Emotion and Political Polarization

Abstract

Political polarization is a major source of conflict in multiparty democracies, and there is evidence that it is on the rise (Abramowitz and Saunders, The Journal of Politics 70, 542–555, 2008). Polarization can be analyzed as an emotional phenomenon. First, it is governed by negative feelings towards members of opposing political factions (Kimball et al. 2018; Skitka et al., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 895–917, 2005). Members of opposing political factions regard each other with contempt, fear, and disgust, among other negative feelings. Second, it is associated with ideologies: beliefs that are held with a degree of passion that is disproportionate to the available reasons (Jost and Amodio, Motivation and Emotion 36 (1), 55–64, 2012). Third, and less obviously, polarization relates to moral identity—a construct that has an important relationship to emotions. There is evidence that polarization can be impacted by partisanship above and beyond ideology, and partisanship is linked to construction of the self (Iyengar et al., Public Opinion Quarterly 76, 405–431, 2012; Mason, American Journal of Political Science 59, 128–145, 2015). That is, people who identify with a party sometimes come to see the dictates of that party as authoritative, independent of the political beliefs that happen to hold. Such political identification often comes to be seen as core to one’s personal identity (Prinz and Nichols, Diachronic Identity and the Moral Self. In: Handbook of the Social Mind, ed. J. Kiverstein, 449–464. New York: Routledge, 2016). Self-construction, in turn, is enforced by emotions, including, for example, the anxiety associated with losing one’s identity. Here, links between emotion and polarization are explored, touching on related issues such as echo chambers, moral panics, and xenophobia.