Affective polarization is uniformly distributed across American States.

US partisans view each other with increasing negativity. While many attribute the growth of such affective polarization to nationally cross-cutting forces, such as ideological partisan sorting or access to partisan media, others emphasize the effects of contextual and institutional forces. For the first time, we introduce and explore data sufficiently granular to fully map the extent of partisan animosity across the US states. With a massive, nationally representative survey we find that, counter to expectations, variation in affective polarization across states is relatively small, and is instead largely a function of individual-level attitudinal (but not demographic) characteristics. While elections pit regions of the country against others, our results suggest affective polarization is a national, not regional, problem, requiring national interventions.

Racial Minorities Face Discrimination From Across the Political Spectrum When Seeking to Form Ties on Social Media: Evidence From a Field Experiment.

We conducted a preregistered field experiment examining racial discrimination in tie formation on social media. We randomly assigned research accounts varying on race (Black, White) and politics (liberal/Democrat, conservative/Republican, neutral) to follow a politically balanced sample of Twitter (i.e., X) users (N = 5,951) who were unaware they were in a research study. We examined three predictions from the social and political psychology literatures: i) individuals favor White over Black targets, ii) this tendency is stronger for conservatives/Republicans than for liberals/Democrats, and iii) greater discrimination by conservatives/Republicans is explained by the assumption that racial minorities are liberal/Democrat. We found evidence that individuals were less likely to reciprocate social ties with Black accounts than White accounts. However, this tendency was not moderated by individuals' political orientation, shared partisanship, or partisan mismatch. In sum, this work provides field experimental evidence for racial discrimination in tie formation on social media by individuals across political backgrounds.

Partisans process policy-based and identity-based messages using dissociable neural systems.

Political partisanship is often conceived as a lens through which people view politics. Behavioral research has distinguished two types of "partisan lenses"-policy-based and identity-based-that may influence peoples' perception of political events. Little is known, however, about the mechanisms through which partisan discourse appealing to policy beliefs or targeting partisan identities operate within individuals. We addressed this question by collecting neuroimaging data while participants watched videos of speakers expressing partisan views. A "partisan lens effect" was identified as the difference in neural synchrony between each participant's brain response and that of their partisan ingroup vs. outgroup. When processing policy-based messaging, a partisan lens effect was observed in socio-political reasoning and affective responding brain regions. When processing negative identity-based attacks, a partisan lens effect was observed in mentalizing and affective responding brain regions. These data suggest that the processing of political discourse that appeals to different forms of partisanship is supported by related but distinguishable neural-and therefore psychological-mechanisms, which may have implications for how we characterize partisanship and ameliorate its deleterious impacts.

Survey data to unveil the power of political crowdsourcing on social media.

This paper describes a dataset collected from a survey carried out in the United Kingdom, Malaysia, and Pakistan, to understand the variables that impact political trust. The data was collected from September to November 2021 via an online survey on Google Forms, and 472 valid responses were obtained. Drawing on relevant literature, the survey instrument was designed to cover the respondents' opinions concerning partisanship, social media utilization, online social capital, voluntary online and offline political participation, and political trust. The dataset offers useful insights for institutional practitioners and policymakers working in the domains of democracy and political communication, facilitating policy formulation to bolster political trust through collaborative crowdsourcing.

Not our kind of crowd! How partisan bias distorts perceptions of political bots on Twitter (now X).

Social bots, employed to manipulate public opinion, pose a novel threat to digital societies. Existing bot research has emphasized technological aspects while neglecting psychological factors shaping human-bot interactions. This research addresses this gap within the context of the US-American electorate. Two datasets provide evidence that partisanship distorts (a) online users' representation of bots, (b) their ability to identify them, and (c) their intentions to interact with them. Study 1 explores global bot perceptions on through survey data from N = 452 Twitter (now X) users. Results suggest that users tend to attribute bot-related dangers to political adversaries, rather than recognizing bots as a shared threat to political discourse. Study 2 (N = 619) evaluates the consequences of such misrepresentations for the quality of online interactions. In an online experiment, participants were asked to differentiate between human and bot profiles. Results indicate that partisan leanings explained systematic judgement errors. The same data suggest that participants aim to avoid interacting with bots. However, biased judgements may undermine this motivation in praxis. In sum, the presented findings underscore the importance of interdisciplinary strategies that consider technological and human factors to address the threats posed by bots in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Political Partisanship, Confucian Collectivism, and Public Attitudes toward the Vaccination Policy in Taiwan.

