People are more than their politics: Expanding our sense of self as a way to alleviate affective polarization

Animosity between Republicans and Democrats runs strong in the United States, escalating to the point of political violence as we saw with the storming of the Capitol. This dissertation seeks to identify and test tangible solutions for reducing this animosity, positing that pointing out valued attributes in outpartisans - such as common identities and positive characteristics - can reduce animosity toward them. My three empirical chapters, which include one original survey and two original survey experiments, proceed as follows. First, I present the results from an original open-ended survey administered to a convenience sample of American adults through LucidTheorem in July 2023. The survey asked people which identities were most important to them and in their relationships, and I found that people most frequently mentioned positive characteristics such as being kind and honest but also mentioned a variety of attributes from hobbies and interests to personality types to roles in the family. I then used these results to identify attributes to prime in outpartisans in two original survey experiments to test whether those would be strong enough to reduce affective polarization and increase desired social contact between outpartisans. In April to May 2024, I administered a shared-attributes conjoint experiment testing whether common identities - shared hobby, occupation, birth order, and personality type - could increase people’s desire to connect with someone of the opposite party. In my second empirical chapter, I show that while partisanship has the strongest effect on people’s desires to connect, the other attributes also have positive and statistically significant effects on their desire to connect, which encourages some contact between outpartisans. In my third empirical chapter, I share the results from an original vignette experiment I administered to a student subject pool at a large midwestern university in March 2024 and find that priming positive characteristics in outpartisans successfully reduces animosity at the individual level but not at the group level. In summary, the data from both these experiments suggest that priming valued attributes does in fact reduce the negative effect that outpartisanship has on attitudes toward people. Normatively, these are promising findings in suggesting that people can be encouraged to think about the complexity of people’s identities and that their attitudes toward those of the opposite political party can be improved. The tangible solutions identified in my dissertation are rather simple and could be implemented in real-world settings in order to expand the impact beyond academic experiments.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Political Science

Grantor

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2025

Author dc:creator

• Raynal, Isaiah Rose

Contributors dc:contributor

• Mondak, Jeffery J
• Winters, Matthew S.
• Wong, Cara J.
• Yang, JungHwan

• affective polarization
• intergroup conflict
• identity
• survey experiments
• American politics

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2025 Isaiah Rose Raynal

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/129488

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F129488