Jarret Crawford and Sean Modri (CNJ) and Matt Motyl (Virginia): Bleeding-Heart Liberals and Hard-Hearted Conservatives: Subtle Political Dehumanization through Differential Attributions of Human Nature and Human Uniqueness Traits. Curtis Holland (Northeastern): An Empirical Analysis of the Structuration of American Ideologies About Economic Justice. David C. Kimball, Bryce Summary, and Eric C. Vorst (Missouri): Political Identify and Party Polarization in the American Electorate. From a series on political polarization at The Monkey Cage blog, Alan I. Abramowitz on how race and religion have polarized American voters; Hans Noel on how ideological activists constructed our polarized parties: Intellectuals and activists created modern liberalism and conservatism — then the parties followed suit; are Fox and MSNBC polarizing America? Today’s changing media environment mostly affects those voters who are already committed partisans; Morris P. Fiorina and Samuel Abrams, authors of Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation in American Politics, on how Americans aren’t polarized, just better sorted; if polarization is an American problem, why is it higher in other countries?; and can young voters break the cycle of polarization? To understand what might break a politics of polarization and stalemate, we need to look to the youngest voters. Henry Farrell on the not-quite-as-depressing psychological theory that explains Washington: Partisan blinkers can have benefits in the right context. Andrew Gelman on political values and scientific attitudes: People feel they have coherent attitudes, even though correlations are low when you consider specific survey responses.
