Han van der Maas | The art of not taking sides: is neutrality still possible?
No opinion. Or; don’t know. Why do some people choose to remain neutral? That question intrigues columnist Han van der Maas. And in the current era, is staying neutral at all possible?
As polarization increases, the question of middle positions becomes more relevant. But do middle positions actually exist? Recently, I delved into the scientific literature on the subject. In data, we see the middle position as questionnaires often include a neutral response option. However, this option is given a variety of names, such as don't know, no opinion, not applicable, neutral, or even a modern neutral smiley. Sometimes the question is also simply skipped.
One possible explanation for the preference for neutral response options lies in a person’s response style. Some think this may be cultural or gender-related, but the evidence for this is weak. This tendency toward middle positions is also called the midpoint response set. Opposed to this is the extreme response set, where people give mostly extreme answers without any consistency.
An alternative explanation is that people choose neutral options simply because they have no interest in the particular issue. Thus, the escape from polarization and extremism seems to be phlegm or apathy.
But social psychology offers another possibility: ambivalence. Unlike indifference, this state is actually accompanied by commitment. Ambivalent people regularly change their point of view, either spontaneously - similar to perceiving multistable perceptions like the Necker cube - or under the influence of new information. For example, I myself have delved several times into the one- or two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, but each time I am convinced by the arguments of the last author I read. Switching positions is not even necessary; ambivalence can include recognizing or intuitively sensing the validity and consistency of the opposing position. While there are good reasons for a state of general ambivalence, it is not a pleasant state. It is accompanied by cognitive dissonance.
Our current research, applying models from statistical physics to attitudes, points to a final option, one that rarely appears in the psychological literature but does in political philosophy: involved or epistemic neutrality. This form of neutrality seems to be rooted in at least two currents of Greek philosophy. On the one hand, it shares similarities with the skeptical concept of epoché, in which one suspends final judgments. On the other hand, it aligns with the Socratic recognition of our own lack of understanding, which encourages ongoing critical reflection.
Committed neutrality may offer the best response to current polarization precisely because social developments are exceptionally complex. The conflict in Israel and Gaza aptly illustrates this. It is both easy and right to strongly condemn many actions by Hamas and the Israeli military. But when it comes to constitutional solutions that do justice to the immense and historic suffering-from the horrors of the Holocaust to the tens of thousands of civilian victims in Gaza-I have to pass.
I fear that the parties on the fringes of the polarization spectrum will not settle for committed neutrality. They will put forward one very last statement: cowardly neutrality. I do not know if it has roots in Greek thought, but I cannot rule out this option.
