They Started It: Punitivism, Zero-Sum Worldview, and Affective Polarization

• In Event: Affective Polarization and Public Opinion

Abstract

The United States has recently experienced levels of polarization previously seen only during the immediate Antebellum era of the 1860s. Though scholars have examined both how and why polarization originally increased, less work has focused on why this polarization has remained persistent and difficult to alleviate. While observers may initially identify the election of populist president Donald Trump as a possible impetus for this polarization, Trump’s rise merely accelerated pre-existing patterns of polarization within the electorate. Further, Trump’s loss in the 2020 election; his eviction from prominent social media platforms; and the disappointing performance of Trump aligned candidates in the 2022 midterm elections have not heralded a decline in polarization. Nor is the United States alone in its prolonged experience with polarization: societies as diverse as Venezuela, Brazil, and the United Kingdom have all experienced enduring polarization even after the leader or policy battle that accelerated it have resolved or declined in salience.

Our primary motivating question is simple: why do some people become polarized, under what circumstances, and most importantly, why does polarization persist and even deepen over time? Few satisfactory answers to this last question have been proposed, largely because most existing work on the causes of polarization treat it as static: societies can be more or less polarized at any given point in time, but a static conceptualization does not examine possible internal dynamics, as we discuss presently.

This paper seeks to answer these questions by conceptualizing polarization not as a static social state but rather as a dynamic process that unfolds over time, and under particular circumstances becomes self-sustaining. This vicious cycle is a result of a dyadic relationship between elite rhetoric and popular response. Polarization begins with structural factors which generate widespread anger among certain groups in society and accelerates when political and media elites begin proliferating polarizing narratives. We identify two different categories of frames: punitive frames and zero-sum frames. Each frame is named for the specific attitude it activates. Punitive frames invoke moral, norm, or justice violations, depicting opponents as profoundly evil or immoral. Either stated or (more often strongly implied) is the conclusion that such villains must be punished in order to redeem the nation. These frames trigger political punitivism, an overwhelming desire to punish political opponents. Zero-sum frames, by contrast, eschew morality in favor of an amoral, dog-eat dog view of social conflict. These frames depict national decline as the result of some disfavored and undeserving group (e.g. members of the other party, immigrants, minorities, etc.) stealing what rightfully belongs to “the true people of the nation”; i.e., one’s own group. These appeals activate a zero-sum worldview (ZSW), the belief that all social and political interactions are inherently zero-sum, mutually beneficial cooperation is impossible, and when one group wins, another must inevitably lose a commensurate amount.

The activation of these attitudes is the mechanism by which polarization becomes a self-sustaining cycle, even in the absence of further provocation by leaders or social conditions. When political punitivism and zero-sum worldviews increase, cooperation and compromise across social groups becomes all but impossible. Crucially, the behavior compelled by each of these states triggers a concomitant reaction in the targeted group. Actions to “punish” one group’s bad behavior is seen by the punished as unwarranted hostility, thus provoking a symmetrical punitive response. Similar cycles occur with ZSW as it justifies exploitative and noncooperative behavior since gains for one group means losses for the others; this behavior sparks reciprocal actions from others. Polarization thus becomes a tit-for-tat retaliatory cycle, spiraling out according to its own malign logic, with no need for exogenous sustenance. We use data from an original observational study as well as survey experiments to analyze how punitivism and the zero-sum worldview contribute to and sustain affective polarization.

Authors

• Rachel Navarre, Bridgewater State University

• Matthew Rhodes-Purdy, Clemson University

• James Fahey, University of Memphis