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Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona,
Barcelona, Spain
Correspondence
Daniel Balinhas, Departament de Ciència
Política i Dret Públic, Facultat de Ciències
Polítiques i Sociologia, Edifici B, Despatx
B3b/-113, Universitat Autònoma de
Barcelona, P.C. 08193 Bellaterra (Cerdanyola
del Vallès), Barcelona, Spain.
Email: daniel.balinas@uab.cat
Funding information
Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and
Universities, Grant/Award Number: FPI
doctoral scholarship
Abstract
The study of political polarization, in both its ideological and
its affective expressions, has garnered significantly more
interest over the last years. But despite recent research on
the conceptualization, measurement, causes, and conse-
quences of this socio-political phenomenon, and some
tentative interventions to mitigate it, relevant new avenues
remain surprisingly underdeveloped. Indeed, scholarship in
the field of political polarization, mainly in the case of affec-
tive polarization, frequently uses cognitivist approaches to
make sense of the growing antipathy between different
social and political groups. However, the bulk of this work
seems to overlook valuable insights into the psychology of
intergroup conflict, stereotyping, prejudice reduction, and
discourse studies. The aim of this paper is to underline the
main gaps in the political polarization literature, to subse-
quently argue how knowledge linked to the tradition of
critical social psychology can help in filling them. Ultimately,
the article aims to contribute to the psychosocial study of
political polarization and to the design, if necessary, of inter-
ventions to counter its detrimental consequences.
KEYWORDS
affective polarization, critical social psychology, de-polarization
interventions, intergroup relations, prejudice, political polarization
REVIEW ARTICLE
Bringing critical social psychology to the study of
political polarization
Daniel Balinhas
DOI: 10.1111/spc3.12721
Received: 18 July 2022 Revised: 11 October 2022 Accepted: 9 November 2022
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This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use,
distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
© 2022 The Authors. Social and Personality Psychology Compass published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Soc Personal Psychol Compass. 2022;e12721.
https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12721
wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/spc3
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Political polarization is currently one of the main concerns in the field of social and behavioral sciences. Whipped up
by certain members of their respective political elites (Somer et al., 2021), different societies worldwide seem to have
undertaken a path of political conflict recrudescence, intergroup ideological distance, and growing intergroup animus.
There is a fear on the part of pundits and scholars that the dynamics of polarization lead societies to legitimize politi-
cians' illiberal tendencies, support autocratic leaders, and/or break down certain democratic norms, procedures, and
checks and balances (Finkel et al., 2020; Kingzette et al., 2021). This fear is justified by recent events such as Brexit,
the assault on the US Capitol, the growing support garnered by far-right parties worldwide, or the reaction of some
citizens against immigration and the reception of refugees in the EU.
The growing literature on political polarization stems explicitly or implicitly from this preoccupation, as can be
seen in recent contributions on “de-polarization interventions” (e.g., Levendusky, 2018). This means that ultimately,
the raison d'être of studying political polarization today is the aspiration to counter the current trends of tribalism, high
levels of distrust, loathing, and confrontation between sociopolitical groups.
Stating the potential applications of this scholarship on polarization helps us better grasp the strengths and
weaknesses of the field. This paper proposes that insights from critical social psychology can help address different
shortcomings in the literature and delineate a richer framework for the study of political polarization. The paper first
argues that the limits of the extensive literature on polarization stem from its exclusive adherence to (orthodox)
cognitive psychology. Second, although Social Identity Theory (SIT) (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) is widely used as a frame-
work, some aspects of this integrative theory receive undue attention, whilst others are systematically overlooked.
And third, the polarization literature has not considered further advances in the psychology of prejudice or made
critical reflections on the contact hypothesis.
Throughout the article, it is shown that these three shortcomings work together, producing different consequences
mainly related to the measurement, causes and consequences of polarization, and also to interventions that aim to
foster social change. Moreover, mainstream approaches to political polarization, by trying to be neutral and value-free
and by avoiding the study of meaning-making processes, might carry ideological implications such as the defense of
the Ideological Symmetry Thesis, 1 on the one hand, and the legitimization of a highly unequal status quo, on the other.
Political polarization is an umbrella concept, which comprises growing ideological and policy-based differences
between political groups and the affective distance between them (i.e., affective polarization, hereafter AP). Table 1 in
the Appendix shows the different dimensions of polarization (see also Lees & Cikara, 2021). The possible causal rela-
tionships between them are part of an open debate that has generated mixed evidence (Lelkes, 2021; Mason, 2018;
Wagner, 2021; Webster & Abramowitz, 2017). What seems clearer is that the different dimensions are indeed related
(Reiljan & Ryan, 2021) and that AP might potentially have detrimental consequences on intergroup relations and
political tolerance (Martherus et al., 2019).
