Imagined Otherness: Perceived Construal Distance and Interparty Animosity in the United States

What leads people to feel negatively about members of other social groups? While recent work has focused on the strength of group identity, we propose that perceptions of intergroup difference – and the
animas they catalyze – are often rooted in beliefs that members of other groups interpret the world in inherently different ways. Drawing on work in the sociology of culture, we focus on the role of construal’s –
that is, cognitive associations people hold about meaningful concepts – in shaping intergroup sentiment. We develop a theory of multilevel perceived construal distance and propose that: (a) perceived intergroup
construal distance relates to negative outgroup affect; whereas (b) perceived construal distance between an outgroup and the generalized other is associated with outgroup dehumanization. We introduce a new
method, the Multilevel Construal Elicitation Task (MCET), to tap respondents’ multilevel construal’s and apply it to associations that politically affiliated Americans hold about the concept, “America.” Our
pre-registered study results suggest that antipathy towards members of the opposing political party is grounded in people’s perceptions of construal distance, above and beyond their strength of party identity or ideology.
These findings contribute to debates on the causes of increased political polarization in the U.S. and have implications for research on identity, social boundaries, and the measurement of cultural meaning.