Pluralistic Collapse: The “Oil Spill” Model of Mass Opinion Polarization

DellaPosta, Daniel

doi:10.1177/0003122420922989

Cited by 221Electoral Systems and Political ParticipationOpinion Dynamics and Social InfluenceSocial Media and Politics

Pluralistic Collapse: The “Oil Spill” Model of Mass Opinion Polarization

DellaPosta, Daniel·2020·American Sociological Review

DOI 10.1177/0003122420922989

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Abstract

Despite widespread feeling that public opinion in the United States has become dramatically polarized along political lines, empirical support for such a pattern is surprisingly elusive. Reporting little evidence of mass polarization, previous studies assume polarization is evidenced via the amplification of existing political alignments. This article considers a different pathway: polarization occurring via social, cultural, and political alignments coming to encompass an increasingly diverse array of opinions and attitudes. The study uses 44 years of data from the General Social Survey representing opinions and attitudes across a wide array of domains as elements in an evolving belief network. Analyses of this network produce evidence that mass polarization has increased via a process of belief consolidation, entailing the collapse of previously cross-cutting alignments, thus creating increasingly broad and encompassing clusters organized around cohesive packages of beliefs. Further, the increasing salience of political ideology and partisanship only partly explains this trend. The structure of U.S. opinion has shifted in ways suggesting troubling implications for proponents of political and social pluralism.

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Bonikowski, B., Feinstein, Y., & Bock, S. (2021) · American Journal of Sociology · doi:10.1086/717103 · Cited by 88 · see citing works
When debates break apart: discursive polarization as a multi-dimensional divergence emerging in and through communication
Brüggemann, M., & Meyer, H. (2023) · Communication Theory · doi:10.1093/ct/qtad012 · Cited by 60 · see citing works
Transmission of Faith in Families: The Influence of Religious Ideology
Smith, J. (2020) · Sociology of Religion · doi:10.1093/socrel/sraa045 · Cited by 60 · see citing works
“Processes of social constraint and belief consolidation may further contribute to overlap of political and religious perspectives over time (Baldassarri and Gelman 2008; Boutyline and Vaisey 2017; DellaPosta 2020).”
Background
The Polarization of Popular Culture: Tracing the Size, Shape, and Depth of the “Oil Spill”
Rawlings, C. M., & Childress, C. (2023) · Social Forces · doi:10.1093/sf/soad150 · Cited by 57 · see citing works
“…on key issues (Baldassarri and Gelman 2008); partisans increasingly dislike each other (Iyengar et al. 2019); and individuals’ political beliefs have become more interconnected and therefore likely constrained in their ability to change (Axelrod, Daymude, and Forrest 2021; DellaPosta 2020).”
BackgroundMethodInfluential
Global Markets, Corporate Assurances, and the Legitimacy of State Intervention: Perceptions of Distant Labor and Environmental Problems
Amengual, M., & Bartley, T. (2022) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.1177/00031224221092340 · Cited by 44 · see citing works
The Ising model celebrates a century of interdisciplinary contributions
Macy, M. W., Szymanski, B. K., & Hołyst, J. A. (2024) · npj Complexity · doi:10.1038/s44260-024-00012-0 · Cited by 36 · see citing works
“SimulationswithanIsing-likemodelrevealtheconsequentdestabilizingofa pluralist equilibrium, allowing pluralism to collapse into bifurcation, as has happened in the US in recent decades 47,48 .”
Impact of content ideology on social media opinion polarization: The moderating role of functional affordances and symbolic expressions
Sun, R., Zhu, H., & Guo, F. Q. (2022) · Decision Support Systems · doi:10.1016/j.dss.2022.113845 · Cited by 35 · see citing works
“Scholars identify opinion polarization as a major concern because it can lead to extremism and social chaos [23,24].”
Background
The Rise of the Nones across the United States, 1973 to 2018: State-Level Trends of Religious Affiliation and Participation in the General Social Survey
Wiertz, D., & Lim, C. (2021) · Sociological Science · doi:10.15195/v8.a21 · Cited by 33 · see citing works
Constrained Citizens? Ideological Structure and Conflict Extension in the US Electorate, 1980–2016
Hare, C. (2021) · British Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1017/s000712342100051x · Cited by 30 · see citing works
The Interactive Effects of Scientific Knowledge and Gender on COVID‐19 Social Distancing Compliance
Algara, C., Fuller, S., Hare, C., & Kazemian, S. (2020) · Social Science Quarterly · doi:10.1111/ssqu.12894 · Cited by 31 · see citing works
Rooted America: Immobility and Segregation of the Intercounty Migration Network
Huang, P., & Butts, C. T. (2023) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.1177/00031224231212679 · Cited by 29 · see citing works
“…party lines (Levendusky 2009); social cleavages by political ideology extend to a growing array of public opinions (Baldassarri and Gelman 2008; DellaPosta 2020) and life-styles (DellaPosta, Shi, and Macy 2015) and have led to segregated social networks and tensions in relationships, including…”
Background
Individual attitude change and societal dynamics: Computational experiments with psychological theories.
