ABSTRACT
The symptoms of party polarization are, all too familiar: intransigent policy positions, unwillingness to compromise, and intensified political conflict. For Americans, partisanship is a particularly salient and powerful identity for several reasons. The feeling thermometer data show clearly that the party divide elicits affective polarization. As in the case of the party thermometers, partisans’ feelings toward their own party nominee are unchanged; the strengthened polarization occurs because of increased hostility toward the opposing party nominee. Of course, survey data on social distance is limited to questions of hypothetical social interactions across the party divide. Fortunately, psychologists have developed an array of implicit or sub-conscious measures of group prejudice. These implicit measures provide a more valid comparison of the bases for prejudice because they are much harder to manipulate than explicit self-reports and less susceptible to impression management or political correctness.
