Drinking the Kool-Aid
Self-Fulfilling Misperceptions of Public Polarization
Douglas Ahler
Journal of Politics, July 2014, Pages 607-620
Abstract:
Mass media convey deep divisions among citizens despite scant evidence for such ideological polarization. Do ordinary citizens perceive themselves to be more extreme and divided than they actually are? If so, what are the ramifications of such misperception? A representative sample from California provides evidence that voters from both sides of the state’s political divide perceive both their liberal and conservative peers’ positions as more extreme than they actually are, implying inaccurate beliefs about polarization. A second study again demonstrates this finding with an online sample and presents evidence that misperception of mass-level extremity can affect individuals’ own policy opinions. Experimental participants randomly assigned to learn the actual average policy-related predispositions of liberal and conservative Americans later report opinions that are 8–13% more moderate, on average. Thus, citizens appear to consider peers’ positions within public debate when forming their own opinions and adopt slightly more extreme positions as a consequence.
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Paradoxical thinking as a new avenue of intervention to promote peace
Boaz Hameiri et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
In societies involved in an intractable conflict, there are strong socio-psychological barriers that contribute to the continuation and intractability of the conflict. Based on a unique field study conducted in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, we offer a new avenue to overcome these barriers by exposing participants to a long-term paradoxical intervention campaign expressing extreme ideas that are congruent with the shared ethos of conflict. Results show that the intervention, although counterintuitive, led participants to express more conciliatory attitudes regarding the conflict, particularly among participants with center and right political orientation. Most importantly, the intervention even influenced participants' actual voting patterns in the 2013 Israeli general elections: Participants who were exposed to the paradoxical intervention, which took place in proximity to the general elections, reported that they tended to vote more for dovish parties, which advocate a peaceful resolution to the conflict. These effects were long lasting, as the participants in the intervention condition expressed more conciliatory attitudes when they were reassessed 1 y after the intervention. Based on these results, we propose a new layer to the general theory of persuasion based on the concept of paradoxical thinking.
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“Ditto Heads”: Do Conservatives Perceive Greater Consensus Within Their Ranks Than Liberals?
Chadly Stern et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
In three studies, we examined (a) whether conservatives possess a stronger desire to share reality than liberals and are therefore more likely to perceive consensus with politically like-minded others even for non-political judgments and, if so, (b) whether motivated perceptions of consensus would give conservatives an edge in progressing toward collective goals. In Study 1, participants estimated ingroup consensus on non-political judgments. Conservatives perceived more ingroup consensus than liberals, regardless of the amount of actual consensus. The desire to share reality mediated the relationship between ideology and perceived ingroup consensus. Study 2 replicated these results and demonstrated that perceiving ingroup consensus predicted a sense of collective efficacy in politics. In Study 3, experimental manipulations of affiliative motives eliminated ideological differences in the desire to share reality. A sense of collective efficacy predicted intentions to vote in a major election. Implications for the attainment of shared goals are discussed.
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Douglas Ahler, Jack Citrin & Gabriel Lenz
University of California Working Paper, April 2014
Abstract:
To alleviate growing polarization among US lawmakers, reformers, pundits, and scholars have promoted open primaries — allowing voters to choose primary candidates from any party — but evidence on this reform's efficacy is mixed. To determine whether open primaries favor centrist candidates, we conducted a statewide experiment just before California’s 2012 primaries, the first conducted under a new open format. We randomly assigned voters in districts with moderate and extreme candidates to select candidates from either the new ballot or the ballot they would have seen absent reform. We find that moderate candidates for US House of Representatives and California State Senate fared no better under the open ballot. Although voters apparently prefer moderate candidates, they failed to discern which candidates held moderate policy views. Tellingly, the reform actually led voters to choose more ideologically distant candidates. These results suggest that voters lack the knowledge to incentivize centrism in congressional open primaries.
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Sore Loser Laws and Congressional Polarization
Barry Burden, Bradley Jones & Michael Kang
Legislative Studies Quarterly, August 2014, Pages 299–325
Abstract:
To enhance explanations for party polarization in the U.S. Congress, we focus on an unappreciated legal structure known as the sore loser law. By restricting candidates who lose partisan primaries from subsequently appearing on the general election ballot as independents or as nominees of other parties, these laws give greater control over ballot access to the party bases, thus producing more extreme major party nominees. Using several different measures of candidate and legislator ideology, we find that sore loser laws account for as much as a tenth of the ideological divide between the major parties.
