"As a philosopher working on interdisciplinary issues such as the polarization of public opinion, I'm often asked two things: what role philosophy plays in relation to this topic and what can be done to reduce polarization. In this post, I'll address both of these points with the aim of showing that philosophy is crucial for studying polarization, and that certain interventions only become visible when we approach the issue from philosophy."
"Several opinion surveys include questions asking participants to report their feelings toward political parties, political leaders, and partisans-usually on a scale from 0 to 100, where "0" means cold or unfavorable feelings and "100" means warm or favorable ones. Drawing on data from various sources, Shanto Iyengar and other scholars found in 2012 that the gap between citizens' positive feelings toward their own group and their negative feelings toward the opposing group had grown in the U.S."
Philosophy is positioned as crucial for examining political polarization and for identifying interventions overlooked by other disciplines. Opinion surveys often use feeling scales to measure citizens' warmth toward their own party and coldness toward opponents. Empirical evidence shows a growing gap between positive ingroup feelings and negative outgroup feelings, termed affective polarization. This pattern has been observed in the U.S. and other contemporary democracies using multiple methods. Psychological theories like social identity theory explain group formation and ingroup favoritism, suggesting emotional dynamics are a distinctive feature of modern democratic polarization.
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