Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity

“As affective polarization increases and the electorate increasingly views democracy as a clash of identities (Mason 2018; Iyengar et al.”

“American society today is polarized (Mason, 2018).”

“As Mason (2018) writes, “The more (politicultural) divisions there are, and the less organized those groups are around any one division, the more peaceful and cooperative a society can be.””

“Partisanship has become a durable social identity (Huddy, Mason, & Aarøe, 2015; Iyengar & Westwood, 2015), helping to spur affective polarization (Iyengar, Sood, & Lelkes, 2012; Mason, 2015, 2018a), and negative partisanship (Abramowitz & Webster, 2016).”

“As the political climate in the U.S. becomes increasingly hostile, scholars have largely examined polarization through the lens of social identity theory and/or biased cognitive processing (e.g., Iyengar, Sood, & Lelkes, 2012; Mason, 2018).”

“On the one side, these issues are often more salient in the public debate due to an ambient discourse that is more polarized (Baldassarri and Park 2020; Mason 2018).”

“In the political real, affective polarisation can make it more difficult to find compromises, fuel civil disagreement (Mason 2015, 2018) and ultimately undermine the functioning of democracy and pluralist norms (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018; McCoy et al .”

“…shift,” or inclination to exaggerate the maliciousness and power of opponents (Sabatier et al. 1987), parallels the argument of affective polarization scholars who contend that identity-based sorting has largely replaced issue-based sorting as a divisive force in modern democracies (Mason 2018).”

“A long line of scholarship has argued and found that individuals use partisanship to process incoming information, form attitudes, and guide evaluations of political objects (Campbell et al., 1960; Zaller, 1992), and this has only intensified in an era of high polarization (Mason, 2018).”

“” And as recent fi ndings by Halliez and Thorton (2021, 259) show, this ’ nonideological ’ use of ideological labels “ has important consequences, ” such that ideology is conceptualized more as a social identity (Devine 2015; Mason 2018) rather than a consistent set of policy preferences.”

“Today, elections are likely to be nationalized not because of the current electoral system as much as by the types of campaigns coordinated by the national parties and the increasing number of individuals who view politics as part of their individual identity (Klein 2020; Mason 2018).”

“A well-established body of literature in political science suggests that identity issues drive political engagement and preferences more than substantive policy preferences (Huddy et al., 2015; Iyengar et al., 2012; Mason, 2018).”

“This polarization has been reinforced by the ongoing social and geographical sorting of Americans (Mason, 2018; Tesler, 2016).”

“With the two parties so clearly defined politically and socially, it has become easier for elites to craft highly effective messages evoking social identities (Mason 2018; Sinclair 2012).”

“Due to increasing polarization (Abramowitz 2010; Mason 2018; McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal, 2016), liberals and conservatives in the United States have become divided on the values that are previously observed to divide countries based on a collectivist or individualistic orientation (Graham,…”

“A pesar de la dificultad para identificar el origen de la polarización afectiva, di-versos estudios destacan el auge del populismo como uno de los principales factores detrás de su crecimiento en las sociedades contemporáneas (Pappas, 2019; Mason, 2018; McCoy & Somer, 2018).”

“Because the meaning of religious freedom has been sorted into partisan camps—and because partisan identity is so potent to understanding politics and religion (Margolis 2018; Mason 2018)—we expected these effects to be filtered through partisanship for many.”

“As identi fi - cation with the two parties in Washington have become increasingly-central components of Americans ’ social identities (Mason 2018; West and Iyengar 2020), the public has come to let their partisan group a ffi liations govern the sources of political information that they fi nd…”

“…the growing importance of affective polarisation in influencing the political choices of some voters (e.g. Hobolt et al., 2021; Politics 45(2) Kalla and Broockman, 2018; Mason, 2018), what happens during the campaign period can play an important role in determining how voters cast their ballot.”

“…not to appeal to their racial conservatism and appeals by Republican politicians are likely to be dulled in effectiveness by the cross-pressuring forces of partisanship — much as individuals with cross-pressuring group identities are less likely to be politically engaged (Mason 2016, 2018).”

“As Mason (2018) affirms, this view would imply that “ citizens do not choose which party to support based on policy opinion ” (p.20).”

“At the same time, modern American politics is besieged by partisanship such that political identity competes with and perhaps even surpasses all other identities in terms of its importance (Mason, 2018).”

“As the polarization stems from animosity driven by distinctions between social identities and groups (Mason 2018; Shanto, Yphtach, and Matthew et al. 2019), it is necessarily connected to social distance and stereotypes about “them,” hostility and discrimination toward political opponents and to…”

“Recent research suggests that affective polarization is driven primarily by feelings of threat (Mason, 2016, 2018), and Trad Instagram positions “orthodoxy as the only rebellion left” against mainstream society (June 29, 2020, Figure 3).”

“The literature on motivated beliefs, and in particular the role of political partisanship, is large and we do not review it here (see, e.g., Kahan, 2015b; Kunda, 1987, 1990; Mason, 2018; Stanovich, 2021; Taber & Lodge, 2006).”