AP has been defined as the emotional gap between what individuals consider to be their in-party or parties and
what they consider to be their out-party or parties (Iyengar et al., 2012). More recently, AP has also been concep-
tualized between different party supporters, social groups, and opinion-based groups (Harteveld, 2021; Hobolt
et al., 2021; Simon et al., 2019). The most frequently used tools to measure it are like-dislike scales and feeling
thermometers (see Appendix).
Measuring dislike between political groups and its evolution provides us with valuable information. Nevertheless,
like and dislike constitute a broad-brush assessment of intergroup relations and conflict. In fact, doubts about the
measures, on one hand, and the consequences of this “dislike”, on the other, are increasingly frequent (Broockman
et al., 2022; Druckman & Levendusky, 2019). Because of this, refining the quantitative measures of AP to disentangle
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“like” and “dislike” from stronger emotions such as fear, disgust or hate would arguably be an important addition to
the literature. But generally, treating dislike or negative emotions as synonyms of prejudice without interest in their
meaning (what does it mean to feel dislike/fear a concrete group in a particular context?) constitutes a shortcoming
of current approaches to polarization.
Along with these measurement issues, the causes posited for AP frequently stem from an adherence to orthodox
cognitive psychology and a lack of importance attributed to the context and history of intergroup relations. The next
section presents the causes of AP that are often mentioned when approaching the phenomenon from a cognitivist
perspective.
Table 1 offers different examples, from leading journals in both psychology and political science, which show that AP
tends to be rooted in universal perceptual limitations and/or the perceptive biases coming from individuals' identifi-
cation with a political party or group, leading citizens to motivated reasoning.
Within this view, group stereotypes are envisaged as “pictures in our heads” (Lippmann, 1922), and preju-
dice is envisaged as unjustified (that is, not grounded in evidence) negative pictures of a given social group or, in
Allport's (1954) words, “thinking ill of others without sufficient warrant” (p.6). This tradition conceptualizes prejudice
as a phenomenon that has to do with the way individuals process information that comes from the real world. People
receive an overwhelming amount of daily information which is impossible to process in all its complexity, so they
need to rely on heuristics and processes of information reduction such as categorization. In other words, humans are
“cognitive missers” (Fiske & Taylor, 1991) who cannot deal with the complex nature of the social world, so we (over)
simplify and distort information about the world and the different social groups that inhabit it.
In this way, individuals do not perceive the outside social world as it really is but filtered through these limitations,
which might eventually lead them to misperceive the attributes of social categories. Thus, the gap between what the
biased perceiver thinks about an outgroup and the outgroup's real characteristics would be the magnitude of the
bias. Following this rationale, cognitivist approaches locate the causes of polarization in automatic, inherent, and
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Fernbach and Van Boven (2022) “A major challenge is that several basic cognitive and affective processes push
toward polarization, and people are unaware of how these unwanted
processes shape their own views. Behavioral science has an important role
to play in diagnosing and addressing the underlying mechanisms.” (p. 1)
Ahler and Sood (2018) “Republicans, Democrats, and independents, all overestimate the share of
party-stereotypical groups in both the major parties. Partisan differences,
although statistically significant, are relatively small compared to the
overall magnitude of these misperceptions.” (p. 979)
Iyengar et al. (2019) “What, if anything, can be done to ameliorate affective polarization? While
efforts here are at best nascent, several approaches have shown promise.
All of them work to reduce the biases generated by partisanship's division
of the world into an in group and an out group.” (p. 139)
Lees and Cikara (2020) “Our findings highlight a consistent, pernicious inaccuracy in social
perception, along with how these inaccurate perceptions relate to
negative attributions towards out-groups (…) This suggests that there may
be many domains of intergroup interaction where inaccurate group meta-
perceptions could potentially diminish the likelihood of cooperation and,
instead, exacerbate the possibility of conflict. However, our findings also
highlight a straightforward manner in which simply informing individuals
of their inaccurate beliefs can reduce these negative attributions.” (p. 285)
Conceptions of the drivers and necessary interventions to ameliorate affective polarization
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inescapable perceptive biases that are accentuated by a division of the political camp between political in-groups and
out-groups. Parties, ideologies, or opinion groups can act as social groups which provide citizens with a lens through
which they approach reality, triggering in-group favoritism and intergroup bias (Tajfel et al., 1971).
A powerful critique of the conceptualization of prejudice made above has recently (re)gained relevance: this is the
kernel-of-truth approach (Jussim et al., 2009). It states that far from (mis)perceiving other groups' attributes, people
often hold stereotypes about them that correspond to how these groups really are. This research highlights the limi-
tations of the theoretical apparatus of the previous tradition, using its own terminology. Nevertheless, this approach
suffers from the same shortcomings: the epistemological issue of how we can objectively define what group members
are like in reality, along with the ethical issue of assuming that there are group stereotypes that might be “true”
(Stangor, 1995). Both approaches, in trying to see the level of correspondence between the stereotypes in people's
minds and reality, overlook the social origins of stereotypes, their contextual and contested nature, as well as their
situated consequences and their relationships to wider power structures (Dixon, 2017). As classic social psychological
theories started to outline, stereotypes are much more than pictures in our heads.
