Doublespeak
The Big Lie: Expressive Responding and Misperceptions in the United States
James Fahey
Journal of Experimental Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Misinformation about events surrounding the 2020 election and the COVID-19 pandemic pose an existential threat to American democracy and public health. Public opinion surveys reveal that high percentages of Republicans indicate that they endorse some aspects of mistaken beliefs surrounding election fraud in the 2020 election. Still, understanding how to measure the endorsement of misperceptions is critical for understanding the threat at hand. Are high levels of mistaken beliefs genuinely held, or are they partially a function of expressive responding? I address this question through a set of survey experiments encouraging accuracy-oriented processing among the general public. Using well-powered surveys of Republicans and Independents, I find that treatments designed to encourage more accurate responses are ineffective in reducing the endorsement of partisan electoral and public health misperceptions and can in some cases even backfire. These findings suggest that support for these misperceptions is genuinely held.
Two Decades of Polarization in American State Legislatures
Boris Shor & Nolan McCarty
Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy, December 2022, Pages 343-370
Abstract:
One of the most robust findings in American politics is the decades-long trends in the level of elite partisan polarization. Among the most consequential of these trends has been that of state legislators. Polarization among these officials has had significant ramifications for political representation, policy making, and the workings of the US federal system. In this paper, we update the analysis of Shor and McCarty (2011) with comprehensive data from 1996 to 2020 for the state legislatures of all fifty states. We extend the analysis of state legislative polarization back to 1977 for a select set of states. These updates reinforce our earlier findings about the pervasiveness of polarization and its links to national trends. The new data also highlight features of polarization that appear unique to the states. While the polarization US Congress has been characterized by an asymmetric pattern of GOP movement to the right, the predominant asymmetry in the states is one characterized by Democratic movement to the left. Additionally, we discuss the burgeoning literature on evaluating the causes of polarization using our measures as well that identifying its consequences.
Partisan Conflict Over Content Moderation Is More Than Disagreement about Facts
Ruth Appel, Jennifer Pan & Margaret Roberts
Stanford Working Paper, January 2023
Abstract:
Social media companies have come under increasing pressure to remove misinformation from their platforms, but disagreements between Republicans and Democrats over what should be removed have stymied efforts to deal with misinformation in the United States. In this paper, we identify three potential sources of partisan disagreement: 1) a "fact gap" -- differences in perceptions about what is misinformation; 2) a "value gap" -- differences in overall preferences about the amount of content that should be removed; and 3) "party promotion" -- a desire to leave misinformation online that promotes one's own party. We conduct a survey experiment in a national survey of U.S. respondents that controls for the first factor and disaggregates the effects of the remaining two. We explicitly tell respondents that the content presented to them is misinformation and vary whether that content aligns with the respondent's party or the opposing party. We find strong evidence for a value gap. Even when Republicans agree that content is false, they are half as likely as Democrats to say that the content should be removed and more than twice as likely to consider removal as censorship. While we find some evidence of Democrats' willingness to use content moderation for party promotion, overwhelmingly our results show that disagreement between Republicans and Democrats about content moderation comes from differences in values rather than strategic considerations of party promotion. These findings have important implications for policymakers and suggest that settling factual disagreements will not resolve partisan conflict over content moderation.
Interventions reducing affective polarization do not necessarily improve anti-democratic attitudes
Jan Voelkel et al.
Nature Human Behaviour, January 2023, Pages 55–64
Abstract:
There is widespread concern that rising affective polarization -- particularly dislike for outpartisans -- exacerbates Americans’ anti-democratic attitudes. Accordingly, scholars and practitioners alike have invested great effort in developing depolarization interventions that reduce affective polarization. Critically, however, it remains unclear whether these interventions reduce anti-democratic attitudes, or only change sentiments towards outpartisans. Here we address this question with experimental tests (total n = 8,385) of three previously established depolarization interventions: correcting misperceptions of outpartisans, priming inter-partisan friendships and observing warm cross-partisan interactions between political leaders. While these depolarization interventions reliably reduced affective polarization, we do not find compelling evidence that these interventions reduced support for undemocratic candidates, support for partisan violence or prioritizing partisan ends over democratic means. Thus, future efforts to strengthen pro-democratic attitudes may do better if they target these outcomes directly. More broadly, these findings call into question the previously assumed causal effect of affective polarization on anti-democratic attitudes.
