Perceiving Political Polarization in the United States: Party Identity Strength and Attitude Extremity Exacerbate the Perceived Partisan Divide

Perspectives on Psychological Science

Volumn 10, Issue 2, 2015, Pages 145-158

  Westfall, Jacob ^a   Van Boven, Leaf ^a   Chambers, John R ^b   Judd, Charles M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO   (United States)

^b SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

American National Election Study; attitudes; identities; polarization; political psychology; politics

Indexed keywords

ATTITUDE; GROUP PROCESS; HUMAN; PERCEPTION; POLITICS; PSYCHOLOGICAL MODEL; SELF CONCEPT; UNITED STATES;

ATTITUDE; GROUP PROCESSES; HUMANS; MODELS, PSYCHOLOGICAL; PERCEPTION; POLITICS; SELF CONCEPT; UNITED STATES;

EID: 84924915649     PISSN: 17456916     EISSN: 17456924     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1745691615569849     Document Type: Article

References (70)

1. Abramowitz A. I.The electoral roots of America’s dysfunctional government.Presidential Studies Quarterly. 2013;43:709-731
2. Abramowitz A. I.,Saunders K. L.Is polarization a myth?.Journal of Politics. 2008;70:542-555
3. Allport G. W.The nature of prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley; 1954:
4. Asch S. E.Social psychology. New York, NY: Prentice Hall; 1952:
5. Baldassarri D.,Gelman A.Partisans without constraint: Political polarization and trends in American public opinion.American Journal of Sociology. 2008;114:408-446
6. Bartels L. M.Expectations and preferences in presidential nominating campaigns.American Political Science Review. 1985;79:804-815
7. Bernstein R.,Chadha A.,Montjoy R.Overreporting voting: Why it happens and why it matters.Public Opinion Quarterly. 2001;65:22-44
8. Bosveld W.,Koomen W.,van der Pligt J.Selective exposure and the false consensus effect: The availability of similar and dissimilar others.British Journal of Social Psychology. 1994;33:457-466
9. Brewer M. B.The psychology of prejudice: In-group love or out-group hate?.Journal of Social Issues. 1999;55:429-444
10. Cadinu M. R.,Rothbart M.Self-anchoring and differentiation processes in the minimal group setting.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1996;70:661-677
11. Chambers J. R.,Baron R. S.,Inman M. L.Misperceptions in intergroup conflict.Psychological Science. 2006;17:38-45
12. Chambers J. R.,Melnyk D.Why do I hate thee? Conflict misperceptions and intergroup mistrust.Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 2006;32:1295-1311
13. Chambers J. R.,Schlenker B. R.,Collisson B.Ideology and prejudice: The role of value conflicts.Psychological Science. 2013;24:140-149
14. Cialdini R. B.,Goldstein N. J.Social influence: Compliance and conformity.Annual Review of Psychology. 2004;55:591-621
15. Conover P. J.,Feldman S.Projection and the perception of candidates.Western Political Quarterly. 1982;35:228-244
16. Converse P. E.The nature of belief systems in mass publics. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Survey Research Center; 1962:
17. Corneille O.,Judd C. M.Accentuation and sensitization effects in the categorization of multifaceted stimuli.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1999;77:927-941
18. Dawes R. M.,Singer D.,Lemons F.An experimental analysis of the contrast effect and its implications for intergroup communication and the indirect assessment of attitude.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1972;21:281-295
19. Deustch F. M.When friends lead us astray: Evidence for the selective exposure hypothesis.Journal of Social Psychology. 1988;128:271-273
20. Dimock N.,Doherty C.,Kiley J.,Oates R.Political polarization in the American public: How increasing ideological uniformity and partisan antipathy affect politics, compromise and everyday life. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center; 2014:
21. Dow J. K.A comparative spatial analysis of majoritarian and proportional elections.Electoral Studies. 2001;20:109-125
22. Downing J. M.,Judd C. M.,Brauer M.Effects of repeated expressions on attitude extremity.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1992;63:17-29
23. Fiorina M. P.,Abrams S. J.,Pope J. C.Culture war? The myth of a polarized America. 2010. Culture war? The myth of a polarized America (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Longman.New York, NY: Longman; 2010:
24. FiveThirtyEight. (2014). Democrats are way more obsessed with impeachment than Republicans. Retrieved from http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/obama-impeachment-msnbc-fox-news/
25. Gelman A.Red state, blue state, rich state, poor state: Why Americans vote the way they do. 2009. Red state, blue state, rich state, poor state: Why Americans vote the way they do (Expanded ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; 2009:
26. Graham J.,Haidt J.Beyond beliefs: Religions bind individuals into moral communities.Personality and Social Psychology Review. 2010;14:140-150
27. Graham J.,Nosek B. A.,Haidt J.The moral stereotypes of liberals and conservatives: Exaggeration of differences across the political spectrum.PLoS ONE. 2012;7 (12): e50092
28. Granberg D.,Brown T. A.The perception of ideological distance.Western Political Quarterly. 1992;45:727-750
29. Henrich J.,Heine S. J.,Norenzayan A.Most people are not WEIRD.Nature. 2010;466:29
30. Jost J. T.,Nosek B. A.,Gosling S. D.Ideology: Its resurgence in social, personality, and political psychology.Perspectives on Psychological Science. 2008;3:126-136
31. JuddC. M.Van BovenL. (2014). Perceptions of partisan separation and variation in the American electorate. Unpublished manuscript, University of Colorado Boulder.
32. KahanD. (2013). Fooled twice, shame on who? Problems with Mechanical Turk study samples, part 2. Retrieved from http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2013/7/10/fooled-twice-shame-on-who-problems-with-mechanical-turk-stud.html
