People often change their political minds as they get older. Adolescents and young adults tend to form political opinions that reflect those of their peers or are more extreme versions of their parents’ politics (as befits the intensity of youth). Then something happens: the intrepid fledglings leave home and school, enter the greater world of work and responsibility, and begin to doubt their old certainties about how the world is and should be. Or at least some do. I certainly did.

Back in the day, I ran a small career counseling business. Had a few employees, did well enough. Bought a house and over a couple decades achieved all I wanted on the material plane (which isn't all that much).  And my politics were never the same. 

In college and at the beginning of my entrepreneurial adventure, I was your standard-issue progressive, waxing poetic about social justice while looking down on "corporate America". Judged people if they "looked Republican". Wouldn't date men who were "right-wing". I was even a card-carrying member of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Then one too many clients complained about how bad luck had ruined their careers - the same clients who showed up late for appointments (if at all) and didn't follow-through on assignments. And one too many of my own employees became "outraged" when fired for chronic misbehavior. Basically, I heard the victim narrative one too many times. Yeah, yeah - someone else is always to blame. And I came to appreciate how frickin hard it is to run a successful business. I saw firsthand how initiative and hard work led to success, in my own experience and that of my employees and clients. I saw firsthand how the victim narrative undermined success by encouraging a kind of passivity: others owe me and they need to fix my situation. Which is why it makes total sense to me that small business owners are more likely to be Republicans than Democrats. One, the vast majority work long hours. Two, even if their business manages to beat the odds and achieve long-term success, it typically takes decades for small business owners to strike it rich. After all those years of risk-taking, uncertainty, sleepless nights, and delayed gratification, who wouldn't resent the whiners and the blamers and feel they deserve the fruits of their labor? I never became a Republican myself but could certainly respect their point of view.

My politics changed because I had new experiences that made a huge impression on me. These experiences left their mark by creating vivid “episodic” memories, which in turn influenced my thinking about political issues.

Episodic memory is a person's unique memory of a specific event. Some episodic memories are easy to retrieve because they’re laden with emotion and meaning and provide storylines for how we see the world and other people. A similar concept in political psychology is “episodic framing”, which describes concrete events and particular cases to illuminate a political issue, such as a “news story about an elderly disabled woman unable to get public home care” (Aaroe, 2011).

Episodic framing of a political issue can be very persuasive when it elicits strong emotion. But a more measured, abstract framing, one that relies on broader considerations and general evidence, is more effective at influencing opinion on issues that don’t engage strong emotion. An example of such framing is a “news story about cuts in government welfare expenditures substantiated by statistical figures” (Aaroe, 2011).

Both life experiences and episodic framing influence our hearts and minds through their effect on the imagination:

“By analyzing the effects of individual differences in imagination, we demonstrate that political cognition relies on vivid, mental simulations…citizens use imagination, often referred to as decoupled cognition, to generate vivid mental simulations of relevant events and groups in mass politics.” - Petersen & Aarøe, 2013.

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References:

Aarøe, L. (2011) Investigating Frame Strength: The Case of Episodic and Thematic Frames, Political Communication, 28:2, 207-226, DOI: 10.1080/10584609.2011.568041

Petersen, M., & Aarøe, L. (2013). Politics in the Mind's Eye: Imagination as a Link between Social and Political Cognition. American Political Science Review, 107(2), 275-293. doi: 10.1017/S0003055413000026