CONTEXT: Conventional wisdom suggests that people with a collectivist tradition tend to comply more with the government's regulatory and even coercive disease-prevention policies. Besides this socio-cultural element, political partisanship is also an important aspect relating to people's willingness to cooperate with the government. This study aims to examine the relationships between these two factors and three dimensions of vaccination policy attitudes: common responsibility to take the vaccine, the government's vaccine mandate, and indignation over anti-vaxxers. METHODS: Using the data from a nationally representative cross-sectional survey conducted in 2022 in Taiwan, this study applies multiple linear OLS regression to examine the relationships between vaccination policy attitudes and Confucian collectivism and political partisanship. FINDINGS: Confucian collectivism and political partisanship aligning with the ruling party are associated with supportive vaccination policy attitudes. For those who do not align with the ruling party, the negative attitudes toward the vaccination policy appear in different dimensions according to the party they lean to. CONCLUSIONS: Confucian collectivism is prevalent in Taiwan and is related to public attitudes toward vaccination policy. This association is independent of political partisanship. Public health authorities should consider the socio-cultural context and political atmosphere for the effectiveness of disease-prevention measures.

Preregistered Replication and Extension of "Moral Hypocrisy: Social Groups and the Flexibility of Virtue".

The tendency for people to consider themselves morally good while behaving selfishly is known as moral hypocrisy. Influential work by Valdesolo and DeSteno (2007) found evidence for intergroup moral hypocrisy such that people were more forgiving of transgressions when they were committed by an in-group member than an out-group member. We conducted two experiments to examine moral hypocrisy and group membership in an online paradigm with Prolific workers from the United States: a direct replication of the original work with minimal groups (N = 610; nationally representative) and a conceptual replication with political groups (N = 606; 50% Democrats and 50% Republicans). Although the results did not replicate the original findings, we observed evidence of in-group favoritism in minimal groups and out-group derogation in political groups. The current research finds mixed evidence of intergroup moral hypocrisy and has implications for understanding the contextual dependencies of intergroup bias and partisanship.

County-level political group density, partisan polarization, and individual-level mortality among adults in the United States: A lagged multilevel study.

Objective: To investigate the associations between county-level political group density, partisan polarization, and individual-level mortality from all causes and from coronary heart disease (CHD) in the United States. Methods: Using data from five survey waves (1998-2006) of the General Social Survey-National Death Index dataset and the County Presidential Election Return 2000 dataset, we fit weighted Cox proportional hazards models to estimate the associations between (1) political group density and (2) partisan polarization measured at the county level in 2000 (n = 313 counties) categorized into quartiles with individual-level mortality (n = 14,983 participants) from all causes and CHD, controlling for individual- and county-level factors. Maximum follow-up was from one year after the survey up until 2014. We conducted these analyses using two separate measures based on county-level vote share differences and party affiliation ideological extremes. Results: In the overall sample, we found no evidence of associations between county-level political group density and individual-level mortality from all causes. There was evidence of a 13% higher risk of dying from heart disease in the highest quartile of county-level polarization (hazards ratio, HR = 1.13; 95% CI = 0.74-1.71). We observed heterogeneity of effects based on individual-level political affiliation. Among those identifying as Democrats, residing in counties with high (vs. low) levels of polarization appeared to be protective against mortality, with an associated 18% lower risk of dying from all causes (HR = 0.82, 95% CI = 0.71-0.94). This association was strongest in areas with the highest concentrations of Democrats. Conclusions: Among all study participants, political group density and polarization at the county level in 2000 were not linked to individual-level mortality. At the same time, we found that Democratic party affiliation may be protective against the adverse effects of high polarization, particularly in counties with high concentrations of Democrats. Future research should further explore these associations to potentially identify new structural interventions to address political determinants of population health.

