Journal article
Narcissism and affective polarization
- Abstract:
- There are increasing concerns about affective polarization between political groups in the US and elsewhere. While most work explaining affective polarization focuses on a combination of social and ideological sorting, we ask whether people’s personalities are associated with friendliness to their political in-group and hostility to their political out-group. We argue that the personality trait of narcissism (entitled self-importance) is an important correlate of affective polarization. We test this claim in Britain using nationally representative survey data, examining both long-standing party identities and new Brexit identities. Our findings reveal that narcissism, and particularly the ‘rivalry’ aspect of narcissism, is associated with both positive and negative partisanship. This potentially not only explains why some people are more susceptible to affective polarization, but also has implications for elite polarization given that narcissism is an important predictor of elite entry.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 828.6KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1007/s11109-024-09963-5
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Political Behavior More from this journal
- Volume:
- 47
- Issue:
- 2
- Pages:
- 599–618
- Publication date:
- 2024-08-02
- Acceptance date:
- 2024-07-18
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1573-6687
- ISSN:
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0190-9320
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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2018307
- Local pid:
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pubs:2018307
- Deposit date:
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2024-07-26
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Tilley and Hobolt
- Copyright date:
- 2024
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2024. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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