Instead of viewing political opponents as simply having different points of view, nearly half of American voters see political opponents as “downright evil,” according to polling data from Johns Hopkins University.

Three-quarters of Republicans who believe former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election “somewhat agree” or “strongly agree” that Democrats are evil, though only 27% of Republicans who believe President Joe Biden share that sentiment, the data show. Slightly less than 50% of Democrats believe Republicans are evil. 

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The polling data, from the university’s SNF Agora Institute, is part of a project to better understand the mindset of American voters leading up to the presidential election. Researchers surveyed a 2,000-person sample representative of the demographic and political makeup of U.S. voters. 

“Vilifying our political opponents is a signal that we consider them to be enemies instead of opponents,” Lilliana Mason, a Johns Hopkins University professor who studies political violence and polarization, said in a statement. “The work of governing a democracy requires compromise and mutual respect. These sentiments make that respect nearly impossible, which threatens the health of democracy.”

The psychology behind the demonization of political opponents is complex and counterproductive, two Philadelphia-based mental health experts said.

Villainizing the other side creates a distraction from the real issues and leads to more division, Christina Kemp, a Philadelphia-area licensed clinical psychologist and school psychologist, said in an email.

“My elementary school aged son innocently asked why the political ad commercials are ‘so mean,'” Kemp said. “He also voiced concerns for people with lawn signs in support of who they are voting for due to fear that people voting for the other candidate may become angry and direct violence towards them. These are the messages our young children are receiving about how our leaders and citizens conduct themselves, especially during election seasons.”

People who characterize opponents as evil are often “unsure of their own moral high ground, even if they’re using that kind of terminology as if they really are utterly confident,” said Jill Lamar, a licensed professional counselor in Philadelphia. “It’s kind of like over-compensation.”

This kind of behavior is often rooted in fear and dehumanizes an opponent, Lamar said.

“It’s basically saying, ‘OK, I no longer have respect for you as a co-equal human being,'” she said. “‘You are now the evil other that needs to be destroyed or put in its place.’

“So calling it ‘evil’ is a really easy way to opt out of having a dialogue about it. If you can just categorize it as ‘evil’, there’s no intent to try to understand what’s going on. You don’t care about the other person’s point of view. They’re just wrong.”

This kind of behavior, Lamar said, is linked to a perpetrator strategy defined by psychologist Jennifer Freyd as “Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender,” or DARVO.

“The perpetrator may Deny the behavior, Attack the individual doing the confronting, and Reverse the roles of Victim and Offender, so that the perpetrator adopts the victim role and accuses the true victim of being an offender,” Freyd writes on her website. “This can occur when an actually guilty perpetrator assumes the role of ‘falsely accused’ and attacks the accuser’s credibility and blames the accuser of being the perpetrator of a false accusation.”

A political opponent who employs DARVO is essentially saying, “‘Let’s not talk about me or what I’m doing or how I’m contradicting myself in any way,'” Lamar said. “‘Let’s talk about you and your evil beliefs and behavior.'”

When dealing with someone who operates this way, it is best to disengage, Lamar said.

“You’re not going to change the other person’s mind,” she said. “All engaging does is it turns you into somebody who is then attacking them, and then that makes you the bad guy, too. Nobody wins.”

An effective way to disengage with someone who is being combative is to say, “This is unproductive. If you won’t end this conversation, I’m going to walk away,” Lamar advised.

“Be willing to do that to get yourself some peace of mind,” Lamar said.