The recent increase in partisan media has generated interest in whether such outlets polarize viewers. I draw on theories of motivated reasoning to explain why partisan media polarize viewers, why ...these programs affect some viewers much more strongly than others, and how long these effects endure. Using a series of original experiments, I find strong support for my theoretical expectations, including the argument that these effects can still be detected several days postexposure. My results demonstrate that partisan media polarize the electorate by taking relatively extreme citizens and making them even more extreme. Though only a narrow segment of the public watches partisan media programs, partisan media's effects extend much more broadly throughout the political arena.
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2.
Americans, Not Partisans Levendusky, Matthew S.
The Journal of politics,
01/2018, Volume:
80, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
In recent years, Americans have become more affectively polarized: that is, ordinary Democrats and Republicans increasingly dislike and distrust members of the opposing party. Such polarization is ...normatively troubling, as it exacerbates gridlock and dissensus in Washington. Given these negative consequences, I investigate whether it is possible to ameliorate this partisan discord. Building on the Common Ingroup Identity Model from social psychology, I show that when subjects’ sense of American national identity is heightened, they come to see members of the opposing party as fellow Americans rather than rival partisans. As a result, they like the opposing party more, thereby reducing affective polarization. Using several original experiments, as well as a natural experiment surrounding the July 4th holiday and the 2008 summer Olympics, I find strong support for my argument. I conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for efforts to reduce polarization more generally.
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Few topics in public opinion research have attracted as much attention in recent years as partisan polarization in the American mass public. Yet, there has been considerably less investigation into ...whether people perceive the electorate to be polarized and the patterns of these perceptions. Building on work in social psychology, we argue that Americans perceive more polarization with respect to policy issues than actually exists, a phenomenon known as false polarization. Data from a nationally representative probability sample and a novel estimation strategy to make inferences about false polarization show that people significantly misperceive the public to be more divided along partisan lines than it is in reality. Also, people's misperceptions of opposing partisans are larger than those about their own party. We discuss the implications of these empirical patterns for American electoral politics.
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5.
Partisanship and the pandemic Levendusky, Matthew S
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
10/2022, Volume:
378, Issue:
6615
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Political polarization shaped attitudes and outcomes related to COVID-19
Abstract
The mass public has become affectively polarized—ordinary Americans increasingly dislike and distrust those from the other party, with negative consequences for politics. Drawing on work in ...political and social psychology, this paper tests two mechanisms for reducing this discord, both of which have been shown to reduce similar biases in other settings: heightening partisan ambivalence, and using self-affirmation techniques. A population-based survey experiment shows that neither strategy reduces affective polarization in the aggregate. But this null finding masks an important heterogeneity: Heightening partisan ambivalence reduces affective polarization for ideological moderates, but increases such discord for those with more extreme ideological identities. Efforts to depolarize the electorate can make it more deeply divided, with important implications for our understanding of contemporary politics and the durability of affective polarization.
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To what extent do partisan media sources shape public opinion? On its face, it would appear that the impact of partisan media is limited, given that it attracts a relatively small audience. We argue, ...however, that its influence may extend beyond its direct audience via a two-step communication flow. Specifically, those who watch and are impacted by partisan media outlets talk to and persuade others who did not watch. We present experimental results that demonstrate this process. We therefore show that previous studies may have significantly underestimated the effect of these outlets. We also illustrate that how the two-step communication flow works is contingent upon the precise composition of the discussion group (e.g., is it consistent of all fellow partisans or a mix of partisans?). We conclude by highlighting what our results imply about the study of media, preference formation, and partisan polarization.
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How does local television news shape viewers' national political attitudes? The answer is unclear, because local news typically focuses on local, not national, stories, and is politically neutral. ...But the rise of Sinclair Broadcasting, now the nation's second-largest owner of local TV stations, upends that assumption. News on Sinclair-owned stations focuses more on national topics, and presents them with a right-wing slant. Given this, we might expect it to shift its viewers' attitudes in a pro-Republican direction. Using data on Sinclair's acquisition of local TV stations between 2008 and 2018, I show that living in an area with a Sinclair-owned TV station lowers viewers' approval of President Obama during his tenure in office, and makes viewers less likely to vote for the Democratic nominee for president. This has important implications for our understanding of the effects of local TV news, as well as for media trust, as I discuss in the conclusion.
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Scholars typically argue that elite polarization has only negative consequences for American politics. I challenge this view by demonstrating that elite polarization, by clarifying where the parties ...stand on the issues of the day, causes ordinary voters to adopt more consistent attitudes. Scholars have made such claims in the past, but because only observational data has been available, demonstrating a cause-and-effect relationship has proven to be difficult. I use original experiments to verify that there is a small but significant causal link between elite polarization and voter consistency. These findings have important normative implications for our understanding of the consequences of elite polarization, the role of political parties in a modern democracy, and the standards scholars use to assess citizen competence and participation.
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How do domestic political conditions shape when leaders get punished for backing down in international crises? We explore how three factors—the president’s partisanship, the reaction of other elites, ...and whether the president justifies his decision on the basis of new information—influence the size of domestic audience costs. While standard theories in American politics suggest that partisanship should exert a large effect over voter behavior, we offer an alternative theory explaining why the president’s unique informational advantage following a crisis will mute partisanship’s effect on audience costs. We argue that the president’s justification for why he backed down, however, will have a large effect on audience costs. Using a series of original survey experiments, we find strong support for our theoretical argument. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for the role of partisanship, framing, and the audience costs literature more broadly.
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