Sherif et al. (1961) illustrated that the context of competition (or cooperation) between groups conditions how
the groups perceive, feel, and think about each other, whereas Tajfel's added cognitive and motivational factors
explained some blind spots in Sheriff's Realistic Conflict Theory. The SIT aimed at understanding why different groups
in positions of clear subordination usually have positive attitudes towards the privileged out-group, tend to derogate
their own group, and why they do not always opt for challenging group inequalities.
The polarization literature conceptualizes prejudice as negativity towards the out-group, which comes from
biased stereotypic views of the opponents (fostered by party elites, the media, and informational bubbles) and which
arises between “equal status groups” 2 (Moore-Berg et al., 2020). Consequently, polarization research tends to use
the SIT framework, but stripped of its several caveats on social change and social mobility. Here we develop these
points more thoroughly:
1. SIT recognizes the existence of differences in power and status between social
groups. The theory focuses closely on historically disadvantaged groups' search for a positive social identity, as
well as the different strategies that individuals, as group members, can follow to challenge their social position
with respect to privileged groups (Billig, 2002). In this sense, SIT explains different ways in which individuals
that belong to (disadvantaged) social groups can accept living with differences in social status, as well as when
the circumstances foster the desire of these groups to revert this unequal status through social competition.
Indeed, in a context of an intergroup struggle for status, when part of a dominant group perceives its superiority
as legitimate, its members will act in a discriminatory manner if the subordinate group makes attempts to change
intergroup relations (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Conversely, when the status differences are seen by both groups as
legitimate, previous studies have found evidence of positive evaluations made by subordinate group members
when they consider privileged groups and vice versa. 3
2. Accepting status differences as legitimate is common in
contexts characterized by long-term inequality and power differences between groups, where warm and pater-
nalistic attitudes make relationships based on the transfer of resources from subordinate to dominant groups
more acceptable and sustainable for the latter (Jackman, 1994). In these cases, the absence of conflict or group
polarization might lead to social harmony, while maintaining an unequal society (Reicher, 2012). That is, positivity
here would be hiding and sweetening relations of domination and undermining the willingness of subordinate
groups to fight against group-based inequality (Wright & Lubensky, 2009), evincing that the relationship between
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positivity/harmony and negativity/polarization is complex. This association between negativity and prejudice also
falls apart when we observe the case of modern, more subtle forms of sexism (Glick & Fiske, 2001) in which
ambivalence or overall positivity operates to fuel and sustain group prejudice.
3. The way we think of
intergroup relations and like-dislike dynamics is inextricably linked to the history of intergroup relations, the actual
context of competition, and the dynamics of power preservation on the part of historically privileged groups.
Indeed, SIT establishes that one of the possible ways for subordinate groups to subvert status differences is
through engaging in social competition; that is, confrontation with the high-status group, which might lead to
conflict and antagonism between the dominant and the unprivileged groups (Tajfel & Turner, 1979, p. 44). This
aspect implies the need to avoid seeing polarization as necessarily pernicious in itself; literature on collective
action actually underlines the role played by negative emotions such as anger in fostering disadvantaged groups'
democratic struggles for equality and recognition (Simon, 2020; Van Zomeren et al., 2008).
Polarization research tends to consider that negative feelings are the result of irrational and biased percep-
tions, which consequently, must be alleviated to restore consensus, compromise, and ultimately, to end the conflicts.
Congruent with this reification of harmony, de-polarization interventions tend to be based on de-biasing individuals'
perceptions and meta-perceptions, providing citizens with truthful information about others, as well as fostering
positive contact between group members. Building on these three points, the next section reviews the consequences
of these systematic flaws.
Theorizing polarization as a phenomenon that takes place between equal-status groups favors adhering to perspec-
tives that try to explain political conflict without reference to the history of intergroup relations. From this perspec-
tive, claims about the Ideological Symmetry Thesis become plausible, theoretically developed, and empirically tested.
This thesis often arrives at (arduously difficult to defend) conclusions such as the following, as described by van
Prooijen (2021, p. 7):
“Research (…) has revealed that the high levels of prejudice commonly observed at the political right towards a
range of societal subgroups (e.g., Muslims; ethnic minorities; feminists) is associated with the belief that these groups
largely vote left-wing. This line of research also has revealed high levels of prejudice at the political left, however,
specifically towards societal groups commonly assumed to vote right-wing (e.g., Christians; business people; the
military; for an overview, see Brandt et al., 2014).”
Badaan and Jost (2020) have contested this thesis. They offer data on hate crimes in the US, showing that the
crimes perpetrated by members of privileged groups against disadvantaged groups are vastly greater in number than
crimes perpetrated by the latter against the former. If hate crimes are envisaged as expressions of (extreme) prejudice,
measures based purely on negativity are not capturing what is essential. Data based on like-dislike scales seem to lead
us to overrate the symmetry of prejudice and depart from the real-world dynamics of conflict.
