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Finkel Science Political
P
olitical polarization, a concern in make strategic sense if partisan identity Political identity is secondary to religion
The rise of out-party hate ducing cable news faltered with the launch
With the exception of 2020, all data come from the American National Election Study (ANES), as reported in (1). of the conservative Fox News in 1996 and the
To calculate the estimates for the lower panel, we used upper-panel estimates to compute, relative to the neutral liberal pivot of MSNBC a decade later. People
point on the feeling thermometer, the strength of in-party love (in-party score – 50) and out-party hate (50 – who are already sectarian selectively seek out
out-party score), and then took the difference of those two scores. See supplementary materials for details. congenial news, but consuming such content
also amplifies their sectarianism (SM).
Warmth toward the opposing party (out-party) has diminished for decades In recent years, social media companies
In-party Out-party like Facebook and Twitter have played an
100° Warm influential role in political discourse, inten-
sifying political sectarianism. Scholars from
Feeling thermometer ratings
Published by AAAS
of moral outrage (e.g., “disgraceful,” “shame- checks and balances, or civil liberties (11). gating climate change, reducing the federal
ful”), further exacerbating sectarianism (SM). Voters’ decisions to support such a candidate debt, and safeguarding democratic rights.
These three trends—identity alignment, may seem sensible if they believe the harm to America’s response to the coronavirus
the rise of partisan media, and elite ideo- democracy from any such decision is small disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic high-
logical polarization—have contributed to while the consequences of having the vile lights the perils of political sectarianism. An
radically different sectarian narratives about opposition win the election are catastrophic. October 2019 report from Johns Hopkins
American society and politics. Although the However, the accumulation of such choices University suggested that America was bet-
content of these narratives is entirely differ- undermines representative democracy. And ter prepared for a pandemic than any other
ent across the political divide, their structure a society that pretends to adhere to demo- nation (SM), but that report failed to account
is similar: The other side cheats, so our side cratic principles but actually does not is one for the sort of political sectarianism that
would be foolish to adhere to long-standing in which people who possess resources and would, months later, make mask-wearing a
democratic norms. These narratives, which influence can leverage democratic gray zones partisan symbol, one favored more by Demo-
partisans experience less as stories than as to impose their will on those who do not. crats than by Republicans. Democrats were
truth (SM), increase their willingness to sac- Sectarianism stimulates activism (SM), also more likely to prioritize stay-at-home
rifice those norms in pursuit of partisan ends. but also a willingness to inflict collateral orders despite their massive, immediate eco-
DARK CONSEQUENCES
Rising political sectarianism has, not sur- Is motivated partisan cognition bipartisan?
prisingly, increased the social distance
between Democrats and Republicans. Com- The extent to which each side exhibits motivated partisan (or biased) cognition is a
Rather, the goal of these interventions is for surging sectarianism, but simply tweak- fact-checkers and mobilizing sectarian loy-
to move toward a system in which the public ing algorithms to show partisans more alists to believe “alternative facts.”
forcefully debates political ideals and policies content from the opposition may aggravate As political sectarianism grows more ex-
while resisting tendencies that undermine sectarianism rather than reducing it (7). treme, pushing strong partisans deeper into
democracy and human rights. Given that More promising are interventions that en- congenial media enclaves that reinforce
substantial swaths of American society (in- courage people to deliberate about the accu- their narratives of moral righteousness, it
cluding many who identify as Democrat or racy of claims on social media, which causes may also become self-reinforcing, rendering
Republican) are fed up with surging sectari- them to evaluate the substance of arguments mitigation efforts more difficult. Scholars
anism (SM), dedicated efforts to mitigate it and reduces their likelihood of sharing false have long argued that a shared threat can
may well land in fertile soil. Such efforts or hyperpartisan content (12) (SM). Another bring people together; indeed, some suggest
must circumvent the sectarian true believ- option is to use crowdsourcing to identify that rising sectarianism in America is due
ers, profiteers, and chaos-seekers who ben- such content and the outlets that emit it, in part to the loss of the Soviet Union as
efit from stoking sectarianism. These actors relying on users’ ratings of trustworthiness a unifying arch-nemesis. But such threats
contribute directly to political sectarianism, to augment the efforts of professional fact- may do the opposite when sectarianism is
and they leverage the government sclerosis checkers. Such information can be incorpo- extreme. COVID-19 offered a test case (SM).
caused by political sectarianism to derail rated into algorithmic rankings to reduce the By the summer of 2020, 77% of Americans
efforts to address structural sources of that presence of false or hyperpartisan content in believed that the nation had grown more
sectarianism, such as economic inequities people’s news feeds (SM). divided since the pandemic arrived that
and biased electoral procedures (SM). A third avenue involves creating incen- winter, a response 2.8 standard deviations
Nonetheless, scholars have begun to iden- tives for politicians and other elites to reduce higher than the mean of the 13 other na-
Published by AAAS
Political sectarianism in America
Eli J. Finkel, Christopher A. Bail, Mina Cikara, Peter H. Ditto, Shanto Iyengar, Samara Klar, Lilliana Mason, Mary C. McGrath,
Brendan Nyhan, David G. Rand, Linda J. Skitka, Joshua A. Tucker, Jay J. Van Bavel, Cynthia S. Wang and James N.
Druckman
SUPPLEMENTARY http://science.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2020/10/28/370.6516.533.DC1
MATERIALS
REFERENCES This article cites 13 articles, 2 of which you can access for free
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6516/533#BIBL
PERMISSIONS http://www.sciencemag.org/help/reprints-and-permissions
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