Network Heterogeneity in European Multiparty Contexts: Direct and Secondary Associations with Ideology-based Affective Evaluations

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Abstract

A growing body of work shows that politically heterogeneous personal networks are associated with reduced affective polarization. However, this relationship has been studied almost exclusively in the two party U.S. context, limiting our understanding of how network composition relates to political affect in other political systems. This study focuses on ideological groups and investigates how ideological network heterogeneity—both direct and indirect—relates to citizens’ affective evaluations of ideological outgroups across four European countries: Czechia, France, Italy, and Sweden.
Using original CAWI survey data collected in November 2024 from N=5,263 respondents we examine whether (1) having a higher proportion of ideological outgroup members in one’s personal network is associated with warmer affect toward members of ideological outgroups, and (2) whether befriending members of one ideological outgroup (a “mediating outgroup”) also increases positive affect toward another ideological outgroup (a “target outgroup”), consistent with the secondary transfer effect in intergroup contact theory. Ideological identities are measured on a left–center–right classification, and affect is captured via 0–10 feeling thermometers.
Regression analyses show that respondents with fully outgroup-composed networks report substantially more positive average evaluations of ideological outgroups (1.6–1.9 thermometer points), with group specific effects reaching 3–5 points. Path analyses provide nuanced evidence for secondary transfer effects. Among leftists and rightists, contact with mediating groups produces positive indirect effects—mediated by attitudes toward the mediating group—and non significant direct effects, supporting both H2 and H3. Among centrists, however, indirect effects are positive but outweighed by strong negative direct effects, yielding negative total effects.
These findings highlight that ideological network heterogeneity can reduce political animosity in multiparty systems, but that its effects depend critically on individuals’ own ideological identities.

Authors

• Gaetano Scaduto, Erasmus University Rotterdam

• Tom Nijs, Erasmus University Rotterdam

• Willem De Koster, Erasmus University Rotterdam

• Fedra Negri, University of Milan Bicocca