Inequality, identity, and partisanship: How redistribution can stem the tide of mass polarization

Stewart, Alexander J.; Plotkin, Joshua B.; McCarty, Nolan

doi:10.1073/pnas.2102140118

Cited by 18 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 44 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…following a reduction in the benefit-cost ratio of cooperative interactions (Figure 4). This phenomenon, in which increased adversity leads to a loss of cooperation with, and increasingly negative attitudes towards, out-groups, is consistent with empirical and theoretical accounts of inter-group conflict [11,37,38] and a growing body of work focused on the global trend towards mass political polarization [39][40][41][42][43][44]. What our results highlight is that such an increase in negative attitudes towards out-groups is a fundamental feature of the dynamics of cultural evolution, which arises when there is a mismatch between the optimal state of the system before and after an exogenous shock.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Group reciprocity and the evolution of stereotyping

Stewart¹,

Raihani²

2022

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Stereotyping is an unavoidable feature of the way humans see each another. As such, understanding how stereotypes are formed, and when they turn negative, can have important consequences for tackling prejudice, discrimination and inter-group conflict. We study the cultural evolution of stereotyping through changes in the willingness of people to cooperate with one another based solely on their group identity. We show that stereotyping often leads to negative judgement bias in which people are overly pessimistic about the willingness of those they stereotype to cooperate. We also show that high cognitive load, or sudden economic crises, can make stereotyping more widespread and more negative. However under more benign conditions, stereotypes can evolve to be positive, and inter-group cooperation can flourish.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Group reciprocity and the evolution of stereotyping

Stewart¹,

Raihani²

2022

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Much of this literature focuses on differentiating sources of polarization and unpacking mechanisms underlying its emergence. Examples include differentiating between affective vs. ideological polarization ( 28 , 29 ), comparing local vs. national polarization ( 30 ), understanding the relationship between elite vs. public polarization ( 31 , 32 ), and understanding the role of exposure to other views ( 33 , 34 ) or economic inequality ( 35 ) in driving polarization. Our results are consistent with these broader patterns with a focus on one especially divisive issue.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Computational analysis of 140 years of US political speeches reveals more positive but increasingly polarized framing of immigration

Card

Chang

Becker

et al. 2022

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We classify and analyze 200,000 US congressional speeches and 5,000 presidential communications related to immigration from 1880 to the present. Despite the salience of antiimmigration rhetoric today, we find that political speech about immigration is now much more positive on average than in the past, with the shift largely taking place between World War II and the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1965. However, since the late 1970s, political parties have become increasingly polarized in their expressed attitudes toward immigration, such that Republican speeches today are as negative as the average congressional speech was in the 1920s, an era of strict immigration quotas. Using an approach based on contextual embeddings of text, we find that modern Republicans are significantly more likely to use language that is suggestive of metaphors long associated with immigration, such as “animals” and “cargo,” and make greater use of frames like “crime” and “legality.” The tone of speeches also differs strongly based on which nationalities are mentioned, with a striking similarity between how Mexican immigrants are framed today and how Chinese immigrants were framed during the era of Chinese exclusion in the late 19th century. Overall, despite more favorable attitudes toward immigrants and the formal elimination of race-based restrictions, nationality is still a major factor in how immigrants are spoken of in Congress.

show abstract

“…Considerable efforts have been recently put into modeling polarization dynamics to uncover the mechanisms behind it [6,12,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. One of progresses is to measure polarization with the variance or SD of continuous ideological positions in a population [28,29,33].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the formation of "harmony with diversity" state within a attraction-repulsion model framework

Cui¹

2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Opinion evolution is generally subject to global neutral consensus, fragmentation state with more than two distinct clusters in the spectrum or polarization into two opposing camps. However, as one widely-existed state, the formation of "harmony with diversity", where individuals freely express various viewpoints to a certain extent to sustain integration of diversity and at the same time shared values ensure social coherence to avoid ideological split, still remains unclear, as well as its unique dynamic features. Since a general model framework to generate the desired state is still lacked. To address this issue, we develop an attraction-repulsion model based on the general simple assumption that individuals tend to either reach an agreement with shared opinions or to amplify difference from others with distant opinions, which allows us to take account into the three core parameters: interaction strength, individuals' susceptibility and tolerance to others' opinions. We are concerned with the effect of not only time-varying topology but also fixed interactions imposed by static social network, where the tasks of heterogeneous individuals' attributes are also performed. Remarkably, the simple model rules successfully generate the three above phases except for fragmentation, along with three different transitions and the triple points, regardless of whether the interactions are time-varying or fixed. We find that sufficient susceptibility, intermediate interaction strength and high tolerance can benefit a balance between repulsive and attractive forces, further leading to the emergence of "harmony with diversity". However, fixed interactions can introduce cluster-level self-reinforced mechanism which can unexpectedly promote polarization. Heterogeneous susceptibility or tolerance turns out to be a inhibiting factor, which should be avoided. A method to identify the phase boundaries through computing the maximum susceptibility of opinion entropy, confirmed by numerical simulations, allows us to build phase diagrams and to locate where the triple points are. These findings provide profound insights that can be subject to further empirical analysis of societal diversity and coherence.

show abstract

Inequality, identity, and partisanship: How redistribution can stem the tide of mass polarization

Cited by 18 publications

References 44 publications

Group reciprocity and the evolution of stereotyping

Group reciprocity and the evolution of stereotyping

Computational analysis of 140 years of US political speeches reveals more positive but increasingly polarized framing of immigration

Exploring the formation of "harmony with diversity" state within a attraction-repulsion model framework

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About