Secondly, equating prejudice with negativity also has conceptual and ideological consequences. On the one
hand, we overlook that we can find manifestations of dislike or disapproval, which cannot be considered prejudice
(Verkuyten et al., 2019). Similarly, we de-problematize relations of inequality and domination between groups if they
are characterized by warm feelings. On the other, it is worth noting that the acritical search for social harmony, and
the conceptualization of polarization as intrinsically negative, might play the role of sustaining and legitimizing the
status quo. Conflict can indeed pave the way for pernicious dynamics, the tribalization of political identities, and
even violence. But by exclusively underlining the destructive side of polarization, an unconditional search for social
harmony may actually hamper positive social change towards more egalitarian and inclusive societies. Conflict can
also fuel positive social change, along with the development of more just and—consequently—more stable societies
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(Mouffe, 2005; Simon, 2020; Stavrakakis, 2018; Wright & Baray, 2012). New developments in critical social psychol-
ogy open up promising avenues for addressing the different shortcomings that have been underlined so far.
Self-Categorization Theory (SCT) (Turner et al., 1987) states that stereotyping is not just a cognitive process, but
also a sociopolitical one (Oakes et al., 1994). Stereotyping would be a context-sensitive collective and collaborative
process that, at a particular time and place, informs us about the current state of a group's life within an evolving
system of intergroup relations and that can be used either to (re)produce social inequality and legitimize it or to prob-
lematize it and contest it (Condor, 2006; Haslam et al., 2002).
Stereotypes are shared collective constructions embedded in a context, which carry a history of inter-group
relations, and at the same time are collective tools used to mobilize particular versions of how a group is, and how
its members ought to be treated (Tileagă, 2014). These insights remove stereotyping and prejudice from individuals'
heads and locate these phenomena in the terrain of motivation, ideology, power, and language. Likewise, they spring
directly towards conceptions of attitudes not as fixed mental identities, but as everyday descriptions of an attitudinal
object (in which individuals elaborate questions of blame, accountability, fact construction, and agency) which can be
examined through text and talk, as theorized by discursive psychology (Edwards & Potter, 1993).
This conception leads us to reformulate some assumptions about the individual perceiver. As Billig has argued
(1987), individuals are not just irrational beings that uncritically and thoughtlessly process all the information they
receive, and always act as victims of their limitations, which are marked by processes of categorization and gener-
alization. In Billig's view, individuals think and argue with ideology, and they are just as capable of particularizing as
of generalizing, as well as being able to adapt their discourses to avoid being labeled as prejudiced and use common
sense arguments to both legitimize and oppose relations of power and dominance.
Stereotypes take part in wider belief systems that update through time depending on sociopolitical conjunctures.
The ways of legitimizing a group's low status have changed substantially. Nowadays, explanations based on biology,
genes, or nature are socially unacceptable for most people in western societies; instead, the use of the liberal tenets
of equality, freedom, or arguments based on hard work and meritocracy to sustain (prejudiced) beliefs hampering the
designing of policies to redress inequality is common (Gibson & Booth, 2018). In fact, prejudiced accounts of racial-
ized and impoverished people are often carefully crafted by people and policymakers as part of broader discourses of
citizenship, and particular versions of place attachment (Di Masso, 2012; Di Masso et al., 2014) that might be used
to legitimize some ideological and material practices, such as the spatial relocation and social exclusion of certain
groups (Manzo, 2014).
This continuous updating points to the slippery nature of stereotypes, and to the public debate on the shifting
boundaries differentiating the prejudiced from the unprejudiced (Durrheim, 2022; Goodman & Burke, 2010), and
evinces that prejudice, far from being a clear and static concept within psychology, constitutes a political judgment
(Drury, 2012). This partially explains the growing acceptability of far-right discourses, as they usually re-draw the
boundary between what is prejudiced and what is not, even trying to depict themselves as victims of prejudice and
of the tyranny of political correctness (Balinhas, 2020; Schröter, 2019).
Thus, it would be difficult to define polarization as merely a consequence of flawed perceptions, leading to biased
mental representations of out-group members. Polarization, in fact, constitutes the very struggle for constructing
and fixing a hegemonic version of how a concrete group really is, and how this group should be treated. Therefore,
drawing a static red line between the prejudiced and the unprejudiced and between accurate and biased perceptions
does not do justice either to the malleability of stereotypes or to the way individuals argue, contest, and discursively
elaborate truth claims (Burke & Demasi, 2019) about what being prejudiced means. Rather than choosing to ignore
this complexity, researchers should try to unravel it (Potter & Wetherell, 1987).
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The proposal to broaden the scope of work on political polarization implies some core assumptions:
First, we should assume that the processes of stereotype formation are not just matters of perception but are
also means for political action. Individuals do not perceive social reality as an object that is totally independent of
the perceiver; instead, they interpret and actively construct this reality through rhetorical and dialogical processes,
creating identity versions of “myself”, “us” and “them” that favor some political narratives and undermine others.
