Policy Disputes Raise Cross-Party Distrust; Immigration Drives the Cultural Effect

Why This Question Matters

Scholars have long observed links between policy disagreements and partisan dislike, or affective polarization, but causal comparative evidence on which kinds of policy disputes matter has been scarce. Noam Gidron, Will Horne, Thomas Tichelbaecker, and James Adams address whether economic versus cultural debates causally shape citizens' distrust of political opponents across multiple countries.

How the Experiment Works

The authors conduct a priming survey experiment in ten Western publics. Respondents were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: prompts to reflect on debates over cultural issues, prompts to reflect on debates over economic issues, or a non-political control prompt. Random assignment allows the authors to identify causal effects of being prompted to think about each type of dispute.

What Respondents Said and How It Was Measured

After the prompts, participants answered items measuring affective polarization—primarily distrust of out-partisans—and provided open-ended responses describing the debates they had in mind. The authors analyzed these qualitative responses to identify which topics respondents invoked (for example, immigration) and explored how those topic mentions related to measured hostility.

Key Findings

• Both economic and cultural priming increased distrust of out-party members relative to the control, providing causal, cross-national evidence that policy disputes heighten affective polarization.
• Within the cultural-issue condition, respondents who spontaneously discussed immigration in their open-ended answers showed substantially higher distrust of opponents than those who did not mention immigration.
• The immigration-related effect was concentrated among right-wing respondents who discussed immigration, indicating asymmetric drivers of cultural polarization.

Implications for Polarization Research and Debate

This ten-country experiment supplies comparative causal evidence that ordinary policy disputes—not only elite rhetoric—can generate cross-party hostility, and it highlights immigration as a potent cultural trigger, especially for right-leaning citizens. The findings suggest scholars and policymakers should treat specific issue content, not only ideological distance, as central to understanding and addressing affective polarization.