Matthew Levendusky - Why Can’t We Be Friends: Cross-Party Friendships as a Mechanism to Mitigate Affective Polarization
Matthew Levendusky, Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania
Over the last few decades, Americans have become more affectively polarized: ordinary Democrats and Republicans increasingly dislike and distrust members of the opposing party. Is it possible to mitigate such affective polarization and discord by reminding individuals that they have friends in the other party? I argue that asking individuals to reflect on these cross-party friendships will reduce affective polarization by changing how respondents think about the other party. Further, it will also generate two important downstream consequences as well: it will reduce perceived polarization, and it will also reduce partisan cue-taking, which in turn will reduce ideological polarization. Using a population-based survey experiment, I find strong support for my theoretical predictions: treated subjects have lower levels of affective polarization, perceive less polarization, and are less likely to follow party cues. In the conclusion, I discuss the broader implications of these findings, including the link between ideological and affective polarization.
Matthew Levendusky is currently the Penny and Robert A. Fox Director of the Fels Institute of Government, Professor of Political Science, and, by Courtesy, in the Annenberg School for Communications. He is also a Distinguished Fellow in the Institutions of Democracy at the Annenberg Public Policy Center. He was previously associate professor (2013-2018), graduate group chairperson (2013-2018), and assistant professor of Political Science at Penn (2007-2013), and a postdoctoral research associate at the Center for the Study of American Politics at Yale University (2006-2007). He obtained his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2006, and his BA (with highest honors) from The Pennsylvania State University in 2001.
His research focuses on understanding how institutions and elites influence the political behavior of ordinary citizens. This broad question is taken up in studies of mass polarization, voter cue taking, the impact of partisan media on ordinary voters, and a variety of other substantive questions.