Lorenz, J., Neumann, M., & Schröder, T. (2021) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/rev0000291 · Cited by 48 · see citing works
Interindividual cooperation mediated by partisanship complicates Madison’s cure for “mischiefs of faction”
Kawakatsu, M., Yphtach Lelkes, B., Levin, S. A., & Tarnita, C. E. (2021) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2102148118 · Cited by 27 · see citing works
“While some papers have argued that the decreasing dimensionality of issue attitudes (8, 9) is at the core of current political tensions, any demonstrated relationship between dimensionality reduction and polarization has been merely correlational.”
Background
Perceived risk, political polarization, and the willingness to follow COVID-19 mitigation guidelines
Block, R., Burnham, M., Kahn, K., Peng, R. X., Seeman, J., & Seto, C. H.-F. (2022) · Social Science & Medicine · doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115091 · Cited by 28 · see citing works
“…rhetoric is crystallizing among citizens: conversations about the severity of COVID-19 are often bundled with preexisting partisan debates regarding the role of government (Bhanot and Hopkins, 2020; Collignon et al., 2021; DellaPosta, 2020; Gollwitzer et al., 2020; Grossman et al., 2020).”
Polarization, abstention, and the median voter theorem
Jones, M. I., Sirianni, A., & Fu, F. (2022) · Humanities and Social Sciences Communications · doi:10.1057/s41599-022-01056-0 · Cited by 25 · see citing works
“…can result from the twin-mechanisms of homophily, a phenomenon that spans the social and biological sciences (Fu et al., 2012; McPherson et al., 2001), and social influence or the diffusion of pairs of associated beliefs (DellaPosta, 2020; DellaPosta et al., 2015; Goldberg and Stein, 2018).”
Background
Becoming an Ideologue: Social Sorting and the Microfoundations of Polarization
Rawlings, C. M. (2022) · Sociological Science · doi:10.15195/v9.a13 · Cited by 26 · see citing works
“Such ideological labels—that is, Democrat versus Republican, but perhaps even more clearly liberal versus conservative (see Boutyline and Vaisey 2017:1413; DellaPosta et al. 2015)—have become so-called mega-identities (Finkel et al. 2020; Mason 2018:14).”
The stratification of media usage in Finland, 2007–2018: Signs of socio-political polarization?
Heikkilä, R. L. S., Leguina, A., & Purhonen, S. (2020) · New Media & Society · doi:10.1177/1461444820971612 · Cited by 24 · see citing works
“…polarization found in the literature, we use the concept of polarization in a simple sociological sense to refer to a temporal process regarding whether social and political differentiation of media usage has become more sharply pronounced over time (e.g. DellaPosta, 2020; DiMaggio et al., 1996).”
Method
Partisanship Meets Social Networks: How Politically Heterogeneous Acquaintances and Close Relationships Buffer Partisan Animosity
Baldassarri, D., & de Jong, J. (2025) · Sociological Science · doi:10.15195/v12.a18 · Cited by 23 · see citing works
“…trait of affective polarization is that it extends to domains of life that would generally be considered removed from politics, such as health-related decisions to wear a mask or get vaccinated (Druckman et al. 2021) and possibly lifestyles (DellaPosta, Shi, and Macy 2015; DellaPosta 2020).”
The YouTube Apparatus
Munger, K. (2024) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/9781009359795 · Cited by 23 · see citing works
Null effects of news exposure: a test of the (un)desirable effects of a ‘news vacation’ and ‘news binging’
Wojcieszak, M., von Hohenberg, B. C., Casas, A., Menchen-Trevino, E., de Leeuw, S., Gonçalves, A., & Boon, M. (2022) · Humanities and Social Sciences Communications · doi:10.1057/s41599-022-01423-x · Cited by 26 · see citing works
“…climate in many countries, when citizens’ political identities are constantly activated (Settle, 2018) and when numerous ostensibly non-political issues and events become associated with politics (DellaPosta, 2020), it may be increasingly difficult to shift individual opinions and beliefs.”
