Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T02:30:24.482Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The role of affective orientations in promoting perceived polarization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2020

Miles T. Armaly Open the ORCID record for Miles T. Armaly [Opens in a new window]  and
Adam M. Enders
Miles T. Armaly*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Mississippi, 133 Deupree Hall, University, MS38677, USA
Adam M. Enders
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Louisville, Ford Hall, Room 205, Louisville, KY40292, USA
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Recent work on political divisions in the mass public has identified several manifestations of polarization linked to different types of attitudes, orientations, and behaviors. Of these, affective polarization and perceived polarization have attracted increasing attention, though we still know fairly little of the links between these variants of polarization. In this paper, we examine the association between affective and perceived polarization, with an aim toward disentangling any potential causal relationship between the two processes. Using two sets of nationally representative panel data from 1992 to 1996 and 2008 to 2009, we find evidence that affective polarization causes perceived polarization, and that perceived polarization is not related to future affective polarization. Stratifying the models by level of political information, we find that the strength and statistical significance of the relationships between past and future values of affective and perceived polarization are conditional on political sophistication: more sophisticated individuals exhibit stronger relationships.

Keywords

Perceived polarizationaffective polarizationemotionsophistication
Type
Original Article
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , July 2021 , pp. 615 - 626
Copyright
Copyright © The European Political Science Association 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abramowitz, AI and Saunders, KL (2008) Is polarization a myth? Journal of Politics 70, 542–555.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ahler, DJ (2014) Self-fulfilling misperceptions of public polarization. Journal of Politics 76, 607–620.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ahler, DJ and Sood, G (2018) The parties in our heads: misperceptions about party composition and their consequences. Journal of Politics 80, 964–981.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alford, JR, Hatemi, PK, Hibbing, JR, Martin, NG and Eaves, LJ (2011) The politics of mate choice. Journal of Politics 73, 362–379.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boven, Van, CMJudd, L and KSherman, D (2012) Political polarization projection: social projection of partisan attitude extremity and attitudinal processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 103, 84.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Campbell, A, Converse, PE, Miller, WE and Stokes., DE (1960) The American Voter. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Converse, PE (1964) The nature of belief systems in the mass publics. In Apter DE (ed), Ideology and Discontent. New York: Free Press, pp. 206–261.Google Scholar
Enders, AM (Forthcoming) Issues vs. affect: how do elite and mass polarization compare? Journal of Politics.Google Scholar
Enders, AM and Armaly, MT (2019) The differential effects of actual and perceived polarization. Political Behavior 41, 815–839.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finkel, SE (1995) Causal Analysis with Panel Data. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fiorina, MP and Abrams, SJ (2008) Political polarization in the American public. Annual Review of Political Science 11, 563–588.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Granberg, D and Brown, TA (1992) The perception of ideological distance. Western Political Quarterly 45, 727–750.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Granberg, D, Kasmer, J and Nanneman, T (1988) An empirical examination of two theories of political perception. Western Political Quarterly 41, 29–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, DP, Palmquist, B and Schickler, E (2004) Partisan Hearts and Minds: Political Parties and the Social Identities of Voters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Huddy, L, Mason, L and Aarøe, L (2015) Expressive partisanship: campaign involvement, political emotion, and partisan identity. American Political Science Review 109, 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iyengar, S and Westwood, SJ (2015) Fear and loathing across party lines: new evidence on group polarization. American Journal of Political Science 59, 690–707.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iyengar, S, Sood, G and Lelkes, Y (2012) Affect, not ideology: a social identity perspective on polarization. Public Opinion Quarterly 76, 405–431.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iyengar, S, Lelkes, Y, Levendusky, M, Malhotra, N and Westwood, SJ (2019) The origins and consequences of affective polarization in the United States. Annual Review of Political Science 22, 129–146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahneman, D (2003) A perspective on judgment and choice: mapping bounded rationality. American Psychologist 58, 697.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kenyon, T (2014) False polarization: debiasing as applied social epistemology. Synthese 191, 2529–2547.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klar, S, Krupnikov, Y and Ryan, JB (2018) Affective polarization or partisan disdain? Untangling a dislike for the opposing party from a dislike of partisanship. Public Opinion Quarterly 82, 379–390.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lelkes, Y (2018) Affective polarization and ideological sorting: a reciprocal, albeit weak, relationship. The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics 16, 67–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lenz, GS (2013) Follow the Leader?: How Voters Respond to Politicians’ Policies and Performance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Levendusky, MS and Malhotra, N (2016) (Mis)perceptions of partisan polarization in the American public. Public Opinion Quarterly 80, 378–391.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lupton, RN, Myers, WM and Thornton, JR (2015) Political sophistication and the dimensionality of elite and mass attitudes, 1980–2004. Journal of Politics 77, 368–380.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mason, L (2015) “I disrespectfully agree”?: The differential effects of partisan sorting on social and issue polarization. American Journal of Political Science 59, 128–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mason, L (2018) Ideologues without issues: the polarizing consequences of ideological identities. Public Opinion Quarterly 82, 280–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pronin, E, Puccio, C and Lee, R (2002) Understanding misunderstanding: social psychological perspectives. In Gilovich T, D Griffin and Kahneman D (eds), Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 636–665.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogowski, JC and Sutherland, JL (2016) How ideology fuels affective polarization. Political Behavior 38, 485–508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sherman, DK, Nelson, LD and Ross, LD (2003) Naive realism and affirmative action: adversaries are more similar than they think. Basic and Applied Social Psychology 25, 275–289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suhay, E (2015) Explaining group influence: the role of identity and emotion in political conformity and polarization. Political Behavior 37, 221–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tajfel, H and Turner, JC (1979) An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations 33, 74.Google Scholar
Webster, SW and Abramowitz, AI (2017) The ideological foundations of affective polarization in the U.S. electorate. American Politics Research 45, 621–647.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westfall, J, Van Boven, L, Chambers, JR and Judd, CM (2015) Perceiving political polarization in the united states party identity strength and attitude extremity exacerbate the perceived partisan divide. Perspectives on Psychological Science 10, 145–158.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wooldridge, JM (2010) Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Young, C (2009) Model uncertainty in sociological research: an application to religion and economic growth. American Sociological Review 74, 380–397.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, C and Holsteen, K (2017) Model uncertainty and robustness: a computational framework for multimodel analysis. Sociological Methods & Research 46, 3–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Armaly and Enders Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/H6GG8O
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Armaly and Enders supplementary material

Appendix

Download Armaly and Enders supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 214.3 KB