Deliberation, a cornerstone of democracy, is in trouble. When people are asked whether they like talking about politics, less than a third of them respond affirmatively. Political talk, if it happens at all, occurs in private settings . Yet political talk is critical to informing a democratic public and creating contexts for debate; consequently it ought not to be aversive. It is therefore necessary to understand which aspects of political talk generate anxiety or avoidance behaviors in Americans.
In our era of affective polarization, it is also necessary to investigate whether affective polarization influences anxiety and/or avoidance. I propose two studies that will explore whether people respond differently to various political talk contexts. Are people more averse to political talk when the issue is nationally significant than when the issue is something more local? Is political talk with someone one generally disagrees with more aversive than when it is with someone one generally agrees with? And what would happen if people were to talk across the two major political parties? Given the United States’ current high affective polarization, it is reasonable to suspect that priming people to think about political issues in terms of parties would increase people’s anxiety and avoidance behaviors. In my first survey experiment, people will answer variations of two questions that make reference to two independent variables. In my second survey experiment, participants will report their political party affiliation (or lack thereof) at the beginning of the study.