Background
Strategies for reducing polarization in social networks
Wu, Y., Li, L., Yu, Q., Gan, J., & Zhang, Y. (2023) · Chaos Solitons & Fractals · doi:10.1016/j.chaos.2022.113095 · Cited by 22 · see citing works
Wicked Crises and the (In)capacity to Act
Meyer, R. E. (2025) · Administrative Science Quarterly · doi:10.1177/00018392251363998 · Cited by 21 · see citing works
“The growing followership of con-spiracy theories (Rao & Greve, 2024; Sutton & Douglas, 2020) and evidence that social sorting encompasses more and more previously apolitical areas of life (DellaPosta, 2020) point in this direction.”
Cognitive Authority and the Constraint of Attitude Change in Groups
Rawlings, C. M. (2020) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.1177/0003122420967305 · Cited by 21 · see citing works
“To date, attitude constraint has been inferred in cross-sectional surveys by examining the alignment of attitudes within groups (e.g., Baldassarri and Bearman 2007; DellaPosta 2020).”
BackgroundInfluential
Moral reframing increases support for economically progressive candidates
Voelkel, J. G., Mernyk, J. S., & Willer, R. (2023) · PNAS Nexus · doi:10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad154 · Cited by 20 · see citing works
The Influence of Simmel on American Sociology Since 1975
Broćić, M., & Silver, D. (2021) · Annual Review of Sociology · doi:10.1146/annurev-soc-090320-033647 · Cited by 19 · see citing works
Partisan Polarization of Childhood Vaccination Policies, 1995‒2020
Estep, K., Muse, A., Sweeney, S., & Goldstein, N. D. (2022) · American Journal of Public Health · doi:10.2105/ajph.2022.306964 · Cited by 18 · see citing works
Party, Race, and Neutrality: Investigating the Interdependence of Attitudes toward Social Groups
Brensinger, J., & Sotoudeh, R. (2022) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.1177/00031224221135797 · Cited by 18 · see citing works
“…century have conceptualized political beliefs in network terms (Converse 1964) and have recently begun to study the structure of such beliefs inductively using network analytic methods (Baldassarri and Goldberg 2014; Boutyline and Vaisey 2017; DellaPosta 2020; DiMaggio and Goldberg 2018).”
Method
Local Edge Dynamics and Opinion Polarization
Bhalla, N., Lechowicz, A., & Musco, C. (2023) · ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM) · doi:10.1145/3539597.3570442 · Cited by 18 · see citing works
“there is increasing concern about the ability of these platforms to polarize and divide us [3, 14, 18, 20, 23].”
Analytic Advances in Social Networks and Health in the 21st Century
Chapman, A., Verdery, A. M., & Moody, J. (2022) · Journal of Health and Social Behavior · doi:10.1177/00221465221086532 · Cited by 17 · see citing works
“Although not tied explicitly to health, a growing share of this research emphasizes the overlap, or not, of value systems among various subpopulations (DellaPosta 2020; DellaPosta, Shi, and Macy 2015).”
Background
Partisanship and anti-elite worldviews as correlates of science and health beliefs in the multi-party system of Spain
Spälti, A. K., Lyons, B. A., Stoeckel, F., Stöckli, S., Szewach, P., Mérola, V., Stednitz, C., González, P. L., & Reifler, J. (2023) · Public Understanding of Science · doi:10.1177/09636625231154131 · Cited by 17 · see citing works
“As such, it is possible that anti-vaccine beliefs may “contaminate” other domains in an “oil-spill” model of belief consolidation (DellaPosta, 2020), or that they represent a larger latent construct around health misperceptions.”
Background
Religious belief alignment: The structure of cultural beliefs from adolescence to emerging adulthood
Keskintürk, T. (2021) · Poetics · doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2021.101591 · Cited by 17 · see citing works
What’s Not to Like? Facebook Page Likes Reveal Limited Polarization in Lifestyle Preferences
Praet, S., Guess, A. M., Tucker, J. A., Bonneau, R., & Nagler, J. (2022) · Political Communication · doi:10.1080/10584609.2021.1994066 · Cited by 22 · see citing works
“Such a process is suggested by the “oil spill” model of polarization, in which clusters of initially disparate issues – including cultural and moral issues – become connected in a belief system (DellaPosta, 2020).”
