Continued Rise of Political Polarization in the United States

Introduction

On January 6, 2021, thousands of supporters of Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from officially confirming the results of the 2020 presidential election (Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, 2022, p. 1). The attack showed that political conflict in the United States had moved beyond ordinary disagreement. It also raised an important question: how did the United States reach this point of division and why has political polarization continued to increase even more?

Political identity can give people a sense of belonging and help define who they are. When political labels become connected to social identities, disagreements can feel like attacks on the person or group rather than debates about just policy (Mason, 2016, pp. 352–355; Mason, 2018, pp. 281–284). Although political disagreements have always existed, the evidence in this paper shows that political polarization has continued to rise because economic pressures, political processes, and social identities reinforce one another. Reducing the hostility connected to this division requires media organizations, schools, and community organizations to remind Americans of the identities they share.

Economic Pressures

The economic perspective shows that political polarization is influenced by more than political ideas. The economists in this section examine how economic decline, international trade, and profit-seeking media can affect voters, parties, and candidates. Each study explains a different economic pressure that can push political groups further apart.

One economic explanation for the continued rise of political polarization is that changes in the economy affect the way political parties compete. Traber (2024) argues that when the economy declines, voters pay more attention to economic problems and expect political parties to offer different solutions. This can encourage parties to take positions that are further apart (pp. 1341–1342).

Traber

Traber (2024) studies this relationship by using a quantitative cross-national statistical analysis of 239 elections in 27 European countries between 1980 and 2021 (p. 1342). It combines party manifesto data, economic indicators like GDP growth and unemployment rates, and public opinion surveys (p. 1342). To measure party polarization, the author compares each party’s economic position with the average position of all parties in an election using a spatial model, where parties are placed on a scale based on their policy positions. This model treats ideologies as physical locations. These economic positions are calculated from party manifestos by classifying statements as supporting either more government intervention or free-market policies. These positions are calculated using the Comparative Manifesto Project. Each party manifesto is first divided into short statements (“quasi-sentences”), and each statement is coded into one of the CMP’s issue categories. For this study, the author uses only the categories related to the role of the state in the economy. The average position of all parties is weighted by the number of parliament seats each party holds, and the farther a party is from this average, the more polarized it is considered to be (Traber, 2024, pp. 1342–1343). The surveys measure how important economic issues are to voters and whether they are worried about their personal financial situation and employment (Traber, 2024, p. 1344). For example, the percentage of respondents who identified the economy as the most important issue facing their country increased from 17% in late 2007 to 49% in the first half of 2009 (Traber, 2024, p. 1349). This shows that economic concerns became more important during the financial crisis. The author then uses regression models to examine whether changes in the economy are related to changes in party polarization (Traber, 2024, pp. 1346–1348).

The analysis shows that lower GDP growth and rising unemployment are associated with greater party polarization (Traber, 2024, pp. 1346–1348). For example, the author found that when GDP growth went from 2.5% to -2.5%, the average distance between a party and the party-system average increased by around 1.25 units (Traber, 2024, p. 1348). Also, when unemployment went from a 2% decrease to a 2% increase, the average party distance increased by about 2 units (Traber, 2024, p. 1348). The results also show that this relationship is indirect because economic decline first increases voters’ concern about economic issues, and political parties then respond by taking more distinct positions. As the economy improves, parties become less polarized because there is less debate over economic policy (Traber, 2024, p. 1352). Although this study examines European countries rather than the United States, it shows how economic decline can contribute to polarization by changing voters’ priorities and the positions political parties adopt.

Autor et al

Economic decline is not the only economic factor that can contribute to political polarization. Changes in international trade can also affect local economies and influence political behaviour. Autor et al. (2020) argue that increased trade with China contributed to greater political polarization in the United States by changing local economic conditions (pp. 3139–3141).

