This post is by Manuel Almagro (University of Valencia). Here he presents his new book, The Rise of Polarization (Routledge 2025).
When I was young, I used to think that doing things you don’t like or that don’t represent you was always wrong. I also believed that all politicians were cut from the same cloth. If asked, I could give reasons for those beliefs. But I hadn’t arrived at them by carefully considering arguments or evidence; they just felt perfectly natural and obviously true, given my experiences and environment at the time.
Today, I wouldn’t hold such beliefs. Is that because I’ve been exposed to arguments against them? Not really. I’ve changed through living, talking, and sharing experiences with people who see things differently. Friction with others, especially those who care about us, is essential for reflecting on what’s right, how we should live, and what we should believe. The experiences I’ve gone through have made me more receptive to the pull of certain narratives I once would have dismissed.
Since the late 2000s, however, many contemporary democracies have increasingly faced something that challenges the positive consequences of having friction with others, at least in the political domain. Public opinion has become sharply divided, and friction with “the other side” rarely feels productive. Even people we care about have become “the others.” In 2018, I went to my parents’ house for a family meeting and couldn’t believe what some of my relatives were saying on certain political issues. They were suddenly “the others.”
The most widely accepted explanation of what’s happening in contemporary democracies holds that societies have become polarized—specifically, affectively polarized. The standard view emphasizes two key factors: partisanship and emotions. Simply put, citizens, typically “the others”, are increasingly attached to particular political identities, which makes them to have positive feelings toward the in-group and negative feelings toward the out-group.
This view favors a diagnosis according to which people, usually “the others”, are epistemically and cognitively deficient: they no longer think critically or base their political views on arguments and evidence. They don’t even care about truth. Citizens, the story goes, just want their side to win.
It’s easy to get swept up in that story. In 2018, I felt that some of my relatives, like nearly half the population, were shielded against reason. Their views didn’t seem to be based on arguments. I had forgotten that I didn’t need arguments to believe that doing things you don’t like is wrong, or that all politicians are the same, just as I didn’t need them to stop believing such things. How do others become “the others”? Are arguments and evidence relevant for that?
The book argues that both the two-dimensional view of affective polarization and the diagnosis it favors are mistaken. Citizens are not epistemically deficient, and the role that arguments and evidence play, or are assumed to play, in shaping political beliefs is often idealized. To make this case, the book explores three key issues: the contingent origins of many of our beliefs, the influence of divisive narratives, and the distinction between abstract and concrete judgments.
More specifically, it argues that affective polarization exploits ordinary belief-forming mechanisms. It involves the mainstreaming of certain ideas, framed within divisive narratives and promoted by political actors, that people embrace with high credence in the abstract because it is rational for them to do so. This way of conceiving affective polarization has important implications for detecting and intervening in polarization processes.
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| Book cover |
When I was young, I used to think that doing things you don’t like or that don’t represent you was always wrong. I also believed that all politicians were cut from the same cloth. If asked, I could give reasons for those beliefs. But I hadn’t arrived at them by carefully considering arguments or evidence; they just felt perfectly natural and obviously true, given my experiences and environment at the time.
Today, I wouldn’t hold such beliefs. Is that because I’ve been exposed to arguments against them? Not really. I’ve changed through living, talking, and sharing experiences with people who see things differently. Friction with others, especially those who care about us, is essential for reflecting on what’s right, how we should live, and what we should believe. The experiences I’ve gone through have made me more receptive to the pull of certain narratives I once would have dismissed.
Since the late 2000s, however, many contemporary democracies have increasingly faced something that challenges the positive consequences of having friction with others, at least in the political domain. Public opinion has become sharply divided, and friction with “the other side” rarely feels productive. Even people we care about have become “the others.” In 2018, I went to my parents’ house for a family meeting and couldn’t believe what some of my relatives were saying on certain political issues. They were suddenly “the others.”
The most widely accepted explanation of what’s happening in contemporary democracies holds that societies have become polarized—specifically, affectively polarized. The standard view emphasizes two key factors: partisanship and emotions. Simply put, citizens, typically “the others”, are increasingly attached to particular political identities, which makes them to have positive feelings toward the in-group and negative feelings toward the out-group.
This view favors a diagnosis according to which people, usually “the others”, are epistemically and cognitively deficient: they no longer think critically or base their political views on arguments and evidence. They don’t even care about truth. Citizens, the story goes, just want their side to win.
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| Manuel Almagro |
It’s easy to get swept up in that story. In 2018, I felt that some of my relatives, like nearly half the population, were shielded against reason. Their views didn’t seem to be based on arguments. I had forgotten that I didn’t need arguments to believe that doing things you don’t like is wrong, or that all politicians are the same, just as I didn’t need them to stop believing such things. How do others become “the others”? Are arguments and evidence relevant for that?
The book argues that both the two-dimensional view of affective polarization and the diagnosis it favors are mistaken. Citizens are not epistemically deficient, and the role that arguments and evidence play, or are assumed to play, in shaping political beliefs is often idealized. To make this case, the book explores three key issues: the contingent origins of many of our beliefs, the influence of divisive narratives, and the distinction between abstract and concrete judgments.