Background
Understanding Cultural Non-Participation in an Egalitarian Context
Heikkilä, R. L. S. (2022) · Palgrave studies in cultural participation · doi:10.1007/978-3-031-18865-7 · Cited by 16 · see citing works
The nature and structure of European belief systems: exploring the varieties of belief systems across 23 European countries
van Noord, J., Turner-Zwinkels, F. M., Kesberg, R., Brandt, M. J., Easterbrook, M. J., Kuppens, T., & Spruyt, B. (2024) · European Sociological Review · doi:10.1093/esr/jcae011 · Cited by 16 · see citing works
The Sociology of Interpretation
Goldberg, A., & Singell, M. H. (2024) · Annual Review of Sociology · doi:10.1146/annurev-soc-020321-030515 · Cited by 16 · see citing works
The Resonance of Repression: Moral Intuitions, Skepticism toward Racial Injustice, and Public Support for Trump’s “Law and Order” Response to the 2020 Racial Justice Protests
Goff, K., Silver, E., & Iceland, J. (2022) · Socius Sociological Research for a Dynamic World · doi:10.1177/23780231221110277 · Cited by 17 · see citing works
“MFT was developed to better understand political polarization (Haidt 2012; cf. Morson and Shapiro 2021), but polarization cuts across political, religious, and other ideological affiliations (DellaPosta 2020; Whitehead and Perry 2020).”
Background
Reducing Cross-Topic Political Homogenization in Content-Based News Recommendation
Shivaram, K., Liu, P., Shapiro, M. A., Bilgic, M., & Culotta, A. (2022) · ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys) · doi:10.1145/3523227.3546782 · Cited by 15 · see citing works
Old wine in new wineskins: Christian nationalism, authoritarianism, and the problem of essentialism in explanations of religiopolitical conflict
Smith, J. (2024) · Sociological Forum · doi:10.1111/socf.13014 · Cited by 15 · see citing works
The organization of political belief networks: A cross-country analysis
Keskintürk, T. (2022) · Social Science Research · doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2022.102742 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
Statistical Mechanics of Political Polarization
Kaufman, M., Kaufman, S., & Diep, H. T. (2022) · Entropy · doi:10.3390/e24091262 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
“According to [2], polarization results from individuals forming “broad and encompassing clusters organized around cohesive packages of beliefs”.”
Background
Reaching the bubble may not be enough: news media role in online political polarization
Kobellarz, J. K., Broćić, M., Graeml, A. R., Silver, D., & Silva, T. H. (2022) · EPJ Data Science · doi:10.1140/epjds/s13688-022-00357-3 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
“Growing distance between partisans, whether in their attitudes, lifestyles, or relations, has eroded the cross-ties that once tempered partisan conflict [8].”
Background
Imagined otherness fuels blatant dehumanization of outgroups
van Loon, A., Goldberg, A., & Srivastava, S. B. (2024) · Communications Psychology · doi:10.1038/s44271-024-00087-4 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
“Bymanymeasures,theAmericanpoliticalspherehasbecome increasinglypolarizedinrecentdecades 69,70 , especially among political elites 71,72 .”
Inequality Belief Systems: What They Look Like, How to Study Them, and Why They Matter
Bertero, A., Franetovic, G., & Mijs, J. J. B. (2024) · Social Indicators Research · doi:10.1007/s11205-024-03352-5 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
“More recently, DellaPosta (2020) expanded belief network analysis to study the dynamics of belief networks.”
Counter-talk as symbolic boundary drawing: Challenging legitimate cultural practices in individual and focus group interviews in the lower regions of social space
Heikkilä, R. L. S., & Katainen, A. (2021) · The Sociological Review · doi:10.1177/00380261211014467 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
“Daniel DellaPosta (2020) has recently used the metaphor of an ‘oil spill’ to illustrate how moral and political divisions have not only become more accentuated but also started to bring along with them many areas of life, such as choices or tastes for food, clothing or music, that were…”
Method
Aesthetic Style: How Material Objects Structure an Institutional Field
Adler, G. J., DellaPosta, D., & Lankes, J. (2022) · Sociological Theory · doi:10.1177/07352751221076864 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
“…analysis, where co-occurrence relations among objects, words, beliefs, products, and other cultural symbols are represented as networks to show how these relationships cohere in larger systems of meaning (e.g., Boutyline and Vaisey 2017; DellaPosta 2020; DiMaggio 2011; Pachucki and Breiger 2010).”