This first assumption points to the importance of studying language and meaning-making processes. Trying
to grasp “partisan prejudice”, political polarization, and the implications of dislike and negative emotions between
groups requires collecting people's opinions about political groups, in order to delve into what these affective evalu-
ations mean for them. People's “descriptions” about certain controversial matters will bring to the fore questions of
blame, accountability, and identity-construction processes (Wetherell & Potter, 1993). As people talk about political
others, we can observe a picture of the ongoing dialogical process of stereotype formation and (re)production, as well
as the ideological consequences of particular group descriptions and how they fit with wider patterns of beliefs and
ideological traditions.
Finally, as the applied consequence of a critical turn in the way we approach polarization, researchers may find
it useful to think beyond contact, de-biasing, and the promotion of superordinate identities, since these sorts of
interventions, when applied indiscriminately to all kinds of intergroup conflicts, might actually have negative conse-
quences (see Mckeown & Dixon, 2017) that will be depicted in the next section. Subsequently, to illustrate these
three points, the reader is provided with a contextualized, real-world example.
Promoting superordinate identities (Levendusky, 2018), providing citizens with “truthful” information about the
out-groups (Druckman et al., 2022) or inter-party contact (Wojcieszak & Warner, 2020) have all proved to be success-
ful ways of reducing levels of AP. These contributions expand the considerable evidence that supports contact as an
effective means of reducing prejudice (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). Nevertheless, literature on de-polarization strat-
egies has not addressed the potential negative effects of these sorts of interventions. In this sense, research has
underlined the paradoxical effects that contact interventions can have on subordinate groups—sometimes actually
weakening these groups' willingness to combat group-based inequalities—(Çakal et al., 2011). In addition, intergroup
contact does not always turn out to be positive, as the prevalence of everyday negative contact experiences shows
(Dixon & McKeown, 2021).
To tackle these concerns, polarization scholarship might benefit from considering insights from the literature that
has examined under what circumstances, and through which mechanisms contact interventions do tend to work and
succeed in increasing privileged groups' support for equality without decreasing unprivileged groups' desire to foster
social change (Hässler et al., 2021). That is, the literature has reported benefits of intergroup contact in which partici-
pants talk about their status differences, rather than contact in which they talk about group similarities or differences
in culture (Hasan-Ashli et al., 2019; Tropp et al., 2021).
As the Integrated Contact-Collective Action Model (ICCAM) (Hässler et al., 2021) has contended, different
conditions might maximize or minimize the compatibility of contact with collective action. In a similar vein, previous
research has found that, whilst promoting in-group identification and pride may be positive for unprivileged groups
(Leach & Zeineddine, 2022), strong identification with a privileged in-group might lead people to act collectively
to improve the status of the advantaged (Hasbún López et al., 2019). But generally, the positive effects of contact
have systematically been clearer for privileged groups and have remained unclear for subaltern groups (Tropp &
Pettigrew, 2005), an aspect that should lead us to think beyond interventions based only on intergroup contact.
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In conflicts sustained by long-term inequalities, a collective action model of social change that tries to foster
unprivileged groups' fights for equality can be effective. Different historical examples, such as the abolition of New
World slavery, civil rights reforms in the US, and the end of apartheid in South Africa, have taught us the essential
role played by the mobilization of subordinate groups to move toward more egalitarian societies (Dixon et al., 2012).
Contact and de-biasing might also not be the most adequate way to deal with conflicts that involve groups with
scarcely compatible moral values and worldviews (Verkuyten et al., 2019); at times, it might be more useful to attempt
to foster acceptance of other people's way of life according to their worldviews and values, even if we do not like
them, since dislike or disapproval cannot be equated with prejudice.
Researchers can examine general, structural measures in form of socioeconomic and integration policies which
have been shown to reduce prejudice (Kende et al., 2022). Similarly, as economic inequality and unemployment might
be causes of AP (Gidron et al., 2020), these sorts of interventions might well reduce it. Nonetheless, context-situated
and tailor-made responses to the idiosyncratic aspects of each political conflict are necessary, since the context and
the characteristics of the targets of each intervention play an essential role in how effective an intervention will be
(Bar-Tal & Hameiri, 2020; Dixon & Levine, 2012).
party in Spain
The following two extracts are taken from a Vox rally in Madrid, on 8 March 2020 (International Women's Day). They
illustrate the conflict between the Spanish feminist movement and the party. The event (Vistalegre III) represented
an attempt to offer an alternative to the yearly demonstrations led by feminist organizations.
