Reading guide
These papers help us define polarization, study misunderstandings between political groups, and compare findings across countries.
Polarization can mean different things. We focus on affective polarization: contempt, distrust, and social distance between political groups.
Philosophy of Science
How it informs the project. Distinguishes several meanings and measures of polarization. It helps us specify what we want to explain and how we will measure it.
Open paperPublic Opinion Quarterly
How it informs the project. Distinguishes differences in policy views from negative feelings toward opposing parties. We study those feelings while checking that our measures make sense across languages and countries.
Open paperAmerican Journal of Political Science
How it informs the project. Shows how party identity can shape discrimination and social judgments. It motivates our question about whether people judge the same reason differently depending on who offers it.
Open paperPeople respond to what they think their opponents believe and why they believe it. Those impressions can be mistaken.
The Journal of Politics
How it informs the project. Shows that people overestimate how many party supporters belong to stereotypical social groups. Correcting these misperceptions can reduce perceived extremity and social distance.
Open paperPNAS
How it informs the project. Finds that people overestimate how hostile the opposing party is toward their own group. These beliefs predict hostility in return. We ask related questions about how people predict their opponents’ judgments of reasons.
Open paperThe Philosophical Review
How it informs the project. Shows how ambiguous evidence can make predictable polarization rational. It helps us avoid assuming that disagreement or polarization always indicates poor reasoning.
Open paperPeople’s reasons can reveal their values, concerns, and standards of evidence. Studying those reasons can help us understand political disagreement.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
How it informs the project. Proposes that reasoning developed to help people produce and evaluate arguments. It informs our study of the reasons people offer and how others judge them.
Open paperOSF Preprints
How it informs the project. Across four preregistered studies, people rated reasons associated with their own party more favorably, even when the reasons supported positions they shared. The studies also link inferred party identity to judgments of reason quality.
Open paperBrazil, Colombia, and Argentina have different political systems and conflicts. Comparing them requires measures that people understand in similar ways across languages and contexts.
Latin American Politics and Society
How it informs the project. Uses surveys from six Latin American countries to compare affective polarization and its changes over time. It highlights the importance of studying the region directly.
Open paperLatin American Politics and Society
How it informs the project. Compares political polarization across Latin America, highlighting the importance of each country’s history, conflicts, and democratic institutions.
Open paperSpine
How it informs the project. Sets out a process for adapting questionnaires across cultures, including translation, back-translation, expert review, and pretesting. Adapted measures also need checks of reliability and validity.
Open paper