Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity

“2019; Mason 2018; Prior 2013).”

“…their views—and even their answers to purely factual questions— to match their political loyalties (Cohen 2003; Lenz 2013; Levendusky 2009; Margolis 2018; Mason 2018; Zaller et al. 1992; but see McGrath [2017] for evidence against the idea that partisanship generates a “perceptual screen”).”

“Chief among these is partisanship (Campbell et al. 1960), which has grown in importance in recent years due to social sorting and affective polarization (Mason 2018).”

“…discussions (as qualitative work by, e.g. Duyn, 2022; Powers et al., 2019 has found), or on the other hand, spark participation as people become more motivated to defend and signal their viewpoints online (as, e.g. work on expressive par-tisanship would suggest Huddy et al., 2015; Mason, 2018).”

“As party affiliation becomes an increasingly central part of American social identity (Mason, 2018), people tend to favor others who share their political views and distrust those who do not (Iyengar & Westwood, 2015).”

“Reaching consensus on which principles are inviolable and what constitutes a violation becomes difficult under partisan polarization (e.g. Kalmoe and Mason 2018).”

“Since the 1990s, however, Americans have sorted ideologically between the parties, and partisan-ship has come to play a formidable role in politics, generating highly negative views of those in the other party (Abramowitz 2010; Levendusky 2009; Mason 2018).”

“As partners co-consumed, shared, or discussed news, it often triggered what scholars would call an identity threat to their partisanship, which is known to provoke negative emotions like anger (Mason, 2018).”

“And it should be noted that they are a group disposed to treat liberals and liberalism with a lack of civility, something Mason (2018b) notes goes hand in hand with a strong ideological identity.”

“…of “fake news” undermining civic education (Gordon, 2018; Journell, 2019); coarsening of political discourse (Canadian Broadcasting Company [CBC], 2016); and impact on the expression of political disagreements (Mason, 2018), along with the spread of extremism among youth (Alvares & Dahlgren, 2016).”

“As social identity theory has shown (Mason 2018), religious identities and group memberships encompass a variety of identities, including not only racial identities, but also national identities, sacralizing both and conflating all three.”

“Mason 2018.”

“Demographic and cultural sorting (Mason, 2018) may have changed perceptions of the parties, their characteristics, and their core values.”

“This is well known (Mason 2018; Grossman and Hopkins 2016, 2015; Freeman 1986).”

“…tendency of voters to see those associated with the opposing party with distrust and even hatred—continue to rise (Abramowitz and Webster 2016; Mason 2018). this trend corrodes democracy by weakening regime legitimacy, inhibiting cross-partisan compromise, and rendering voters more tolerant…”

“A complete history of the development of the recognition crisis since the 1970s would require analysis of social, economic and demographic changes over the last half century (e.g. Jardina, 2019; Mason, 2018).”

“Given the partisanship and polarization of contemporary politics (Mason, 2018), it might be tempting to assume the quest for unity is a recent endeavor.”

“…scholars have emphasized that an individual’s ideological selfunderstanding—conservative, libertarian, progressive, and so on—is also a form of social identity, one that is related to, but not necessarily determined by, their policy preferences (Kinder and Kalmoe, 2017; Mason, 2018; Stimson, 2004).”

“Indeed, party ID appears to be strengthening as it increasingly overlaps with racial, religious, and other salient social identity cleavages (Schickler 2016; Mason 2018).”

“One trend points to the increasing importance of ideological identity over substantive disagreements on specific issues (Iyengar, Sood, and Lelkes 2012; Mason 2015, 2018).”

“…2016; Ahler & Sood, 2018) and the increased sorting of party affiliation along ideological and other dimensions (Mason, 2015; Mason & Wronski, 2018; Mason, 2016, 2018; Bishop, 2008; Levendusky, 2009; Abramowitz, 2018, 2011; Clifford, 2017; Zingher, 2018), our findings paint a picture of an America…”

“Our second control is the strength of partisan identity, which we measure as the individual ’ s closeness to a party (Iyengar et al., 2012; Mason, 2018).”

“…the virus at different rates (Hopkins 2018; Medina and Gebeloff 2020); or are these divisions simply the result of growing partisan tribalism—a consequence of the messages national party elites send, and the growing importance of partisan identity to individuals’ political worldviews (Mason 2018)?”

“Now, political party has arguably become a “mega-identity” that proxies other important identities (e.g., religion, race, education, urban/ rural location; Mason, 2018).”

“In fact, as Lilliana Mason (2018, 2–3) poignantly states, “The ‘we’ … is a crucial element for understanding the election of Donald Trump and, more broadly, recent politics in the American electorate as a whole.””

“…in government has waned in recent decades and the public has increasingly embraced both negative partisanship (Abramowitz & Webster, 2016) and negative affect toward out-party groups (Mason, 2018), political incivility may be an even more effective tool for out-party members today than in the past.”

“…Over the past 4 decades, affective polarization—which denotes the gap between positive feelings for one’s political party and disdain for the opposing party—has increased dramatically in the United States (Finkel et al., 2020; Iyengar et al., 2019; Mason, 2018b; but see Fiorina & Abrams, 2008).”

“Given growing evidence of how partisan identity shapes other kinds of social identities (Mason 2018; Egan 2020), it is also possible that Republican partisans align their beliefs about the robustness of social mobility chances in a market economy to match the dominant views of GOP leaders.”