1. Extract 1: “Spaniards: what used to be a right has today become an obligation (…) In the face of the social and
national emergency that Spain is suffering, in the face of the attack on the family and on life, dissent from the poli-
cies that have dragged us here is the only alternative, it is the only option. Spaniards, the progre 4 consensus, would
like us, ‘the women of the alternative’, not to be here. They would want us to be at their demonstration (…) That
would be their great victory. Silencing the brave ones who stand up to their steamroller like… well… as they have
managed to with all the other parties. (…) Because radical feminism wants us, yes, but it wants us to be submissive
to their ideological agenda. It wants us, yes. But it wants us to support totalitarian laws that separate us from men
and break the fundamental principle of constitutional equality. They want us, yes, but in silence. Silent in the face
of sexist discrimination in other cultures, such as Islam! (…) Because what radical feminism wants, ultimately, is to
take away our freedom to think, the freedom to act autonomously. Take away our freedom to be the women we
want to be. With no impositions, no quotas, in total equality to men”. (Rocío Monasterio-Vistalegre III)
2. Extract 2: “Men do not rape, that's what rapists do. Men do not kill, that's what murderers do. Men do not mistreat
others, that's what abusers do. And men do not humiliate others, that's what cowards do! And today we are
here, on March 8, alone, the only alternative, to say loud and clear: the rapist is not you because you are a man”
(Macarena Olona-Vistalegre III)
Monasterio and Olona's arguments are constructed in rhetorical opposition to the discourses of both the femi-
nist movement and some left-wing parties. The speaker, in the first extract, rhetorically constructs herself and her
supporters as the only ones who resist, whilst all the other political parties have conformed to the “progre(ssive)
consensus”. In contrast, she depicts “radical feminism” as a totalitarian movement aimed at stealing women's freedom,
forcing them to submit, silencing “us” and demanding support for totalitarian laws. Through this rhetorical move, the
speaker locates the in-group as the underdogs, those fighting against the status quo, the victims of authoritarianist
forces that impose a concrete way of thinking which stops the in-group from being “the women we want to be”.
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Monasterio's intervention constructs a particular understanding of the terms “equality” and “freedom”. Free-
dom appears in the text as the absence of coercion (to think, to act autonomously, to be the women they want to
be) exercised by institutions and law (without impositions, without quotas). This conception of freedom is akin to
neoliberal formulations of this principle, by which freedom would mean the absence of state/institutional coercion in
individuals' initiatives and thoughts, meaning that any legislation that tries to regulate aspects of social (or economic)
life is often seen as tyrannical, caricatured as “political correctness”, and aims to grant some form of advantage to the
undeserving (Brown, 2019). Consequently, equality is a principle that is taken up and brandished against policies that
are actually designed to redress inequality.
The second extract constitutes a rhetorical piece that individualizes and particularizes (Billig, 1991) violence
against women, negating the sociohistorical, material, ideological, and institutionalized practices through which
women have systematically been put in a subaltern position with respect to men. This element (re)produces the
narratives of Hayekian and Thatcherian neoliberalism, according to which “the social” 5 does not even exist. The
discursive eradication of the social allows the far right to neglect the influence of exploitation, colonialism, and
patriarchy in producing inequalities that persist in the current arrangements of power, status, and access to material
resources. Olona's words then situate the cause of gender-based violence in the individual predispositions of deviant
individuals, and counter-argue feminist accounts that depict gender-based violence as a social problem with historical
roots that extend to the present. Importantly, this interpretative repertoire might be applied to almost any eman-
cipatory project which theorizes power beyond “coercion” and tries to grasp the different social powers producing
inequality and subjugation. The extract ends with a statement that again individualizes the problem of gender-based
violence, while closing the door to men questioning their position of privilege.
The extracts illustrate how political actors construct identities, social relations, group life, subjectivities, and
other people (Wetherell, 2015, p. 316). These aspects have been exemplified in two pieces of elite discourse, but they
can also be found in the mass media and in citizens' reasoning. In fact, everyday conflicts at university campuses or
different places of social life revolve around similar issues.
The speakers' utterances hardly resemble the living image of a bigot, two irrational prejudiced minds whose
biases lead them to misperceive feminists' real characteristics. On the contrary, they diffuse carefully crafted opin-
ions about feminists and feminism within a rhetorical context characterized by two related phenomena: the Spanish
institutions becoming increasingly more attuned to women's rights, and the consolidation of the Spanish feminist
movement as one of the most vigorous in Europe, as the recent massive feminist mobilizations have shown. In this
sense, Monasterio and Olona are not explicitly arguing for inequality. Quite the opposite: they portray themselves as
the ones defending “real” equality. They elaborate on the idea that feminists' demands have gone too far, a common
argument in “modern” forms of sexism (Swim et al., 1995).
These discourses constitute a form of social action, which justify Vox's opposition to supporting the yearly insti-
tutional acts on November 25 th, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and ques-
tion a law that has generated a consensus over the years (the Integrated Law Against Gender-Based Violence), to
subsequently propose terms such as Intra-familiar violence, alienating gender-based violence as a specific social
phenomenon to dilute it into another nonspecific form of violence. Besides, rhetorically constructing laws to prevent
gender-based violence as being totalitarian, and to claim that feminism is a movement that is trying to curtail freedom
and criminalize men allows Vox's representatives to put themselves in the subject position (Parker, 2002) of dissi-
dents, as anti-status quo, and as the victims of prejudice.
