Jan Gerrit Voelkel

Is affective polarization rooted in attitudinal disagreements? Existing research / disagrees on this question. In the current paper, we leverage 30 effects of attitude change intervention on affective polarization (total n = 7467) to provide the best empirical test of this question so far. We find that attitude interventions that significantly reduce attitudinal polarization (meta-analytical estimate for Cohen’s d = 0.20) barely affect affective polarization (Cohen’s d = -0.01). Attitude interventions that significantly increase attitudinal polarization (meta-analytical estimate for Cohen’s d = 0.27) also do not affect affective polarization (meta-analytical estimate for Cohen’s d = -0.02). These results provide evidence that affective polarization is rooted in other causes than attitudinal disagreements.