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Fear and Loathing Across Party Lines
It’s pretty rare for me to say, “Goodness, look at what Stanford’s Chandler Chair of Communication has to say!” And in truth, I haven’t looked closely at the methodology of this paper, and even if it’s flawless, let’s wait to see if it can be replicated. Still, the claim they’re making is interesting:
When defined in terms of social identity and affect toward co-partisans and opposing partisans, the polarization of the American electorate has dramatically increased. We document the scope and consequences of affective polarization of partisans using implicit, explicit and behavioral indicators. Our evidence demonstrates that hostile feelings for the opposing party are ingrained or automatic in voters’ minds, and that affective polarization based on party is just as strong as polarization based on race. We further show that party cues exert powerful effects on non-political judgments and behaviors. Partisans discriminate against opposing partisans, and do so to a degree that exceeds discrimination based on race. We note that the willingness of partisans to display open animus for opposing partisans can be attributed to the absence of norms governing the expression of negative sentiment and that increased partisan affect provides an incentive for elites to engage in confrontation rather than cooperation.
Among the claims they make are these: “A standard measure of social distance — parents’ displeasure over the prospects of their offspring marrying into a family with a different party affiliation — shows startling increases in the United States” since the 1980s.” Moreover, they claim, data from online dating sites suggest that “marital selection based on partisanship exceeds selection based on physical (e.g. body shape) or personality attributes.”
This is of course partly gibberish: Party affiliation can’t be disambiguated from ‘personality attributes’ unless you genuinely believe there’s no difference at all between the parties.
But what’s interesting is that they used the Implicit Association Test on a sample of 2,000 adults. There’s a lot of controversy about this test, but it’s thought to measure attitudes that people claim not to have, or know they shouldn’t have. You may remember it from the “Are you a closet racist” tests that circulate online.
This is what they found:
The spread between Democrats and Republicans on the partisan D-score was massive (t(824.66) = 17.68, p<.001), with the Republicans averaging .27 (se = .02), the Democrats -.23 (se = .02), and Independents -.02 (.02). In the case of implicit racial bias, African Americans showed a preference for African Americans (D-score = -.09, se = .02), while whites displayed a somewhat stronger in-group preference (D-score = .16, se = .01). Hispanics and Asians both revealed a slight preference for whites over blacks. Consistent with previous research, the black-white difference in implicit bias was substantial (t(740.10) = 11.04, p<.001), but the effect size for race (Cohen’s d = .61) was not nearly as strong as the corresponding effect of party (Cohen’s d = .95).
Surprised by this, they tried randomly assigning 1,021 participants to perform two tasks. The first required them to choose between a Democrat and Republican; the second required choosing between a European American and an African American. They were asked to read the resumes of a pair of graduating high school seniors and decide to whom to award a scholarship:
Depending on the task to which they were assigned, participants were exposed to candidates with either a partisan affiliation (cued through membership in a partisan extracurricular group), or a racial identity (cued through a stereotypical African American/European American name and membership in an extracurricular group)
And whaddya know:
In the partisan task approximately 80% of partisans (both Democrats and Republicans) selected their in-party candidate. Democratic leaners showed a stronger preference for the Democratic candidate than Republican leaners showed for the Republican candidate, though both groups displayed the in-party preference (80.4% and 69.2% respectively). Independents showed a slight preference for the Democratic candidate (57.9%). In-group selection on the basis of race was confined to African Americans (73.1% selecting the African American), with European Americans showing a small preference for the African American candidate (55.8% selecting the African American).
Candidate qualification had no significant effect on winner selection. Even when the candidate from the opposing party was more qualified, the participants gave the scholarship to their co-partisans:
When the Republican was more qualified than the Democrat, the probability of a Democrat selecting the Republican candidate was only .30 (95% confidence interval), when both candidates were equally qualified the probability of a Democrat selecting the Republican candidate fell to .21 (95% confidence interval), and when the Democrat was most qualified the probability of a Democrat selecting the Republican candidate was a meager .14. Similarly, when the Democrat was more qualified, the probability of a Republican selecting the Democrat was only .15 (95% confidence interval), when the two candidates were equally qualified the probability of a Republican selecting the Democrat candidate was .21 (95% confidence interval), and when the Republican was most qualified the probability of Republicans selecting the Democrat candidate was .21 (95% confidence interval). The probability of a partisan selecting an out-party candidate never rose above .3 and the coefficients for the various interaction terms between participant partisan affiliation and candidate qualifications were never significant; partisanship simply trumped academic excellence in this task.