“More recently, scholarly attention has shifted to the affective dimension of polarization, rooted in an understanding of partisanship as a social identity (Finkel et al., 2020; Iyengar et al., 2019; Mason, 2018b).”

“…but, rather, by sentiment.2 It is in this spirit that some have portrayed affective polarization as marking a transformation of partisan affiliation into a social identity in which the bias displayed by partisans resembles that along other social boundaries (Iyengar and Westwood 2015; Mason 2018b).”

“Mass polarization, on the other hand, refers to ideological and/or affective polarization between a social in-group (e.g., members of one ’ s own party or social bloc) and a social out-group (e.g., members of the opposing party or social bloc) (Levendusky 2009; Mason 2018).”

“With Democrats and Republicans becoming increasingly ideologically homogeneous in their membership (Levendusky 2012; Mason 2018), and with individuals increasingly viewing events through a partisan “perceptual screen” (Campbell et al. 1960, 130), we argue that COVID-19 has elevated personal health…”

“To the extent that the contemporary partisan divide in American politics continues to intensify and widen, choosing one’s “tribe” early on may have life-long consequences (Klein, 2020; Mason, 2018).”

“In terms of political action, Klandermans (2014) and Mason (2018) identify superordinate problems and goals as those that affect and are shared by everyone, across group boundaries marked by geographic, social, cultural, economic, and political differences.”

“Most research focuses on the US context, and reveals an extreme case of homogenisation within and polarisation between the two dominant parties and their voters (see e.g. Mason 2018).”

“Cross-cutting political influences are considered important checks on partisan conflict and are ultimately necessary for sustaining a healthy democracy (Mason, 2018).”

“The “ ingroup ” versus “ outgroup ” team mentality of a partisan society causes people to negatively stereotype those who they view as part of their outgroup (Mason 2018, 3; Iyengar et al. 2012).”

“…and Republicans to-day are more ideologically – and socially – distinct than in the past (Baldassarri and Gelman 2008; Webster and Abramowitz 2017; Mason 2018; Rawlings 2022), increasing the social distance between them and potentially reducing the power of conversations to foster understanding…”

“Mason (2018) compellingly shows the centrality of partisanship to identity and the extent to which this generates powerful negative affect towards political outgroups, creating clear opportunities to experience the type of threat that self-affirmation is theorized to protect against.”

“Donald Trump has cast a lasting shadow on the Republican Party.”

“Studies of affective polarization demonstrate the public’s dislike of their political opponents (Mason, 2018; Iyengar et al., 2019) spills into relationships, religious practice, health care use and employment decisions (Huber & Malhotra, 2017; Krupenkin, 2021; Margolis, 2017; McConnell et al.,…”

“Feelings toward out-groups, political elites, and the system at large may be too deeply ingrained in citizens’ overarching social and political identities (Mason, 2018) to be noticeably affected by (again minor) increases or decreases in one’s news consumption.”

“…recent decades.12 The more that Americans’ social identities have been sorted into party ‘mega-identities,’ the more that civility and toleration have broken down and been replaced by ‘loathing’ of and active hostility towards the other party (Mason 2018, 14; also see Iyengar and Westwood 2015).”

“17 See Mason (2018) for an insightful discussion of how political ideology intersects with issues of identity.”

“olarization is a key concept in the social sciences, playing a role in important political outcomes ranging from representation (Ahler and 2018) and party-building (Aldrich 2011) to policymaking (Binder 1999) and democracy (Mason 2018).”

“Polarisation—whether affective, ideological, political, social, perceptual or identity-based (Klein 2020)—thrives on inter-group bias (see Mason 2018), animated by an “us vs. them” mentality (Schmitt [1932] 2007; Mouffe 2005).”

“The causes of affective polarization are normally related to either ideological or social sorting or both (Levendusky, 2009; Harteveld, 2021b; Mason, 2015, 2018).”

“At the same time, the parties have also become “socially sorted,” or increasingly distinct in terms of party members’ race, religion, geography, and culture (Mason, 2018).”

“If there are more contacts and civil exchanges among people, then they are more likely to reduce their prejudices and reflect on their political judgments (Mason 2018, 130).”

“By this we mean, like the other psychological dispositions, status threat can serve as a source of polarization, especially to the extent that the parties are rooted in social identities (Mason, 2018).”

“This concern stems from work that shows partisanship has become more of an identity for many individuals, which leads to strong, negative out-group sentiment across party lines (Huddy, Mason, and Aarøe 2015; Mason 2015; Mason 2018).”

“When parties present more ideologically coherent platforms, this leads to ideological sorting (Levendusky, 2009) and when social identities are more aligned with one another, this leads to social sorting (Harteveld, 2021b; Mason, 2018).”

“…have coherent bundles of policy preferences with which to make their voting decisions (Converse 2006; Kinder and Kalmoe 2017), arguing that these choices are instead driven by factors such as citizens ’ longstanding group identities — especially partisanship (Achen and Bartels 2016; Mason 2018).”

“As Mason (2018) argues, when one’s racial or religious identity aligns with their partisanship (such as being black and a Democrat or white and a Republican), individuals show greater in-group preference and out-group antipathy.”

“According to Mason (2018), parti-sans themselves have become more “sorted” insofar as Democrats increasingly identify as liberal and Republicans increasingly identify as conservative, a pattern she argues amplifies these groups’ emotional investment in politics.”

“However, there is a growing literature suggesting that divisions between party supporters are not only based on ideological or policy differences, but may also be social identity based (e.g., Mason, 2018).”