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Full-Text Articles in Psychology
The Power Of Dissent: Mitigating False Polarization And Cross-Party Dislike In Online Interactions, Victoria Parker
The Power Of Dissent: Mitigating False Polarization And Cross-Party Dislike In Online Interactions, Victoria Parker
Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)
While actual polarization is on the rise in the United States, perceived polarization (i.e., false polarization) is growing at an even faster rate, contributing to increased cross-party hostility. A meaningful amount of out-party dislike may be produced by partisans’ dramatic overestimates of the prevalence of extreme, undesirable views among political opponents. In the current research, we examine whether exposing people to out-party dissenters who challenge their copartisans’ extreme views might help reduce people’s misperceptions of their opponents’ extreme views, and possibly mitigate animosity. Across five studies (N = 3789), we explore how seeing public ingroup dissent (in the form of …
The Great And Widening Divide: Political False Polarization And Its Consequences, Victoria Parker
The Great And Widening Divide: Political False Polarization And Its Consequences, Victoria Parker
Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)
American politics is becoming increasingly ideologically divided, and this cross-party hostility is reflected in pronounced partisan media outrage. However, while actual ideological polarization has indeed been rising, people estimate an ideological gap as being even larger than reality. We focus on whether part of this cross-party dislike can be explained by illusory perceptions of opposing party attitudes, attitudes the majority of the party members do not actually endorse. This illusory gap is referred to as false polarization; it is an interpersonal bias where a perceiver believes an opponent’s position is much farther away conceptually from where that opponent actually reports …