Polarity
Self-reported political ideology
Eddy Yeung & Kai Quek
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming
Abstract:
American politics scholarship has relied extensively on self-reported measures of ideology. We evaluate these widely used measures through an original national survey. Descriptively, we show that Americans’ understandings of “liberal” and “conservative” are weakly aligned with conventional definitions of these terms and that such understandings are heterogeneous across social groups, casting doubt on the construct validity and measurement equivalence of ideological self-placements. Experimentally, we randomly assign one of three measures of ideology to each respondent: (1) the standard ANES question, (2) a version that adds definitions of “liberal” and “conservative,” and (3) a version that keeps these definitions but removes ideological labels from the question. We find that the third measure, which helps to isolate symbolic ideology from operational ideology, shifts self-reported ideology in important ways: Democrats become more conservative, and Republicans more liberal. These findings offer first-cut experimental evidence on the limitations of self-reported ideology as a measure of operational ideology, and contribute to ongoing debates about the use of ideological self-placements in American politics.
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The degree of homogeneity versus heterogeneity in individuals’ political news consumption: A replication and extension in two independent samples
Cornelia Sindermann, Christian Montag & Jon Elhai
Journal of Media Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This work investigated the prevalence of filter bubble or echo chamber-related phenomena, psychological factors rendering individuals resilient or vulnerable to them, and their associations to political views focusing on extremity and polarization. For this, a cross-cultural replication of a study by Sindermann et al. (2021) was conducted. As an extension, multiple political views variables were assessed to examine whether the application of different conceptualizations of political views explains heterogeneous findings across previous studies. Two samples were recruited: 390 (n = 135 males) US college students and a quota sample of 489 (n = 243 males) US adults. Participants completed personality scales and measures on political news consumption homogeneity versus heterogeneity and political views. Consistent with previous research, results revealed few individuals consume political news absolutely homogeneously. Openness was negatively related to the degree of political news consumption homogeneity, and the relationship between political news consumption homogeneity and political views yielded inconsistent, often statistically nonsignificant, results. These findings challenge the prevailing notion of filter bubbles and echo chambers as widespread phenomena and indicate that relationships between political news consumption homogeneity and political views are not necessarily deleterious with respect to extremization and polarization. As such, the results suggest that these phenomena might not be as significant for the general population as previously thought. Nonetheless, certain individuals might still find themselves in filter bubbles or echo chambers and suffer from accompanying consequences. In this regard, the present work replicates findings underscoring that individuals with lower Openness exhibit greater political news consumption homogeneity.
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The relationship between political ideology and judgements of bias in distributional outcomes
Jin Kim & Gal Zauberman
Nature Human Behaviour, February 2024, Pages 228–242
Abstract:
We examine judgements of bias in distributional outcomes. Such judgements are often based on imbalance in distributional outcomes, namely, the under- or over-representation of a target group relative to some baseline. Using data from 26 studies (N = 14,925), we test how these judgements of bias vary with the target group’s characteristics (traditionally dominant or non-dominant) and the observer’s political ideology (liberal or conservative). We find that conservatives set a higher threshold for recognizing bias against traditionally non-dominant targets (women, Black people, immigrants), as compared with liberals. Conversely, liberals set a higher threshold for recognizing bias against traditionally dominant targets (men, white people, native-born citizens), as compared with conservatives. However, these relationships between political ideology and judgements of bias diminish when the targets are unknown or ideologically irrelevant. These findings emphasize the context-dependency of bias judgements and underscore the importance of stimulus sampling and appropriate selection of controls.
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Polarization, Partisan Sorting, and the Politics of Education
David Houston
American Educational Research Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Drawing on annual, nationally representative survey data from 2007–2022, I demonstrate that partisan gaps -- the average differences in public opinion between Democrats and Republicans -- have widened on many education issues. This pattern consistently exceeds what would be expected due to the changing demographic compositions of the parties alone. Widening partisan gaps are primarily attributable to sorting (alignment of one's party affiliation and one's issue positions) rather than polarization (increasing support for more extreme positions relative to more moderate positions). However, polarization is also increasing on some of the most divisive issues. Among those who are sorting, individuals are overwhelmingly switching their issue positions to align with their party affiliations rather than switching their party affiliations to align with their issue positions.
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How perceived polarization predicts attitude moralization (and vice versa): A four-wave longitudinal study during the 2020 U.S. election
Chantal D'Amore, Martijn van Zomeren & Namkje Koudenburg
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Within structurally polarized and dynamic contexts, such as the U.S. 2020 presidential elections, the moralization of individuals’ attitudes on a specific topic (e.g., climate policy) can dangerously escalate disagreements between groups into zero-sum conflict. However, limited knowledge exists regarding the factors that influence individuals’ tendency to moralize their attitudes over time, and what the role of structural polarization is in this psychological process. Our objective is to test a theoretically integrative model of when and how perceived polarization is related to attitude moralization over time within the polarized context of the U.S. 2020 presidential elections and explore reciprocal feedback loops to understand the dynamic relationship between polarization and moralization over time. Our model predicts that, when repeatedly faced with outgroup expressions in the news, individuals’ perceptions of polarization will predict within-person attitude moralization over time via strengthening their value-protective responses to these expressions (i.e., perceiving dyadic harm and experiencing negative moral emotions toward the outgroup). To test our model, we conducted a four-wave, 4-month longitudinal study among Biden supporters (N = 1,236) and Trump supporters (N = 617). The results of the within-person analyses generally supported the model’s hypotheses across both samples and various attitude topics. Furthermore, cross-lagged structural equation models explored reciprocal influences, revealing positive feedback loops between structural polarization and attitude moralization over time. Our findings thus indicate that perceived polarization strengthens attitude moralization (and vice versa) over time -- a dynamic process that helps to explain how nonmoralized conflict between groups can evolve into zero-sum conflict during periods of intense polarization.