BackgroundSelf-citation
Validating Argument-Based Opinion Dynamics with Survey Experiments
Banisch, S., & Shamon, H. (2024) · Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation · doi:10.18564/jasss.5305 · Cited by 10 · see citing works
Political Speech from Corporate America: Sparse, Mostly for Democrats, and Somewhat Representative
Barari, S. (2024) · Journal of Quantitative Description Digital Media · doi:10.51685/jqd.2024.icwsm.5 · Cited by 10 · see citing works
Partisan styles of self-presentation in U.S. Twitter bios
Essig, L. W., & DellaPosta, D. (2024) · Scientific Reports · doi:10.1038/s41598-023-50810-0 · Cited by 10 · see citing works
“The broadening of partisan divisions to incorporate an ever-wider array of previously apolitical topics lends a strong degree of truth to partisan stereotypes of “latte liberals” and “country music conservatives” 12,13,22 .”
Self-citation
Pre-emptive Repair of Potential Misunderstandings: Prospective Procedures for Managing Intersubjectivity and Steering Social Action
Raymond, C. W., & Gill, V. T. (2025) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.1177/00031224251347285 · Cited by 9 · see citing works
“…interaction” (Baldassarri and Bearman 2007:785) by highlighting the on-the-ground mechanisms through which mass public opinion becomes (and, in some cases, remains) polarized, especially through belief consolidation (DellaPosta 2020) and interpersonal influence (Baldassarri and Bearman 2007).”
La forza delle comunità locali
Bellanca, N. (2023) · Studi e saggi · doi:10.36253/979-12-215-0177-3 · Cited by 8 · see citing works
Food for (political) thought: political inferences from apolitical cues and their social consequences in Italy
Scaduto, G., & Negri, F. (2024) · South European Society & Politics · doi:10.1080/13608746.2024.2411539 · Cited by 7 · see citing works
“According to the ‘Oil-spill model’ (DellaPosta 2020), polarization unfolds by leading political opinions to align with a broader set of preferences, spilling over to cultural fields.”
United States Women and Pornography: Methodological Experiment Update
Wright, P. J., & Tokunaga, R. (2025) · Archives of Sexual Behavior · doi:10.1007/s10508-024-03075-1 · Cited by 8 · see citing works
“…consumption) are available (e.g., in secondary data), they should still be utilized as they produce directionally expected (see Wright, 2011, 2014, 2020) correlations with U.S. women’s sexual attitudes and behaviors that (in the aggregate–see present study’s meta-analysis results as well as…”
Influential
What Explains Country-Level Differences in Political Belief System Coherence?
Warncke, P. (2025) · Political Behavior · doi:10.1007/s11109-025-10015-9 · Cited by 8 · see citing works
“By comparing belief system networks across 38 countries based on data from ten waves of the European Social Surveys (2002–2020), this paper reveals that national-level belief systems are characterized by substantially large differences in overall constraint, 1 and that these differences remain…”
'Laughing at us'
Basu, S. (2024) · European Journal of Humour Research · doi:10.7592/ejhr.2024.12.1.833 · Cited by 8 · see citing works
Beyond The God Gap: Mapping Religiopolitical Heterogeneity in the United States1
Smith, J. V. (2022) · Sociological Forum · doi:10.1111/socf.12801 · Cited by 8 · see citing works
Opinion Polarization in Human Communities Can Emerge as a Natural Consequence of Beliefs Being Interrelated
Zafeiris, A. (2022) · Entropy · doi:10.3390/e24091320 · Cited by 8 · see citing works
“In these models, a node is “an element of a person’s belief system” [59], which the related literature names slightly differently, such as “opinions” [49], “concepts” [62] “attitudes” [49, 59, 64], “beliefs” [62, 50, 59], or “positions” [63, 64].”
