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Methodological limitations have hindered our ability to understand the conditions that make individuals seek or avoid political discussions. We introduce a methodological approach to assess communication preferences in contexts where these choices are difficult to measure. We conduct three experiments to examine how the characteristics of the people in a discussion, as well as its topic, influence an individual's "price" to participate. Participants indicated how much they would need to be compensated to participate in a short discussion about a randomly assigned topic (political or nonpolitical) under different group compositions (co-partisans, out-partisans, or a mixed group). We find that individuals demanded significantly more compensation to engage in a discussion with out-partisans than with co-partisans, for both political and non-political topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the strongest regularities in the empirical political science literature is the well-known correlation in parent and child partisan behavior. Until recently, this phenomenon was thought to result solely from parental socialization, but new evidence on genetic sources of behavior suggests it might also be due to heritability. In this article, the authors hypothesize that genes contribute to variation in a general tendency toward strength of partisanship. Using data collected at the Twins Days Festival, the authors compare the similarity of partisan strength in identical twins who share all of their genes to the similarity of partisan strength in nonidentical twins who share only half of their genes. The results show that heritability accounts for almost half of the variance in strength of partisan attachment, suggesting we should pay closer attention to the role of biology in the expression of important political behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are witnessing increasing partisan polarization across the world. It is often argued that partisan "echo chambers" are one of the drivers of both policy and affective polarization. In this article, we develop and test the argument that the political homogeneity of people's social environment shapes polarization. Using an innovative, large-scale pre-registered "lab-in-the-field" experiment in the United Kingdom, we examine how polarization is influenced by partisan group homogeneity. We recruit nationally representative partisans and assign them to discuss a salient policy issue, either with like-minded partisans (an echo chamber) or in a mixed-partisan group. This allows us to examine how group composition affects polarization. In line with our expectations, we find that partisan echo chambers increase both policy and affective polarization compared to mixed discussion groups. This has important implications for our understanding of the drivers of polarization and for how out-group animosity might be ameliorated in the mass public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent do partisan media influence political attitudes and behavior? Although recent methodological advancements have improved scholars' ability to identify the persuasiveness of partisan media, past studies typically rely on self-reported measures of media preferences, which may deviate from real-world news consumption. Integrating individual-level web-browsing data with a survey experiment, we contrast survey-based indicators of stated preferences with behavioral measures of revealed preferences based on the relative volume and slant of news individuals consume. Overall, we find that these measurement strategies generate differing conclusions regarding heterogeneity in partisan media's persuasive impact. Whereas our stated preference measure raises the possibility of persuasion by crosscutting sources, our revealed preference measures suggest that, among consumers with more polarized media diets, partisan media exposure results in limited attitude change, with any observed effects driven primarily by politically concordant sources. Together, these findings underscore the importance of careful measurement for research on media persuasion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democrats and Republicans clearly dislike one another. Yet, scholars debate whether policy disagreement or partisan identity, per se, drives interparty animus. Past studies suggest the relationship between partisanship and interpersonal affect is spurious, driven by inferred policy preferences. We argue, instead, that policy preferences signal partisan identity when the parties' stances on an issue are well‐known. Using a nationally representative survey and four preregistered experiments, we disentangle the effects of policy disagreement and partisan identity on interpersonal affect. Our findings suggest that partisan identity is the principal mechanism of affective polarization, and that policy preferences factor into affective polarization largely by signaling partisan identity. However, our results also affirm that policy disagreement in itself drives interpersonal affect. This provides evidence that partisanship reflects an emotional attachment to a political party, not merely a running tally of rational considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Politics & Policy is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Partisans hold unfavorable views of media they associate with the other party. They also avoid out-party news sources. We link these developments and argue that partisans assess out-party media based on negative and inaccurate stereotypes. This means cross-cutting exposure that challenges these misperceptions can improve assessments of out-party media. To support this argument, we use survey-linked web browsing data to show that the public has hostile views of out-party news sources they rarely encounter. We conduct three survey experiments that demonstrate cross-cutting exposure to nonpolitical or neutral political stories, forms of news widely available from online partisan sources, reduces oppositional media hostility. This explains how perceptions of rampant bias from out-party media coexist with more modest differences in the online content of major partisan news outlets. More broadly, we illustrate how negative misperceptions can sustain animus towards an out-group when people avoid encounters with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until recently, presidential job approval has been positively correlated with a healthy economy. Despite pre‐COVID‐19 sanguine macroeconomic indicators, President Donald Trump's job approval numbers appear to be quite low relative to those of his predecessors. Using a Bayesian model to infer latent presidential approval, we regress approval on consumer sentiment, finding strong evidence of a structural break commencing with the inauguration of President Barack Obama. We also find that the positive associations between presidential approval and consumer sentiment have weakened. Finally, we posit that a polarized political landscape may contribute to the changing of the meaning of presidential approval, which now appears to be a proxy for partisanship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What happens to partisanship when a party undergoes rapid and visible elite-led changes that dilute its traditional brand? We address scholarly debates on the stability of mass partisanship by analyzing the consequences of the major brand change (marked by policy moderation and scandal) experienced by the leftist Brazilian Workers Party (PT) between 2002 and 2006. Analyzing a survey panel with interviews spanning this period, we find that many Brazilian citizens alternated between petismo and independence but rarely crossed party lines. They switched, we demonstrate, in response to political events. While the PT's brand dilution drove away some traditional petistas, we observe two other dynamics: the rise of a new brand associated with the successful incumbent president (Lula) attracted new adherents, and amid this instability, a core of petistas stood by their party. Our findings suggest that scholarship on partisanship has established a false dichotomy between stability and instability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the more robust fields of study in American politics is presidential approval. The influence of rally events, the economy, political sophistication, and partisanship on political attitudes began with explorations into the dynamics of presidential approval. Despite this, we lack a complete understanding of the processes through which people evaluate presidential performance. This article proposes a theoretical model that explains how presidential performance evaluations are strongly influenced by one's genetic makeup. The model is tested using twin data to estimate the genetic heritability of presidential performance evaluations and finds that presidential approval has a strong genetic component. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Politics & Policy is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Previous studies have found that both political orientations (Alford, Funk, and Hibbing 2005) and voting behavior (Fowler, Baker, and Dawes 2008; Fowler and Dawes 2008) are significantly heritable. In this article we study genetic variation in another important political behavior: partisan attachment. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we show that individuals with the A2 allele of the D2 dopamine receptor gene are significantly more likely to identify as a partisan than those with the A1 allele. Further, we find that this gene's association with partisanship also mediates an indirect association between the A2 allele and voter turnout. These results are the first to identify a specific gene that may be partly responsible for the tendency to join political groups, and they may help to explain correlation in parent and child partisanship and the persistence of partisan behavior over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]