Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, Political Science

Elections, and the winner-take-all competition between partisan group it represents, is often captured by common metaphors about politics being similar to a sports competition. In a three article dissertation, I examine how a focus on closeness of political partisan competition affects people's people degree of affective polarization, their tolerance of election cheating, and how it does not affect political engagement. Article 1: In recent political history, most elections have become increasingly non-competitive. Yet even though most elections are non-competitive, the Americans have become increasingly polarized and have even grown to hate or loath their opposing partisan group. If there is so little struggle over partisan control of the U.S. government, then why are Americans so entrenched against their partisan out-group? Using a survey of Americans' perceptions of election competitiveness, I explore what drives people's perceptions of competition and how it influences attitudes. I find people are biased towards perceiving elections as competitive and partisans are bias in vote-share perceptions. Greater perceptions of national partisan competition, but not other levels of office, is a predictor of higher levels of affective polarization. Real levels of partisan competition also affect people's level of affective polarization but in more nuanced ways. Given these findings, I discuss insight on effective methods for reducing partisan competition and thus affective polarization. Article 2: American government supports that highly competitive practices like elections are the best way to represent the will of voters. However, in an era of high partisan animus, it is worth examining the negative effects that this focus has on people's attitudes. Using an original survey experiment, I investigate the effects of salient partisan competition on people's tolerance of election cheating. I find that greater salience of partisan competition increases participants' tol (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Thomas Nelson (Committee Chair); Gregory Calderia (Committee Member); Thomas Wood (Committee Member); Thomas Nelson (Advisor) Subjects: Behavioral Sciences; Political Science; Psychology

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2020, Communication

Research suggests that negative affect between political groups may impact the way that group members interact with counter-attitudinal information. Increasing the affective polarization of political group members may cause them to rate two-sided and counter-attitudinal news headlines as lower in credibility. It may also increase their sensitivity to injunctive norms promoted by in-party elites. These theories are tested in a pair of experiments manipulating participants' affective polarization in order to examine changes in their credibility perceptions of political headlines and their sensitivity to injunctive norms, respectively. This manipulation failed to produce statistically significant effects. These relationships were subsequently tested cross-sectionally based on natural variation in participants' affective polarization. However, these tests also failed to detect a significant relationship between affective polarization and the outcomes of interest. Although these results are inconclusive, a broad examination of patterns within the studies' non-results suggests that further theorizing in this area may be required.

Committee: R. Kelly Garrett Ph.D. (Advisor); Robert Bond Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 0, Psychology

The phenomenon wherein personal feelings towards others are defined by political party identity, termed affective polarization (AP), has been shown to be on the rise since 1960 and is thought to result in several forms of interpersonal conflict. While past research has explained AP in terms of ideology, political sorting, and social identity theory (SIT), the present work aimed to examine the potential for fundamental social motives (FSM) to further explain the potential function of AP for the individual. This study used archival data from multiple timepoints to model relationships among FSM, AP, ideological extremism (IE), and political/moral conflict (PMC) both cross-sectionally and over a 6-month time-period (N = 1777, 1261 respectively). Results showed IE to be a more robust predictor of AP than social motives. AP demonstrated no significant connection to PMC, but IE and the Status motive predicted PMC cross-sectionally. Exploratory analyses also demonstrated small but significant relationships between Status and IE, and Status and PMC at a single time point. Implications and limitations of these findings are discussed. Further research is necessary to understand the complex interplay between IE, AP, and conflict, but the current results demonstrate that IE and AP may be more closely linked than current literature implies.

Committee: Joshua Grubbs PhD (Advisor); Catherine Stein PhD (Committee Member); Michael Zickar PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Political Science; Psychology

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2020, Communication

Over the past three decades, partisanship has become an increasingly salient social identity for Americans, resulting in an electorate that is affectively polarized. An electorate characterized by affective polarization cuts against normative models of democracy, as party loyalists tend to dislike members of other parties, prefer confrontation to compromise, and distrust government when their preferred party is out of power. The commercial US media environment has been a frequent culprit in theories of the origins of affective polarization. Cross-national comparisons find that the United States may have experienced the most rapid gains in affective polarization but Americans' fixation on party identity is far from unique. This comparative analysis categorizes 14 countries' national media systems and tests whether news media consumption in commercial media systems, such as the United States, predicts higher levels of partisan animus and party loyalty in vote choice than media consumption in other types of media systems. The results indicate that television consumption in commercial media systems is associated with higher levels of partisan affect than in public-service or hybrid media systems.

Committee: Erik Nisbet Ph.D. (Advisor); R. Kelly Garrett Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Political Science