Disrespectful Democracy: The Psychology of Political Incivility

THE POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY OF CONFLICT COMMUNICATION

I hate conflict so much that I find myself agreeing with pretty much everything that everyone says.

—ANONYMOUS INTERVIEWEE, HUMANS OF NEW YORK BLOG

IN 2010, BRANDON Stanton set out to photograph ten thousand New York City residents, capturing glimpses of strangers’ daily lives. Along the way, he started interviewing his subjects and including quotes and short stories from their lives alongside their portraits. The photos and interviews turned into a popular blog, Humans of New York (HONY), and Stanton’s reach has extended to other geographic locations and to series of interviews with specific populations, such as inmates and pediatric cancer patients (Stanton 2018). The quote used in this chapter’s epigraph is the only glimpse we have into the life of that particular HONY interviewee; all we know is that he avoids conflict. As he acknowledges, he is so turned off by conflict in his social life that he has become a yes-man, agreeing with everyone else’s opinions because he wants to avoid confrontation.

Given this information, it is not hard to imagine his behavior as a democratic citizen. Committed to avoiding confrontation, he does not share his opinions with anyone—not his close friends, who he worries might become upset or think less of him if they disagree, nor his elected officials, because his views would then be open to public commentary and ridicule. He does not attend protests or city council meetings because they always result in a fight: people on one side of the issue trying to shout down their opponents. And he steers clear of the news, because it seems as though all anyone ever does in politics is argue. In other words, his ability to participate in democratic life is severely restricted; he has few outlets through which to articulate his preferences and priorities to those who represent him.

Conflict orientation exists along a continuum, with some individuals, like our HONY interviewee, having a very strong avoidance reaction to conflict, others being very willing to approach conflict, and most falling somewhere in the middle with a conflict-ambivalent response. When these individuals are placed in a high-conflict environment, they will react in different ways. Psychologists have found that people want congruence between their personal predispositions and their environment and will take action to increase that congruence (Deutsch 1985). Therefore, while those of us who enjoy conflict will be content in a highly uncivil or argumentative environment, our conflict-avoidant counterparts will adapt their behavior and environment to minimize incivility. People also try to minimize their experience of negative emotions and repeat events that produce positive emotions. Therefore, the conflict-avoidant will try to minimize the presence of incivility in their lives, because it produces negative emotions and reactions, while the conflict-approaching will create positive, enjoyable associations with conflict. In politics, attempts to minimize or emphasize incivility will manifest in behavioral choices—decisions about from which media to seek political information and in which political activities to participate.

In this chapter, I draw on research in cultural, organizational, and social psychology to offer a definition of conflict orientation: the way one experiences and reacts to a conflict situation, particularly conflict communication. I then review approaches used to measure conflict orientation and explain the Conflict Communication Scale used in the studies presented in this book. Using longitudinal data from the Qualtrics Panels study,1 I demonstrate that conflict orientation is relatively fixed for individuals across time. Finally, I explore the relationships between conflict orientation and several demographic and political characteristics that also influence political behavior—relationships that may moderate or exacerbate the effects of these characteristics on political engagement.

PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON RESPONSES TO CONFLICT COMMUNICATION

Following from Kurt Lewin’s (1935) work on positive and negative valence in personality, scholars have emphasized the importance of approach/avoidance motivations in ensuring that living organisms—from the single-cell amoebas to human beings—adapt and survive in their environment. Elliott (2006) defines the terms as follows: “Approach motivation is the energization of behavior by, or the direction of behavior toward, positive stimuli (objects, events, possibilities), whereas avoidance motivation may be defined as the energization of behavior by, or the direction of behavior away from, negative stimuli (objects, events, possibilities).” Zajonc (1998) argues that the ability to make these sorts of approach/avoid discriminations is hardwired; we make these judgments unconsciously in response to sets of stimuli.

Inherent in the conceptualization of approach and avoidance motivations is an emphasis on movement. It can suggest movement toward (in the case of approach) or away from (avoidance) a particular experience or object that is currently being experienced—for example, fleeing a bear in the woods or leaning into a hug from your best friend. It can also reflect the decision to keep one’s distance from a negative stimulus—avoid walking in the woods when bears are most likely to be out—or to remain in the presence of something positive, as by sitting in a coffee shop catching up with your friend for hours.

