Affective Polarization and Political Belief Systems: The Role of Political Identity and the Content and Structure of Political Beliefs

Felicity M Turner-Zwinkels, Jochem van Noord, Rebekka Kesberg, Efrain García-Sánchez, Mark J Brandt, Toon Kuppens, Matthew J Easterbrook, Lien Smets, Paulina Gorska, Marta Marchlewska, Tomas Turner-Zwinkels

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

We investigate the extent that political identity, political belief content (i.e., attitude stances), and political belief system structure (i.e., relations among attitudes) differences are associated with affective polarization (i.e., viewing ingroup partisans positively and outgroup partisans negatively) in two multinational, cross-sectional studies (Study 1 N = 4,152, Study 2 N = 29,994). First, we found a large, positive association between political identity and group liking-participants liked their ingroup substantially more than their outgroup. Second, political belief system content and structure had opposite associations with group liking: Sharing similar belief system content with an outgroup was associated with more outgroup liking, but similarity with the ingroup was associated with less ingroup liking. The opposite pattern was found for political belief system structure. Thus, affective polarization was greatest when belief system content similarity was low and structure similarity was high.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1461672231183935
Number of pages17
JournalPersonality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Early online date21 Jul 2023
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 21 Jul 2023
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work is financially supported by the NORFACE Joint Research Programme on Democratic Governance in a Turbulent Age and co-funded by NWO, ESRC, AEI, NSC, FWO, and the European Commission through Horizon 2020 under grant agreement number 822166.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

Keywords

  • affective polarization
  • political attitudes
  • political belief systems
  • political identity

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