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The Liar’s Dividend: Can Politicians Claim Misinformation to Evade Accountability?
Kaylyn Jackson Schiff, Daniel Schiff & Natália Bueno
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study addresses the phenomenon of misinformation about misinformation, or politicians “crying wolf” over fake news. Strategic and false claims that stories are fake news or deepfakes may benefit politicians by helping them maintain support after a scandal. We posit that this benefit, known as the “liar’s dividend,” may be achieved through two politician strategies: by invoking informational uncertainty or by encouraging oppositional rallying of core supporters. We administer five survey experiments to over 15,000 American adults detailing hypothetical politician responses to stories describing real politician scandals. We find that claims of misinformation representing both strategies raise politician support across partisan subgroups. These strategies are effective against text-based reports of scandals, but are largely ineffective against video evidence and do not reduce general trust in media. Finally, these false claims produce greater dividends for politicians than alternative responses to scandal, such as remaining silent or apologizing.
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Cross-Platform Partisan Positioning in Congressional Speech
Jon Green et al.
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Legislative activity -- whether votes or communications -- is often represented in a single partisan or ideological dimension. But as lawmakers communicate in various venues (e.g., traditional, direct, or social media), the extent to which these estimates are interchangeable -- reflecting a common underlying dimension -- is unclear. We estimate a partisan dimension in members’ tweets, Facebook posts, e-newsletters, press releases, and one-minute House floor speeches for the 116th U.S. Congress and test the extent to which representations remain consistent across different venues. We find that while Democrats are consistently separable from Republicans, members’ relative intra-party positions frequently shift between venues. This is likely driven by differences in the affordances and audiences present in each venue, as venues with more nationalized audiences (such as social media) show higher levels of rhetorical polarization than venues with more local audiences (e-newsletters). These results suggest that the level of polarization we observe depends on where we look, and that the scholars of congressional communication should explicitly consider the input they use to measure partisanship.
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Source Matters? Exploring the Effects of Source Congeniality on Corrections of False Information on Twitter
Luxuan Wang & Lauren Feldman
International Journal of Press/Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examines the impact of source congeniality and its interaction with partisanship on the effectiveness of debunking false information on Twitter in the United States. Conducted in February 2022, a survey experiment revealed that most respondents paid little attention to correction source information. Politically congenial sources failed to enhance the effectiveness of corrective tags, whereas politically uncongenial sources and Twitter as the correction source weakened debunking’s persuasiveness, especially among Democrats. Republicans consistently exhibited higher misperception levels, unaffected by the correction source. The study highlights the persistent influence of belief-consistent false information and inattention as challenges in using corrective tags to counter false information on social media. The results underscore the need for more compelling corrections and increased public trust in debunking efforts in the United States.
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How Polarised are Citizens? Measuring Ideology from the Ground-Up
Mirko Draca & Carlo Schwarz
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigate whether the ideological polarisation of citizens has increased in Western democracies. We propose a novel methodology to identify individual ideologies by applying Latent Dirichlet Allocation to political survey data. This approach indicates that questions related to confidence in institutions play a leading role in defining citizen ideologies, in addition to the questions associated with the traditional left-right scale. We decompose the shift in ideological positions across the population over time and measure polarisation. This reveals evidence of a ‘disappearing centre’ in a sub-group of countries with citizens shifting away from centrist ideologies into anti-establishment ‘anarchist’ ideologies. This trend is especially pronounced for the US.
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Privacy and Polarization: An Inference-Based Framework
Tommaso Bondi, Omid Rafieian & Yunfei (Jesse) Yao
Cornell University Working Paper, February 2024
Abstract:
Advances in behavioral targeting allow news publishers to monetize based on advertising. However, behavioral targeting requires consumer tracking, which has heightened privacy concerns among consumers and regulators. In this paper, we examine how stricter privacy regulations that ban consumer tracking affect news publishers’ content strategies. We develop a theoretical framework that captures a change in privacy policies as a shift in publishers’ inference about consumer types. We consider a model where news publishers choose the content and advertising, and ideologically heterogeneous consumers select their preferred content based on their ideology and idiosyncratic shocks. We compare two salient informational environments: (1) behavioral targeting, where perfect inference about consumers is allowed, and (2) contextual targeting, where consumer tracking is banned due to privacy regulations, and publishers can only infer consumer types based on their content choice. We show that privacy regulations that ban behavioral targeting incentivize publishers to shift towards more extreme and polarizing content in both monopoly and duopoly settings, even though the shift to more extreme content can hurt both demand and consumer welfare. In summary, our research uncovers a previously unexplored relationship between privacy and polarization, shedding light on the potential unintended consequences of privacy regulations in media markets.
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The Changing Polarization of Party Ideologies: The Role of Sorting
Satyajit Chatterjee & Burcu Eyigungor
Federal Reserve Working Paper, December 2023
Abstract:
Ideology scores derived from U.S. congressional roll-call voting patterns show that the ideological distance between the two parties along the primary dimension changes inversely with the ideological distance along the secondary dimension. To explain this inverse association, a model of party competition with endogenous party membership and a two-dimensional ideology space is developed. If the distribution of voter preferences is uniform on a disk, equilibrium ideological distances along the two dimensions are inversely related. The model can quantitatively account for the historical movements in ideological distances as a function of changes in the ideological orientation of the two parties.