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Moralizing partisanship when surrounded by copartisans versus in mixed company
Michalis Mamakos1, Tessa E S Charlesworth1, Eli J Finkel1,2
1Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 2211 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
PNAS Nexus
|April 11, 2025
Summary
Left-wing (LW) and right-wing (RW) Reddit users were studied for partisan moralization. RW users showed weaker moralization in mixed company compared to LW users, especially in non-political partisan contexts.
Area of Science:
- Social Psychology
- Computational Linguistics
- Political Science
Background:
- Partisan individuals often perceive their ingroup as moral and outgroups as immoral.
- Understanding how political ideology influences moral language use is crucial for social cohesion.
- Previous research has not extensively compared partisan moralization across different online social contexts.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate partisan moralization among left-wing (LW) and right-wing (RW) Reddit users.
- To compare moralization levels in ingroup versus mixed-company online contexts.
- To explore differences in moralization based on the inherent political nature of online communities.
Main Methods:
- Development of four word embedding models based on Reddit user comments from ingroup and mixed-company contexts.
- Evaluation of word embeddings on semantic dimensions of partisanship and morality.
- Correlation analysis between partisanship and morality as an indicator of expressed partisan moralization.
Main Results:
- LW users exhibited consistent levels of moralized partisanship across ingroup and mixed-company contexts.
- RW users displayed weaker moralized partisanship in mixed company compared to ingroup settings and LW users.
- RW users showed stronger moralized partisanship than LW users in inherently political subreddits, but similar levels in non-political partisan contexts.
Conclusions:
- Partisan moralization varies between political ideologies and online social environments.
- Right-wing users' moralization is more context-dependent, particularly diminishing in mixed-company settings.
- Asymmetries in moralized partisanship suggest distinct psychological mechanisms influencing political discourse online.
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