Intergroup threat and affective polarization in a multi-party system

Abstract

What explains affective polarization among voters and societal groups? Much of the existing literature focusing on mass political polarization in modern democracies originates in the US, where studies have shown that, while ideological separation has grown, political conflict increasingly reflects social identity divisions rather than policy disagreements, resulting in affective polarization. We focus on explaining such polarization in a multi-party context. Drawing on social identity theory and intergroup threat theory, we hypothesize that individuals who perceive an intergroup threat show stronger intergroup differentiation and increased affective polarization. We analyze the influence of perceived threat on affective polarization drawing on two large-scale representative surveys in Sweden (N = 1429 and 1343). We show that individual-level affective polarization is related to perceived intergroup threats among the voters in both studies, measuring affective polarization using social distance, negative trait attribution, and party like-dislike ratings.

Puzzles in affective polarization research: Party attitudes, partisan social distance, and multiple party identification

“…In contrast, negative like-dislike ratings can be accompanied by a wide range of partisan social distance scores, and quite often people who dislike a party profess indifference toward its supporters. We have not seen this asymmetry reported by others who have investigated partisan-directed attitudes (e.g., Knudsen, 2020;Renström et al, 2021). We do not know whether this is because they have found it uninteresting or because it is a feature particular to our data.…”

“…Data on partisandirected attitudes, however, is comparatively limited. Knudsen (2020) and Renström et al (2021) have used the familiar "Social distance", as used in the literature, has two slightly di erent meanings. Iyengar et al ( ) use it to refer to partisan-directed attitudes more generally, whereas, Druckman and Levendusky ( ) use the term more specifically to refer to feelings of comfort with having outparty partisans in one's social circles, i.e., an application of Bogardus's ( ) social distance scale.…”

Protecting the Ingroup? Authoritarianism, Immigration Attitudes, and Affective Polarization

“…As mentioned, we add to the literature on the causes of affective polarization by arguing that the perceived threats toward the individual's ingroup can spur such partisan hostilities and bias (see also Renström et al, 2021). In line with the findings of the previous literature, we recognize that both identity and ideology are important determinants of the affective polarization.…”

“…First, several authors have shown that strengthening group identification increases affective polarization (Iyengar et al, 2012;Mason, 2015;Webster and Abramowitz, 2017;Reiljan and Ryan, 2021). Second, numerous studies show that individuals become increasingly affectively polarized as their views become more ideologically extreme (Webster and Abramowitz, 2017;Harteveld, 2021;Lelkes, 2021;Renström et al, 2021). While both identity and ideology are known to be important drivers of affective polarization, our findings suggest that the perceived threats toward the individual's ingroup can spur affective polarization (see also Rogowski and Sutherland, 2016).…”

“…To build this argument, we draw on intergroup threat theory (Stephan et al, 2009), which claims that perceived threats against the ingroup increase intergroup distancing and negativity toward an outgroup. In line with this idea, perceived threats to the ingroup have been shown to increase affective polarization (Renström et al, 2021). One important aspect of intergroup threat theory is that threats are not objective properties but subjectively perceived.…”