It is worth noting that Vox's discursive actions play the role of reinforcing or even turning the subject posi-
tion of victims into a reality. And here is where more blatantly prejudiced utterances, different from those in the
extracts, play a key role, evincing that political actors tend to mix hostile and benevolent forms of prejudice (Glick &
Fiske, 2001). That is, some of Vox's discursive practices are what often produce the material reality of Vox members
being publicly reprimanded, and some citizens often trying to dynamite public events in which Vox representatives
are participating. An example is when some people impeded the regional parliamentary member Alicia Rubio's partici-
pation in an event in Madrid, days after she said, among other things, that “feminism is cancer”. Similarly, citizens from
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Barcelona's “El Raval” neighborhood protested against the presence of two well-known figures of the party after one
of them compared their neighborhood to a “multicultural dunghill”. In these cases, Vox's discourse-as-action (namely
offering highly prejudiced accounts of unprivileged social groups) is what leads political groups to organize material/
spatialized collective responses (which are sometimes even violent), that are subsequently framed by the party as
examples of lack of political tolerance and illegitimate limitations of free speech (Durrheim, 2020).
This very brief analysis offers a more nuanced picture of political polarization than cognitivist attempts, which
tend to locate partisan polarization inside the heads of citizens and within their perceptive and meta-perceptive
biases. Furthermore, the analysis warns us of the perils of taking debates on free speech or censorship as examples
that confirm the Ideological Symmetry Thesis, since these debates are often raised by political actors whose aim is to
deny group-based inequality. If scholars accept the “non-ideological” idea that intolerance is symmetrical, we would,
in part, be accepting a conception of free speech, freedom, and prejudice stripped of a conceptualization of the social,
partially aligning our views of these concepts with those of political actors firmly committed to the legitimation of
inequality and exclusion. We would also be accepting a way of building a social psychology that separates the psycho-
logical from the social, which omits studying the social and ideological processes by which subjects, their positions,
status, and identities are constituted (Hook, 2004).
Based on our example, different depolarization interventions beyond simple contact can be proposed, consid-
ering the characteristics of the conflict, the targets of the intervention, and the context and history of intergroup
relations. 6 First, interventions that work with the concepts of hegemonic and new masculinities as a way to engage
men in building gender equity (Jewkes et al., 2015) might be useful. A focus on the uneasy demands that gender
roles also place on men might be useful for people who are particularly reluctant to talk about gender inequalities.
This intervention could be a first step to take before initiating interventions based on contact to talk about group
differences in power, or trying more confrontational models (Maoz, 2012). Among them, a softer version would be
narrative-storytelling interventions aimed at visualizing the experiences of conflict, in this case, of men and women,
as a means to favor empathy, but without ignoring power asymmetries. Less soft versions of the confrontational
models would lead us to interventions that foster intergroup contact in order to discuss and challenge group inequal-
ity, as well as interventions with the unprivileged group aimed at group empowerment. Lastly, as a general approach
for conceptualizing and challenging privilege around gender issues and beyond them, there are examples of Partic-
ipatory Action Research that connect inequality to circles of dispossession and privilege, with the aim of engaging
relatively privileged people to act against inequality (Stoudt et al., 2012).
Critical psychology is concerned with uncovering the ways in which psychological knowledge can contribute to gener-
ating and extending existing power relations (Parker, 1990). This article has argued how knowledge generated on the
topic of political polarization has been characterized by psychological reductionism, that conceptualizes prejudice
as a matter of (mis)perceptions, and consequently, as an internal phenomenon stripped of the sociopolitical circum-
stances that gave rise to it. Besides, polarization is usually envisaged in a way that fosters understandings of conflict
and harmony that might favor the maintenance of a highly unequal status quo. Building on this problematization of
some of the underlying assumptions of mainstream approaches to polarization, some conceptual implications, as well
as data-collection recommendations, can be drawn. To conclude, new avenues for future research can be outlined.
Firstly, trying to minimize group “biases”, albeit an important task, should not be the priority of the polarization
field. Research would do well to focus on promoting positive social change by understanding the functioning of
systems of oppression in order to deconstruct and challenge them (Tileagă et al., 2022). At an applied level, research-
ers should consider interventions beyond simple contact, as contact interventions tend to underline the psychologi-
cal and perceptive causes of the problem, at the expense of the cultural and historical legacies of discrimination that
have crystalized in structural and institutional everyday practices of re-production of inequalities (Greenland, 2022).
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The individualization of this problem facilitates members of privileged groups to construct discrimination as some-
thing from the past (Andreouli et al., 2016), whereas believing in the structural nature of discrimination makes people
more likely to address group-based inequality (Rucker & Richeson, 2022). This points to the importance of avoiding
methodological individualism and theorizing about structural causes fostering group inequality, confrontation, and
polarization.