The authors analyze political behaviour and election results in the United States between 2000 and 2016 (Autor et al., 2020, p. 3139). They combine data from congressional and presidential elections, campaign contributions, Nielsen television ratings, and Pew Research Center surveys (Autor et al., 2020, pp. 3139, 3145). To measure trade exposure, they calculate the increase in Chinese imports across different industries and then weight each industry by its share of employment in local labour markets, called commuting zones. This allows them to compare areas that were affected differently by Chinese import competition. The authors also separate the increase in imports caused by China’s export growth from changes caused by demand in the United States. This helps them more accurately examine whether trade exposure affected political outcomes (Autor et al., 2020, p. 3141). They explain that China’s manufacturing exports grew 11.5 percentage points faster than the rest of the world between 2000 and 2010, making this period useful for studying the effects of rising import competition (Autor et al., 2020, p. 3140). To measure political outcomes, the authors compare election results in areas with different levels of trade exposure. Political ideology is measured mainly using Campaign Finance scores, which estimate ideology based on who donates money to a politician’s campaign. The authors also compare these results with DW-NOMINATE scores, which estimate a politician’s ideological position from voting records in Congress (Autor et al., 2020, pp. 3148–3150). These allow the authors to see if areas exposed to greater trade competition elected more moderate or more ideologically extreme representatives. They also study television preferences using Nielsen ratings, which measure what people watch using electronic monitors attached to television sets and viewer diaries. The authors compare average ratings for Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC between 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. on weekdays during November in presidential election years (Autor et al., 2020, pp. 3147–3148).

The results show that areas more affected by Chinese imports became more politically polarized. The authors found an increase in the market share of Fox News, greater ideological polarization in campaign contributions, and a higher likelihood of electing Republican candidates to Congress and in presidential elections (Autor et al., 2020, p. 3177). They also found that areas where most residents were white became more likely to elect conservative Republicans, while areas where ethnic minority groups made up most of the population were more likely to elect liberal Democrats. In both cases, the gains came at the expense of moderate Democrats (Autor et al., 2020, p. 3177). The authors conclude that negative economic shocks can influence political views and contribute to greater polarization. This shows how international trade can shape political behaviour in ways that reach far beyond the economy.

Bandyopadhyay et al

The media also play an important role because they respond to economic incentives. Bandyopadhyay et al. (2020) argue that profit-seeking media can encourage politicians to adopt more extreme platforms because those platforms can increase the public’s demand for information (pp. 1173–1174).

This article does not analyze election or survey data like the previous two did. Instead, the authors develop a theoretical economic model to explain how profit-seeking media can influence politicians’ behaviour. The model includes four participants: a voter, an incumbent politician, a challenger, and a profit-maximizing media outlet. The incumbent’s quality is already known, while the challenger’s quality is uncertain. The voter cares about two things when choosing a candidate: how close the candidate’s policies are to the voter’s preferred position and the candidate’s quality. The media outlet chooses how much coverage to give the challenger by comparing the profits from selling more information with the cost of producing that coverage (Bandyopadhyay et al., 2020, pp. 1173–1174). The authors compare two situations. In the first, media coverage is fixed and does not respond to the challenger’s behaviour. In the second, media coverage depends on the candidate’s platform because the media increases coverage when it expects greater public demand for information. The model then calculates how these different situations affect the policy positions chosen by political challengers (Bandyopadhyay et al., 2020, pp. 1173–1174, 1187).

The authors find that when media outlets respond to profit incentives, high-quality challengers have an incentive to adopt more extreme political platforms because doing so encourages voters to seek more information about them. This increases media coverage, which then helps the challenger (Bandyopadhyay et al., 2020, pp. 1173–1174). The model also shows that when voters are less satisfied with the incumbent or care more about candidate quality, challengers move even further away from moderate policy positions (Bandyopadhyay et al., 2020, p. 1173). The authors conclude that profit-seeking media can contribute to the rise of political polarization even when neither the politicians nor the media are ideologically biased (Bandyopadhyay et al., 2020, pp. 1174, 1187). Since this is a theoretical model, it explains a possible process rather than proving that it happens in every real election (Bandyopadhyay et al., 2020, pp. 1187–1188).

Economic conclusion

These three studies show that economic factors can contribute to polarization in different ways. Economic decline can push parties to offer more different solutions, trade shocks can change the political behaviour of local communities, and media profits can reward more extreme platforms. Economic conditions do not explain the whole problem, but they do create pressures that make political division stronger (Autor et al., 2020; Bandyopadhyay et al., 2020; Traber, 2024).

A Political Cycle

Political science explains how political parties, political leaders, candidates, and voters influence one another. The political scientists in this section show that polarization can continue through a cycle, even when voters’ basic political beliefs do not become much more extreme.

