Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T15:18:17.305Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Value extremity contributes to affective polarization in the US

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2020

Adam M. Enders  and
Robert N. Lupton Open the ORCID record for Robert N. Lupton [Opens in a new window]
Adam M. Enders
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Louisville, Louisville, USA
Robert N. Lupton*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A wealth of research documents the rise of affective polarization, or the increasing disdain for the out-party in American politics. In this paper, we analyze ANES data from 1988 to 2016 to investigate the contribution of core value polarization to the phenomenon of out-party enmity. We find that greater differences in fundamental principles relate significantly to emotionally intense evaluations of the opposing party and its candidates, as well as the ideological out-group, independent of issue attitude extremity and the strength of one's partisan and ideological identities. Moreover, ANES panel data from 1992 to 1996 reveal that past value extremity promotes future affective polarization. These results are important for our understanding of the nature and extent of value-based polarization in American politics.

Keywords

Affective polarizationcore valuessorting
Type
Research Note
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , October 2021 , pp. 857 - 866
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

Bougher, LD (2017) The correlates of discord: identity, issue alignment, and political hostility in polarized America. Political Behavior 39, 731–762.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ciuk, DJ and Jacoby, WG (2015) Checking for systematic value preferences using the method of triads. Political Psychology 36, 709–728.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Connors, EC (2019) The social dimension of political values. Political Behavior. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11109-019-09530-3.Google Scholar
Davis, NT (2018) Religion and partisan-ideological sorting, 1982–2014. Social Science Quarterly 99, 1446–1466.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Druckman, JN and Levendusky, MS (2019) What do we measure when we measure affective polarization? Public Opinion Quarterly 83, 114–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Egan, PJ (2019) Identity as dependent variable: how Americans shift their identities to align with their politics. American Journal of Political Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12496.Google Scholar
Evans, GC and Neundorf, A (2018) Core values and the long-term shaping of partisanship. British Journal of Political Science. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123418000339.Google Scholar
Feldman, S (1988) Structure and consistency in public opinion: the role of core beliefs and values. American Journal of Political Science 32, 416–440.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goren, P (2012) On Voter Competence. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hare, C and Poole, KT (2014) The polarization of contemporary American politics. Polity 46, 411–429.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. Annual Review of Political Science 22, 129–146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacoby, WG (2006) Value choices and American public opinion. American Journal of Political Science 50, 706–723.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacoby, WG (2014) Is there a culture war? Conflicting value structures in American public opinion. American Political Science Review 108, 754–771.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
Lelkes, Y (2019) Policy over party: comparing the effects of candidate ideology and party on affective polarization. Political Science Research and Methods. https://doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2019.18.Google Scholar
Levendusky, MS (2018) Americans, not partisans: can priming American identity reduce affective polarization? Journal of Politics 80: 59–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lupton, RN, Singh, SP and Thornton, JR (2015a) The moderating impact of network heterogeneity on the relationships among core values, partisanship, and candidate evaluations. Political Psychology 36, 399–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lupton, RN, Myers, WM and Thornton, JR (2015b) Political sophistication and the dimensionality of elite and mass attitudes, 1980–2004. Journal of Politics 77, 368–380.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lupton, RN, Smallpage, SM and Enders, AM (2020) Values and political predispositions in the age of polarization: examining the relationship between partisanship and ideology in the U.S., 1988–2012. British Journal of Political Science 50, 241–260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malka, A and Lelkes, Y (2010) More than ideology: conservative-liberal identity and receptivity to political cues. Social Justice Research 23, 156–188.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 (2016) A cross-cutting calm: how social sorting drives affective polarization. Public Opinion Quarterly 80, 351–377.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orr, LV and Huber, GA (2019) The policy basis of measured partisan animosity in the United States. American Journal of Political Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12498.Google Scholar
Rogowski, JC and Sutherland, JL (2016) How ideology fuels affective polarization. Political Behavior 38, 485–508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwartz, SH (1992) Universals in the content and structure of values: theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. In Zanna, MP (ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. Orlando, FL: Free Press, pp. 1–65.Google Scholar
Searing, DD, Jacoby, WG and Tyner, AH (2019) The endurance of politicians’ values over four decades: a panel study. American Political Science Review 113, 226–241.CrossRefGoogle 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
Supplementary material: PDF

Enders and Lupton supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Enders and Lupton supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 1.8 MB
Supplementary material: Link

Enders and Lupton Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/W01JL7
Link