Fighting misinformation among the most vulnerable users.

Misinformation undermines trust in the integrity of democratic elections, the safety of vaccines, and the authenticity of footage from war zones. Social scientists have proposed many solutions to reduce individuals' demand for fake news, but it is unclear how to evaluate them. Efficacy can mean that an intervention increases discernment (the ability to distinguish true from false content), works over a delay, scales up, and engages users. I argue that experts should also consider differences in exposure prevalence before declaring success. Misleading content makes up a small fraction of the average person's news diet, but some groups are at increased risk - conservatives and older adults see and share the most fake news. Targeting the whole population (universal prevention) could concentrate benefits among the users who already see the least misinformation to begin with. In complement to these approaches, we should design interventions for the people who need them most - conservatives and older adults (selective prevention), as well as users who have already shared low-quality news (indicated prevention).

Partisan divide and Racial/Ethnic disparities in COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among Parents/Guardians and vaccine uptake among children in the U.S.

OBJECTIVES: We undertook an observational study to assess the impact of state-level partisanship and parents'/guardians' race/ethnicity on their degree of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. MATERIAL AND METHODS: We observed a pooled cross-section of 59,280 U.S. adults residing with children in the same household between June 29 and November 14, 2022. Using household-weighted logistic regression models, we evaluated the association between partisanship, race/ethnicity, and vaccine hesitancy, while controlling for other social determinants of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: We found that children were less likely to receive a COVID-19 vaccine if they resided in Republican as compared to Democratic states, with the difference in probability greatest among those households where parents/guardians identified as White. We also found that children were less likely to receive a COVID-19 vaccine if their parents/guardians identified as White as compared to any other race/ethnicity, with the differences in probability greatest among households in Republican states.

Political affiliation as a moderator of the relationship between organizational climate and COVID-19 vaccine readiness.

RATIONALE: Organizations have a significant influence on their employees' behavior and attitudes across a wide range of areas. A framework to bundle these effects is organizational climate. Here, we argue that in a highly polarized society, such as the United States, many types of organizational climate revolve around issues that are divided along partisan lines (e.g., diversity, sustainability, COVID-19). However, research on organizational climate has largely overlooked the idea that employees perceive these issues through a partisan lens. OBJECTIVE: We aim to address this gap by arguing that political affiliation constitutes a boundary condition for those types of organizational climates addressing partisan cleavages. In particular, we focus on the interplay of organizational climate and the partisan gap in COVID-19. We predicted that the effect of organizational COVID-19 safety climate on employees' COVID-19 vaccine readiness is moderated by political affiliation. METHODS: We conducted a survey with 1158 U.S. citizens. To strengthen the generalizability of our findings, we took care to ensure that the gender and ethnicity distribution of our sample reflected the distribution of both variables in the U.S. RESULTS: As predicted, results showed that the effect of organizational COVID-19 safety climate on employees' COVID-19 vaccine readiness was moderated by political affiliation. Specifically, the relationship between organizational COVID-19 safety climate and COVID-19 vaccine readiness was more pronounced among Republicans than Democrats. CONCLUSION: We provide a new perspective on the interactive effects of organizational climate and political partisanship on attitudes to vaccines. Our research suggests that, when it comes to vaccine readiness, it is precisely those who are most vaccine-hesitant who are most affected by the organizations for whom they work.

Updating the identity-based model of belief: From false belief to the spread of misinformation.

The spread of misinformation threatens democratic societies, hampering informed decision-making. Partisan identity biases perceptions of reality, promoting false beliefs. The Identity-based Model of Political Belief explains how social identity shapes information processing and contributes to misinformation. According to this model, social identity goals can override accuracy goals, leading to belief alignment with party members rather than facts. We propose an extended version of this model that incorporates the role of informational context in misinformation belief and sharing. Partisanship involves cognitive and motivational aspects that shape party members' beliefs and actions. This includes whether they seek further evidence, where they seek that evidence, and which sources they trust. Understanding the interplay between social identity and accuracy is crucial in addressing misinformation.