Regarding data collection, a critical-psychological approach might include an assessment of collective action
intentions and policy change, along with the usual polarization measures. Moreover, including measures of identi-
fication with sociopolitical groups beyond parties would provide researchers with a more nuanced picture of mass
polarization and would make it easier to identify status differences between groups and how they relate to support
for different parties, as well as to partisan polarization.
To conclude, some future avenues to be explored can be sketched out. In general, there is a need for situated
studies aimed at analyzing the meaning behind overall cognitive and affective evaluations, so we can grasp if a
conflict might escalate into pernicious forms of polarization or, conversely, might be a part of a creative tension,
which might lead us to more inclusive and egalitarian societies. Similarly, by adopting a meaning-focused approach,
researchers can investigate if the growing “partisan prejudice” is just another updated version of classical prejudices,
in which expressing dislike towards parties and supporters of egalitarian principles is a more socially acceptable way
of expressing class/race/gender-based prejudice, or if it constitutes a different phenomenon.
Political polarization is becoming intensified at a time when a backlash is occurring against the progressive
incorporation of different historically disadvantaged groups into public life (Lisnek et al., 2022; Mudde, 2019). Thus,
future endeavors might find it useful to discern between political conflicts stemming from dynamics of polarization,
and conflicts stemming from the resistance, on the part of unprivileged groups, to a conservative backlash, as the
causes, consequences, and interventions that would arise from these different conceptualizations will be differ-
ent. In fact, the lack of recognition of group inequalities or high levels of Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) and
Right-wing Authoritarianism (RWA) on the part of dominant groups are factors that hamper the success of contact
experiences (Hässler et al., 2021). Research on cognitive liberalization, which has reported that contact reduces
RDA, SDO, and consequently, prejudice (Hodson et al., 2018), might be a promising area to explore for tackling
these issues.
From a discursive perspective, analyzing the uses of the term “polarization”- on the part of experts, the media,
and the people- is relevant. What identity-related, rhetorical, and ideological functions might the use of this term and
the depiction of a political conflict as “polarized” have? Are there situations in which the use of a “rhetoric of polari-
zation” and the subsequent creation of a sense of urgency to end some political conflicts might justify and legitimize
a highly unequal status quo?
Lastly, since the social construction of some groups as a threat might have real-world consequences, future
research should consider if and how trends in political polarization translate into the everyday, material, and spatial-
ized experiences of citizens, as some recent research in historically divided societies has been doing (see Dixon
et al., 2020). That is, are current trends of political polarization fostering narrower notions of citizenship, further
segregation, the securitization of public spaces, and exclusionary dynamics in our communities? Critical Psychology
has much to contribute to these questions and to the political polarization field.
I would like to thank Eva Anduiza, Vladimir Bortun, Carol Galais, Juan Pérez-Rajó, Damjan Tomic, and Marta Vallvé
for their support and for their valuable comments on earlier versions of the paper. This article has been written as
part of the project ‘Cambio Político en España: Populismo, Feminismo y Nuevos Ejes de Conflicto’ (POLCHAN),
funded by the FEDER/Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (CSO2017-83086-R); and the project
‘Emociones Políticas en Movimiento: Causas y Consecuencias’ (EMPOL), funded by the Spanish Ministry for Science
and Innovation (PID2020-113030RB-100). The author is funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation
(grant number: PRE2018-086672).
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The author has no conflict of interest to declare.
ORCID
Daniel Balinhas https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1386-8215
1 This thesis posits, in a nutshell, that left and right-wing people are equally prejudiced, but towards different groups.
2 Party supporters (e.g., supporters of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party) are conceptualized as equal-status
groups. An objection to this is that supporters also have other social (those based on race, gender, class) and political iden-
tities (e.g., feminist/anti-feminist) that are characterized by asymmetries in power and status, and that are surely at play in
political polarization dynamics.
3 Durrheim et al. (2014), in South Africa, found that positive interactions between black domestic laborers and their white
bosses served to reproduce power differences between them.
4 This constitutes a mocking way in which Vox designates the consensus around some issues, such as gender issues, in which
progressive policies tend to generate high levels of support throughout the political spectrum.
5 In Wendy Brown's words (2019, p. 27) the social is “situated conceptually and practically between state and personal life”
and is the space “where citizens of vastly unequal backgrounds and resources are potentially brought together and thought
together. It is where we are politically enfranchised and gathered (not merely cared for) through provision of public goods
and where historically produced inequalities are made manifest as differentiated political access, voice, and treatment, as
well as where these inequalities may be partially redressed.”
6 The Appendix includes a rough example of how cognitivist approaches often frame depolarization interventions in a hypo-
thetical situation, compared to the critical-psychological approach.
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Additional supporting information can be found online in the Supporting Information section at the end of this article.
Balinhas, D. (2022). Bringing critical social psychology to the study of political
polarization. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, e12721. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12721
Daniel Balinhas is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the Autonomous University of
Barcelona. He is a social psychologist whose main research interests are focused on inter-group processes and
conflict, political polarization, and the study of social forces producing, developing, and sustaining group-based
inequalities.
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