The impacts of ideological polarization among political elites on citizens’ attitudes toward opposing-party supporters via an affective channel

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent studies have reported that the ideological polarization of party elites induces citizens’ affective polarization toward parties in the United States, while others have found that American citizens’ affective polarization strengthens their biased attitudes toward opposing-party supporters. This study tests the implication of the literature that affective polarization mediates between the ideological polarization of party elites and biased attitudes against fellow citizens using survey experiments in the United States and South Korea. We find three common results between the two countries. First, the manipulation of the ideological distance between the two parties does not influence respondents’ relative affect between them. Second, however, there appears to be a positive correlation between the relative affect and biased attitudes toward fellow citizens. Finally, mediation analysis further reveals that the manipulation does not affect the biased attitudes through the relative affect. We conclude by briefly discussing the key findings.