Research in health communication and psychology has shown that messages framed to be congruent with individuals’ approach/avoidance motivations are more effective in changing behavior. Specifically, in the congruent conditions, participants who were categorized as more approach-oriented were shown gain-framed messages promoting dental flossing, while those who were more avoidance-oriented were shown similar messages with a loss frame. In the incongruent conditions, the match of motivational orientation and message frame were reversed. Participants who had read congruent messages were more likely to floss and were more efficacious in their flossing than those who had read incongruent messages (Sherman, Mann, and Updegraff 2006). These findings suggest that individual differences (in this case, approach or avoidance motivations) and situational factors (message framing) interact in communication to influence individuals’ feelings of efficacy, their intentions, and behavior change. This individual-differences framework can also be applied to our understanding of the effects of uncivil political messages on political behavior.

Psychologists’ understanding of approach and avoidance motivation as a framework for understanding individual differences lays the groundwork for my argument that individual responses to conflict shape people’s reactions to uncivil political messages. Conflict orientation can be seen as a specific type of approach/avoidance motivation; it is a stable personality trait centered around how people experience and react to conflict—whether they are excited by arguments, uncomfortable when others fight in public, or happy to handle a disagreement face to face (Bresnahan et al. 2009; Goldstein 1999; Testa, Hibbing, and Ritchie 2014). At one extreme, an individual can be highly conflict-avoidant, finding disagreement and argument uncomfortable and anxiety-inducing. Like avoidance motivations more generally, conflict avoidance produces behavior that drives individuals away from the negative stimulus: the expression or manifestation of conflict. These people dislike confrontation and face-to-face resolution of conflict and will ultimately institute strategies in their personal and political lives to minimize their exposure to potential conflict situations. At the other extreme are the conflict-approaching people, who have no problem expressing disagreement, are excited by the prospect of a debate, and are happy to air their arguments face to face in any environment. These people are not disturbed by the presence of conflict around them, and even thrive in a high-conflict environment. Therefore, they will not shy away from disagreements in their personal social networks, nor from environments that will expose them to conflict between other people. Most people, as I will show below, fall somewhere in the middle—leaning slightly toward conflict avoidance.

This book measures individuals’ motivation to approach or avoid conflict in communication using the Conflict Communication Scale (CCS; Goldstein 1999). The CCS is constructed to measure variability in the experience of conflict rather than strategies for reducing it. It is designed to provide measures that are relevant for conflict intervention such as mediation, but also broad enough to assess both cultural and individual differences in communication style in conflict situations. The CCS is designed around five subscales drawn from cultural research on the dimensions of conflict response: confrontation, public/private behavior, self-disclosure, emotional expression, and conflict approach/avoidance; the adapted scales used throughout this work draw from one to four of these subscales. Following is a list of the statements used across all of the studies in this book. While not widely cited in social- or organizational-psychology literature, this scale has previously been adapted to political questions (Mutz and Reeves 2005; Mutz 2015).2

ADAPTED CONFLICT COMMUNICATION SCALE

Please indicate your level of agreement with the following statements.

(Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, Strongly Disagree)

APPROACH/AVOIDANCE SCALE

I enjoy challenging the opinions of others.

I find conflicts exciting.

I hate arguments.

Arguments don’t bother me.

I feel upset after an argument.

PUBLIC/PRIVATE BEHAVIOR

I avoid arguing in public.

I feel uncomfortable seeing others argue in public.

It wouldn’t bother me to have an argument in a restaurant.

I don’t want anyone besides those involved to know about an argument I’ve had.

I would be embarrassed if neighbors heard me argue with a family member.

CONFRONTATION

I feel more comfortable having an argument in person than over the phone.

I prefer to express points of disagreement with others by speaking with them directly rather than by writing them notes.

When I have a conflict with someone I try to resolve it by being extra nice to him or her.

After a dispute with a neighbor, I would feel uncomfortable seeing him or her again, even if the conflict had been resolved.

I prefer to solve disputes through face-to-face discussion.

EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION

Getting emotional only makes conflicts worse.

Everything should be out in the open in an argument, including emotions.

It makes me uncomfortable watching other people express their emotions in front of me.

I feel like running away when other people start showing their emotions in an argument.

It shows strength to express emotions openly.

Showing your feelings in a dispute is a sign of weakness.

Note: The entire set of questions was only asked as part of the Qualtrics Panel study (2016). To see which questions were included in each survey, see appendix A.