BackgroundMethodInfluential
Polarization and Persuasion: Engaging Sociology in the Moral Universe of a Divided Democracy
Downey, D. J. (2022) · Sociological Perspectives · doi:10.1177/07311214221124443 · Cited by 7 · see citing works
“Daniel DellaPosta, Yongren Shi, and Michael Macy (2015) explain how that happens and the resulting social structure: “[T]he self-reinforcing dynamics of homophily and influence dramatically amplify even very small elective affinities between lifestyle and ideology, producing a stereotypical world of ‘latte liberals’ a…”
BackgroundInfluential
Development of policy measures for diffusing human pro-environmental behavior in social networks—Computer simulation of a dynamic model of mutual learning
Kyoi, S., & Mori, K. (2023) · World Development Sustainability · doi:10.1016/j.wds.2023.100118 · Cited by 7 · see citing works
News Nationalization in a Digital Age: An Examination of How Local Protests Are Covered and Curated Online
Jaidka, K., Fischer, S., Yphtach Lelkes, B., & Wang, Y. (2023) · The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science · doi:10.1177/00027162231217873 · Cited by 7 · see citing works
“At the individual level, if local sociopolitical issues are increasingly interpreted through a hyperpartisan, nationalized lens (DellaPosta 2020), then local readers are less aware of their civic and economic ties to rural areas, leaving them with fewer opportunities to find common ground with…”
Background
U.S. Males and Pornography: Replication and Experimental Extension
Wright, P. J., & Tokunaga, R. (2024) · Health Communication · doi:10.1080/10410236.2024.2389354 · Cited by 7 · see citing works
“The pornography, sexual attitude, and sexual behavior measures used by P. J. Wright (2013) are listed and described in Table 2 (including the GSS names for the measures, as is common among GSS analysts – Davis, 2013; DellaPosta, 2020; Hammond, 1986).”
Do Stubborn Users Always Cause More Polarization and Disagreement? A Mathematical Study
Shirzadi, M., & Zehmakan, A. N. (2025) · ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM) · doi:10.1145/3701551.3703510 · Cited by 7 · see citing works
Perceived agenda-setting effect in international context: Impact of media coverage on American audience’s perception of China
Su, L., & Li, X. (2020) · International Communication Gazette · doi:10.1177/1748048520984029 · Cited by 7 · see citing works
“The U.S. audience have become more and more polarized in opinion and expression, and the gap between the liberals and conservatives in the U.S. is growing due to political ideology and partisanship (DellaPosta, 2020; PewResearchCenter, 2020).”
Background
Moral Reframing Increases Support for Economically Progressive CandidatesPreprint
Voelkel, J. G., Mernyk, J. S., & Willer, R. (2020) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/mtfjn · Cited by 8 · see citing works
Groups activate identities; identities activate behavior: How political homogeneity breeds extremism and apathy in American politics
Overton, J., & Cunningham, G. (2025) · Social Science Research · doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2025.103234 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
Are economists overconfident? Ideology and uncertainty in expert opinion
Kozlowski, A. C., & Gunten, T. S. V. (2023) · British Journal of Sociology · doi:10.1111/1468-4446.13001 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
Tolerants versus traditionalists: making sense of online conversations on the new Finnish flagship library Oodi
Heikkilä, R. L. S., & Sirkka, O. (2023) · International Journal of Cultural Policy · doi:10.1080/10286632.2023.2272841 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
“This division largely reflects the idea of political lifestyle polarisation and the connection between political and cultural attitudes in the Global North (DellaPosta 2020; Flanagan and Lee 2003).”
Raising the Spectrum of Polarization: Generating Issue Alignment with a Weighted Balance Opinion Dynamics Model
Schweighofer, S., & García, D. (2024) · Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation · doi:10.18564/jasss.5323 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
“It is also consistent with the observation that issue alignment has increasedamongtheUSelectorateoverthelastdecades(Kozlowski&Murphy2021;DellaPosta2020),inparallel to an increase in hostile feelings towards political opponents (Mason 2015).”
Result
Response Item Network (ResIN): A network-based approach to explore attitude systems
Carpentras, D., Lueders, A., & Quayle, M. (2024) · Humanities and Social Sciences Communications · doi:10.1057/s41599-024-03037-x · Cited by 6 · see citing works
“While social network methods usually try to provide a structure of the social connections among the studied population, belief networks provide information about the structural organization of belief systems (Boutyline and Vaisey, 2017; DellaPosta, 2020; Brandt et al. 2019; Kertzer et al. 2019).”
Influential
Politicultural Linking: Inferences Between Political and Apolitical Traits
Scaduto, G. (2025) · Public Opinion Quarterly · doi:10.1093/poq/nfaf047 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
“…and lifestyle preferences, addressing it with several different expressions, such as “lifestyle politics” (DellaPosta, Shi, and Macy 2015), “politicultural sorting” (Rogers 2022), “the oil-spill” (DellaPosta 2020; Rawlings and Childress 2024), and “lifestyle polarization” (Talaifar et al. 2024).”
