, PPR has been used by a wide array of factions, ideologies, actors, and regimes including fascists, communists, religious extremists, electoral campaign rhetoric, and non-governmental organizations.

As a tool of political warfare, PPR utilizes a number of psychological and sociological concepts, but is not truly rationalization in a classical psychology context. In psychology, rationalization is generally an internal (and usually subconscious) coping mechanism used to justify actions and decisions arrived at through alternative logic paths—but in a political context, rationalization is usually an external (and almost always conscious) justification used to create a specific association for the target audience. In theory, a political actor using PPR could exploit the phenomenon of group think (whereby an idea has unfounded credibility because many members of a particular group adhere to it in a desire to maintain cohesion) to rationalize a particular political position. In some cases, PPR might also be a defense mechanism against being branded with a negative image by an opponent through active exploitation of cognitive dissonance, creating alternative messages to rationalize a real or perceived inconsistency in policy or a previous attack by an opponent. Due to the highly subjective nature of both broadcaster and target audience perceptions, it is difficult to definitively label a particular messaging campaign as being an example of PPR.

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