In-Party Love, Out-Party Hate, and Affective Polarization in Twelve Democracies

https://academic.oup.com/poq/article/89/2/459/8152104?login=false

by PaulHoule • 10 months ago

41 83 10 months ago

academic.oup.com

anon2916• 10 months ago

Get offline. Meet people. Most people want the same thing. This is honestly crazy that we do this to ourselves

euroderf• 10 months ago

But think of all the faux engagement! Think of all the advertising revenue! Won't someone think of the poor shareholders?

cosmicgadget5• 10 months ago

What like "prosperity for ourselves and our children"? I think the issues arise when it gets a smidge more nuanced then that.

JumpCrisscross• 10 months ago

the issues arise when it gets a smidge more nuanced then that

The issues arise when folks get distracted from common prosperity.

I meet so many people in the Rockies and New York who are up in arms about some imaginary problem, or a problem they have no influence over and which cannot affect them, one they solely know about due to social media.

palmfacehn4• 10 months ago

Specifically, it feels like the lack of discernment goes off the rails and falls into the chasm of derangement where people assume that their opponents do not have that common goal. Anti-natalists and population control advocates excluded, most of us do share that goal. The differences are in the proposed approaches.

There are legitimate discussions which can be had about those approaches to achieving that common goal. The discussion is no longer in good faith where partisans deny that common goal or assume evil intent.

anon2916• 10 months ago

Yeah but when you discuss nuances in person rather than online your natural social chemistry in your brain kicks in and we all behave like actual people instead of mindless savages

anon7000• 10 months ago

There are a large number of policy issues the average American should be able to agree on, but have been polarized to the point that we don’t solve them.

- Get money out of politics. Everyone complains about corruption, no one tries to do a constitutional amendment to get rid of Citizens United.

- Strong privacy protections for your online data. Does anyone like the fact that your data gets sold and then used against you by car insurance companies?

- Break up big companies that are taking their power too far. Seriously, take your Syscos, Nestles, AB InBevs of the world and break them up. No company deserves to have that much power over consumer markets, and the centralization of that power definitely makes prices higher. My conservative parents definitely don’t like how when Walmart and Rite Aid came to small-town midewest, all the local drug & grocery stores went out of business.

- Every American knows our private health insurance system sucks. I mean every person you meet either doesn’t have good coverage, hasn’t used it much, or has had had a terrible experience with it.

- We need to do away with police overstep like asset forfeiture, where the government can basically just rob you. I’m not talking defund the police, but you could sit the average American down, and probably come to agree that the police state has too much power and not enough accountability in a couple areas.

There are so many stories along these lines which could get republicans and democrats on a similar page, and it comes down to the frustrations we ALL have with the systems we live in. It doesn’t matter who you voted for, when health insurance starts scamming you out of a procedure you need, it’s frustrating on a deeply personal level. And we all feel like we don’t have much control over federal policy — partly because businesses & moneyed interests can protect their interests while everyone else struggles, no matter who’s in charge.

(And btw, this isn’t a elected officials on both sides are the same comment, more of a “we Americans have a lot of shared frustrations regardless of party”

obscurette• 10 months ago

Unfortunately it's not that simple any more. There are already very fundamental issues on which we are already very polarized, online or not. One of these is safety for example – far too many people are ready to give up any freedoms in the name of security. Ideas for EU chatcontrol, camera networks etc don't come from some bureaucrats, there is a very broad social demand for this.

mcny• 10 months ago

there is a very broad social demand for this

I don't believe you. My guess is the demand comes from manufactured consent, not from people who deeply understand the issue.

hermannj314• 10 months ago

If you see yourself in the hegemon, sure. This strategy has also led to horrible brutality against marginal groups.

protocolture• 10 months ago

Lots of people just want to use political processes to hurt their perceived enemies.

weregiraffe6• 10 months ago

Get offline. Meet people. Most people want the same thing.

A lot of people want more freedom. It's easy to identify with this, until you get into details. For example:

- Lower taxes.

- Easier access to weapons.

- Lower age of consent.

These are all things that increase freedom, by some definition.

rapnie2• 10 months ago

Go for balanced freedom. Against humanity, and place humanity first.

spencerflem8• 10 months ago

Gtfo with this. The problem is not ‘polarization’ it’s that so many people are willingly and knowingly cruel when they get the chance.

dmichulke• 10 months ago

Cruel as in

- physically violent,

- destructive to others' property, or

- expressing negative opinions verbally?

jasonsb• 10 months ago

None of the above. Cruel as in manipulating others and taking advantage of others for their own personal gain whenever they get the chance.

spencerflem8• 10 months ago

They are sending the military into cities to shoot people.

ICE prisoners are made to lap water off the floor like dogs.

My trans friends are making plans to flee the country in advance of their existence being criminalized

mock-possum4• 10 months ago

All of the above, of course! Why should it be otherwise?

zpeti2• 10 months ago

Cruelty is your perceived behaviour of people on the other side sticking up for their values.

