Seeing Red (or Blue): Anger More Than Sadness Exacerbates Politically Polarized Evaluations of the Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina

Political polarization projection: Social projection of partisan attitude extremity and attitudinal processes.

“…We examined whether polarization projection and simple projection occurred independently of people's strength of partisan identification. And we tested whether partisan identification was independently associated with perceived polarization, consistent with other research (Abrams & Hogg, 1988; Ellemers et al, 2002; Huber et al, 2012; Jetten et al, 2004; Sherman et al, 2009; Westfall et al, 2012).…”

“…Polarization projection and simple projection were also independent of people's partisan identification. To be sure, people who more strongly identified as a Democrat or Republican perceived more polarization than did people who identified less strongly (Huber et al, 2012; Sherman et al, 2009; Westfall et al, 2012). But the effects of polarization projection and simple projection were independent of political identification.…”

“…We nevertheless suspect that attitude extremity and perceived polarization often have a reciprocal relationship. This relationship between actual extremity and perceptions of polarization may be particularly strong for those who see the political parties as homogeneous, agentic groups, and may be particularly acute during periods of uncertainty and threat (Huber et al, 2012; Sherman et al, 2009). Of course the same kind of reciprocal relationship may also hold for simple projection: The relationship between one's own attitude and perceptions of others' mean attitude derives both from the projection of one's own attitude as well as from the assimilative influences of others' mean attitude.…”

“…Finally, given that perceptions of political polarization are multiply determined, what shapes the relative importance of different determinants? By way of example, self-categorization implies that people perceive distinctions between political ingroups and outgroups to the degree that they personally identify with the ingroup and are motivated to accentuate group differences (Huber et al, 2012; Mackie, 1986; Mullen et al, 1992; Turner et al, 1987; Westfall et al, 2012). The influence of personal partisan identification is different from the influence of attitude extremity; the results of Study 1 indicate that both identification and attitude extremity are associated with perceived polarization.…”

“…The more strongly people identify with the ingroup, the more motivated they are to differentiate between ingroups and outgroups (Mackie, 1986; Mullen, Dovidio, Johnson, & Copper, 1992; Turner et al, 1987). Self-categorization thus implies that the strength of individuals' partisan identification may be associated with greater perceived political polarization (Abrams & Hogg, 1988; Ellemers, Spears, & Doosje, 2002; Huber, Van Boven, Park, Teixeira, & Pizzi, 2012; Jetten, Spears, & Postmes, 2004; Sherman, Hogg, & Maitner, 2009; Westfall, Chambers, & Van Boven, 2012).…”