As Goldstein found in her assessment of the 75-item scale, the adapted 21-item scale used here displays strong enough correlations between items and Cronbach’s alpha statistics to conclude that the items cohere into a relatively strong measure of a single dimension, conflict orientation.3 When we combine these items into a single scale, participants fall across the entire range of possible values, from extremely conflict-avoidant (a score of −40 in the Qualtrics Panel) to extremely conflict-approaching (a score of 40). In each scale, zero indicates the neutral midpoint; people scoring here could be classified as conflict-ambivalent. Each subscale has a range from −10 to 10, with −10 indicating high avoidance, high preference for private conflict resolution, and high distaste for confrontation.

While the use of online samples prevents me from drawing conclusions about the distribution of conflict orientation across the U.S. population more generally, it is still helpful to get a sense of the range of orientations found in the participants. Figure 2.1 displays the distribution of participants on the Conflict Communication Scale across each of the seven times the scale was administered. As you can see from the figure, conflict orientation tends to be relatively normally distributed in each sample, although it can skew slightly right, as we see in the Project Implicit, Mechanical Turk Study 2, and GfK samples. It is also clear that individuals can vary widely on these same measures, as everyone does not find it equally easy to have a face-to-face conversation about uncomfortable arguments or to openly express their emotions.

FIGURE 2.1 Distributions of participants on the conflict communication scale, by study.

Note: Lower numbers indicate greater conflict avoidance, higher numbers indicate greater conflict-approaching scores on the Conflict Communication Scale. Different numbers of questions from the full CCS scale were used across experiments, given sampling and timing constraints.

Figure 2.1 demonstrates that at a single point in time, there is substantial variation across individuals in conflict orientation. But what about within an individual over time? If conflict orientation is malleable and susceptible to environmental influences over the course of an individual’s life, then the relationships I am studying throughout this book could be endogenous. Individuals’ conflict orientation could shape media exposure, but media exposure could also affect an individual’s conflict orientation.

Psychological research suggests that this is not the case. Conflict orientation is a relatively entrenched component of our personalities by a young age, although it is shaped by cultural and social factors. For example, people raised in East Asian cultures tend to be more conflict-avoidant overall, specifically preferring private and nonconfrontational airing of disagreements. Americans are more willing to approach and handle conflict through face-to-face discussion (Gudykunst and Ting-Toomey 1988). As we age or become more educated, we can become more comfortable and accepting of conflict (Birditt, Fingerman, and Almeida 2005; Eliasoph 1998). However, these changes are small fluctuations around an initial stable point; someone who is predisposed to be highly conflict-avoidant is not going to become highly conflict-approaching simply by growing older and becoming highly educated.

The stability of conflict orientation over a short period of time is apparent in the Qualtrics Panels survey. A sample of 333 participants completed an adapted 15-question version of the Conflict Communication Scale (CCS; Goldstein 1999). The full scale is an additive measure of participants’ responses to the 15 questions that ranges from a value of −40, indicating extreme conflict avoidance, to 40, signaling extreme conflict-approaching orientation. Participants’ conflict orientation was measured for the first time between July 27 and August 3, 2016. They were then recontacted on August 15, 2016, and asked to complete a second battery of psychological measures that included the same set of CCS questions. The distribution of individual conflict-orientation scores changed minimally over the three-week span. The average conflict orientation score in the first survey was 0.11 (sd = 0.53), or just barely above the neutral zero point. The average score in the August survey was −0.64 (sd = 0.51), just below the neutral point. A paired t-test of conflict orientation across the two surveys is statistically significant (p = 0.04, two-tailed), but the difference between the two averages is just 0.74—less than one point on an 80-point scale. While some individuals did report dramatic changes in their conflict orientation from July to August, the majority of the participants’ scores changed by four points or less. While these data cannot demonstrate that conflict orientation is immovable in the face of environmental shocks, it does suggest that it is a relatively stable trait that is unlikely to be affected by any single political event. Instead, conflict orientation influences the way that humans respond to politics.

I want to make an additional distinction: one’s conflict orientation is not the same as one’s strategies for conflict resolution. Conflict orientation is a psychological characteristic of an individual; it is entrenched in an individual’s personality and only differs marginally across environments. Conflict-resolution strategies are situation-dependent. They vary based on the environment in which individuals are responding to a conflict.