Learning from Shared News: When Abundant Information Leads to Belief Polarization
Renee Bowen, Danil Dmitriev & Simone Galperti
Quarterly Journal of Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study learning via shared news. Each period agents receive the same quantity and quality of first-hand information and can share it with friends. Some friends (possibly few) share selectively, generating heterogeneous news diets across agents. Agents are aware of selective sharing and update beliefs by Bayes’ rule. Contrary to standard learning results, we show that beliefs can diverge in this environment leading to polarization. This requires that (i) agents hold misperceptions (even minor) about friends’ sharing and (ii) information quality is sufficiently low. Polarization can worsen when agents’ friend networks expand. When the quantity of first-hand information becomes large, agents can hold opposite extreme beliefs resulting in severe polarization. We find that news aggregators can curb polarization caused by news sharing. Our results hold without media bias or fake news, so eliminating these is not sufficient to reduce polarization. When fake news is included, it can lead to polarization but only through misperceived selective sharing. We apply our theory to shed light on the polarization of public opinion about climate change in the US.
Polarization as a Function of Chamber Size
Daniel Magleby, Gregory Robinson & Matthew Walz
Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy, December 2022, Pages 481-496
Abstract:
The size of the House of Representatives has remained fixed at 435 members for more than a century. A static House stands in contrast to the vision of the framers of the Constitution who imagined that the House would grow with the population of the country. In this article we analyze the implications of a static House size on the partisan polarization of its members. Using a series of computer simulations, we imagine a set counter-factual worlds set in a purely hypothetical environment and in the real world to explore the relationship between apportionment and polarization. We find that increasing the number of districts exacerbates polarization, but that each additional seat has a diminishing marginal impact on partisan polarization. Our findings suggest that while increasing the size of the House may have other benefits, it would not reduce polarization, though the marginal increase in polarization slows greatly with larger chamber sizes.
Homophily and acrophily as drivers of political segregation
Amit Goldenberg et al.
Nature Human Behaviour, forthcoming
Abstract:
Political segregation is an important social problem, increasing polarization and impeding effective governance. Previous work has viewed the central driver of segregation to be political homophily, the tendency to associate with others who have similar views. Here we propose that, in addition to homophily, people’s social tie decisions are driven by political acrophily, the tendency to associate with others who have more extreme political views (rather than more moderate). We examined this using a paradigm in which participants share emotions and attitudes on political policies, observe others’ responses and choose which others to affiliate with. In four studies (N = 1,235), both liberal and conservative participants’ social tie decisions reflected the presence of acrophily. We found that participants who viewed peers who expressed more extreme views as more prototypical of their political group also tended to engage in greater acrophily. These studies identify a previously overlooked tendency in tie formation.
‘American’ is the Eye of the Beholder: American Identity, Racial Sorting, and Affective Polarization among White Americans
Ryan Dawkins & Abigail Hanson
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
White Americans are more affectively polarized today than at any point since at least the 1870s -- and the trend shows no sign of abating any time soon. Recent work using the Common In-group Identity Model (CIIM) suggests that appealing to a super-ordinate identity -- in this case, American national identity -- holds the potential of bridging the social distance between partisans (Levendusky, 2018). However, CIIM assumes that the normative content -- i.e. the norms and stereotypes -- that people associate with being an American are the same across subordinate groups. Using the 2016 and 2020 American National Election Studies cross-sectional surveys, as well as the 2016–2020 ANES panel survey, we demonstrate three key findings. First, White Democrats and White Republicans have systematically different ideas about what attributes are essential to being a member of the national community. Second, the association between partisanship and these competing conceptions of American identity among White Americans has gotten stronger during the Trump Era, largely because of Democrats adopting a more racially inclusive conception of American identity. Lastly, appeals to American identity only dampen out-partisan animosity when the demographic composition of the opposing party matches their racialized conception of American identity. When there is a mismatch between people’s racialized conception of American identity and the composition of the opposition party, American identity is associated with higher levels of partisan hostility.
