The Psychology of Political Polarization

Jan-Willem van Prooijen, Jan-Willem van Prooijen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000365535
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Psychology of Political Polarization was inspired by the notion that, to understand the momentum of radical political movements, it is important to understand the attitudes of individual citizens who support such movements.

Leading political psychologists have contributed to this important book, in which they share their latest ideas about political polarization – a complex phenomenon that cannot be traced back to a single cause, and that is associated with intolerance, overconfidence, and irrational beliefs. The book explores the basis of political polarization as being how citizens think and feel about people with a different worldview, how they perceive minority groups, and how much they trust leaders and experts on pressing societal issues such as climate change, health, international relations, and poverty. The chapters are organized into two sections that examine what psychological processes and what social factors contribute to polarization among regular citizens. The book also describes practical strategies and interventions to depolarize people.

The book offers a state-of-the-art introduction to the psychology of political polarization which will appeal to the academic market and political professionals.

Chapter 1

The psychology of political polarization

An introduction

Jan-Willem van Prooijen

Across the world, societies polarize politically. The tone of political debate has hardened in recent years, and the political left and right increasingly seem to perceive each other as enemies instead of as opponents. Extremist, nationalist, and populist leaders who blame other groups for society’s problems have benefited electorally from these developments. Various countries have elected populist leaders in office in recent years (e.g., the US, Italy, Hungary, Brazil), and also elsewhere nationalist movements have significantly shaped the political landscape (e.g., Brexit). Against the backdrop of these developments, the world faces important challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, geopolitical conflict, terrorism, and immigration. Moreover, governmental officials frequently report suspicions of foreign interference in national elections, and the public is regularly exposed to fake news, alternative facts, and conspiracy theories that fuel further polarization.

Political polarization is often visible through macro-level processes in society, including protest movements, electoral support for relatively radical political parties, and increasing levels of conflict between societal movements. Yet, at the basis of political polarization are psychological, micro- and meso-level processes that determine how individual citizens think and feel about people with a different worldview, how they treat ethnic, religious, and sexual minority groups, and how much they trust leaders and experts on issues such as climate change, health, poverty, and international conflict. Any manifestation of political polarization starts with the concerns of individual citizens, and therefore, the social-psychological processes associated with polarized political views are key to understanding the broader societal implications of this phenomenon. As such, attempts to depolarize the political debate are more likely to be effective if they take scientific knowledge of the psychology of political polarization into account.

The present edited volume was inspired by these issues, and sought to provide a state-of-the-art overview of scientific knowledge on the psychology of political polarization. To achieve this aim, leading experts on the psychology of political polarization generously contributed a chapter in which they share their views on this phenomenon. The current introductory chapter will briefly illuminate what political polarization is exactly, and what the main theoretical and practical reasons are to study this phenomenon. Moreover, it will provide a short overview of the book.

What is political polarization?

At the core of political polarization is the extent to which citizens hold strong and moralized attitudes about political and societal issues. In general, strong attitudes tend to be relatively resistant to social influence, stable over time, and influential on cognition and behavior (Howe & Krosnick, 2017). Accordingly, political beliefs that people endorse with strong moral conviction are relatively difficult to change, drive behavior in significant ways, and form the basis of intolerance towards competing views (Skitka, 2010). A working definition of political polarization, therefore, is the extent to which citizens become ideologically entrenched in their own values and political beliefs, thereby increasing the divide with citizens who hold different values and political beliefs. Political polarization thus fuels a perception of society as a struggle between “us versus them,” and may yield high levels of mutual conflict between ideologically opposing groups (e.g., liberals versus conservatives in the US).

Political polarization can manifest itself in various ways. One example is through political extremism, which refers to the extent to which people polarize into, and strongly identify with, generic left- or right-wing ideological outlooks on society (Van Prooijen & Krouwel, 2019). While the term political extremism often is used in reference to underground – and sometimes violent – extremist groups, it is also commonly used in reference to regular citizens who ideologically are at the edges of the political spectrum, and vote accordingly (e.g., EU socialist parties at the political left, or anti-immigration parties at the political right). Such preference for relatively radical political parties may suggest that societies indeed are polarizing. As a case in point, throughout the EU electoral support for relatively moderate left-wing parties (e.g., social democrats) and moderate right-wing parties (e.g., Christian democrats) has dropped in the past few decades, whereas support for relatively radical parties at the left and right has increased (Krouwel, 2012).