Islam and the Transmission of Cultural Identity in Four European Countries
Karim, S. M. (2024) · Social Forces · doi:10.1093/sf/soae076 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
How to divide people with things: division entrepreneurs, wedges, and the Delta Smelt controversy
Scoville, C. (2024) · American Journal of Cultural Sociology · doi:10.1057/s41290-024-00212-0 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
The Preparedness Paradox in Climate Attitudes: Democrats Worry, Republicans Prepare
Rivera-Kientz, K., & Stewart, E. M. (2024) · Sociological Quarterly · doi:10.1080/00380253.2024.2417386 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
“The political polarization of other climate attitudes suggests that preparedness actions may be politically polarized in the same way (DellaPosta 2020; Salil, Azevedo, and Holman 2022).”
The Green Elephants in the Room: Perceived Environmental Harm and Support for Regulation Among Republicans
Dacey, T., & Stewart, E. M. (2022) · Sociological Inquiry · doi:10.1111/soin.12511 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
Researching Attitude–Identity Dynamics to Understand Social Conflict and Change
Lueders, A., Quayle, M., Maher, P. J., Bliuc, A., & MacCarron, P. (2024) · European Journal of Social Psychology · doi:10.1002/ejsp.3022 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
Political Polarisation on Social Media: Competing Understandings of Democracy in Turkey
Türkoğlu, D., Odabaş, M., Tunaoglu, D., & Yavaş, M. (2022) · South European Society & Politics · doi:10.1080/13608746.2023.2200901 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
“Polarisation also influences the political culture wherein an increasing number of citizens accept undemocratic measures against dissent and political pluralism becomes increasingly hard to maintain (DellaPosta 2020).”
Background
Alignment and Differentiation: How Language and Network Proximity Drive Opinion‐Based Group Formation Online
Morselli, D., Durrheim, K. L., Beramendi, M., Sepahpour‐Fard, M., Mafunda, M. C., Torres, A. M., Ohamadike, N., Quayle, M., & Schuld, M. (2025) · European Journal of Social Psychology · doi:10.1002/ejsp.70038 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
The Long Shadow of Partisan Hostility: How Affective Polarization Hinders Democracies’ Ability to Mitigate Climate Change
Grant, D., Jorgenson, A. K., Longhofer, W., & Vasi, I. B. (. (2025) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.1177/00031224251396518 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
“…to examine the environmental consequences of affective polarization, partly because it has been framed as a feature of interpersonal life, influencing friendships, dating, and marriage (Iyengar and Krupenkin 2018; Iyengar et al. 2019; see also DellaPosta 2020; Hahl, Kim, and Zuckerman Sivan 2018).”
A new measure of issue polarization using k -means clustering: US trends 1988–2024 and predictors of polarization across the world
Young, D. J., Ackland, J., Kapounek, A., Madsen, J. K., Greening, L. J., & de‐Wit, L. (2026) · Royal Society Open Science · doi:10.1098/rsos.251428 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
Toward a better understanding of environmental concern as a belief system: The lens of network psychometrics
Tang, C., Yue, D., Fu, W., Hu, Z., Xu, X., Guo, Y., & Tian, H. (2024) · Journal of Environmental Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2024.102515 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
Subjective Political Polarization
Kwon, H., & Martin, J. J. (2023) · Sociological Science · doi:10.15195/v10.a32 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
“First, although formal analyses of culture (Mohr 1998; Martin 2002; Baldassarri and Goldberg 2014; Boutyline and Vaisey 2017; DellaPosta 2020) at identifying general patterns from the data (e.g., latent class analysis), here we have deductively formulated an analytically meaningful patterning of…”
Background
Following a Child’s Lead and Setting Kids Up for Success: Convergence and Divergence in Parenting Ideologies on the Political Right and Left
Rees, M. E., & Saguy, A. C. (2024) · Social Forces · doi:10.1093/sf/soae069 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
“…studies have shown that public discourse around issues of gender and sexuality has become more polarized over time (Baldassarri and Gelman 2008; DellaPosta 2020; Finkel et al. 2020), in-depth interviews with eighty-five activists highlighted some surprising convergence in how US activists on…”
Influential
Belief polarization can be caused by disagreements over source independence: Computational modelling, experimental evidence, and applicability to real-world politics
Young, D. J., Madsen, J. K., & de‐Wit, L. (2025) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2025.106126 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
“Furthermore, it is unknown whether Bayesian belief polarization processes contribute to the real-world increases in political issue polarization that have been well-documented in the US (DellaPosta, 2020; Dimock et al., 2014; Webster & Abramowitz, 2017).”
