Liberals and conservatives are (geographically) dividing

Abstract

Liberals and conservatives are (geographically) dividingConservatives may not be from Mars and liberals may not be from Venus, but they are dividing into Red and Blue worlds. And this is increasingly so in recent decades. Despite the fact that most national elections are relatively close, where the winner prevails by a couple of percentage points, the United States of America is becoming increasingly the (not so) United Red and Blue States of America. This is most pronounced in smaller, more localized geographic units like neighborhoods and census tracts, where one party wins elections in a landslide and residents rarely communicate with people who hold differing political values (Bishop, 2009;Mutz, 2006). Blue communities are home to disproportionately many Democrats and Red communities are home to disproportionately many Republicans, and both these communities and the residents of these communities differ in many ways beyond simple partisan identification. For example, residents of blue communities are more likely to identify as "spiritual, but not religious," while residents of red communities are much more likely to identify as religious (Abramowitz, 2012). Similarly, 50% of residents in Red America own guns, but only 19% of residents in Blue America own guns. Moreover, recent survey data suggests that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals report feeling stigmatized and they do not belong in red states where the majority of the population has supported banning same-sex marriage and forbidding non-heterosexuals from teaching in public schools (Lick, Tornello, Riskind, Schmidt, & Patterson, 2012). This sense of not belonging triggers selective migration to places where people feel that they are accepted and that they do belong (Motyl, 2014;Motyl et al., 2014). Some evidence even suggests that LGBT individuals may be fleeing red communities and heading for greener (or, more rainbow-patterned) pastures Smart & Klein, 2013). With LGBT individuals emigrating from red communities, there are fewer opportunities for people in red communities to befriend LGBT individuals. These are just a few instances of a broader phenomenon of ideological migration that has resulted in the growing segregation of Red America and Blue America.In this chapter, I propose Ideological Enclavement Theory to explain how Red and Blue America emerged and what the consequences of living in these ideologically-segregated enclaves are. This theory identifies two primary antecedent causes. First, people have gut-level intuitions about the ideology of different enclaves, and when the ideology of a community matches people's personal ideology, people infer that they would fit in that community. Second, when people have the opportunity to do so, they will selectively migrate into enclaves that share their ideology. This ideological migration process operates to satisfy basic psychological needs, like the need to belong and a sense of physical security, and to pursue higher-level psychological goals, like self-transcendence. Thes...

How Ambient Cues Facilitate Political Segregation

“…Study 2 replicated our findings in Study 1 that political orientation correlates with many community characteristics, even though most of these characteristics are not inherently and necessarily political (e.g., bicycle riding, single family houses). The strongest correlations supported previous research on political enclaves: Liberals preferred communities with more liberal Democrats while conservatives preferred communities with more conservative Republicans (Motyl, 2016). Even when both liberals and conservatives thought the same characteristics were important, they prioritized the characteristics differently.…”

“…Polarization in Congress and among citizens has reached unprecedented heights (Abramowitz, 2016;Iyengar, Sood, & Lelkes, 2012;McCarty, Poole, & Rosenthal, 2016). One factor contributing to this division is geographic political segregation, where Americans live in distinct politically homogeneous communities (Bishop & Cushing, 2008;McDonald, 2011;Motyl, 2016). People in homogeneous groups often polarize and become more extreme in their beliefs (Mackie, 1986;Keating, van Boven, & Judd, 2016;Sunstein, 2002).…”

Dying for the group: Towards a general theory of extreme self-sacrifice

“…This further exacerbates the cycle of enclavement, whereby people sort themselves into ideologically congenial enclaves and are then further polarized in these enclaves and are more likely to behave in a hostile manner toward out-group members. The scope of this problem is even greater than this article anticipates, as conservatives and liberals in America are geographically segregating themselves, potentially leading to a political climate in which peaceful solutions to ideological conflict become less possible (Motyl 2016;Motyl et al 2014). Indeed, we are seeing the early warning signs of violent political conflict in the United States, where even presidential candidates endorse the infrahumanization of dissimilar others as "deplorables" and the use of violence at rallies against those with whom they disagree (Kirk & Martin 2017).…”

Identifying the domains of ideological similarities and differences in attitudes

“…These differences, sometimes called ideological asymmetries, have been described as the essence of political psychology (Jost, 2017). Liberals and conservatives have different values and moral beliefs (Caprara & Vecchione, 2018;Feldman & Steenbergen, 2001;Graham et al, 2011;Sterling, Jost, & Hardin, 2019), live in different neighborhoods (Motyl, 2016;Motyl, Iyer, Oishi, Trawalter, & Nosek, 2014), invest in different products (Khan, Misra, & Singh, 2013), prefer different types of light bulbs (Gomet, Kunreuther & Larrick, 2013), keep different things in their dorm rooms (Carney, Jost, Gosling, & Potter, 2008), and tweet about different gold medalists (Kteily, Rocklage, McClanahan, & Ho, 2019). Just as there are differences, there are also similarities.…”