Putting the affect into affective polarisation

ABSTRACT

While many believe that affective polarisation poses a significant threat to democratic stability, the definition and operationalisation of the concept varies greatly. This leads to conceptual slippage as well as imprecise tests of the causes and consequences of affective polarisation. In order to clearly identify and target its micro-foundations, we must understand the degree to which political divides are, in fact, affective. In this paper, we do so. We begin by delineating affective polarisation, a social divide that is purportedly distinct from policy-based disagreements. Subsequently, we explore the influence of emotions in politics, including how affect is conceptualised within the framework of polarisation. Where possible, our literature review is supplemented with analyses of existing datasets to support our points. The paper concludes by proposing a series of questions emotion researchers could address in the study of polarisation.

KEYWORDS:

• Affective polarisation
• core affect
• physiology
• discrete emotions

Acknowledgements

Many of the points raised in this paper were inspired by conversations with other members of our lab groups: the Hot Politics Lab and the Polarisation Research Lab and interactions with the acting editor Klaus Scherer. Following the CRedIT taxonomy roles, both authors contributed equally to the Writing – Original Draft and Writing – Review & Editing of this paper.

Data availability statement

The data and R-code to reproduce the results reported in Figures 1 and 2 can be found on our OSF page https://osf.io/y4jt7/. The data belonging to Figure 3 can be found here: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/XI1VKC

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This is not to say that policy and identity are orthogonal–instead, the policies and identities people adopt likely affect one another (Dias & Lelkes, 2022; Orr & Huber, 2020).

Additional information

Funding

This publication is part of the project “Under pressure: How citizens respond to threats and adopt the attitudes and behaviours to counter them” [project number VI.Vidi.211.055 awarded to Bert N. Bakker] of the research programme NWO Talent Programme VIDI which is financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).