An Agent-Based Statistical Physics Model for Political Polarization: A Monte Carlo Study
Diep, H. T., Kaufman, M., & Kaufman, S. (2023) · Entropy · doi:10.3390/e25070981 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
“Polarization stems from individuals forming broad and encompassing clusters organized around cohesive packages of polotical beliefs [2].”
Background
Holding a Position: Public Opinion as Cognition in a Disorganized Field
Boutyline, A. (2022) · Poetics · doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2022.101710 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
Response Item Network (ResIN): A network-based approach to explore attitude systemsPreprint
Carpentras, D., Lueders, A., & Quayle, M. (2021) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/uzdcg · Cited by 4 · see citing works
Divided Dems, United Reps: Party strategy and within-party variation in immigration attitudesPreprint
Bock, S. (2020) · doi:10.31235/osf.io/3atq7 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
What do stances on immigrants' welfare entitlement mean? Evidence from a correlational class analysis
Lindner, T., Daenekindt, S., de Koster, W., & van der Waal, J. (2024) · British Journal of Sociology · doi:10.1111/1468-4446.13078 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
Elite polarization — The boon and bane of democracy: Evidence from thirty democracies
Seimel, A. (2024) · Electoral Studies · doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102801 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
Exploring affective Polarisation of the (Digital) Public Sphere in Slovenia: The Case of Marshal Twito
Mahmutović, M., & Lovec, M. (2024) · Javnost - The Public · doi:10.1080/13183222.2024.2383903 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
“…of the digital as arena of the public sphere in which even political ﬁ gures do not shy away from utilising initially apolitical characteristics, such as taste in music, leisure, or aesthetic choices as signals for more profound beliefs and preferences thus politicising them (DellaPosta 2020).”
Cultural and opinion dynamics in small-world “social” networks
Lee, Y. (2024) · Journal of Mathematical Sociology · doi:10.1080/0022250x.2024.2423941 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
“…a higher chance, the two conditions can also generate even more extreme polarization, which is in line with the current findings of partisan polarization in apolitical issues (e.g., latte-drinking liberals vs bird-hunting conservatives) (DellaPosta, 2020; DellaPosta et al., 2015; Shi et al., 2017).”
Ideological constraint and behavioral consistency—A person-centered approach to political attitudes and Public Goods Games behavior
Lönnqvist, J., Leikas, S., & Walkowitz, G. (2025) · Frontiers in Social Psychology · doi:10.3389/frsps.2025.1467884 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
Conquering the Divide? The Role of Political Polarization in the Destigmatization of a U.S. Medical Marijuana Platform Market
Verhaal, J. C., Reis, S., & Khessina, O. M. (2025) · Journal of Management · doi:10.1177/01492063251359947 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
“Sociologists have explored how changes in the propensity of individuals to increasingly dislike and distrust members of opposing political parties affect society (DellaPosta, 2020).”
Charismatic authority and fractured polities: A cross‐national analysis
Davis, A. P., & Vila‐Henninger, L. A. (2021) · British Journal of Sociology · doi:10.1111/1468-4446.12841 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
The Structure, Prevalence, and Nature of Mass Belief Systems
Bakker, B. N., & Yphtach Lelkes, B. (2022) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/9781108779104.007 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
The organization of ethnocultural attachments among second- generation Germans
Karim, S. M. (2023) · Social Science Research · doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2023.102959 · Cited by 3 · see citing works

Authors: DellaPosta, D.
Affiliations: Pennsylvania State University (US)
Corresponding author: DellaPosta, Daniel
ORCID: DellaPosta, Daniel
Venue: American Sociological Review
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Published: 2020-06
Volume: 85
Issue: 3
Pages: 507-536
ISSN: 0003-1224 (ISSN-L)
1939-8271
DOI: 10.1177/0003122420922989
OpenAlex: W3034108861
Semantic Scholar: 866357ade0b940c5aa010a94bd27d7287d4132a0
Cited by: 219
References: 113
Citations by year: 2026: 31 · 2025: 53 · 2024: 46 · 2023: 27 · 2022: 32 · 2021: 20 · 2020: 9 · 2018: 1
FWCI: 76.65
Type: journal article
Language: en
Open access: closed
Licence: journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
Locations: American Sociological Review (publishedVersion)
Topics: Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence
Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
Keywords: Bayesian networks, political ideology, partisanship, pluralism, opinion change, General Social Survey

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