"The Dept for the Blatantly Obvious releases a new study that shows that Americans are more polarized not because they disagree on issues, but rather due to a team sport mentality which wants to see the other side defeated in a zero sum game."
A New Study Shows How American Polarization Is Driven by a Team Sport Mentality, Not by Disagreement on Issues
https://theintercept.com/2018/04/03/politics-liberal-democrat-conservative-republican/
In 2004, then-Senator Barack Obama wowed the country with an address at the Democratic National Convention designed to unite the country and tear down partisan divides.
“Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes,” he said. “Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America.”
He talked about how in so-called blue states they “worship an awesome God” and about how people have gay friends in red states. “There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America,” he said to thunderous applause.
The years since then have softened the national debate over marriage equality, but the question of how we fall into color-coded political patterns has gotten even more resonant. While support for same-sex marriage has increased, for instance, support for “interpolitical marriage” — specifically, Gallup asked adults about the prospect of their son or daughter marrying someone of a different political background — has actually gone down.
But what if the source of this polarization has little do with where people actually fall on the issues, or what people actually believe in? What if people are simply polarized by political labels like “liberal” and “conservative” and what they imagine their opponents to be like more than they are by disagreements over issues like taxes, abortion, and immigration?
That news wouldn’t surprise anybody who’s spent time battling it out in a news outlet’s comment section, and it’s the firm conclusion of new research by Lilliana Mason, a professor at the University of Maryland.
Her paper, “Ideologues Without Issues: the Polarizing Consequences of Ideological Identities,” published in late March by Public Opinion Quarterly, uses 2016 data from Survey Sampling International and American National Election Studies to study how and why Americans are politically polarized.
(More at above url)
A New Study Shows How American Polarization Is Driven by a Team Sport Mentality, Not by Disagreement on Issues
https://theintercept.com/2018/04/03/politics-liberal-democrat-conservative-republican/
In 2004, then-Senator Barack Obama wowed the country with an address at the Democratic National Convention designed to unite the country and tear down partisan divides.
“Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes,” he said. “Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America.”
He talked about how in so-called blue states they “worship an awesome God” and about how people have gay friends in red states. “There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America,” he said to thunderous applause.
The years since then have softened the national debate over marriage equality, but the question of how we fall into color-coded political patterns has gotten even more resonant. While support for same-sex marriage has increased, for instance, support for “interpolitical marriage” — specifically, Gallup asked adults about the prospect of their son or daughter marrying someone of a different political background — has actually gone down.
But what if the source of this polarization has little do with where people actually fall on the issues, or what people actually believe in? What if people are simply polarized by political labels like “liberal” and “conservative” and what they imagine their opponents to be like more than they are by disagreements over issues like taxes, abortion, and immigration?
That news wouldn’t surprise anybody who’s spent time battling it out in a news outlet’s comment section, and it’s the firm conclusion of new research by Lilliana Mason, a professor at the University of Maryland.
Her paper, “Ideologues Without Issues: the Polarizing Consequences of Ideological Identities,” published in late March by Public Opinion Quarterly, uses 2016 data from Survey Sampling International and American National Election Studies to study how and why Americans are politically polarized.
(More at above url)
