Who Dislikes The Other More, Democrats Or Republicans? This Study Found Out

Political polarization in the US has been increasing for decades, but it has reached new heights in recent years. However, this divide does not just involve a disagreement over policies but also a distinct dislike between supporters of the two parties. Is this personal animosity shared equally between Democrats and Republicans? According to a new study, the former are more likely to dislike the latter, due to the belief that Republicans are harmful towards racial and ethnic minorities and other marginalized groups.

Scholars, politicians, and political commentators have been aware of the growing tensions between the two American parties for some time. But whereas these types of tensions have typically been focused on policy differences and opposing ideological worldviews, the last few decades have witnessed a more worrying development: the rise of what is called “partisan dislike”.

This is where Democrats and Republican in the general population become increasingly negative towards the prospect of having close social relations with supporters of the other party. Partisan dislike has been found to impact a wide range of behaviors, including someone’s choice in friends, their romantic partners, employers, or even where they live.

This may sound inconsequential, but these social tendencies can lead to a preference and biases towards a person’s ingroup (those they identify with the most) and a distancing from perceived outgroups (those that don’t belong to their group). This can result in increasingly segregated communities, like “blue” verses “red” neighborhoods or online echo chambers.

But which side of the political divide feels the most acrimony towards the other? Previous research has suggested that right-wing individuals often demonstrate greater prejudice towards outgroups than their left-wing counterparts. This has been interpreted as a result of right-wing supporters expressing greater levels of ingroup loyalty and being more sensitive to perceived threats from outgroups. Right-wing supporters often score lower on openness to experience as well.

Alternatively, other research has pointed to a conflict in worldviews whereby both left-wing and right-wing individuals express hostility towards those who champion differing values. Those who follow this perspective believe that levels of distrust and dislike are shared equally across the political divide, as both left and right-wing supporters are hostile to the other for not seeking their values. But this may not be so, or it may not represent the full extent of the issue, as new research reveals.

Going beyond these two interpretations, the authors of the new study found that partisan dislike is asymmetric in the US and is based more on moral values. In this context, the team hypothesizes that Democrats in particular are more likely to moralize (the extent to which a person views something in terms of being right or wrong) concerns about minority groups, especially immigrants and racial minorities. And because Republicans often favor policies that could cause harm to disadvantaged groups, Democrats are more likely to see them negatively.

To investigate this, the team conducted five studies and two supplementary ones between 2022 and 2023.

The first study was held on Twitter (now X) and engaged with 4,000 users. The team created multiple accounts that were designed to look like real people – half appeared like left-leaning liberal Democrat supporters and half like right-leaning conservative Republicans. They then followed different people who were identified as being supporters of one of the two political parties to see how they would respond to being followed by an account associated with the other side. So, in this instance, how a liberal might respond to being followed by an obviously conservative user. 

The results showed that Democrats were more likely to block an opposing partisan follower than Republicans were, suggesting a stronger dislike to being connected with someone from the other party, even if this other person was pretty much anonymous.

In their second study, online participants – 284 Democrats and 288 Republicans – were randomly assigned to groups where they were asked to consider a hypothetical scenario where a new neighbor had recently moved into their area. They were presented with a fake Facebook profile for these new neighbors, which had content that identified them as either Democrats or Republicans. Participants were then asked how much they would like the new neighbor and the extent to which they believed the neighbor would harm disadvantaged people.

As with the previous study, Democrats were more likely to perceive Republicans negatively than the other way around. They were also more likely to believe their fictitious new conservative neighbor would be harmful to disadvantaged people.

In their third study, the researchers turned their attention to hiring in the workplace. They recruited 400 participants with full-time jobs and asked them to evaluate a hypothetical job applicant whose resume had subtle indicators of their political leanings. As with the second study, the participants were asked questions about the fictitious applicant’s suitability for the role, as well as how much they believed they would be harmful to disadvantaged people, as well as to themselves and to the organization. In addition, participants were asked to comment on how morally wrong they believed it was to champion the values common to the opposing political party.

Democrats tended to see Republicans as less suitable for the job they were applying for. At the same time, they seemed to be more concerned with the impacts these Republicans would have on disadvantaged groups, rather than their own or the organization’s wellbeing. Importantly, Democrats showed stronger condemnation for Republican views on racism and immigration when compared to issues such as transgender rights or party affiliation. This, the researchers believe, suggests that some values are more moralized by Democrats than others, helping to explain why they appear to fuel partisan dislike.

“[W]e found that attitudes related to transgender people (a historically disadvantaged group in the U.S. and many other countries) were not moralized more by Democrats than by Republicans and were not an asymmetric contributor of partisan dislike for Democrats,” the team explains in the paper.

“One potential explanation for our findings is that transgender-related issues—which can connect with attitudes relating to sexuality—may fuel purity/sanctity moral concerns among Republicans which in turn, could fuel moralization among Republicans. This possibility should be examined in future research.”

In the fourth study, the researchers recruited 797 participants who were presented with a scenario in which a bank manager allocated money to six different task forces, including a diversity task force. The participants were told that the manager supported the opposing political party. Behind the scenes, the researchers adjusted whether the manager allocated higher or lower funds to the diversity task force than others at the bank, while participants were asked to rate how much they liked the manager and how likely the manager was to hurt disadvantaged or less privileged people.

In this study, Democrats were more likely to like the manager, regardless of their political leaning, if they were seen to support diversity efforts. However, if the manager did not support these efforts, then they tended to like them less than Republicans did. This demonstrates that partisan dislike actually disappeared when the acts of the opposing party supported disadvantaged people, therefore showing that perceived harm to these people is an important factor in Democrats’ partisan views.

The final study sought to replicate the results of the fourth study by conducting another social media field experiment on Twitter involving 6,000 users. This time, the team created partisan accounts that also signaled support or opposition to disadvantaged groups. This involved support for “Black Lives Matter” or statements that acknowledged racism as a problem, while others had statements clearly opposing these values.

As with the previous studies, Democrats were more likely to block conservative partisans that did not support these groups. But if a clearly Republican account did support these groups then the rate of blocking was lowered, narrowing the difference in responses between the two parties.

Overall, this body of research shows how the moralization of an issue can be a significant driver of partisan dislike, challenging past explanations for this phenomenon. Importantly, the researchers argue that if the gap between the political attitudes towards disadvantaged people were narrow, then partisan dislike would likely decrease too.

“Consistent with our own revised version of the worldview conflict perspective - that takes group differences in moralization of values into consideration – we found that this asymmetry in partisan dislike is explained by the unique belief among Democrats that counter-partisans are likely to harm disadvantaged people, particularly racial/ethnic minorities,” the team concluded.

The study is published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.