Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity

“Political involvement and partisan attachment are established individual-level correlates of increasing polarization (see Iyengar et al. 2018; Mason 2018).”

“…in party system (Abramowitz and Saunders 1998; Stonecash et al. 2018), elite polarisation (Druckman et al. 2013; Gallop and Greene 2021; Levendusky 2010; Smidt 2017), negative campaigns (Ansolabehere 1999), economic crisis (Bisgaard 2015; Stanig 2013), or social sorting (Mason 2015, 2018).”

“…implications for political cognition (Arceneaux and Vander Wielen 2017; Goggin and Theodoridis 2017; Greene 1999; Henderson and Theodoridis 2017; Huddy, Mason and Aarøe 2015; Iyengar, Sood and Lelkes 2012; Iyengar and Westwood 2015; Klar 2014; Mason 2018; Nicholson 2012; Theodoridis 2017b, 2013).”

“The 2016 US election served as a recent turning point in identity-based political polarization (e.g. Mason, 2018).”

“Such social polarization leads to highly emotional responses to politics, from anxiety (Albertson and Gadarian 2015) to anger (Mason 2018; Phoenix 2019). the combination of these threats intensified in the lead-up to the 2020 election.”

“A non-political subreddit could still be dominated by people of particular political leanings due to the correlation between different social identities and politics (Mason, 2018).”

“This means that polarization is not primarily rooted in ideology but identity (Iyengar, Sood, and Lelkes 2012; Mason 2018).”

“Outside of issue polarization, ideological labels also are an important part of a politically engaged person’s identity, especially when comparing in-groups and out-groups (Kinder and Kalmoe 2017; Mason 2018a).”

“…polarization rooted in social identities and “deeper sources of resentment” in American society continue to threaten democratic values, particularly around racial and ethnic, religious, and gender differences (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018, 220; see Mason 2018; Sides, Tesler, and Vavreck 2019).”

“People can now more accurately recognize the political party that aligns with their other social identities and group memberships (Clifford 2017; Davis and Mason 2016; Mason 2018; 2015; Green, Palmquist, and Schickler 2002).”

“As work by Mason (2018) and others has made clear, for instance, the strong connection between race and partisanship emerged in the post-Civil Rights era.”

“This pattern of findings is consistent with the arguments made about social sorting in the electorate (Layman, 2001 ; Mason, 2018 ), but also shows that the strength of these overlapping identities varies across individuals.”

“In the US, partisan identities are powerful social identities that provide a lens through which people observe the world (Campbell et al. 1960; Green, Palmquist, and Schickler 2004; Iyengar and Simon 2000; Mason 2018; Theodor-idis 2017).”

“People are also willing to discriminate against others because of their partisanship (Mason, 2018; Kalmoe and Mason, 2022), even in social interactions devoid of political context (Gift and Gift, 2015; Huber and Malhotra, 2017).”

“Rather, political contexts can affect them, especially through social sorting (Mason 2015; Mason 2018).”

““ When parties grow more socially homogeneous, ” (Mason, 2018: 15) argues, “ their members are quicker to anger and tend toward intolerance.”

“Finally, historically high levels of affective polarization and the consequent hardening of party identi fi cation in the United States suggest that violations of democratic norms may have limited impact on political attitudes and behavior (Iyengar et al., 2020; Mason, 2018).”

“Thus, “having more followers is not always better” in deploying influence campaigns on social media (Himelboim & Golan, 2023, p. 10), particularly when emotions are involved, as they are in politics (Mason, 2018).”

“…views over place (Brown & Enos, 2021; Tam Cho et al., 2013), compounded by the fact that social sorting has resulted in political identities that align with the identities that people have historically used to structure their social networks, such as race, class, and religion (Mason, 2018).”

“This increase in affective polarization has led individuals to more strongly process their attitudes towards groups in society through a partisan lens (Mason 2018).”

“Partisanship is a social identity comprised of an increasingly aligned set of attitudes and positions (Mason, 2018) and is a significant explanation for differences in public attitudes toward immigration policy (Levy and Wright, 2020), including during health scares (Adida et al., 2018).”

“Nevertheless, partisanship has become a powerful political and social identity that shapes not only voting but also our interaction with the larger political world (Mason 2018).”

“A voter’s partisanship is an important identity (Mason 2018), and strong partisans are often motivated by animosity toward the opposition (Abramowitz and Webster 2016; Doherty and Kiley 2016).”

“…ranging from 1 to 4: “Very interested”; “Somewhat interested”; “Not very interested”; “Not at all interested”), and a feeling thermometer for “conservatives” (1–100, with 1–50 indicating coldness and 50–100 indicating warmth) which is used as a proxy for conservative-group affinity (Mason, 2018).”

