Political Polarization and Intolerance of Intolerance

3 Introduction . 4 History of Attitude Polarization Research . 5 Psychological Underpinnings of Ideology . 7 Intolerance . 9 Research Goals and Hypotheses . 12 Objective Intolerance (“How intolerant are you of them? ”) . 13 Perceived Intolerance (“How intolerant do you think they are? ”) . 13 Additional Variables . 14 Methodology . 16 Participants . 16 Measures. 16 Procedure . 20 Results . 20 Poltical Ideology . 20 Objective Intolerance . 21 Perceived Intolerance . 21 Additional Variables . 22 Manipulation Check . 24 Discussion. 24 Conclusion . 27 References . 28 Table . 32 Figures . 33 Appendices . 35 Political Polarization and Intolerance of Intolerance Senior Capstone Project for Nina Luiggi 3 ABSTRACT Scholarly research linking conservatism to intolerance is widespread (McAdams et al, 2008; Jost et al, 2003): however, relatively little attention is paid to the impact of intolerance on the liberal side. Nevertheless, mounting empirical research and popular journalism suggests that intolerance works both ways, but that liberals are not aware of their own intolerance. Building on survey methodology used by Crawford and Pilanski (2014), the present study uses a scale of ideological consistency, intolerance judgments across a range of issues, and perceived intolerance, to explore both the intolerance levels and perceived intolerance levels of liberals and conservatives, as well as additional variables associated with intolerance. Most notably, the study demonstrates preliminary findings suggesting that even though liberals are objectively no more tolerant than conservatives, they perceive themselves to be so. In an era of intensifying ideological divide and hostility, these findings may be used to inspire further research into an apparent intolerance perception gap among liberals as a contributing factor in political polarization. Political Polarization and Intolerance of Intolerance Senior Capstone Project for Nina Luiggi 4 INTRODUCTION The United States is currently in a new political era characterized by growing political divide and hostility. In 1994, the Pew Research Center (2017) embarked on a large, ongoing national study tracking the political polarization of the United States electorate. In 2017, they reported a marked decrease in ideological overlap between the Democratic and Republican parties and a rise in animosity across party lines: 45% of republicans and 44% of democrats now hold “very unfavorable” views of the opposing party, up from 16% and 17% just two decades ago. Partisans are also reported to associate more and more exclusively with members of their own party and self-segregate due to an increased desire to live in different types of communities, suggesting that contact between partisans is becoming increasingly limited (Pew Research Center, 2017). Mainstream media messages and popular stereotypes confirm general findings in personality psychology that the liberal worldview emphasizes empathy and openness (McAdams et al, 2008) while conservatives are characterized by a resistance to change and justification of inequality (Jost et al, 2003). Such ideas therefore make it easy to assume that polarization is driven primarily by the rigidness and intolerance of political conservatives. However, more recent empirical research (Crawford & Pilanski, 2014; Brandt et al., 2014; Wetherell et al., 2013) and popular journalists (Kristof, 2016; Kristof, 2017; Hutson, 2017; King, 2017), have found that political intolerance works on both sides of the ideological spectrum. Nicholas Kristof (2017), who has written several New York Times articles about liberal intolerance and the alienation of liberals from the political right, asked Trump voters in Oklahoma why they voted the way they did. They cited that a major reason was to mock Democrats who “deride them as ignorant Political Polarization and Intolerance of Intolerance Senior Capstone Project for Nina Luiggi 5 bumpkins” (Kristof, 2017). Kristof argues that liberals are halting their own progressive agenda by being hostile towards the very people they need to get on board with their policies (2017). The present study aims to examine and compare the intolerance of liberals and conservatives as part of a continuing line of research in political polarization. Underlying this is a goal to spotlight liberal intolerance, highlight a lack of awareness among liberals about their own intolerance, and speculate on the importance of this perception gap in political polarization. History of Attitude Polarization Research A wealth of research has studied the psychology of attitude polarization since the late 1960s and 1970s, and reveals that people naturally tend to diverge in their attitudes. Moscovici & Zavalloni (1969) found that membership of a group could act as a polarizer. Participants were given a questionnaire about their opinions on topical issues, and then were asked to discuss the same issues in groups of five until they came to a consensus. Afterwards, they indicated individually whether they would accept or reject the group consensus. The researchers found that the consensus mean was more distant from neutral than the pre-consensus mean, indicating that group opinions became more extreme. Furthermore, their results suggested that participants privately endorsed the consensus even if it required changing their personal position to become more extreme. Intergroup comparison has also been found to shift attitudes to be more polarized. Reid (1983) presented social work students with a two-part questionnaire with the same set of eight attitude statements about social work issues. All participants decided on their own opinion about each statement, but half also decided what the majority of other social workers would think about the statements (ingroup) and the other half decided what the majority of commerce students Political Polarization and Intolerance of Intolerance Senior Capstone Project for Nina Luiggi 6 (outgroup) would think. The order of decisions was also changed: half decided about the opinions of the ingroup/outgroup before their own opinion, and the other half decided on their own opinion first. The results showed a tendency for subjects to adopt more extreme positions after considering the opinions of rival outgroup members. Even people presented with the same objective facts have been found to become more polarized in their attitudes. In their classic study on biased assimilation, Lord, Ross and Lepper (1979) found that proponents and opponents of capital punishment became even more polarized in their attitudes after reading the same two studies: one that made positive conclusions and another that made negative conclusions about the deterrent effects of the death penalty. For example, proponents of the death penalty saw the pro-deterrence study as more convincing than the anti-deterrence study, and vice versa. Instead of taking on board all information equally to come a more neutral position, participants chose the arguments that confirmed their preexisting biases to strengthen their attitude. The principle of biased proce