What happened when they tried the experiment with race, rather than partisanship?
The results of the race manipulation showed generally weaker effects of outgroup bias. Most African American and European American participants selected the African American candidate. African Americans were significantly more likely than European Americans to select the African American candidate (b=.95, se=.36, p<.01). However, there was an overall tendency to select the European American as the winner when she was the more qualified candidate (b=-.93, se=.30, p<.01). There were no significant interactions between participant race and candidate qualifications.
They then tried another experiment: trust and dictator games:
In the trust game, Player 1 is given an initial endowment ($10) and instructed that she is free to give some, all, or none to Player 2 (said to be a member of a designated group). She is further informed that the researcher will triple the amount transferred to Player 2, who will have a chance to transfer an amount back to Player 1 (though Player 2 is under no obligation to return any money). The dictator game is an abbreviated version in which there is no opportunity for Player 2 to return funds to Player 1 and where the amount transferred is not tripled by the researcher. Since there is no opportunity for Player 1 to observe the strategy of Player 2, variation in the amount Player 1 allocates to different categories of Player 2 in the dictator game is attributable only to group dislike and prejudice.
And whaddya know:
In both versions of the game, players were more generous toward co-partisans, but not co-ethnics. The average amount allocated to co-partisans in the trust game was $4.58 (95% confidence interval [4.33, 4.83]) representing a “bonus” of some ten percent over the average allocation of $4.17. In the dictator game, co-partisans were awarded twenty-four percent over the average allocation.
Their conclusion may be an overstretch, but it’s still an interesting thought:
… our evidence documents a significant shift in the relationship between American voters and their parties. Fifty years ago, comparative party researchers described American parties as relatively weak, at least by the standards of European “mass membership” parties. The prototypical instance of the latter category was a party “membership in which is bound up in all aspects of the individual’s life.” By this standard, American parties have undergone a significant “role reversal.” Today, the sense of partisan identification is all encompassing and affects behavior in both political and non-political contexts.
A big problem with the study is that inherently, they seem to be assuming that the parties don’t genuinely stand for anything. Now, I would have said this was ridiculous. But let’s face it: a Democrat with vile manners has managed to soar to the top of the GOP polls. Can’t really wish that fact away.
As I said, let’s see if these studies can be replicated. If they can, though, they’d make some sense of the frustration I feel when reading the news. The other day, I wrote about this:
I’m being driven insane by the way all journalism now is partisan journalism. I have to fact-check everything I read for myself — which is hugely time-consuming — and half the time, when I look up the original document or source material to which a piece of journalism alludes, I find it said nothing of the sort.
Genferei replied, and it’s a reasonable rebuttal:
At least now you can fact-check things yourself. You can look at the source document, or read another story from a different outlet about the same events. Were the gin-swilling, chain-smoking, hard-bitten reporters of The Golden Age Of Journalism (R) really paragons of unvarnished, fact-checked truth? Or was what they said all you got, so no point worrying about what ‘reality’ really was?
This is true. But those gin-swilling, chain-smoking, hard-bitten reporters — and I was once one of them, so I know — certainly weren’t as nakedly and obviously partisan. We at least paid lip-service to the virtue of “non-partisanship.” And as I recall, there really was a belief that politics stopped at the water’s edge. To play politics with American national security was, truly, held to be un-American.
Does it seem to you that partisanship is now the deepest social cleavage in America? If so what do you think will be the consequences of losing this amount of social trust?
Published in General, Politics
No we didn’t. Don’t confuse our limited social welfare programs with full blown socialism. From 1945-80 huge swaths of industrial sectors were owned and operated by European governments. And huge chunks remain after privatization efforts in the 1980s.
We do not have a national airline, a national health service, a national broadcaster or anything of that nature.
A question for our younger Ricochetti. Like Z I was in a management position and most of my employees (and close direct peers) were liberals. Though people who’d been around me for awhile knew my political inclinations I avoided discussions at work and politics was irrelevant in my hiring or evaluation practices and I observed no discrimination from my liberal peers regarding politics (one of whom, a very liberal pacifist, hired and promoted a former Army Ranger who kept a picture of Reagan on his desk). However, my impression is that for younger folks in their first few years in the workplace politics plays a more important role and might impact their hiring and promotion practices as their careers progress. Do any of you have observations or experience with this?
