Earlier this fall, Occidental College junior Luigi Maruani laid in bed anxious and angry, swiping through his phone. His 75-year-old father had just contracted the coronavirus, and Maruani felt the federal government wasn’t responding to the pandemic with enough urgency.

A post in a Facebook group for students living off-campus caught his eye.

Voters are frustrated with the state of US politics. They want a fairer system that empowers them to elect representatives who will put their interests above those of private political parties and special interests. It is becoming much more apparent to citizens that long-term solutions to the nation’s biggest problems can’t be found until we fix how voters elect public officials.

One of the most interesting aspects of political psychology concerns the gap between the reasons for which people believe they hold their political opinions and the real causes of their holding those opinions.

Typically, that gap generates another one – between the content of arguments a person makes for her political position and the real motivation for her holding that position.