Elite Polarization and Partisan Think Tanks
E.J. Fagan
Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy, December 2022, Pages 395-411
Abstract:
This paper argues that partisan think tanks played an important role in the rapid polarization of American politics that began in the late 1970s. Scholars of polarization conclude that political elites polarized long before their voters or districts did, directing our attention toward causes of elite polarization. I argue that partisan think tanks, particularly the Heritage Foundation, played an important role in elite polarization. Using data on partisan think tank testimony before Congress, newspaper citations and revenue from 1973 to 2016, I examine the time series relationship between partisan think tank outputs and polarization in Congress. I find strong evidence that partisan think tanks are related to polarization in Congress and the relationship is not spurious, but that the correlation is so close that think tanks likely function as a mechanism for other forces polarizing the political system to actualize their preferences. I conclude that researchers should further explore potential causes of both elite polarization and the growth of partisan think tanks.
How politics constrain the public’s understanding of terrorism
Murat Haner et al.
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
Far-right domestic terrorism is a major threat to US national security. Despite this reality, conservative policymakers have downplayed the threat of right-wing violence while arguing that far-left violence (from groups like Antifa) is a more pressing concern. Drawing on attribution theory and research on politically motivated reasoning, we suggest that politics constrain the American public’s understanding of terrorism by shaping casual attributions for it. Using data from an experiment within a national survey (n = 700), we examine how political views moderate attributions made for the actions of far-right, far-left, and Islamist terrorism. We find that causal attributions for terrorism depend on the type of terrorist considered, with external attributions (motivated by injustice or oppression) endorsed most strongly for Islamist terrorists and internal attributions (motivated by hate or evil) endorsed most strongly for far-right terrorists. Furthermore, political views moderate this effect such that people believe terrorism committed by politically aligned groups is motivated less by the internal characteristics of the terrorists and more by external factors. Taken together, these findings may help to explain partisan differences in moral outrage over politically motivated terrorism.
Is Online Textual Political Expression Associated With Political Knowledge?
Toby Hopp et al.
Communication Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Prior research has reliably shown a positive relationship between political talk and political knowledge. This study sought to build upon this research by assessing the association between internet-based textual political expression and political knowledge. Notably, while online textual political expression is closely linked to traditional conceptualizations of political talk, it is also different in several key ways. Accordingly, this study drew upon research and theorization in the areas of political talk, online expression, and communication self-effects to explore the association between political commentary frequency on Facebook and performance on a political knowledge quiz. Moreover, we investigated the degree to which expression-apparent elaborative thinking levels were differentially associated with political knowledge. The results indicated that Facebook-based textual political expression was, as predicted, positively associated with political knowledge. Therein, we found that textual political expression indicative of high levels of elaboration was much more strongly associated with political knowledge levels than textual political expression that was indicative of comparatively lower levels of elaboration. Finally, exploratory analyses suggested that highly elaborative textual political expression was at least as strongly related to political knowledge as traditional media consumption variables.
Red Schools, Blue Schools? Republican and Democratic Student Groups at U.S. Colleges and Universities
Jonathan Coley, Jericho McElroy & Jessica Schachle
Sociological Forum, forthcoming
Abstract:
How prevalent are Republican and Democratic student groups, and why are some schools home to Republican and Democratic student groups while other schools are not? Some commentators and scholars suggest that Republican student groups may be less prevalent than Democratic student groups and, when present, will likely be found at “red schools” (rather than “blue schools”) in Republican-leaning areas of the country. However, other scholars argue that both Republican and Democratic student groups should be similar in their overall prevalence and located at a similar set of “engaged schools” (as opposed to “unengaged schools”). Analyzing our original database of Republican and Democratic student organizations across 1,953 four-year, not-for-profit U.S. colleges and universities, we first show that Republican student groups are nearly as common as Democratic student groups: Republican student groups can be found at 39% of campuses, while Democratic student groups are present on 40% of campuses. Employing binary and multinomial logistic regression analyses, we then show that Republican and Democratic student groups tend to be located at the same types of schools, that is, larger, wealthier, public schools that offer political science majors. Our article holds significant implications for theorizing on student organization presence more generally.