Explanations of and interventions against affective polarization cannot afford to ignore the power of ingroup norm perception.

ABSTRACT: Affective polarization, or animosity toward opposing political groups, is a fundamentally intergroup phenomenon. Yet, prevailing explanations of it and interventions against it have overlooked the power of ingroup norm perception. To illustrate this power, we begin with evidence from 3 studies which reveal that partisans' perception of their ingroup's norm of negative attitudes toward the outgroup is exaggerated and uniquely predicts their own polarization-related attitudes. Specifically, our original data show that in predicting affective polarization (i.e. how one feels about one's partisan outgroup), the variance explained by ingroup norm perception is 8.4 times the variance explained by outgroup meta-perception. Our reanalysis of existing data shows that in predicting support for parti

SUBMITTER: You ZT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11475411 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature