Why Can't You All Just Get Along?: Effects of Political Conflict among Outgroups

• In Event: Exacerbating and Attenuating Intergroup Conflict

Abstract

It is hard to overstate the importance of social and political groups in politics. The political arena often involves complex combinations of groups aligning on various sides of contested political issues. A great deal of research demonstrates that political attitudes and behaviors stem from feelings towards the various social and political groups engaged in these political contests. This scholarship focuses primarily on the relationship of individuals with a single group– e.g., one’s connection to the NRA, various racial minorities, or LGBTQ+ activists. However, this perspective fails to capture the more complex reality of various groups with different relationships with one another. In particular, little extant research documents how the changing relationships among two or more social groups to which an individual does not belong (and therefore among potential coalition members) affect the attitudes of these third-party observers. Our project steps into this space and builds on extant group-based research by exploring how more complex networks of groups and the relationships between groups shape political attitudes. More specifically, we examine the effects of political conflict between two social groups on individuals who belong to neither of these groups. When such conflict violates prior expectations of relationships among these groups, third-party observers should experience cognitive dissonance. Drawing on balance theory in social psychology, we hypothesize that individuals will resolve this dissonance by adopting more negative attitudes toward one of the outgroups. We field two survey experiments – one on a convenience sample and one with a nationally representative sample – to test this hypothesis. Our results indicate that when political conflict involves a liked group and a disliked group, individuals do not experience dissonance and do not change their evaluations of these outgroups. By contrast, when political conflict involves two outgroups toward whom an individual feels positively, individuals experience cognitive dissonance. They then adopt more negative affect for and express lower solidarity with the lesser-liked of the two groups. Furthermore, we incorporate an instrumental variables approach that allows us to assess whether cognitive dissonance indeed mediates these effects. Our results suggest that intergroup political conflict can have far-reaching consequences. Conflict can shift attitudes among those involved and those already aligned with the competing parties; it also, though, can shape the views of third-party observers and potential allies. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of this work for coalition making and group-based politics generally.

Authors

• Ethan C. Busby, Clemson University

• Jacob Edward Rothschild, Northwestern University