Affective polarization is based in social identity theory (SIT) and describes the intergroup differentiation between partisans that manifest as biased evaluations of the ingroup and the outgroup. In line with SIT, affective polarization increase as partisan identification becomes stronger, but also as a consequence of perceived intergroup threats (Renström et al. 2021). In an online experiment, we test the hypothesis that identification with a party influence how a political message on a hot topic is processed and hypothesize that messages sent by an outgroup representative will be perceived as threatening, hence increasing affective polarization. While most research on affective polarization is based on the US context, recent research indicate that affective polarization occurs on multi-party systems as well. We here explore Sweden, a multi-party system, which has a relatively high degree of affective polarization (Reiljan, 2019).
To test this hypothesis, we presented participants with neutralized messages on politically charged topics such as immigration, gender equality and climate. The content was neutralized such that it did not contain any evaluative aspects and therefore were constructed in a way that it could plausibly come from any of the parties. The sender of the message was either an ingroup party representative, or an outgroup party representative.
If the hypothesis is supported, this is a strong indication that identification with a party influences how a message is perceived and cognitively processed depending on whether it comes from a political in- or outgroup, and that these identities in fact lead to increased affective polarization.