The moralized coalitions model: How coalitional thinking and moralization shape social perception

Social identities increasingly align along partisan lines in the United States, creating the potential for "moralized coalitions" that structure how people perceive and evaluate others. We propose the moralized coalitions model: When people mentally represent social groups as overlapping coalitions, these representations prompt category-based inferences and shape social evaluation, especially when group boundaries are moralized. Rather than representing groups primarily in terms of traits or beliefs, individuals may also construe social groups (e.g., political parties) as coalitions of overlapping social categories. Across five studies (total N = 2,226), we provide initial evidence consistent with this framework. Study 1 shows that individuals treat political party as highly informative about others despite its limited predictive value, suggesting reliance on coalitional inference. Study 2 demonstrates that coalitional descriptors can be distinguished from traits and that partisan groups agree more on coalition-based stereotypes than on trait-based stereotypes. Study 3 shows that participants spontaneously described partisans in largely coalitional terms. In an evaluative judgment study (Study 4) and an experimental manipulation of coalitional strength (Study 5), perceived associations between parties and groups shaped evaluations of those groups. Moralization of partisanship amplified these effects, especially for outparty-associated groups. Study 5 further suggests that these effects operate primarily through perceived alignment (e.g., support and affiliation), rather than perceived trait similarity. Together, these findings suggest that perceived coalitional alignment plays a role in social evaluation alongside traits and beliefs. More broadly, the moralized coalitions model highlights how perceived group structure and moralization jointly contribute to moralized intergroup conflict. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).