The Devil No More? Decreasing Negative Outparty Affect through Asymmetric Partisan Thinking

Abstract

Political scientists, party elites, and journalists agree that affective polarization and negative partisanship are serious problems in American politics, but is it possible to reverse this trend and decrease negative outparty affect? Using two original survey experiments that manipulate partisans to think of the Republican and Democratic parties in either expressive or instrumental terms, I find that providing policy information about the parties decreases Republicans’ negative affect toward Democrats, while providing party coalition information decreases Democrats’ negative affect toward Republicans. Neither type of information, however, causes a significant change in inparty affect. This paper provides evidence, therefore, that an asymmetric informational intervention can decrease negative outparty affect, with important implications for an affectively polarized America.