Fear and Loathing across Party Lines: New Evidence on Group Polarization

In the citing paper

“In the political domain, there is ample evidence that affective polarization is on the rise (Finkel et al. 2020, Iyengar & Westwood 2015), leading to concerns about reduced support for democratic norms (Broockman et al. 2022, Kingzette et al. 2021).”

In the citing paper

“Some studies have found that polarization includes affective aspects related to ideology that foster the difference between groups, favoring severe divisions between us and them.”

In the citing paper

“For various authors, it is an affective polarization associated with social beliefs and the configuration of the other as an enemy or adversary.”

In the citing paper

“This is because personalistic links are established with electoral candidates that lead to a consideration of the other as an enemy.”

In the citing paper

“Hence, polarization has an emotional and affective dimension that unfolds in social life and everyday relationships and goes beyond ideological opposition.”

In the citing paper

“This results in moral disqualification of the opponent, oversimplification of their position, exacerbation of disputes in everyday interactions, and personalization of political events.”

In the citing paper

“Many scholars link these negative feelings to shifts in identity, with partisanship emerging as an important social identity under which many societal divisions and conflicts are coming to align (15–18).”

In the citing paper

“Iyengar and Westwood (2015) use trust and dictator games to show people discriminate against those from other parties more than they do toward people of different races (also see Carlin & Love, 2013, 2018;Whitt et al., 2024).”

In the citing paper

“From a social identity perspective, affective polarization is a natural offshoot of this sense of partisan group identity”

In the citing paper

“The results indicated little racial bias; whites, in fact, preferred the African American applicant (55.8%).”

In the citing paper

“The difference in the D-score-the operational indicator of implicit bias-across the party divide was 0.50, while the corresponding difference in implicit racial bias across the racial divide was only 0.18 (see also Theodoridis 2017 for an application of implicit measures to the study of partisanship).”

In the citing paper

“Relative to implicit racial bias, implicit partisan bias is more widespread.”

In the citing paper

“Results show that copartisans consistently receive a bonus while opposing partisans are subject to a financial penalty.”

In the citing paper

“Interestingly, implicit bias is less pronounced than explicit bias as measured through survey questions; 91% of Republicans and 75% of Democrats in the same study explicitly evaluated their party more favorably.”

In the citing paper

“But 79.2% of Democrats picked the Democratic applicant and 80% of Republicans picked the Republican applicant.”

In the citing paper

“Their results showed that implicit bias is ingrained; approximately 70% of Democrats and Republicans show a bias in favor of their party.”

In the citing paper

“These results held even when the out-party candidate had a significantly higher grade point average (4.0 versus 3.5); the probability of a partisan selecting the more qualified out-party candidate was never above 30%.”

In the citing paper

“The body of literature on mass political polarization in the USA has yielded mixed findings: ordinary citizens are deeply divided9,31,35,41–49 or they are not10,29,36,50–54; polarization poses a huge threat to democratic functioning3,11,55, is not a problem at all13,56–58 or the nature of the threat is ambiguous7,59,60.”