How the Politicization of Everyday Activities Affects the Public Sphere: The Effects of Partisan Stereotypes on Cross-Cutting Interactions

Lee, Amber Hye-Yon

doi:10.1080/10584609.2020.1799124

Cited by 27 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Another potential solution is to encourage citizens to personally interact more with their political opponents (Lyons and Sokhey 2017; Levendusky and Stecula 2021), particularly around apolitical topics (Santoro and Broockman 2022). Of course, the tragic irony of this solution is that misperceptions discourage cross-party interactions (Lee 2021). Thus, another important set of interventions would address other facts that dis-courage cross-party interactions, such as hostile elite rhetoric (Berry and Sobieraj 2013).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

American Partisans Vastly Underestimate the Diversity of Other Partisans' Attitudes

Dias¹,

Pearl²,

Lelkes³

2023

Preprint

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In the United States, a popular explanation for rising partisan animosity and declining faith in democracy is that Republicans and Democrats misperceive each other to hold extreme policy attitudes. However, other aspects of group-attitude perceptions are likely as important to democracy. In particular, partisans may underestimate the diversity of Democrats' and Republicans' attitudes to harmful effect. This paper uses surveys and pre-registered experiments with representative and convenience samples (N = 6,158) to assess how much Americans underestimate within-party attitude diversity and to what consequence. We find that American partisans underestimate — by more than a factor of two — the diversity of each party's attitudes, and these misperceptions drive partisan animosity and perceived out-party threat. Yet, contrary to existing research, we find little evidence that American partisans consistently overestimate how radical the ``average'' Republican or Democrat is. Instead, our results suggest that ``perceived polarization'' may largely be a measurement artifact.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

American Partisans Vastly Underestimate the Diversity of Other Partisans' Attitudes

Dias¹,

Pearl²,

Lelkes³

2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…On the other hand, there are distinct grounds for arguing that the incidence of self-selection may be limited in our study. First, studies find that some people actively seek out those with whom they disagree on political issues (Lee, 2021). Second, party identification and/or vote intention are often hidden identities, first disclosed long after initial contact (Mutz, 2006, p. 65).…”

Section: Data and Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intergroup contact reduces affective polarization but not among strong party identifiers

Thomsen

2022

Scand Pol Stud

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Previous studies have assumed that the relationship between intergroup contact and affective polarization is uniform across political predispositions. We argue instead that party identification serves as a boundary condition for the intergroup contact‒affective polarization relationship. Our findings suggest that: (1) intergroup contact between “in‐party” and “out‐party” supporters reduces affective polarization among nonidentifiers, weak, and moderate party identifiers, and (2) intergroup contact remains unrelated to affective polarization among strong party identifiers. These findings apply to high‐ and low‐quality contact measures alike, meaning that party identification strength is an essential boundary condition capable of obstructing the impact of contact on affective polarization. Analyses were performed on a new sample among Danish citizens. The survey was fielded in 2021 (n = 3638). The findings contribute to both intergroup contact research and to the study of the sources of affective polarization. In terms of broader implications, our study suggests that aside from true partisans, intergroup contact stimulates democratic behavior.

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“…Seeing someone that the individual perceives to be a Republican is likely to foster feelings of in-group favoritism for Republicans, or out-group distain for Democrats (Iyengar, Sood, & Lelkes, 2012). Given that, we expect that these political perceptions derived from faces will be correlated with partisan discriminatory behavior in a host of settings, both political and apolitical (e.g., Engelhardt & Utych, 2020;Iyengar & Westwood, 2015;Lee, 2020;Shafranek, 2021). We focus on two apolitical venues -employment and casual interpersonal encounters.…”

Section: Partisan Discrimination Based On Facial Appearance?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Partisan discrimination without explicit partisan cues

Lyons

Utych

2022

J. Soc. Polit. Psych.

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Much research has demonstrated that Democrats and Republicans use information about party affiliation to discriminate against one another. However, we know little about how people gain the necessary information about other people’s partisanship to engage in discriminatory behavior. We explore whether people perceive partisanship when shown only images of faces, and whether they then use these perceptions to engage in partisan discrimination. We find that they do. Using two studies we show that the partisan perceptions people derive from seeing images of faces influence discrimination of job applicants, and propensities to engage is a wide range of social interactions. People appear to be making judgements about partisanship using only facial appearance, and are willing act on that perception. The implication of this finding is that partisan discrimination is likely widespread, and does not require the explicit communication of partisan affiliations.

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How the Politicization of Everyday Activities Affects the Public Sphere: The Effects of Partisan Stereotypes on Cross-Cutting Interactions

Cited by 27 publications

References 39 publications

American Partisans Vastly Underestimate the Diversity of Other Partisans' Attitudes

American Partisans Vastly Underestimate the Diversity of Other Partisans' Attitudes

Intergroup contact reduces affective polarization but not among strong party identifiers

Partisan discrimination without explicit partisan cues

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