Diermeier and Li

Diermeier and Li (2019) argue that stronger emotional attachment to political parties can encourage politicians to adopt more extreme positions (p. 277).

The authors create a behavioural voting model to examine how partisan affect could influence the decisions made by political parties. The model includes two political parties competing in an election, and both parties are assumed to only care about winning office. Each voter is assigned a preferred policy position, called a bliss point, which represents the policy they would most like a party to adopt. Each voter is also assigned a different level of party affinity, which represents how emotionally attached they are to each party. Whether a voter supports the incumbent depends on three things: how close the party’s policies are to the voter’s preferred policy position, the voter’s emotional attachment to the party, and unexpected events outside the government’s control, such as changes in oil prices (Diermeier & Li, 2019, p. 278). To test their idea, the authors increase the level of affective polarization in the model by changing the distribution of party affinities. Voters on the left are given stronger emotional attachment to Party A, while voters on the right are given stronger attachment to Party B. Importantly, the voters’ preferred policy positions do not change. The authors then compare the policy positions chosen by the parties before and after this change to determine whether stronger partisan affect leads parties to adopt more extreme policies. They also explain that loyal voters react more strongly when their own party changes its policies than when the opposing party changes its policies. The authors call this in-group responsiveness (Diermeier & Li, 2019, pp. 278–280).

The model shows that political parties have an incentive to adopt more extreme policy positions instead of moving toward the political centre. Parties gain more support by satisfying loyal supporters than by trying to attract moderate voters because loyal supporters react more strongly to policy changes. As affective polarization increases in the model, the two parties choose policy positions that are farther apart (Diermeier & Li, 2019, p. 280). The authors conclude that stronger emotional attachment to political parties can increase elite polarization even if voters’ policy preferences stay the same (Diermeier & Li, 2019, p. 281).

Zingher and Flynn

This relationship also works in the opposite direction. As political parties become more polarized, they can influence the way voters identify with them. Zingher and Flynn (2018) argue that as Democrats and Republicans become more ideologically different, voters find it easier to identify with the party that matches their political beliefs (pp. 23–24).

The authors use a quantitative statistical analysis that combines data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) and Common Space DW-NOMINATE scores between 1972 and 2012 (Zingher & Flynn, 2018, pp. 23–24). The ANES surveys ask Americans about their opinions on issues such as government involvement in the economy, healthcare, civil rights, welfare, abortion, and gay rights. Instead of studying each issue separately, the authors use confirmatory factor analysis, which groups together survey questions that measure the same political beliefs (Zingher & Flynn, 2018, p. 28). This allows them to estimate each respondent’s position on two broad policy areas: economic issues and social issues. Each respondent receives a score ranging from about −3 (most liberal) to +3 (most conservative), although most respondents fall between −1 and +1 (Zingher & Flynn, 2018, p. 29). The authors use the same survey questions in every election year so that these scores can be compared consistently over time (Zingher & Flynn, 2018, p. 29). To measure polarization among political leaders, the authors use Common Space DW-NOMINATE scores. These scores estimate each member of Congress’s ideological position based on their pattern of roll-call votes. The authors then calculate elite polarization by measuring the ideological distance between the average Democratic and Republican member of Congress. The greater this distance is, the more polarized Congress is considered to be (Zingher & Flynn, 2018, p. 33). Finally, the authors use regression models to examine whether voters’ political behaviour becomes more closely connected to their ideological positions as elite polarization increases. They also include additional statistical tests to determine whether the results remain after accounting for the passage of time (Zingher & Flynn, 2018, pp. 33–41).

The results show that Americans’ basic political beliefs remain relatively stable over time (Zingher & Flynn, 2018, p. 39). However, as political leaders become more polarized, these beliefs become more strongly connected to political behaviour. Conservatives become more likely to identify as Republicans, while liberals become more likely to identify as Democrats. Voters also become less willing to support the party that does not match their political views, and negative feelings toward the opposing party become stronger (Zingher & Flynn, 2018, p. 31). The authors conclude that greater polarization among political leaders encourages ideological sorting and contributes to greater polarization among voters (Zingher & Flynn, 2018, pp. 41–43).

Thomsen

These first two studies show that voters and political parties influence one another. Stronger partisan loyalty encourages political parties to become more polarized, and greater polarization among political parties strengthens partisan loyalty among voters.