33. Koestner R.,Losier G. F.,Worren N. M.,Baker L.,Vallerand R. J.False consensus effects for the 1992 Canadian referendum.Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science/Revue Canadienne des Sciences du Comportement. 1995;27:214-225
34. Levendusky M.The partisan sort: How liberals became Democrats and conservatives became Republicans. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press; 2009:
35. Levendusky M.,Pope J. C.Red states vs. blue states: Going beyond the mean.Public Opinion Quarterly. 2011;75:227-248
36. Mackie D. M.Social identification effects in group polarization.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1986;50:720-728
37. Marks G.,Miller N.Ten years of research on the false consensus effect: An empirical and theoretical review.Psychological Bulletin. 1987;102:72-90
38. McCarty N.,Poole K. T.,Rosenthal H.Polarized America: The dance of ideology and unequal riches. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 2006:
39. McDonald M. P.On the overreport bias of the National Election Study turnout rate.Political Analysis. 2003;11:180-186
40. Mullen B.,Dovidio J. F.,Johnson C.,Copper C.In-group-out-group differences in social projection.Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 1992;28:422-440
41. Napier J. L.,Jost J. T.Why are conservatives happier than liberals?.Psychological Science. 2008;19:565-572
42. Nivola P. S.,Brady D. W.Red and blue nation?: Consequences and correction of America’s polarized politics. Baltimore, MD: Brookings Institution Press; 2008:
43. Payne B. K.,Krosnick J. A.,Pasek J.,Lelkes Y.,Akhtar O.,Tompson T.Implicit and explicit prejudice in the 2008 American presidential election.Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 2010;46:367-374
44. Prentice D. A.,Miller D. T.Advances in experimental social psychology. Zanna M., ed. San Diego, CA: Academic Press; 1996:161-209.
45. Pronin E.,Lin D. Y.,Ross L.The bias blind spot: Perceptions of bias in self versus others.Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 2002;28:369-381
46. Rabinowitz J. L.,Sears D. O.,Sidanius J.,Krosnick J. A.Why do white Americans oppose race-targeted policies? Clarifying the impact of symbolic racism.Political Psychology. 2009;30:805-828
47. Read S. J.,Simon D.Cognitive consistency: A unifying concept in social psychology. Gawronski B.Strack F., ed. New York, NY: Guilford Press; 2012:66-88.
48. Riek B. M.,Mania E. W.,Gaertner S. L.Intergroup threat and outgroup attitudes: A meta-analytic review.Personality and Social Psychology Review. 2006;10:336-353
49. Robbins J. M.,Krueger J.Social projection to ingroups and outgroups: A review and meta-analysis.Personality and Social Psychology Review. 2005;9:32-47
50. Roberson D.,Davidoff J.,Davies I. R.,Shapiro L. R.The development of color categories in two languages: A longitudinal study.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 2004;133:554-571
51. Robinson R. J.,Keltner D.Much ado about nothing? Revisionists and traditionalists choose an introductory English syllabus.Psychological Science. 1996;7:18-24
52. Robinson R. J.,Keltner D.,Ward A.,Ross L.Actual versus assumed differences in construal: “Naive realism” in intergroup perception and conflict.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1995;68:404-417
53. Ross L.,Greene D.,House P.The “false-consensus effect”: An egocentric bias in social perception and attribution processes.Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 1977;13:279-301
54. Ross L.,Ward A.Advances in experimental social psychology. Zanna M. P., ed. San Diego, CA: Academic Press; 1995:255-304.
55. Rutchick A. M.,Smyth J. M.,Konrath S.Seeing red (and blue): Effects of electoral college depictions on political group perception.Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy. 2009;9:269-282
56. Schofield N.,Schnidman E.Support for political leaders.Homo Oeconomicus. 2011;28:7-47
57. Sears D. O.College students in the laboratory: Influence’s of a narrow data base on social psychology’s view of human nature.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1986;51:515-530
58. Seyle D. C.,Newman M. L.A house divided? The psychology of red and blue America.American Psychologist. 2006;61:571-580
59. Sherman D. K.,Nelson L. D.,Ross L. D.Naive realism and affirmative action: Adversaries are more similar than they think.Basic and Applied Social Psychology. 2003;25:275-289
60. Shoots-Reinhard B. L.,Petty R. E.,DeMarree K. G.,Rucker D. D.Personality certainty and politics: Increasing the predictive utility of individual-difference inventories.Political Psychology. 2014;:
61. Simon D.,Holyoak K. J.Structural dynamics of cognition: From consistency theories to constraint satisfaction.Personality and Social Psychology Review. 2002;6:283-294
62. Simon D.,Snow C. J.,Read S. J.The redux of cognitive consistency theories: Evidence judgments by constraint satisfaction.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2004;86:814-837
63. Tajfel H.Quantitative judgement in social perception.British Journal of Psychology. 1959;50:16-29
64. Tajfel H.,Wilkes A. L.Classification and quantitative judgment.British Journal of Psychology. 1963;54:259-272
65. Tetlock P. E.A value pluralism model of ideological reasoning.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1984;50:819-827
66. Turner J. C.,Hogg M. A.,Oakes P.,Recher S.,Wetherell M.Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory. Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell; 1987:
67. Van Boven L.,Judd C. M.,Sherman D. K.Political polarization projection: Social projection of partisan attitude extremity and attitudinal processes.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2012;103:84-100
68. Wallsten K..Paper presented at the American Political Science Association’s Annual Meeting; 2005Washington, DC; 2005.
69. Zaller J.The nature and origins of mass opinion. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press; 1992:
70. ZurcherA. (2013). Debt ceiling crisis has other nations angry and scared. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-24467534