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A Multidimensional Study of Ideological Preferences and Priorities among the American Public
Samara Klar
Public Opinion Quarterly, Summer 2014, Pages 344-359
Abstract:
Political ideology is not always best measured along a unidimensional spectrum. With a multidimensional construct, we are better able to understand the complexities of Americans’ ideological views. This research note presents new survey data from a nationally representative sample of over 2,000 Americans. The survey asks respondents to place themselves on distinct ideological scales regarding social and economic issues, then to prioritize the importance of these issues. The first of its kind to include both ideological preferences and attitude importance, this survey contributes new insights into the complex dimensionality of ideology. Results reveal a plurality of individuals identifying as conservative on both social and economic issues, and a smaller group that is consistently liberal on both policy spectrums. Eleven percent of respondents self-identify as liberal on one scale and conservative on the other, yet choose to identify as “moderate” on the traditional unidimensional scale. By analyzing an extensive set of attitudinal and behavioral measures — including vote choice in the 2012 presidential election — this research demonstrates that true moderates are substantially different from those who mix both social and economic beliefs. It further shows that the vast majority of Americans place more importance on economic issues than on social issues, which has greater influence over respondents’ unidimensional ideological placement as well as their presidential vote choice. This study reveals important consequences of the multidimensional nature of ideology at the mass level.
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Marina Azzimonti
Federal Reserve Working Paper, June 2014
Abstract:
American politics have become extremely polarized in recent decades. This deep political divide has caused significant government dysfunction. Political divisions make the timing, size, and composition of government policy less predictable. According to existing theories, an increase in the degree of economic policy uncertainty or in the volatility of fiscal shocks results in a decline in economic activity. This occurs because businesses and households may be induced to delay decisions that involve high reversibility costs. In addition, disagreement between policymakers may result in stalemate, or, in extreme cases, a government shutdown. This adversely affects the optimal implementation of policy reforms and may result in excessive debt accumulation or inefficient public-sector responses to adverse shocks. Testing these theories has been challenging given the low frequency at which existing measures of partisan conflict have been computed. In this paper, I provide a novel high-frequency indicator of the degree of partisan conflict. The index, constructed for the period 1891 to 2013, uses a search-based approach that measures the frequency of newspaper articles that report lawmakers' disagreement about policy. I show that the long-run trend of partisan conflict behaves similarly to political polarization and income inequality, especially since the Great Depression. Its short-run fluctuations are highly related to elections, but unrelated to recessions. The lower-than-average values observed during wars suggest a "rally around the flag" effect. I use the index to study the effect of an increase in partisan conflict, equivalent to the one observed since the Great Recession, on business cycles. Using a simple VAR, I find that an innovation to partisan conflict increases government deficits and significantly discourages investment, output, and employment. Moreover, these declines are persistent, which may help explain the slow recovery observed since the 2007 recession ended.
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Christopher Claassen, Patrick Tucker & Steven Smith
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper extends Ellis and Stimson’s (Ideology in America. New York: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2012) study of the operational-symbolic paradox using issue-level measures of ideological incongruence based on respondent positions and symbolic labels for these positions across 14 issues. Like Ellis and Stimson, we find that substantial numbers — over 30 % — of Americans experience conflicted conservatism. Our issue-level data reveal, furthermore, that conflicted conservatism is most common on the issues of education and welfare spending. In addition, we also find that 20 % of Americans exhibit conflicted liberalism. We then replicate Ellis and Stimson’s finding that conflicted conservatism is associated with low sophistication and religiosity, but also find that it is associated with being socialized in a post-1960s generation and using Fox News as a main news source. Finally, we show the important role played by identities, with both conflicted conservatism and conflicted liberalism linked with partisan and ideological identities, and conflicted liberalism additionally associated with ethnic identities.
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Social vigilantism and reported use of strategies to resist persuasion
Donald Saucier et al.