Political partisanship, laissez-faire attitudes, and COVID-19 behaviours and viewpoints in Canada and the United States.

OBJECTIVE: In the United States, clear partisan differences in responses to COVID-19 have been shown in leadership and elite cueing at the state level as well as in perspectives and behaviours of the citizenry. This study probes differences in political values-particularly the prevalence of laissez-faire attitudes-that might explain the stronger social consensus on pandemic countermeasures seen in Canada. METHODS: Data were obtained from temporally aligned waves of cross-sectional surveys of Canadian and US adults in the first year of the pandemic. Survey questions were used to construct an index of laissez-faire attitudes (LFA) which, along with demographic variables and measures of partisanship, was incorporated into regression models to predict three outcomes: practice of personal mitigation measures (e.g. mask wearing), level of worry about the pandemic, and likeliness to get a vaccine. RESULTS: LFA scores had a strong negative relationship to all three outcomes for Canadians and Americans, albeit with larger effects among the Americans on two outcomes. Overall differences in LFA scores between Americans and Canadians were modest (0.04 on a 0-1 scale). However, Republican Party stalwarts had considerably higher LFA scores and were proportionally more numerous than Conservative loyalists in Canada. While there were partisan differences in LFA scores within Canada, the largest gap by far was between Republicans and Democrats in the USA. Respondents from Canada's Prairie provinces had slightly higher average LFA scores but there were no significant residence effects on outcomes. CONCLUSION: Laissez-faire attitudes that may conflict with public health values and measures are much more prevalent in the USA than in Canada. This difference underpins the limited effects of political partisanship and broad consensus in the Canadian public's responses to the pandemic.

RéSUMé: OBJECTIF: Aux États-Unis, des différences partisanes évidentes au niveau des réactions face au COVID-19 ont été mises en évidence pour ce qui est du leadership et des indications données par l'élite au niveau de l'État, ainsi que des perspectives et des comportements des citoyens. Cette étude examine les différences de valeurs politiques, en particulier la prévalence de comportements de type « laissez-faire ¼, susceptibles d'expliquer le consensus social plus fort observé au Canada concernant les contre-mesures à prendre en cas de pandémie. MéTHODES: Les données ont été obtenues à partir de séries d'enquêtes transversales alignées temporellement auprès d'adultes canadiens et américains durant la première année de la pandémie. Les questions de l'enquête ont été utilisées pour élaborer un indice de laissez-faire (LFA) qui, avec des variables démographiques et des indicateurs de partisanerie, a été incorporé dans des modèles de régression pour prédire trois résultats : la mise en œuvre de mesures d'atténuation personnelles (par exemple, le port d'un masque), le niveau d'inquiétude face à la pandémie et la probabilité de se faire vacciner. RéSULTATS: Les scores LFA ont une forte relation négative avec les trois résultats pour les Canadiens et les Américains, bien qu'avec des effets plus importants chez les Américains pour deux résultats. Les différences globales dans les scores LFA entre les Américains et les Canadiens étaient modestes (0,04 sur une échelle de 0 à 1). Toutefois, les fervents du parti républicain ont obtenu des scores nettement plus élevés au niveau du LFA et étaient proportionnellement plus nombreux que les partisans du parti conservateur au Canada. S'il existe des différences partisanes dans les scores du LFA au sein du Canada, l'écart le plus important, et de loin, se situe entre les républicains et les démocrates aux États-Unis. Les répondants des provinces des Prairies au Canada ont obtenu des scores moyens légèrement plus élevés pour le LFA, mais il n'y a pas eu d'effets significatifs du lieu de résidence sur les résultats. CONCLUSION: Les attitudes de « laissez-faire ¼ pouvant entrer en conflit avec les valeurs et les mesures de santé publique sont beaucoup plus répandues aux États-Unis qu'au Canada. Cette différence explique les effets limités de la partisanerie politique et du consensus général quant aux réactions du public canadien face à la pandémie.

