Can Values Messages Shape Affective Polarization and Support for Compromise?

• In Event: Affective Polarization and Public Opinion

Abstract

Divisions between secular Americans and religious, especially Christian, Americans are one of the biggest fault lines in American politics (Campbell and Green 2020). Yet, both Christian and secular values encourage charitable attitudes and behavior toward out-groups. For example, Jesus taught “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44, New International Version), while secular Americans generally value rationales and facts (Campbell, et al. 2018; Campbell and Green 2020) that discourage bias against people with different views. We ask whether messages that emphasize core Christian and secular values can decrease animus toward opposing groups and increase support for compromise in U.S. politics. We report on a pre-registered survey experiment included in the 2022 Cooperative Election Study. Respondents were randomly selected into the control group, the Christian values message group, or the secular values message group. The treatment consisted of a message emphasizing Christian or secular values. Post-treatment, respondents were asked a series of items tapping their attitudes toward out-partisan voters (drawn from Druckman and Levendusky 2019) and support for compromise (drawn from Wolak 2020). Comparing levels of out-group animus and compromise across conditions enables us to assess whether emphasizing specific Christian and secular values can temper some of the most volatile attitudes roiling American politics today.

Authors

• Stephanie L. DeMora, Stony Brook University

• Jennifer L. Merolla, University of California, Riverside

• Brian Newman, Pepperdine University

• Elizabeth J. Zechmeister, Vanderbilt University