I can both argue that it’s cruel to not have housing for everyone,

while also arguing it’s cruel to tax away 40-50% of an entire country’s productivity (people’s actual work) to pay for houses for people who have never worked or paid taxes in their life.

Who’s right? Who’s cruel? Both sides and both. This is why I find this cruelty argument so bad.

spencerflem8• 10 months ago

If your values allow for what ICE is doing, your values suck and I don’t like you

Nasrudith2• 10 months ago

Those values all come from straight up your ass. Both the numbers and the idea that the other side has any values to stick up for other than cruelty. They operate in bad faith consistently and are more than happy to pay for far things more expensive than just housing if it leads to more suffering. ICE isn't cheap you goddamned evil hypocrites.

gsf_emergency_4• 10 months ago

The trends reported from our data generally support Gidron et al.’s (2020) conclusion of a gradual decline of in-party liking

zwaps• 10 months ago

Interesting in the second graph, the countries which we traditionally consider to be well working societies are those where out-hate has not crossed in-love

kubb3• 10 months ago

Driving polarization is a conscious strategy of leaders and the media (especially a particular large corporate media outlet, which is worldview shaping for a large part of the population), isn’t it?

You could argue that the system rewards it in the short term which is all that matters.

There’s also one party with way less scruples when it comes to the methods it uses, which polarizes the other party against them.

There’s no way to make friends with someone who wants to „take care” of you by violent means.

skrebbel5• 10 months ago

the system

Which system? This article compares 12 countries, which have wildly varying systems.

kubb3• 10 months ago

The one with the most cultural influence across the western world, whose messaging is parroted by everyone else?

Come on let’s not pretend we don’t have a default.

naruhodo• 10 months ago

No analysis of the association of the mass media owners to the political party in or out of power?

Traditional media are still political thought leaders. In the US, the media is giving cover to the fascist takeover of government.

skrebbel5• 10 months ago

They define in-party and out-party very weirdly for multiparty systems like the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway. In NL, if I'm a leftie, I have 3-4 reasonable parties to choose from. Most people voting for any of these parties won't deeply hate any of the other. Similar stuff on the right, or along a conservative/progressive axis. But the authors do this:

Thus, we follow these studies and define the in-party as the party receiving the highest score among all parties rated by the respondent on the party feeling thermometers.4 The out-party measure is drawn from the average of all other parties’ feeling thermometer scores, weighted by their respective vote shares.

By mixing all the other parties that aren't the in-party, they mix parties the voter is quite OK with, with parties that the voter deeply and passionately detests. I can't imagine this not skewing the graphs enormously.

For example, if you're right wing in NL you get to choose between the anti-Muslim party, the conspiracy theory anti-Muslim party, the farmers-against-immigrants party, the God-wants-the-death-penalty party, and the regular oldschool conservative right wing party (who call themselves "liberals", by the way). Most right-wing voters will have a strong preference among this lot, but at the same time they won't mind deeply if one of the other options wins elections instead.

But they hate hate hate the progressives! A few weeks ago right wing protesters attacked and trashed the HQ of one of the more progressive parties (D66). The hatred is very deep (and mutual), totally unlike what the graphs in this article show you.

victorbjorklund• 10 months ago

Agreed. I'm from Sweden and most here are OK with another party on their side. But the hate towards the opposite side is still there.

Jensson• 10 months ago

But according to the article its much less hated in Sweden than for example USA or Greece, and we can see how the out party used to not be as hated in USA but is very hated now, while the levels in Sweden were always kind of modest while Greece the out party was always hated.

So its interesting to see these dynamics.

constantius• 10 months ago

Maybe you're in a bubble in terms of knowing how people feel about out-parties, as your descriptions of right-wing parties are too caricatural for you to not be biased. I'm in the same bubble and don't think most people view things that way.

Your point about skewed results is right though: reading through the paper's annex on dataset construction, no distinction is made between out-parties. An analysis based on political spectrum-based clusters of parties would have been more telling, though the current methodology is probably on point for the more echo-chambered people.

skrebbel5• 10 months ago

your descriptions of right-wing parties are too caricatural for you to not be biased

Fair, obviously I'm a leftie. But I don't believe that PVV voters are going to be equally angry when FvD wins the elections than when D66 does. I can make caricatures and still understand that about right-wing voters.

Plus we have the exact same on the left, you can choose between the closeted maoists, the educated-elites-pretending-to-care-about-workers party, the educated-elites-not-even-pretending-to-care-about-workers party, the God-loves-workers-but-hates-gays party and the party against the humans (but for the animals).

Seriously the only party I can't come up with an obvious caricature of is CDA but then again they don't really stand for anything so it fits.

rapnie2• 10 months ago

Are there good studies on the role of social media in relation to these trends, that people can recommend?

In-Party Love, Out-Party Hate, and Affective Polarization in Twelve Democracies

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