Finally, polarization also affects the people who choose to run for office. Thomsen (2014) argues that as political parties become more polarized, moderate candidates are less likely to run for Congress because they no longer feel that they fit in their party (pp. 786, 789).

The author uses two quantitative analyses to test this idea. First, she analyzes survey data from the 1998 Candidate Emergence Study, which includes 569 state legislators (262 Republicans and 307 Democrats) from 41 states (Thomsen, 2014, p. 789). State legislators were asked questions about how likely they believed they were to win a congressional primary and how valuable they considered a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. They also reported their own political ideology, ranging from very liberal to very conservative. The author then uses ordinary least squares (OLS) regression to see if a legislator’s ideology is related to these beliefs while accounting for factors such as age, fundraising ability, party recruitment, incumbent strength, previous political experience, and state legislative professionalism (Thomsen, 2014, pp. 790–791). Next, she studies actual candidate behaviour using 31,030 observations of state legislators who either ran or did not run for Congress between 2000 and 2010 (Thomsen, 2014, p. 792). She uses campaign finance records to estimate each legislator’s ideology and applies logistic regression to examine whether more moderate state legislators were less likely to become congressional candidates. The models also take into account district ideology, incumbents seeking re-election, campaign fundraising, political experience, gender, term limits, and other institutional factors (Thomsen, 2014, pp. 792–793).

The results support the author’s argument. Liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats were less likely to run for Congress than candidates whose views were closer to the ideological extremes of their parties. The effect was especially strong among Republicans (Thomsen, 2014, pp. 793–795). For example, the probability that a conservative Republican state legislator like Paul Ryan would run for Congress was more than nine times larger than for a more moderate Republican like Olympia Snowe (Thomsen, 2014, p. 794). The author concludes that when moderate candidates choose not to run, they are replaced by more ideologically extreme politicians. This allows polarization in Congress to continue and can later influence the public as well, as seen previously (Thomsen, 2014, pp. 795–796).

Political conclusion

These three studies together show a cycle in which aspects continuously shape one another. Emotional attachment among voters encourages parties to adopt more extreme positions. More polarized parties then strengthen voters’ partisan identities, and this polarized environment discourages moderate candidates from running for office. Each part of the cycle reinforces the next, which helps political polarization continue to grow over time (Diermeier & Li, 2019; Thomsen, 2014; Zingher & Flynn, 2018).

Politics and Social Identity

Sociology helps explain why political disagreements become personal. The sociology scholars in this section show how political beliefs connect to race, religion, ideology, and other parts of identity. They also show how these identities shape emotions, relationships, and communication.

Mason 2016

The first explanation for this section focuses on social sorting. Mason (2016) argues that polarization is not caused only by disagreement. It also increases when a person’s political party becomes closely connected to other social identities like race, religion, or ideology. As these identities become more linked, people become more emotionally attached to their party and react more strongly to political events (pp. 352–355).

The author uses two sources of data. First, she analyzes data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) between 1948 and 2012 to examine long-term changes in political emotions and social sorting (Mason, 2016, p. 356). The ANES includes national surveys that ask Americans about their political opinions, party identification, and feelings toward political candidates. For example, respondents were asked whether presidential candidates made them feel angry or proud. The author compares these responses over time and shows that the percentage of partisans who reported feeling angry toward the opposing party’s presidential candidate increased from around 40% in 1980 to 60% in 2012, and pride in their own party’s candidate increased by around 12 percentage points (Mason, 2016, p. 357). The author also did a national online survey of 1,100 respondents in 2011 (Mason, 2016, p. 359). Participants were randomly assigned to read one of several political messages that either criticized or supported a political party or certain policy positions. After reading the message, they rated how angry, hostile, disgusted, proud, hopeful, and enthusiastic they felt (Mason, 2016, pp. 361–362). To measure social sorting, the author first identified whether the respondents belonged to groups such as Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives, evangelicals, secular people, Black Americans, or Tea Party supporters. Respondents then answered four questions for each identity, including how important that identity was to them, how well it described them, whether they used “we” instead of “they” when talking about the group, and how strongly they thought of themselves as members of that group. These answers were combined into an identity score ranging from 0 to 1 for each group (Mason, 2016, p. 360). The author then created a social sorting score by linking each identity to the political party it is usually associated with, based on previous research, and by checking that the same pattern appeared in the current data. For the Democratic Party, the aligned identities were liberal, secular, and Black. For the Republican Party, they were conservative, evangelical, and Tea Party. People whose identities mostly matched the same political party received higher social sorting scores, while people whose identities were divided between the two parties received lower scores. The author then compared whether people with different social sorting scores reacted differently to the political messages (Mason, 2016, pp. 360–362).