A closely related, yet conceptually distinct, manifestation of political polarization is populism. Populism is defined as a political mentality that construes society as an ongoing struggle between “the corrupt elites” and “the noble people” (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017). As such, populism is a form of political polarization that portrays societal elites as the enemies of the people. Populism has several underlying dimensions, notably anti-elitism (i.e., a perception of political and societal elites as corrupt), people-centrism (i.e., a belief that the “will of the people” should be the leading principle in political decision making), and relatedly, anti-pluralism (the belief that only a populist worldview reflects the true “will of the people,” implying that different opinions should not be tolerated; Müller, 2016). Populism occurs at both the left and right, and indeed, political parties that are considered left- or right-extreme often also are considered populist (Akkermans, Mudde, & Zaslove, 2014; Schumacher & Rooduijn, 2013). A notable difference with political extremism, however, is that populism can occur throughout the political spectrum, including in the center. For instance, Italy’s five-star movement is widely considered a populist party yet is not clearly left-wing or right-wing (e.g., it has relatively left-wing positions on income equality and sustainability, yet relatively right-wing positions on immigration). Moreover, various well-known politicians have articulated rhetoric consistent with populist leadership, yet are not politically extreme (e.g., Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, or Boris Johnson in the UK, who both are center-right but not far-right; Van Prooijen, 2018; see also Müller, 2016, for other examples).

Besides such support for broad political movements, political polarization may be reflected in increased levels of conflict between citizens on more specific policy issues. For instance, many citizens do not believe the scientific evidence that climate change is real or that humans are causing it, yielding conflict with citizens or political parties that support regulations to reduce CO₂ emissions (see Chapter 9). Such climate change skepticism is robustly associated with a conservative ideology in the US, although the link with ideology is less clear in various other countries (Hornsey, Harris, & Fielding, 2018). Likewise, the COVID-19 pandemic has not only sparked agreement to global lockdown policies to contain the virus, but it has also inspired resistance and protest among citizens who oppose the lockdown policies. Such anti-lockdown sentiments are associated with conspiracy beliefs (Marinthe, Brown, Delouvée, & Jolley, 2020), a common predictor of political polarization (Krouwel, Kutiyski, Van Prooijen, Martinsson, & Markstedt, 2017). In sum, although political polarization can take many forms, the common denominators are a strong conviction in one’s own values and beliefs, and hostility towards those who are perceived to hold different values and beliefs.

Why study political polarization?

While many good reasons may exist to study political polarization, here I will elaborate on two important ones. A first reason is that political polarization is a paradox that currently is insufficiently understood by scientists, policy makers, and the general public. Specifically, a popular assumption is that political polarization is rooted in negative emotions (Van Prooijen & Krouwel, 2019) and detrimental societal circumstances (Midlarsky, 2011). While these factors indeed are important, the evidence also suggests a more complicated picture. During the past decades many societies with high levels of wealth and well-being have polarized; at the individual level, such polarization is not exclusive to citizens who experience economic deprivation (see Chapter 6). This suggests that a more fine-grained analysis of the many psychological factors that are associated with political polarization is needed.

A second reason to study political polarization is that, in many ways, it has a disruptive influence on society. A central aspect of political polarization is a strong belief in the moral superiority of one’s own ideological beliefs, which easily prompts the assumption that alternative ideological beliefs are morally inferior (Van Prooijen & Krouwel, 2019). This may stimulate intolerance of people and social groups that have (or are assumed to have) different ideological beliefs. Moreover, political polarization stimulates overconfidence, and leads people to reject scientific evidence that is incompatible with their ideological beliefs (e.g., about the reality of climate change, or the necessity to adhere to social distancing regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic). Below, I will elaborate in more detail on both of these reasons.

