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Are Republicans and Democrats driven by hatred of one another? Less than you think
| A new study from the University of Pennsylvania suggests this is not the case. The perception of American partisanship as overwhelmingly negative is exaggerated.
Using several different data sets – including a survey directly asking people how their hatred of another party impacts their affiliation decisions – the study found that people’s primary motivations for choosing a party are more strongly tied to love for their own party, rather than hatred of the other side.
| The study also measured the degree to which allegiances are motivated by hatred of the other party using an experiment designed to disentangle hurting the other side monetarily from helping one’s own side monetarily.
Associate Professor Yphtach Lelkes stresses that the implications of negative partisanship are problematic on many practical levels and hopes that the study can help everyday Americans better understand what motivates voters.
| “Many people are led to believe that the other side is driven by hatred and is out to get them. Hatred only breeds hatred, so by showing that there is really no clear evidence for hatred of the other party trumping everything, we can clear up some of the misperceptions people have about how much they are hated by their political opponents, and thus, discourage people from feeding their own hostility in response to exaggerated perceptions of hostility coming from the other side.”
| The study’s findings definetly merit more media attention. Scholars tend to love the term “negative partisanship” and news outlets may have a bias toward disproportionately covering expressions of extreme emotions that tend to garner more clicks.
The study's impact can be self-fulfilling: “We are wildly off in how we think the other side feels about us,” Lelkes says. “We’re trying to tone that down.”
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/953494
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| Americans’ perception of negative partisanship — that Democrats or Republicans are primarily driven by their hatred for their political opponents — has ballooned in recent years, particularly in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election. It has become a popular assumption that members of America’s political parties are united more by their hatred of the other side of the aisle than by their affinity to their own.