It makes sense. You don’t choose your race or family but you do choose what you believe in. As our Nation’s faith in God has evaporated, that void is being filled with idols like religion (which I see as different from faith) and politics and academics (or non-scientific science). My family is almost entirely nominal liberals. My church consists of all age groups and nearly every ethnic and racial group but is largely nominal conservatives. I love my family but I have to be honest, I don’t very much like them and spending time with them is a chore. I much prefer my church family.
I can only say that now that I’m in a large company (first time in one) I certainly have the worry that it will affect it so I keep my mouth mostly shut.
Instead of nationalizing, we regulate them so much that they are effectively government managed. Their effective monopolies are protected in regulation or even in statute.
Examples: Banks. Cigarette Companies. Utilities (power/water/gas/roads). Baseball.
And the trend is to regulate so very heavily that all companies are effectively regulated into quasi-state-control. The regulatory burden is death by a million cuts.
Which is why companies who can are getting out.
This had its beginning with the left-liberal demonization of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. In those years, as I mention in an upcoming post, the rules of academic discourse changed. Cheap shots at Bush became acceptable in papers on subjects having nothing to do with politics. That this was rude did not matter. Barack Obama’s demonization of the opposition was the next step, and to this you can add his use of the IRS to go after the Tea Party. It is no wonder that conservatives feel a measure of antipathy for liberals. They have been on the receiving end of a great deal of abuse.
The real source of this shift is generational. The old liberals made common cause with conservatives against communism. The old Democratic Party had room for conservatives. In bygone days, liberals took courses from conservative professors and enjoyed wrestling with their arguments. Now there are no conservative professors at most elite institutions, and liberal students regard the few who survive as little better than fascists.
Think a bit about the attempts to paint the Tea Party as racist. This was not the work of a few hotheads. It was systematic. The press plays a large role in this, demonizing the likes of George Zimmerman, the cop who killed Michael Ferguson, and the cops who arrested Freddie Gray. Or consider the war against young men that has swept our universities — a war launched by the Obama administration’s Department of Education. These folks are up to ugly stuff, and they are ruthless.
It is no accident that most of the members of Ricochet use pseudonyms. A lot of people fear retaliation, and they are right to do so. Remember what happened to the guy chosen to be president of Mozilla.
I was just talking to a friend about this. It’s a huge challenge, because to get people’s attention — hits, clicks, ratings — you have to up the ante in hysteria and sensationalism.
There came a point during the time I was living in Turkey when I realized the economy and the media market had so changed that I could no longer support myself by reporting the news as best I saw and understood it. But lots of highly partisan “think tanks” — and worse, foreign news agencies that exist as propaganda arms for their national interest — were willing to pay me to report the news they wanted to hear.
Good, interesting point. There’s a religious zealotry aspect to hyper-partisanship, or at least the stuff I see on social media. Kind of like the way some people get religious about their diet or Cross-Fit.
In a sense, fear and loathing because of someone’s politics is far more acceptable than fear and loathing because of someone’s race.
After all, we choose our politics, but we cannot choose our skin color. It is far better to judge people based on their choices than to judge people based on accidents of birth.
So I’ll go out on a limb here, and state what at least some of us already think to ourselves: There is nothing wrong with judging people based on their beliefs; indeed, a person’s beliefs may be one of the best metrics available.
Do they?
Yes. But I have a sense that the most controversial thing I could say on Ricochet is that I will vote for the most conservative candidate — even if he or she’s a Democrat.
Not that this is a likely match-up, but I’d unhesitatingly vote for Jim Webb over Donald Trump.
No. Government protection and regulation is not the same as government management. Not even the cronyism is as bad as that. If government truly managed industry on the scale that you claim there wouldn’t be an unemployement rate. Nor would there be any technical advancement.
I think most of us would do the same.
Well, never mind, then. Guess that wasn’t so controversial.
Agreed. But taken to its limits (and the banks and utilities are great examples of this), you get results that are VERY close to government management. New entrants are effectively locked out.
They view business as an enemy that requires restraint. And they trumpet growth in government employment.
I think it is pretty obvious that in fields without competition (the ones most heavily regulated/monopolistically controlled), technical advancement is far slower than in industries that have less regulation.
The push by US companies to effectively move overseas is a desire to keep an American culture but do it in a much more business-friendly environment.
True, but this can vary in different contexts. I’d vote for a conservative even with a number of personal shortcomings. But outside of a political context, in my day to day life, I’m mostly looking for a good friend or an able co-worker.