Communities of Knowledge in Trouble.

The community-of-knowledge framework explains the extraordinary success of the human species, despite individual members' demonstrably shallow understanding of many topics, by appealing to outsourcing. People follow the cues of members of their community because understanding of phenomena is generally distributed across the group. Typically, communities do possess the relevant knowledge, but it is possible in principle for communities to send cues despite lacking knowledge-a weakness in the system's design. COVID-19 in the United States offered a natural experiment in collective-knowledge development because a novel phenomenon arrived at a moment of intense division in political partisanship. We review evidence from the pandemic showing that the thought leaders of the two partisan groups sent radically different messages about COVID, which were, in turn, reinforced by close community members (family, friends, etc.). We show that although actual understanding of the individual plays a role in a key COVID-mitigation behavior (vaccination), it plays a smaller role than perceived understanding of thought leaders and beliefs about COVID-related behaviors of close community members. We discuss implications for theory and practice when all communities are in the same epistemic circumstance-relying on the testimony of others.

The Politics of the Gender Gap in COVID-19: Partisanship, Health Behavior, and Policy Preferences in the US.

Several studies demonstrate gender and partisan differences among Americans in COVID-19 socioeconomic consequences, attitudes, and behaviors. Using six waves of panel survey data, this article explores the intersection of gender and party across COVID-19 mitigation behaviors, concerns, and policy preferences. We observe small gender gaps on several measures; however, partisan differences are larger than gender differences when considering the interaction between gender and partisanship. Democratic women are more similar to Democratic men on these measures than to Republican women. On virtually all measures, Republican women report lower levels of mitigation behaviors, worries, and support for expansive government policies compared to Democratic women and men. Analyzing the interaction of gender and partisanship illuminates how individuals navigated the pandemic with respect to identity factors that often pull in different directions. These findings suggest that one's partisan identity is more consequential than gender when it comes to COVID behaviors, concerns, and policy preferences.

Misinformation warning labels are widely effective: A review of warning effects and their moderating features.

There is growing concern over the spread of misinformation online. One widely adopted intervention by platforms for addressing falsehoods is applying "warning labels" to posts deemed inaccurate by fact-checkers. Despite a rich literature on correcting misinformation after exposure, much less work has examined the effectiveness of warning labels presented concurrent with exposure. Promisingly, existing research suggests that warning labels effectively reduce belief and spread of misinformation. The size of these beneficial effects depends on how the labels are implemented and the characteristics of the content being labeled. Despite some individual differences, recent evidence indicates that warning labels are generally effective across party lines and other demographic characteristics. We discuss potential implications and limitations of labeling policies for addressing online misinformation.

Medicaid by Any Other Name? Investigating Malleability of Partisan Attitudes Toward the Public Program.

CONTEXT: Medicaid is the largest health insurance program by enrollment in the United States. The program varies across states across a variety of dimensions, including what it's called; some states use state-specific naming conventions (e.g., MassHealth in Massachusetts). METHODS: In a pre-registered online survey experiment (n = 5,807), we test whether public opinion shifts in response to the use of state-specific Medicaid program names or the provision of information about program enrollment. FINDINGS: We find that replacing "Medicaid" with a state-specific name results in a large increase in the share of respondents reporting that they "haven't heard enough to say" how they feel about the program. This corresponds to a decrease in both favorable and unfavorable attitudes toward the program. Though confusion increases among all partisan groups, there is evidence that the state-specific names may also strengthen positive perceptions among Republicans. Providing enrollment information generally does not affect public opinion. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings offer suggestive evidence that state-specific program names may muddle understanding of the program as a government-provided benefit. Policymakers seeking to bolster support for the program or claim credit for expanding or improving it may be better served simply referring to it as "Medicaid."