Much of the psychological research on responses to conflict focuses not on this individual predisposition, but on conflict-resolution strategies and outcomes in specific interpersonal settings—dating, marital conflict, and organizational or managerial situations. The majority of research in this discipline builds on Blake and Mouton’s managerial grid theory, which argues that differences in conflict-handling approaches stem from relative concerns for production and for people. These relative concerns produce five types or styles of handling office conflict: impoverished, country club, dictatorial or “produce or perish,” middle-of-the-road, and the team (Blake and Mouton 1964). For example, an employer who is more concerned about ensuring high production than about the well-being of his employees will handle conflict in a dictatorial style. He will force the resolution of any disagreements and do so in a way that does not damage his firm’s output but likely leaves his employees unhappy and unsatisfied. Alternatively, a manager who cares about both production and people will take a team-building approach to conflict resolution, encouraging his team to air disagreements in a way that does not sacrifice either their happiness or the success of the organization.

This distinction between conflict orientation and conflict-resolution strategies is captured in the second wave of the Qualtrics Panel survey. Participants completed both the CCS and Blake and Mouton’s Leadership Questionnaire. Whereas the two components of the managerial grid—concern for people and concern for production—were highly correlated (r = 0.87), each individual component was only slightly correlated with participants’ conflict orientations (r_task = 0.13 and r_people = 0.15). While both correlations are statistically significant at p = 0.05, they are loose enough to leave us feeling confident that conflict avoidance is not the same as low concern for people or production, nor is conflict-approaching motivation equivalent to high concern for people or production. Conflict orientation and conflict-resolution strategies are related, but they are not different ways of assessing the same underlying concept. Instead, one’s conflict orientation may make one more or less likely to turn to specific strategies for resolving conflict.

Conflict orientation is a psychological trait that is pre-political—developed and engrained in our personalities throughout childhood and relatively firmly entrenched by the time we enter adulthood. As such, it is expected to be closely related to other personality measures—specifically, the Big Five traits that are thought to present a holistic assessment of an individual’s personality (McCrae and Costa 2008). These five traits—extraversion, openness to new experience, emotional stability, conscientiousness, and agreeableness—are heritable and stable over time. Because they are determined by biological differences, whereas conflict orientation has been shown to vary with cultural and other demographic characteristics, the Big Five can be thought of as causally prior to both our conflict orientation and our political behaviors (Mondak 2010).

Research into the influence of Big Five traits on disagreement in political discussion reinforces this expectation of a connection. Looking at interpersonal relationships, Graziano, Jensen-Campbell, and Hair (1996) found that individual differences in agreeableness are systematically related to patterns of conflict and conflict resolution. Specifically, individuals who received a low score on a scale of agreeable tendencies were more likely than highly agreeable individuals to see “power-assertion” tactics as solutions to conflict. While this finding highlights the connection between agreeableness and a behavioral strategy for resolving conflict, it also suggests that an individual high in agreeableness should have a negative reaction to conflict situations. Findings in political science reinforce this hypothesized relationship. In a study of personality’s impact on an individual’s exposure to disagreement on topics ranging from politics to sports, researchers have found that higher levels of agreeableness are weakly associated with increased willingness to engage in discussion (Gerber et al. 2012).

Beyond agreeableness, political scientists also find that openness to new experiences, extraversion, and emotional stability are also related to the willingness to engage in political discussion where there may be disagreement (Gerber et al. 2010, 2012; Testa et al. 2014). A highly open person should find conflict stimulating and exciting, while an extrovert’s tendency to be more assertive and outgoing should also lead toward more comfort in experiencing conflict. Those high in emotional stability are also more likely to have high self-confidence, ultimately making them feel less threatened by conflict. Finally, while there is less conclusive evidence about the relationship between conscientiousness and political disagreement, highly conscientious people are likely to be highly aware of violations of social norms (Mondak 2010). Therefore, they should be particularly attuned to the use of conflict communication like incivility that infringes on conversational norms of politeness.

Ultimately, previous research suggests that a conflict-approaching orientation, measured as positive values on the adapted CCS, should be positively associated with extraversion, emotional stability, and openness but negatively associated with agreeableness and conscientiousness. In the Project Implicit and Qualtrics Panels studies, participants were asked to complete the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI), which gives them scores from −6 to 6 on each of the five personality factors, with −6 indicating low levels of that trait and 6 indicating high values (Gosling, Rentfrow, and Swann 2003). The results for Project Implicit are presented here; the Qualtrics Panels results are available in appendix B. I test the relationship between these characteristics and conflict orientation by examining the correlations between each of the five factors and the full CCS and the results of ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions of conflict orientation on each characteristic, holding the other four constant. As table 2.1 shows, the Pearson’s correlations between each personality trait and the scale are in the expected direction, and all are significant. Extraversion and agreeableness are correlated more strongly than the other three traits. These relationships hold in the regression results, as seen in figure 2.2. The higher an individual’s score on emotional stability, extraversion, or openness, the higher that individual’s predicted conflict orientation. In other words, an individual who is extraverted, open, or emotionally stable is more likely to be conflict-approaching, holding the other factors constant. The greater one’s score on agreeableness or conscientiousness, however, the lower the predicted CCS score, or the more likely one is to be conflict-avoidant. This effect is particularly strong for agreeableness, where there is a 15-point difference in the likely CCS score of individuals on the two extremes of the personality factor. These results are consistent with previous findings by psychologists and political scientists, suggesting that conflict orientation may mediate the relationship between these standard measures of personality, political communication, and political behavior.