The results show that people with highly sorted identities reacted with more anger and enthusiasm than people with cross-cutting identities. Social sorting was also a stronger predictor of emotional reactions than partisanship or disagreements over political issues alone. People with cross-cutting identities reacted less emotionally to both party-based and issue-based messages (Mason, 2016, pp. 364–368). Mason concludes that as fewer Americans have cross-cutting identities, fewer people stay calm during political conflict, which makes the electorate more polarized (Mason, 2016, pp. 368–369).

This study shows that political polarization is influenced by changes in social identity. When many identities become connected to the same political party, people become more emotionally involved in politics and more divided from members of the opposing party. This makes it more difficult for people with different views to understand one another (Mason, 2016, pp. 368–369).

Social sorting explains why political identity can become more emotional. Marchal (2022) continues this explanation by examining what happens when people with different political identities interact online. The article argues that affective polarization is not only about disagreement. It also appears in the way people treat members of the opposing party during political discussions (pp. 376–378).

Marchal

The author uses a quantitative study of discussions on Reddit’s r/politics forum. She collected 1.2 million comments posted by 141, 171 users between October 15 and November 5, 2018. After removing deleted comments, moderator bots, and discussions with only one reply, the final dataset included 176 339 comment-response pairs from 12 447 discussion threads (Marchal, 2022, pp. 382–383). To estimate each user’s political views, the author counted how many comments each user posted in political subreddits during the last six months. A list of 258 political subreddits was first classified as either liberal or conservative by reading each subreddit’s title, description, rules, and posts. Users who posted more often in liberal subreddits received a more liberal score, and users who posted more often in conservative subreddits received a more conservative score. Then, she used a Bayesian estimation method to calculate each user’s overall political leaning from the patterns (Marchal, 2022, p. 383). To check whether this method worked, she manually examined a random sample of 100 comments posted by classified users, and the results matched the model’s estimates 78% of the time. About 78% of the users were classified as liberal and 22% as conservative (Marchal, 2022, pp. 383–384). The author also looked at the emotional tone of every comment using VADER, a computer program designed to analyze social media text. VADER compares the words in each comment with a dictionary of words that have positive or negative emotional values and gives each comment a score from −1 (most negative) to +1 (most positive). The comments with the lowest 25% of scores were treated as negative, and those with the highest 25% were treated as positive. Then, the author compared discussions between people with similar political views and discussions between people with different political views to see if they were more positive or negative (Marchal, 2022, pp. 384–385).

The results show that 69% of the discussions happened between people with similar political views and 31% between people with different political views (Marchal, 2022, p. 384). Discussions between people with different views were significantly more negative, although the difference was modest (Marchal, 2022, p. 387). The author also found that discussions were more likely to end after a negative comment about the other person’s party. Positive comments about the opposing group, however, were more likely to receive positive responses (Marchal, 2022, p. 388). These results show that political group identity shapes the way people communicate online and that respectful interactions can help reduce hostility (Marchal, 2022, p. 390).

Mason 2018

Mason (2018) adds another part to the sociological perspective by looking into the difference between a person’s political opinions and the political label they use. The author argues that identifying strongly as a liberal or conservative can increase hostility toward the opposing group, even when the person is not consistent in their liberal or conservative policy positions (pp. 280–284).

The author uses two sources of data. The first is a national online survey conducted by Survey Sampling International in August 2016 with 2,500 respondents. Since the participants volunteered to join the online survey panel, the sample may not perfectly represent the American population. To reduce this problem, the sample was matched using characteristics such as age, gender, ethnicity, and region. The author also applied weights because the sample included more Democrats than Republicans (Mason, 2018, p. 285). The second source is the 2016 American National Election Studies, which included 4,271 interviews. The author uses this second dataset to check whether the results from the first survey also appear in a more nationally representative sample (Mason, 2018, p. 288).