Personality and Individual Differences, November 2014, Pages 120–125
Abstract:
We assessed the unique contribution of social vigilantism (SV; the tendency to impress and propagate one’s “superior” beliefs onto others to correct others’ more “ignorant” opinions) in predicting participants’ reported use of strategies to resist persuasion. Consistent with hypotheses, SV was uniquely and positively associated with reported use of several resistance strategies (including counterarguing, impressing views, social validation, negative affect, and source derogation) in response to challenges above and beyond the effects of argumentativeness, attitude strength, and topic (in Study 1, the issue was abortion; in Study 2, the war in Iraq or the constitutional rights of pornographers). These studies indicate that social vigilantism is an important individual difference variable in the process of attitude resistance.
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Who Do Voters Blame for Policy Failure? Information and the Partisan Assignment of Blame
Jeffrey Lyons & William Jaeger
State Politics & Policy Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
How do people assign blame in the wake of significant government failures? If the role of the citizenry in a representative democracy is to discipline elected officials for failing to meet collective expectations, then this question is of paramount importance. Much research suggests that the base tendency of citizens is to simply blame the other party — a normatively concerning outcome. However, some argue that information, especially that from expert and nonpartisan sources, may push citizens to overlook their party affiliation and assign blame in a more performance-based fashion. Using an experimental design, we test this possibility, manipulating whether there is unified or divided government, the partisanship of key actors, and the nature of expert information that participants receive during a hypothetical budget crisis at the state level. We find strong evidence that party weighs heavily on individuals’ minds when assigning blame, as expected. More importantly, we find that nonpartisan expert information about the situation does not live up to its potential to sway partisans from their priors. Rather, unbiased information appears to be used as a weapon — ignored when it challenges partisan expectations and used to magnify blame of the other party when it conforms with them.
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Public Preferences for Bipartisanship in the Policymaking Process
Laurel Harbridge, Neil Malhotra & Brian Harrison
Legislative Studies Quarterly, August 2014, Pages 327–355
Abstract:
At a time of a high level of polarization in Congress, public opinion surveys routinely find that Americans want politicians to compromise. When evaluating legislation, does the preference for bipartisanship in the legislative process trump partisan identities? We find that it does not. We conduct two experiments in which we alter aspects of the political context to see how people respond to parties (not) coming together to achieve broadly popular public policy goals. Although citizens can recognize bipartisan processes, preferences for bipartisan legislating do not outweigh partisan desires in the evaluation of public policies.
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Party Polarization and Mass Partisanship: A Comparative Perspective
Noam Lupu
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Scholars view polarization with trepidation. But polarization may clarify voters’ choices and generate stronger party attachments. The link between party polarization and mass partisanship remains unclear. I look to theories of partisanship to derive implications about the relationships among polarization, citizens’ perceptions of polarization, and mass partisanship. I test those implications using cross-national and longitudinal survey data. My results confirm that polarization correlates with individual partisanship across space and time. Citizens in polarized systems also perceive their parties to be more polarized. And perceiving party polarization makes people more likely to be partisan. That relationship appears to be causal: using a long-term panel survey from the United States, I find that citizens become more partisan as they perceive polarization increasing.
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Kaye Sweetser
American Behavioral Scientist, August 2014, Pages 1183-1194
Abstract:
Focusing on the psychological underpinnings of partisanship, this study asks whether there is a difference in the personality profile for self-described Democrats and Republicans. Using a survey of young voters (N = 610), psychological measures such as the Big Five personality dimensions and locus of control were measured in conjunction with standard political interest variables such as political cynicism and political information efficacy. The results indicate supporters for the two major parties are wired differently, in line with previous findings about ideology. Democrats were driven by an external locus of control and Republicans by an internal locus. This research finds self-identified Independents as truly being somewhere in between.
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Political Conservatives’ Affinity for Obedience to Authority Is Loyal, Not Blind
Jeremy Frimer, Danielle Gaucher & Nicola Schaefer
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Liberals and conservatives disagree about obeying authorities, with conservatives holding the more positive views. We suggest that reactions to conservative authorities, rather than to obedience itself, are responsible for the division. Past findings that conservatives favor obedience uniformly confounded obedience with conservative authorities. We break down obedience to authority into its constituent parts to test the divisiveness of each part. The concepts of obedience (Study 1) and authority (Study 2) recruited inferences of conservative authorities, conflating results of simple, seemingly face valid tests of their divisiveness. These results establish necessary features of a valid test, to which Study 3 conforms. Conservatives have the more positive moral views of obedience only when the authorities are conservative (e.g., commanding officers); liberals do when the authorities are liberal (e.g., environmentalists). The two camps agree about obeying ideologically neutral authorities (e.g., office managers). Obedience itself is not ideologically divisive.