Intraindividual Changes in Political Identity Strength (But Not Direction) Are Associated With Political Animosity in the United States and the Netherlands.

We test if within-person changes in political identities are associated with within-person changes in political animosity in two longitudinal studies (United States N = 552, Waves = 26; Netherlands N = 1,670, Waves = 12). Typical studies examine cross-sectional associations without assessing within-person change. Our work provides a stronger test of the relationship. We find that within-person changes in the strength of people's ideological and partisan identities are associated with increased political animosity. We found no such associations with within-person changes in identity direction. These patterns were robust to covariates and emerged in both studies. In addition to these average effects, we found substantial heterogeneity across participants in the associations among identity strength, identity direction, and political animosity. We did not find robust and replicable moderators for this heterogeneity. These findings suggest that identity strength (but not identity direction) is a key, if heterogenous, factor in changes in political animosity.

Explaining the U.S. rural disadvantage in COVID-19 case and death rates during the Delta-Omicron surge: The role of politics, vaccinations, population health, and social determinants.

The Delta-Omicron wave of the COVID-19 pandemic (Wave 4) in the United States occurred in Fall of 2021 through Spring of 2022. Although vaccinations were widely available, this was the deadliest period to date in the U.S., and the toll was especially high in rural areas, exacerbating an existing rural mortality penalty. This paper uses county-level multilevel regression models and publicly available data for 47 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. We describe differences in COVID-19 case and mortality rates across the rural-urban continuum during Wave 4 of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a progressive modeling approach, we evaluate the relative contribution of a range of explanatory factors for the rural disadvantage we observe, including: pre-pandemic population health composition, vaccination rates, political partisanship, socioeconomic composition, access to broadband internet rate, and primary care physicians per capita. Results show that rural counties had higher observed burdens of cases and deaths in Wave 4 compared to more urban counties. The most remote rural counties had Wave 4 COVID-19 mortality rates 52% higher than the most urban counties. Older age composition, worse pre-pandemic population health, lower vaccination rates, higher share of votes cast for Donald Trump in the 2020 Presidential election, and lower socioeconomic composition completely explained the rural disadvantage in reported COVID-19 case rates in Wave 4, and accounting for these factors reversed the observed rural disadvantage in COVID-19 mortality. In models of mortality rate, Trump vote share had the largest effect size, followed by the percentage of the population age 50 or older, the poverty rate, the pre-pandemic mortality rate, the share of residents with a 4-year college degree, and the vaccination rate. These findings add to a growing literature describing the disproportionate toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on rural America, highlighting the combined effect of multiple sources of rural disadvantage.

The association of conspiracy beliefs and the uptake of COVID-19 vaccination: a cross-sectional study.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed that health denialism might be an important determinant of adherence to preventive measures during epidemic challenges. Conspiracy beliefs seem to be one of the most visible manifestations of denialism in society. Despite intensive efforts to promote COVID-19 vaccinations, the number of citizens reluctant to get vaccinated was very large in many countries. The main aim of this study was the analysis of the association between the acceptance of the COVID-19 vaccination and conspiracy beliefs among adult Internet users in Poland. The analysis was based on data from a survey performed on a sample of 2008 respondents in October 2021. Uni- and multivariable logistic regression models were applied to evaluate the association between attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination and generic conspiracist, vaccine-conspiracy, and COVID-19-related conspiracy beliefs. In the multivariable model, the effect of conspiracy beliefs was adjusted for the level of vaccine hesitancy, future anxiety, political sympathies, and socio-demographic variables. Univariate regression models showed that COVID-19 vaccination acceptance is significantly lower among respondents with higher levels of all three types of conspiracy beliefs. In the multivariable model, the effect of COVID-19-related and vaccine conspiracy beliefs, but not generic conspiracist beliefs, was maintained after adjusting for vaccine hesitancy. We conclude that conspiracy beliefs should be treated as a potential indicator of lower adherence to preventive measures during epidemic challenges. The respondents revealing a high level of conspirational thinking are a potential group for intensified actions which employ health educational and motivational interventions.