Political polarization is a paradox

Various theoretical perspectives have noted that political polarization is rooted in negative feelings and emotions, that may emerge through negative social experiences (e.g., McGregor, Prentice, & Nash, 2013; Van den Bos, 2018). For instance, significance quest theory proposes that feelings of significance loss are important to understand ideological extremism. This theory is based on the argument that people have a desire for significance, that is, to matter and be respected in the eyes of themselves or significant others (Kruglanski et al., 2014). When people experience a loss of significance, however – for example through humiliation, injustice, economic hardship, and so on – they seek to restore a sense of significance, which may be achieved by supporting a meaningful cause. Negative experiences that challenge people’s feelings of self-worth therefore can make them committed to their ideological beliefs, causing polarization. While significance quest theory was initially developed to explain violent terrorism, it may also explain political polarization among regular citizens (Webber et al., 2018; see also Van Prooijen & Kuijper, 2020).

Many empirical studies have yielded results that are consistent with these links between negative emotions, aversive social experiences, and political polarization. Political extremism is related to negative emotions, including fear (Van Prooijen, Krouwel, Boiten, & Eendebak, 2015) and anger (Frimer, Brandt, Melton, & Motyl, 2018). Likewise, feelings of self-uncertainty increase people’s preference for radical leaders (Hogg, Meehan, & Farquharson, 2010). A meta-analysis suggests that manipulations of mortality salience may polarize both the political left and right (Burke, Kosloff, & Landau, 2013). Also, perceptions of unfairness (Van den Bos, 2018) and distressing societal circumstances (Midlarsky, 2011) have been associated with politically polarized beliefs. Taken together, the evidence supports the theoretical link between feelings of distress and political polarization.

There is a paradox in these insights, however, which pertains to a discrepancy between citizens’ aversive subjective experiences versus their objective life circumstances. Societies increasingly seem to be getting more polarized, yet by and large, citizens’ life circumstances have improved substantially over the past decades. Contrary to the bleak rhetoric of politically radical leaders, objective metrics suggest that on average citizens of modern societies actually are safer, richer, happier, and healthier than ever before. Even over the last 50 years people have a longer life expectancy, are less likely to suffer from poverty, unemployment, or sickness, are less likely to be sent to war, are less likely to be victimized in a crime, are more likely to own a house and car, and so on (e.g., Pinker, 2018; Rosling, 2018). Why do these prosperous and successful societies offer such fertile ground to political polarization?

One possible explanation is that the benefits of globalization are not equally distributed among citizens, and that particularly those who are “left behind” cause the political polarization in modern societies. Indeed, a 2020 United Nations report shows that income inequality is on the rise throughout the world.¹ Moreover, psychological research reveals that higher levels of inequality in societies predict a preference for radical leadership (Sprong et al., 2019). A closer look suggests, however, that also this explanation needs more specificity. Political polarization occurs not only among relatively poor but also among relatively wealthy citizens (see Chapter 6; Mols & Jetten, 2017). Moreover, during the past few decades life circumstances have improved not only for wealthy people but also for the poorer segments of most societies (Rosling, 2018). All of this suggests that the psychology of political polarization is a complex phenomenon that cannot be traced back to a single cause.

Political polarization is a problem

Central in political polarization are opposing values, beliefs, and opinions, which raises the question to what extent political polarization should be considered a problem. After all, healthy-functioning democracies often benefit from diverging opinions between citizens and political groups, and an open debate about different possible solutions to societal problems. One might say that different values and opinions are part and parcel of what democracy as a political system is all about. Admittedly, political polarization can emerge in various degrees, and there may be a gray area between a fierce yet constructive discussion versus a harmful and polarized conflict. My point here is that there is a difference between an open, mutually respectful, and constructive political debate that is focused on solving societal problems, versus a polarized political debate that is primarily focused on justifying one’s own beliefs or defeating competing groups – if necessary at the expense of truth or progress. Here, I briefly review evidence that (a) political polarization implies excessive confidence in the correctness of one’s views, which may lead to overconfidence in decision making; (b) political polarization is associa...