Verified by 
Disagreement is the core of politics. If everyone agreed, we would have little societal need for legislatures, campaigns, elections, debates, voting, or any other democratic institution. But, increasingly, scholars and pundits have worried about the divisiveness of contemporary politics. Why do we seem to disagree so much? And why do we seem to feel that disagreement so strongly?
Interestingly enough, despite the intuitive appeal of arguments about increasing polarization in American society, scholarly research has yet to reach consensus about the existence or scale of polarization (see, disagreement – even about disagreement itself – is everywhere!). Some, like Marc Hetherington (Vanderbilt) see polarization as increasing, a reflection of an increasingly polarized Congress and polarized political parties.
Others, however, are more skeptical about increasing disagreement. Matthew Levendusky (University of Pennsylvania) argues that politics only appears to be more polarized, when in fact people who already disagreed with each other are simply affiliating with opposite political parties. In a forthcoming book, Levendusky also shows that what polarization is happening is driven largely by people selecting into distinct partisan media (liberals watching programs like MSNBC and conservatives watching programs like Fox News).
Still others, like Stanford’s Morris Fiorina, think that polarization might not be happening at all.
A recent paper (gated, ungated) by Shanto Iyengar and several other political scientists from Stanford University suggests a radically different view. They argue that much of political polarization is affective rather than ideological. That is to say, we aren’t experiencing polarization through people holding more extreme and more divided opinions about policy issues. Instead, we are simply growing to like people from our own party more and like people from the other party less.
Their analysis of an extensive array of public opinion data focuses on an in-group/out-group differential. Specifically, they want to know how big the differences are between Americans’ perceptions of their own group (i.e., their party) and other groups (i.e., the other party).
The results are striking. Even as this differential has nearly disappeared when looking at race (whites and blacks do not thinking much less of the other group than they think of their own) and religion, the in-group/out-group differential among partisans is growing and presently larger than it has ever been (with data going back to the 1960s).
A particularly interesting set of results shows that in the 1960s neither Republicans nor Democrats were particularly troubled by the idea of their children marrying someone of the other party. Today, however, 50% of Republicans and 30% of Democrats (give or take 5%) would be somewhat or very unhappy with their children marrying someone from the other party.
These results have made a big splash among public opinion scholars because of the new way of thinking about polarization. But the results also speak to our own experiences of contemporary politics.
Politics today feels different from what it did years or decades ago because of this changing affective character of politics. Attack ads, ad hominem arguments, and apocalyptic claims about the other party’s impact on America’s future have become staple elements of political campaigns and media coverage.
What this means is that even though we actually do not disagree with each other any more than we did fifty years ago, we feel like we disagree more and we feel that disagreement more intensely. Political debate is a necessary element of democracy, but fervent dislike for our political opponents is not. With affective polarization as historical levels, it will take significant changes for politics to refocus on policy disagreement and shift away from the political attacks that breed unnecessary dislike of our fellow citizens.