All I’m really adding, I guess, is that while you can judge someone by the things they believe, most people believe in things more than politics, so it should be weighted accordingly depending on the circumstances.
They attempted to do it to Ronald Reagan. It didn’t work with the tools they had available to them. RR was blasted in the culture, and some of the media played along, but in the end they didn’t yet have the ability to force their opinions down the throats of the populace in general.
I recall watching CNN’s coverage of Reagan’s funeral and Bernard Shaw’s genuine surprise at the depth of feeling among the spectators.
If I can only have 20% of the loaf, then that 20% needs to be a mixture of national defense and commitment to the Constitution. For all his faults, Webb is a good man.
Claire,
1.) A Women is at a check-out line. She has two items. The price of each item is $2.00. The clerk rings up $5.00. She stops him and complains. She shows him the two items and the prices. He says, “yes 2 + 2 = 5. She is stunned at first not believing that he actually believes what he is saying. After a futile attempt at reasoning, she calls for the manager. The manager says she is being narrow-minded as all his employees have the right to their beliefs. She keeps arguing and soon she is escorted from the store by security.
2.) A Rabbi is at an interfaith local group meeting. He meets a new member of the group. He turns out to be the spiritual leader of a new faith that practices cannibalism. The Rabbi is stunned at first not believing that this could be true. The cannibal high priest is irritated and says that they only eat the poor & the weak. Now the Rabbi bursts into a lecture on the value of human life. Soon the Rabbi is asked to leave as he is not behaving in the spirit of interfaith cooperation.
In both examples your social scientist sees only increasing polarization. The content of anyone’s belief is taken for granted. I would put it to you that it is exactly this kind of social science nihilism that is responsible for the polarization. By ignoring values that are not relative but a priori, our society produces an absurd culture that tolerates perversity.
The only rational response from those who must endure this absurdity is to protest. That then is taken as a sign of more “polarization” by the social scientist. My recommendation is to remove the social scientist’s grant money as soon as possible and see whether we don’t get improvement.
Regards,
Jim
Actually, in rather innovative fashion, we have effective government control of most industry. What remains is merely nominal private ownership. The linked essay, entitled “Why buy the cow?” breaks down how this works and the startling extent to which government is the economic beneficiary of what is generally believed to be private, capitalist activity. Whether or not you want to call this fascism, it does represent an almost ideal totalitarianism, in that the reality of government control/coercion is superficially deniable.
I agree with this. I support Webb over most people running.
“Does it seem to you that partisanship is now the deepest social cleavage in America? If so what do you think will be the consequences of losing this amount of social trust?”
Yes, and not just political partisanship but cultural partisanship as well. And the information culture amplifies and aggravates it. You know how they showed you pictures of cell division in 10th grade biology and the middle picture showed the little chromosome thingies still attached but obviously separating? That’s where we are now. I think we will see complete separation and the formation of two new creatures. Good news: probably not in my lifetime. Bad news: I’m old.
There is a psychology of human relationships that I know exists but I can’t prove in any way. The more alike people are, the more likely they are to fight bitterly.
My point is that Democrats and Republicans have more in common than either ever admits.
As the government grows, so do the stakes.
Tug of war over a mud puddle is a fun picnic game. Tug of war over the Grand Canyon is life and death.
If you want to be controversial, Claire, then just suggest that Muslim Syrian refugees should be fast tracked over Christian refugees from the same region.
Though I think you already have tried something very close to that. The response was emphatic.
And best of all, Washington State privatized the sale of hard alcohol! I just can’t stop pointing out how wonderful that is.
Vin Scully?
I’m fond of saying the partisanship is not out of control until someone is caned half to death on the floor of the Senate again. Then we can talk divisiveness.
But it’s true that ideological affiliation is now an indicator of intellectual purity or righteousness. In a way that religion maybe used to be. So our secular world retains the zeal but for more earthly concerns.
And frankly, I’m quite open to the notion that we’ve reverted to the mean. Especially on economics. Since you were in television, you acutely understand how that medium has…distorted a lot of our thinking.
After all, a lot of us want the prosperity and regulated competition and taxation of the 1950s, but I’m pretty certain most of us don’t want the near 10% of GDP that this nation spent on defense.
Byron,
Could I hit Debbie Wasserman Schultz with a water balloon? No..No..I didn’t say that. I thought it but I didn’t say it. Just once maybe. You know it could be a small water balloon.
Regards,
Jim