Are politically diverse Thanksgiving dinners shorter than politically uniform ones?

Abstract

Americans on the political left and right are engaged in a Culture War with one another, one that is often characterized by mutual fear, antipathy, and avoidance. Are there safe havens from the socially straining effects of this Culture War, times and places where Americans of different political stripes gather and put aside their political differences? Previous research (Chen & Rohla, 2018) implied that there might not be insofar as even intimate family gatherings seem to be subject to Culture War tensions. They found that politically diverse Thanksgiving Dinners were 35–70 minutes shorter than politically uniform ones, representing a 14–27% reduction in overall dinner duration. Noting analytical and methodological limitations in the prior analysis, we conducted two pre-registered studies to test whether diverse dinners are shorter than uniform ones and to attempt to conceptually replicate and extend this prior analysis. Individual analyses yielded mixed results, with null models generally supported but effect estimates generally overlapping with those of Chen and Rohla (2018). A mega-analysis found that, when controlling for various covariates, politically diverse dinners were 24 minutes shorter than politically uniform ones, 95% confidence interval = [9, 39], representing a 6% decrease in the total dinner time [2%-10%]. This final result successfully replicates Chen and Rohla (2018) both in terms of effect overlap and direct-and-significance criteria while nonetheless favoring the conclusion that politics is not straining family ties as much as previously thought.

All we need is love? Irreconcilable political incongruence in families after the 2019 social unrest in Hong Kong

“…First, the directionality of the association between familial relationships and parent–child political incongruence remains unclear. In line with previous evidence (Cowan & Baldassarri, 2018; Frimer & Skitka, 2020; Iyengar et al., 2019; Khan, 2019; Kobayashi & Tse, 2022; Lee, 2021; Youth Research Centre, 2019), this study found that parent–child political incongruence may be a common theme initiating and intensifying family conflicts that can in turn worsen familial relationships. Given that this study did not measure changes in perceived political differences with family members from T1 to T2, we mainly examined and discussed the impact of political incongruence on changes in family functionality over a two‐week period.…”

Attitudes in an interpersonal context: Psychological safety as a route to attitude change

“…As noted, a disagreement on importantly held attitudes is potentially threatening and may lead people to double down on their preexisting views. This will generally have negative implications for interactions (Frimer and Skitka, 2020), because, as described below, high-quality interactions often flourish in the presence of curiosity and receptivity to another person's point of view. Itzchakov and DeMarree 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.932413 the speakers feel psychologically safe to share their experiences authentically (e.g., Van Quaquebeke and Felps, 2018;Weinstein et al, 2022).…”

“…As noted, a disagreement on importantly held attitudes is potentially threatening and may lead people to double down on their preexisting views. This will generally have negative implications for interactions ( Frimer and Skitka, 2020 ), because, as described below, high-quality interactions often flourish in the presence of curiosity and receptivity to another person’s point of view.…”

Network loss following the 2016 Presidential Election among LGBTQ+ adults

“… Lee (2021) found that close elections may even “close off” strong tied relationships because Americans are less likely to travel and have shorter Thanksgiving dinners following close elections. Thanksgiving dinners among politically diverse groups are also significantly shorter than those who agree on politics ( Frimer and Skitka 2020 ). These studies are good indicators of a trend of political separation, but their designs do not directly test how political can change social networks overtime.…”