TABLE 2.1 PEARSON’S CORRELATIONS BETWEEN BIG FIVE PERSONALITY TRAITS AND THE ADAPTED CCS

	CORRELATION: FULL CCS
Extroversion	0.22*
Agreeableness	−0.37*
Conscientiousness	−0.11*
Emotional stability	0.11*
Openness	0.12*

Source: Project Implicit.

* p < 0.01

FIGURE 2.2 Relationship between conflict orientation and the five personality factors.

Note: Linear predictions derived from bivariate regressions of personality dimensions on conflict orientation. Shaded areas represent 95% confidence intervals.

Source: Project Implicit.

In chapter 1, I suggested that conflict orientation has the potential to exacerbate existing inequalities in political participation. This argument rests on the assumption that conflict orientation is connected to political and demographic characteristics that shape political behavior. Specifically, I am concerned with the relationship between conflict orientation and age, gender, race, education, and income.

Years of political science research has found that these demographic characteristics are correlated with an individual’s likelihood of participating in politics, both by voting and by engaging in more effortful political acts such as donating money, working for a campaign, or protesting. Those in the highest income quintile are more likely to vote, more likely to donate their time, and substantially more likely to contribute financially to a political candidate than those in the lowest quintile (Brady, Verba, and Schlozman 1995; Schlozman, Verba, and Brady 2012; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995). Citizens are more likely to participate as they get older (with a drop-off as they approach the oldest 10 percent) and as they gain more education (Rosenstone and Hansen 2002; Verba et al. 1995). Finally, men are more likely to participate than women, and white citizens are more likely to participate than minorities (Schlozman, Burns, and Verba 1999; Verba, Burns, and Schlozman 1997; Verba et al. 1995).

According to psychological research, these demographic characteristics are also related to conflict orientation. Literature on aging and developmental psychology suggests that as people age, they experience fewer problems and tensions in their interpersonal relationships. They become less aggressive, more conciliatory, and are more capable of regulating their reactions to problems (Birditt et al. 2005; Blanchard-Fields and Cooper 2004; Carstensen, Isaacowitz, and Charles 1999). In other words, citizens should become more conflict-avoidant as they age.

Women are generally more conflict-avoidant than their male counterparts. Tannen suggests that the U.S. education system trains students to stake out one position in opposition to another, but also notes that this particular form of learning—directly criticizing or contradicting colleagues’ or authors’ perspectives—is not always as effective in teaching women as men. She concludes, “Clearly, women can learn to perform in adversarial ways…. [It is not written in stone that] individual women may not learn to practice and enjoy agonistic debate or that individual men may not recoil from it” (Tannen 1998). If conflict avoidance deters political participation, and women are also more likely to be conflict-avoidant, as Tannen suggests, then gender is one area in which we would expect conflict orientation to exacerbate existing political divides.

Tannen’s argument also suggests that education should be positively associated with conflict-approaching behavior. As people spend more time in an adversarial education system, they should become more comfortable with conflict, particularly conflict as expressed through academic practices like debate. However, increased education also serves to delineate social expectations for speech and tone, so that those with greater education may be less tolerant of incivility. A similarly ambivalent expectation holds for the relationship between conflict orientation and income. On one hand, income is something one acquires in adulthood, at which point one’s conflict orientation is relatively established. However, income is also closely related to education, so that if education influences conflict orientation in predictable ways, it is possible that income follows the same pattern.

Finally, research on the cultural differences in conflict orientation suggests that racial minorities in the United States may react differently to conflict than whites (Gudykunst and Ting-Toomey 1988; Leong, Wagner, and Tata 1995; Trimble et al. 1996). From this research, we would expect African American and Hispanic participants to be more conflict-avoidant than their white counterparts. This relationship, like that for gender, has the potential to exacerbate existing political inequalities.