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Ideological Moderates Won’t Run: How Party Fit Matters for Partisan Polarization in Congress
Danielle Thomsen
Journal of Politics, July 2014, Pages 786-797
Abstract:
Scholars have focused on elite-level and mass-level changes to explain partisan polarization in Congress. This article offers a candidate entry explanation for the persistence of polarization and the rise in asymmetric polarization. The central claim is that ideological conformity with the party — what I call party fit — influences the decision to run for office, and I suggest that partisan polarization in Congress has discouraged ideological moderates in the pipeline from pursuing a congressional career. I test this hypothesis with a survey of state legislators and with ideology estimates of state legislators who did and did not run for Congress from 2000 to 2010. I find that liberal Republican and conservative Democratic state legislators are less likely to run for Congress than those at the ideological poles, though this disparity is especially pronounced among Republicans. The findings provide an additional explanation for recent patterns of polarization in Congress.
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Partisan Paths to Exposure Diversity: Differences in Pro- and Counterattitudinal News Consumption
Kelly Garrett & Natalie Jomini Stroud
Journal of Communication, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examines selective exposure to political information, arguing that attraction to proattitudinal information and aversion to counterattitudinal information are distinct phenomena, and that the tendency to engage in these behaviors varies by partisanship. Data collected in a strict online experiment support these predictions. Republicans are significantly more likely to engage in selective avoidance of predominantly counterattitudinal information than those with other partisan affiliations, while non-Republicans are significantly more likely to select a story that includes proattitudinal information, regardless of its counterattitudinal content. Individuals across the political spectrum are receptive to predominantly proattitudinal content and to content that offers a mix of views, but the form these preferences take varies by partisanship. The political significance of these findings is discussed.
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Partisan Media and Discussion as Enhancers of the Belief Gap
Aaron Veenstra, Mohammad Delwar Hossain & Benjamin Lyons
Mass Communication and Society, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examines the roles of partisanship, partisan media use, and political discussion in the development of belief gaps. Using national survey data, we construct models of political identity, media use, and discussion factors predicting beliefs on five contested political issues, and find that ideology and partisanship are generally stronger predictors of beliefs than is education. Notably, each has independent effects on belief outcomes. Contrary to some concerns that the Internet especially promotes partisan clustering, use of partisan traditional media – television and radio – is by far the strongest information-related predictor of belief outcomes, while partisan social media use and partisan discussion are relatively weak and inconsistent. These findings suggest that political elites continue to exert significant influence over the perceptions of rank and file partisans.
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David Mandel & Philip Omorogbe
PLoS ONE, June 2014
Abstract:
Previous research finds that Republicans report being happier or more satisfied with their lives than Democrats. Using representative American samples from 2002, 2005, 2007, 2009, and 2010, we tested a Person × Situation interactionist account in which political affiliation (Democrat, Republican) and political climate (favorable when the president in office is of the same party) are proposed to affect past, present, and anticipated future life satisfaction. Meta-analyses of related tests of key hypotheses confirmed that (a) life satisfaction was greater when the political climate was favorable rather than unfavorable and (b) Republicans were more sensitive to political climate than Democrats. As predicted, Republicans also were more politically polarized than Democrats. Taken together, the findings indicate that, compared to Democrats, Republicans are more apt to self-identify in political terms, and core aspects of their subjective well-being are more easily affected by the outcome of political events.
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Demand for Slant: How Abstention Shapes Voters’ Choice of News Media
Santiago Oliveros & Felix Várdy
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Political commentators warn that the fragmentation of the modern media landscape induces voters to withdraw into “information cocoons” and segregate along ideological lines. We show that the option to abstain breaks ideological segregation and generates “cross-over” in news consumption: voters with considerable leanings toward a candidate demand information that is less biased toward that candidate than voters who are more centrist. This non-monotonicity in the demand for slant makes voters’ ideologies non-recoverable from their choice of news media and generates disproportionate demand for media outlets that are centrist or only moderately biased. It also implies that polarization of the electorate may lead to ideological moderation in news consumption.