“Partisanship is typically conceptualized as a group or social identity (Greene 2004; 1999; Mason 2018b).”

“Social identities seem to play an increasingly large role in mass politics in the United States, due in part to more and more people from the same social groups identifying with the same political parties (Levendusky, 2009; Mason, 2018).”

“…salience in partisan political debates and an existing scholarship which documents that partisanship has become a core identity to many Americans (for example, Mason 2018; Iyengar, Sood and Lelkes 2012), we investigate whether people consider a doctor ’ s partisanship as a factor for seeking care.”

“Polarization has been steadily growing over the last forty years in the US (Abramowitz and Saunders 2008, 548; Malka and Lelkes 2010, 182; Jacobson 2012, 1625; Campbell 2018, 29–30; Mason 2018a, 876; Abramowitz 2019, 164).”

“Contemporary political polarization is thought to be particularly potent, in part, because it is reinforced by – and in turn, reinforces – other social identities (Iyengar et al., 2012; Mason, 2018).”

“Unlike Americans on the right who are increasingly unified in partisan, ideological, religious, and racial identities (Mason 2018; Perry 2023), Americans on the left must not only work through challenges associated with greater racial diversity, but include groups of Americans who are dog-matically…”

“The two-party system encourages Americans to see politics as a Manichean struggle (Mason, 2018).”

“…families from collective public schools into the home or from relying on police services to protecting one’s home with a firearm—newly formed or strengthened social identities may develop in the same isolated way Lilliana Mason (2018) has described as social polarization (Joslyn et al., 2017).”

“…of representation (cf. Laclau and Mouffe’s notion of ‘constitutive outside’ – Mouffe, 2000), and by the empirical research results of social psychology: the emergence of an identity-group (an ingroup) is accompanied by the appearance of an outgroup (Mason, 2015; 2018; Achen and Bartels, 2017).”

“Much of this polarization can be traced to the way that other forms of social identity like race and religion have aligned with partisan identity (Mason, 2018).”

“In turn, social media also contribute to bridging the gap between citizens’ personal and political lives by furnishing tools and spaces for networked political discourse and identification (Bennett, 2012; Mason, 2018).”

“The 2017 – 21 Trump presidency took place after decades of sorting and political polarization by citizens (Levendusky 2009; Mason 2018), and is the product of a combination of causes operating at multiple levels of the political system (Sides, Tesler, and Vavreck 2019).”

“That is, many researchers show that “the base” are generally more extreme than “the moderates” (Downs, 1957; Levendusky, 2013; Mason, 2018), and so political organizations may communicate with them more, and in more extreme ways.”

“In the U.S., Democrats increasingly like the Democratic Party, and Democratic voters increasingly dislike the rival Republican party and its voters, and vice versa (Mason, 2018).”

“Partisanship, under certain conditions, is internalized as a social identity — as a part of an individual ’ s concept of self (West and Iyengar 2020; Mason 2018).”

“Partisan attachments can form an important part of a person ’ s social identity (Green et al., 2002; Mason, 2018).”

“Finally, due to high levels of partisan polarization and animosity (e.g., Mason 2018), we expect that women running in a voter’s out-party will be seen as particularly contemptible, especially to strong partisans.”

“In the current era, party identification and political ideology have become anchors for social identity (Cohen, 2003; Mason, 2018), and thus motivated reasoning should be particularly strong for politicized issues.”

“They argue that the current Republican Party appeals to abstract conservative values, while the Democratic Party focuses more on concrete policy change that appeals to a broad coalition of different liberal groups.”

“In order to see what happens asymptotically, rather than analyze how the players update with the signals one at a time, it is easier to consider updating based on the mean of the 15 See Ross et al. (1977) for early work from psychology and Butler et al. (2015) for a recent application from economics.”

“After more than a decade of research, consensus has been reached on the most important causes of affective polarisation: group attachment (e.g. Harteveld, 2021b; Mason, 2018) and ideology (e.g. Algara and Zur, 2023; Harteveld, 2021a).”

“The continuation of this trend has implications for the quality of local educational services and the health of local democratic governance in the United States.”

“Likewise, voters ’ expressive perceptions of the social group composition of parties ’ electoral alliances have been found to influence political behaviour (for example, Ahler and Sood 2018; Kane et al. 2021; Mason 2018; Mason et al. 2021).”

“Under growing affective polarization (Gidron et al., 2020; Mason, 2018), an increase in beliefs in a conspiracy may occur as partisanship is an important social group attachment like other group identities such as race/ethnicity, region, gender, or age.”

“For more elaboration of this process see Mason (2018) and Coleman (2021).”

“In an age of ideologically, socially, geographically, and emotionally driven partisan polarization (Abramowitz 2022; Iyengar et al. 2019; Mason 2018; Myers 2013), the in fl uence of PID on all things political, has probably never mattered more than it does now.”

“More speci fi cally, we try to explore how their partisanship, usually considered a “ mega identity ” correlating with other identities and ideologies, in fl uences immigrants ’ pro-environmental values differently (Mason, 2018).”