“See also the work of Mason (2018) who argues that social identities shape both partisanship and views.”

“It is important to note that most of the existing evidence of affective polarisation comes from the United States (e.g., Iyengar & Westwood 2015; Kalla & Broockman 2018; Mason 2015, 2018).”

“Mason (2018) claims that “More often than not, citizens do not choose which party to support based on policy opinion; they alter their policy opinion according to which party they support (20-21).””

“…Bons fi lls, 2022; Rodr´ ı guez et al., 2022; Torcal and Comellas, 2022) and, in a context where the emotive rejection of the “ other ” side is high (Mason, 2018), rejecting a potential coalition partner and conceding political ground to the left-wing bloc is likely psychologically costly for…”

“…understood as a set of overlapping group or social identities initially transmitted from our families and early social context and later re fi ned, as individuals sort themselves into parties based on group stereotypes (Green et al., 2002; Jennings et al., 2009; Layman & Carsey, 2002; Mason, 2018).”

“” – Elmer 1 , Respondent #43 It is broadly recognized that American society is sorted, by which scholars mean that Americans ’ social identities have become increasingly aligned with their partisan identities (Mason 2018).”

“The same is true of ideological attachments: as Mason (2018) and others have pointed out, conservatism and liberalism as ideological identities increasingly mean the same thing to those voters who possess that identity nearly regardless of where they live.”

“This emerging literature, particularly over the last decade, emphasizes the importance of social and in-group identity as drivers of attitudes and political behavior that has produced intense division, and a reduction of interpersonal interactions (Mason 2018; Hartveld 2021).”

“…(Grif fi n et al. 2021; Jardina and Ollerenshaw 2022), the leading explanation points to decades of a complementary and reciprocal process of partisan sorting and political framing (Engelhardt 2021a; Enns and Jardina 2021; Mason 2018; Sides, Tesler, and Vavreck 2020; Valentino and Sears 2005).”

“These dividing lines in American society have grown in importance as race, ethnicity, and gender identity have all becomemore strongly correlated with partisanship, reinforcing the influence of party labels on political behavior (Egan, 2020; Mason, 2018).”

“That, essentially, is the culmination of “identity-based democracy” (Mason 2018).”

“Such a rationale reflects well-known social identity dynamics, where the (political) out-group is more likely to be assigned negative stereotypes (Mason, 2018), and because the political out-group is negatively construed it becomes automatically more salient and noteworthy (Soroka, 2014).”

“When the most socially available way to enact partisanship re fl ects an exclusively identitarian conception, citizens may inad-vertently lock in ways of behaving toward each other that re fl ect the zero-sum con fl ict that comes naturally to Manichean struggles, such as a ff ective and social polarization, which consist…”

“Extreme political divides may lead to social polarization that divides people in diverse aspects of their social life, causing rifts between individuals holding conflicting political ideologies (Lozada, 2014; Mason, 2018; McCoy et al., 2018).”

“Affective polarization demonstrates how creating belonging among one group can create rejection of another (Iyengar et al., 2012; Mason, 2018).”

“Identity has long been a foundational element of human interaction and a significant component of democracy (Gutmann, 2003; Hall, 1996), but has in the past decade grown even more overtly interwoven with every facet of politics (Jardina, 2019; Mason, 2018).”

“While Mason (2018) and Redlawsk et al. (2018) have begun to examine emotions toward candidates from opposing parties, our design could extend this work to look at emotional reactions to the misfortunes of opposing partisans.”

“Finally, uncovering partisan polarization on this critically important topic of mass opinion would provide more evidence of the increasingly tribal nature of partisanship in America (Barber and Pope 2019; Mason 2018).”

“Still, Mason (2018) argues that partisan identity has become a core social identity, whereas Abramowitz (2010) argues the political center is disappearing.”

“Indeed, this substantial opinion change typifies the historically high rate of emotionally and socially based partisan polarization found within the contemporary American electorate (Abramowitz 2018; Abramowitz and Web-ster 2016, 2018; Iyengar et al. 2019; Mason 2018).”

“Not only have partisans become more polarized (Hetherington and Rudolph, 2015; Mason, 2018), but also this trend has primarily manifested through increasing hostility towardmembers of the other party (Abramowitz and Webster, 2016).”

“Mason (2018) has shown that social sorting—including along religious lines—magnifies the strength of partisan identity well beyond what we could expect based on policy preferences.”

“…strong ‘affective polarization’, in which partisans dislike and distrust those from the opposing party(ies), people from either party often believe partisan content over public policy information, and may even be more susceptible to believing false information (Iyengar et al., 2019; Mason, 2018).”