Vicarious Elite Contact: Reducing Affective Polarization in the U.S.

• In Event: Poster Session: STEP 2 & New Perspectives within Political Psychology
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: New Perspectives within Political Psychology

Abstract

Over the past few decades, scholars have found a significant and frightening increase in affective polarization (Iyengar & Westwood, 2015, p. 691). Previous work highlights that an affectively polarized public is likely to support anti-democratic practices and violence against political opponents (Finkel et al., 2020). While a body of work highlights potential causes and consequences of affective polarization for citizens in the U.S. (Iyengar et al., 2019), this project explores how to increase interparty cooperation by reducing affective polarization and outgroup hostility in the electorate.
Our project makes two contributions. First, we show that co-partisans’ affective polarization toward out-partisans can be reduced when co-partisans vicariously experience the cooperation of party elites to pass legislation on salient issues. Wojcieszak and Warner (2020) find that vicarious contact has depolarizing effects: observing positive and cooperative interactions between Democrat and Republican citizens reduces social distance and improves out-partisan perceptions. This study expands on existing research by examining how vicarious contact between partisan leaders reduces affective polarization in the public. Elite polarization, or the lack thereof, serves as a powerful cue with a substantial impact on the development of public opinion (Druckman et al., 2013). Consequently, we find that elite interactions play a key role in levels of affective polarization in the mass public. More specifically, we find that affective polarization can be reduced by party leadership uniting on an issue, even among strong partisans. Our finding highlights the importance of elites and news coverage emphasizing bipartisan achievements over conflict.
Second, we investigate how vicarious contact experiences with elites impact outgroup spite. Prior research demonstrates that exaggerated negative meta-perceptions of the out-party increase outgroup spite even at the cost of democratic health, such as making it difficult for the out-party to take part in governance (Moore-Berg et al., 2020). However, highlighting positive cooperation between party elites should alleviate some of these negative meta-perceptions by altering partisans' views about party leaders’ ability to overcome differences and dislike for one another. We find that levels of spite toward members of the outparty are relatively low in our sample, and we do not find evidence that our treatment increases or decreases spite toward outparty members.
We use a pre-registered survey experiment on YouGov (n=2000) to assess the effects of elite vicarious inter-party contact on affective polarization and outgroup spite. Our design tests this relationship by varying the degree of conflict between elite partisans by randomly assigning participants equally across four conditions: (1) a control condition where participants read an inconsequential local news story unrelated to vicarious elite contact, (2) a minimal conflict and unity condition in which partisan leaders put aside their differences and pass a bill to improve public safety, (3) a high conflict and unity condition in which partisan elites are sharply divided on the issue of crime but come together after lengthy negotiations to pass a bill to improve public safety, or (4) a high conflict and no unity condition in which party elites are sharply divided on the issue of crime and negotiations fail.

Our design tests two hypotheses. Hypothesis 1: Vicarious experiences of cooperation between competing party elites reduce affective polarization toward out-partisans.
Hypothesis 2: Vicarious experiences of cooperation of competing party elites decrease spite toward the outparty. We find support for hypothesis 1 and do not find support for hypothesis 2.

Ultimately, our project highlights tools that party elites and the media could use to combat partisans' willingness to harm the out-party at the expense of democracy and the nation’s well-being for the sake of their own party.

Authors

• Jair Moreira, University of Pennsylvania

• Aleena Khan, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• James Steur