What Is Affective Polarization?
What is affective polarization?
Affective polarization is hostility toward members of the opposing political party rather than distance on policy positions. It is measured through feeling thermometers, trust questions, and willingness to live near, work with, or marry across party lines. In the United States it has grown faster than ideological disagreement over the same period.
- Affect, not policy: it measures how partisans feel about each other.
- Standard instruments include feeling thermometers and social distance questions.
- The share of partisans rating the other party at the coldest possible score rose roughly fivefold between 2000 and 2020.
- By 2022, majorities in both parties described the other side as more immoral than other Americans.
- It can rise even when actual policy positions overlap substantially.
How it is measured
The most common instrument is the feeling thermometer, which asks respondents to rate a party from 0 (very cold) to 100 (very warm). Affective polarization is the gap between the rating a person gives their own party and the rating they give the other. Researchers also use social distance measures: comfort with a child marrying across party lines, willingness to have a neighbor or coworker from the other party, and trust in the other side to act in good faith. These questions capture something the policy questions miss.
What has actually changed
The share of partisans rating the opposing party at the coldest possible score rose roughly fivefold between 2000 and 2020. By 2022, majorities in both parties described members of the other party as more immoral, more dishonest, and more closed minded than other Americans. Over the same window, the measured distance between the median voter of each party on many specific policy questions moved far less. People did not primarily move apart on what should be done. They moved apart on who they believe the other side is.
Why affect moves faster than policy
Affect responds to exposure, and exposure is now curated. Most partisans encounter the other side mainly through content selected because it provokes a reaction: the least reasonable clip, the worst comment, the most extreme figure. That sample is not representative, but it is what the incentive structure surfaces. A person can form a strong impression of tens of millions of strangers from a feed optimized for engagement, and that impression will be systematically more hostile than direct contact would produce.
What reduces it
The research on interventions is modest but consistent in direction. Correcting misperceptions about what the other side actually believes reduces hostility, because partisans routinely overestimate how extreme the other party is. Direct contact under low stakes conditions also reduces it. What does not reliably work is exposure to more opposing political content in an adversarial format, which in some studies increases hostility rather than reducing it.