TABLE 2.2 PEARSON’S CORRELATIONS: CONFLICT ORIENTATION AND DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS

	QUALTRICS PANELS (T1)	MTURK STUDY 1	SSI	PROJECT IMPLICIT	MTURK STUDY 2	GFK
Age	−.05	−0.11*	−0.11*	−0.08*	−0.09*	−0.11*
Female	−0.06	−0.25*	−0.24*	−0.30*	−0.28*	−0.25*
White	−0.08	−0.01	0.11*	−0.02	−0.01	−0.08
Education	−0.02	0.08*	0.15*	0.01	0.02	0.11
Income	0.05	0.07*	0.04	—	0.03	0.08

* p < 0.05

Pearson’s correlations from five of the six studies buttress these findings (see table 2.2). Linear predictions of the relationship between age and conflict orientation suggest that conflict orientation moves from an average score of −4 (slightly conflict-avoidant) for an 18-year-old to −6 (more conflict-avoidant) for a 65-year-old in the Project Implicit study. An examination of 18-year-old and 65-year-old Mechanical Turk Study 1 participants yields a similar difference in conflict orientation, with scores of −3.5 and −6.5, respectively. This change occurs for both men and women.

The correlations in these studies provide further evidence of the claim of gender differences, with the gender-CCS relationship matching only the strength of political interest and the personality trait agreeableness. A female Mechanical Turk Study 1 participant scores, on average, around a −7.2 on the full CCS, while her male counterpart scores −2.4. Similarly, male and female Project Implicit participants score −2.3 and −6.3, respectively, demonstrating that women in these studies are substantially more conflict-avoidant than men. For the most part, the adapted CCS used throughout this book mirrors the relationships with key demographic variables that have been found in other research.

CONFLICT ORIENTATION AND POLITICS

I am arguing that conflict orientation shapes individuals’ political behavior and patterns of media consumption in part by affecting individuals’ emotional responses to mediated incivility. However, one’s response to political incivility may depend on whom the rude language is directed toward. For example, Republican citizens may respond negatively to incivility when it is directed toward Republican politicians but find it entertaining when like-minded political commentators are uncivil toward their political opponents (Gervais 2015). Furthermore, this reaction could be stronger for those who strongly identify with a particular party than for weak identifiers. Given these possibilities, it is important to demonstrate that conflict orientation is distinct from certain political variables—specifically, partisan identification, the strength of that identification, and political interest.

Recent research into a trait-based understanding of ideology suggests that conservatism is strongly connected to an individual’s risk aversion or threat sensitivity (Jost et al. 2003). Although I do not simultaneously measure conflict orientation and risk aversion in any of the studies presented here, one could imagine that there is a relationship between the two, such that those who are conflict-avoidant are also more likely to be risk-averse or sensitive to threat. These hypothesized relationships, in turn, suggest that conflict avoidance could be correlated with conservatism and Republican partisan identification.

There is an additional argument to be made for the connection between conflict orientation and partisan strength. Those who are stronger partisans could be more likely to embrace conflict because they are more invested in a particular party or set of policy preferences. Incivility also appears to be more prevalent among media outlets that present strong partisan perspectives, suggesting that individuals who tune in to Hannity or Rush Limbaugh are accepting not only of their political perspective but also of the tone in which they deliver that perspective (Jamieson and Cappella 2008; Sunstein 2011).

However, there is little evidence of a relationship between ideology, partisan identification, or partisan strength and conflict orientation in any of my studies. Across all six samples, the full Conflict Communication Scale and the three political characteristics have essentially no correlation, as measured by the Pearson’s correlation coefficients displayed in table 2.3. This provides strong evidence that conflict orientation is not tied to these specific political characteristics.

TABLE 2.3 PEARSON’S CORRELATIONS BETWEEN CONFLICT ORIENTATION AND POLITICAL CHARACTERISTICS

	QUALTRICS PANELS (T1)	MTURK STUDY 1	SSI	PROJECT IMPLICIT	MTURK STUDY 2	GFK
Republican	0.06	−0.03	−0.01	0.01	−0.01	−0.04
PID Strength	−0.01	0.06	−0.01	−0.03	−0.03	−0.05
Pol. Interest	−0.08	0.23*	n/a	0.23*	0.17*	n/a
Conservative	0.02	0.03	−0.03	−0.04	−0.01	−0.02