To measure identity-based ideology, respondents were asked four questions about identifying as liberal or conservative. They were asked how important the identity was to them, how well the label described them, whether they used “we” instead of “they” when speaking about the group, and how strongly they thought of themselves as a member of that group. These answers were combined into a score ranging from 0 to 1, the higher scores represent stronger ideological identity. To measure issue-based ideology, the author examined respondents’ positions on six issues: immigration, the Affordable Care Act, abortion, same-sex marriage, gun control, and whether reducing the federal deficit or unemployment was more important. The author then calculated how consistently the respondents’ positions were liberal or conservative across these issues (Mason, 2018, pp. 285–286).

The author measures affective polarization by asking respondents how willing they would be to marry a person from their own ideological group and a person from the opposing group. They were also asked whether they would be willing to become friends, live next door, or spend social time with liberals and conservatives (Mason, 2018, p. 287). In the American National Election Studies data, the author uses feeling thermometer scores to compare how warmly respondents felt toward liberals and conservatives (Mason, 2018, p. 288). The author then uses regression models to compare the effects of identity-based ideology and issue-based ideology while controlling for partisanship, race, sex, income, age, political sophistication, church attendance, and political interest (Mason, 2018, pp. 287–288).

The results show that identity-based ideology had a much stronger effect on social division than issue-based ideology. Moving from the weakest to the strongest ideological identity increased the preference for marrying someone from the same ideological group by 30 percentage points (Mason, 2018, p. 291). It also increased the preference for having friends from the same ideological group by 16 percentage points, spending social time with them by 11 percentage points, and living next door to them by 13 percentage points (Mason, 2018, p. 292). In the American National Election Studies data, stronger ideological identity was connected to a 28-degree increase in the difference between feelings toward the respondent’s own ideological group and the opposing group. This effect was more than five times larger than the effect of issue-based ideology (Mason, 2018, p. 292).

The author also finds that strong ideological identity increases social distance even when people’s policy positions do not match their political label. For example, people who identified strongly as conservative became more socially distant from liberals even when many of their actual opinions were left-leaning. Similar results appeared among liberals whose issue positions did not completely match their identity (Mason, 2018, pp. 296–297). This shows that people can dislike an opposing political group because of the meaning attached to the labels “liberal” and “conservative,” not only because of disagreements about policies (Mason, 2018, p. 298).

Together, the three studies show that political polarization continues to increase because politics is no longer only about what people believe. Social sorting connects several identities to the same political party, online discussions can turn those identities into hostile behaviour, and the labels “liberal” and “conservative” can create distance even when people’s actual policy opinions are mixed. Politics is therefore becoming connected to who people believe they are (Marchal, 2022; Mason, 2016, 2018).

Recommendations

Political polarization is still an important problem because it affects how Americans view and communicate with people from the opposing party. In a 2025 Pew Research Center survey of 3,445 U.S. adults, 85% said that politically motivated violence was increasing in the United States. When respondents were asked about its causes, 11% mentioned partisan polarization and 10% mentioned an unwillingness to communicate with or understand people who hold different views. Social media and traditional media were each mentioned by 6% of respondents (Copeland & Kiley, 2025). These results show that many Americans connect political violence with division and the loss of respectful communication.

Political polarization is also visible in areas of life that may not appear political at first. Bocquier (2024) uses Taylor Swift’s political influence as an example. Taylor Swift began her career in country music, which is often associated with conservative American culture, but she later showed that she supports Democratic candidates. This let journalists, polling organizations, and political campaigns studied the political views and demographic characteristics of her fans. The discussion around her influence shows how music, age, location, and cultural identity are easily connected to politics. It also shows that political division now affects almost every aspect of life.

One possible response to this problem comes from the research of the social psychologists Blomster Lyshol et al. (2023). The authors conducted a quantitative experiment with 841 Americans, including 421 Democrats and 420 Republicans. Participants were randomly placed into one of four groups. They watched either a moving or a neutral video, and the video was either about the United States or about a neutral subject. Before conducting the experiment, the authors examined 32 videos and selected eight that best represented the four conditions (Blomster Lyshol et al., 2023, p. 497). After watching one video, participants answered questions about whether they viewed Democrats and Republicans as members of the same American group, how warm they felt toward supporters of the opposing party, how much they trusted them, and whether they would be willing to have them as friends, neighbours, or family members through marriage (Blomster Lyshol et al., 2023, pp. 499–500).

