title: Polarizing cues.
abstract: People categorize themselves and others, creating ingroup and outgroup distinctions. In American politics, parties constitute the in- and outgroups, and party leaders hold sway in articulating party positions. A party leader's endorsement of a policy can be persuasive, inducing co-partisans to take the same position. In contrast, a party leader's endorsement may polarize opinion, inducing out-party identifiers to take a contrary position. Using survey experiments from the 2008 presidential election, I examine whether in- and out-party candidate cues—John McCain and Barack Obama—affected partisan opinion. The results indicate that in-party leader cues do not persuade but that out-party leader cues polarize. This finding holds in an experiment featuring President Bush in which his endorsement did not persuade Republicans but it polarized Democrats. Lastly, I compare the effect of party leader cues to party label cues. The results suggest that politicians, not parties, function as polarizing cues.
authors.affiliation: University of California, Merced.
authors.forename: Stephen P
authors.initials: SP
authors.lastname: Nicholson
mesh_terms: D049674:History, 21st Century; D011057:Politics; D011639:Public Opinion / Q000266:history; D012918:Social Alienation / Q000523:psychology; D012919:Social Behavior / Q000266:history; D012933:Social Identification; D014481:United States / Q000208:ethnology