The authors were studying an emotion called kama muta, which describes the feeling of being moved by a sudden sense of closeness (Blomster Lyshol et al., 2023, pp. 494–495). The results show that participants who watched moving videos showed more warmth, trust, and willingness to interact with supporters of the opposing party. Videos about the United States also made participants view all Americans, no matter the party, as people with a shared identity. The moving videos about the United States gave the strongest overall results. However, the authors explain that the moving content and the American theme had separate positive effects rather than creating a special effect only when combined (Blomster Lyshol et al., 2023, pp. 505–506). The findings suggest that emotional content and reminders of a shared identity can both help improve attitudes towards political opponents (Blomster Lyshol et al., 2023, pp. 507–508).

Based on this evidence, the first recommendation is that media organizations should create more content that focuses on what Americans have in common instead of presenting members of parties as enemies. News and entertainment media could give more attention to moving stories about Americans from different political backgrounds being kind to each other as Americans and as human beings and supporting their community. This does not mean the media should ignore political disagreements, because they are a normal thing in a democracy. However, there should be more reminders of a more complete image of American society, where people don’t hate each other because of their political stance. This recommendation is relevant because some respondents in the Pew survey identified both social and traditional media as causes of political violence and division (Copeland & Kiley, 2025).

The second recommendation is that schools should use stories, videos, and class activities that remind students of the identities they share before focusing on political disagreements. The purpose would not be to tell students which political beliefs are correct or to prevent political debate, it would be to encourage them to see classmates and other Americans as people before seeing them only as Democrats, Republicans, liberals, or conservatives. This would also help them recognize that there are more urgent issues than debates about political parties and politicians. The findings of Blomster Lyshol et al. (2023) support testing this approach because, as we saw, participants responded more positively to political opponents when they viewed both parties as belonging to the same larger American group.

The third recommendation is that community organizations should create campaigns and activities centred on common local concerns instead of partisan identities. Libraries, community centres, neighbourhood associations, and religious organizations could share moving stories about cooperation or organize projects in which people work together on issues that affect the entire community. For example, helping local families, collecting food, supporting disaster relief, or improving neighbourhood spaces. This way, political labels would not be the main reason for bringing people together. This approach follows the thesis of Blomster Lyshol et al. (2023): people become more open to political opponents when they are reminded that both groups belong to a larger shared community.

These campaigns could, for example, summarize the experiment by Blomster Lyshol et al. (2023) and explain why the problem is so important today. They could then show or create content that emphasizes shared identity. The goal would be to test the recommendations through smaller things before applying them more widely.

These recommendations would not remove political disagreement, and that should not be their purpose. People will continue to disagree about social and political questions, and they should be free to do so. The more serious problem happens when political identity becomes so strong that members of the opposing party are no longer viewed as people who deserve respect. So, it is important to remind Americans of what they still share.

Conclusion

Political polarization has continued to increase because economic, political, and social forces strengthen one another. Economic decline and trade shocks can change what voters expect from political parties, while media profit incentives can lead to more extreme platforms. Inside the political system, voters and parties influence each other, and the increasingly polarized environment makes moderate candidates less likely to run. Sociology adds the final part of the explanation by showing why these differences become personal. When political labels connect to social identity, disagreement affects emotions, relationships, and the way people communicate.

Together, the evidence shows that polarization is not caused by one politician, one election, or one disagreement. It develops through a cycle in which different aspects deepen the same divide. When politics become a source of a person’s belonging, changing an opinion or making a compromise can feel like giving up a part of one’s identity. Political opinion then becomes harder to separate from personal identity.

Finally, the recommendations presented cannot eliminate political disagreement, but they can address the hostility that has become connected to it. Moving stories, shared identities, and action based on common goals could help Americans see political opponents as fellow Americans rather than as enemies (Blomster Lyshol et al., 2023, pp. 507–508). As conflicts between parties become more common among both the public and politicians, they take attention away from more urgent problems. If Americans continue to focus only on political conflict, critical issues will continue to be ignored or even forgotten about, and the country will simply stop advancing.

References

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