Rice University, Houston, TX, USA,
Politics Life Sci. 2023 Nov;42(2):254-276. doi: 10.1017/pls.2023.19.
Partisans in the American electorate are affectively polarized, which coincides with the tendency for partisan geographic sorting. Could mate selection pressures contribute to this geographic tendency, and how might they interact with out-party affect? I propose a model in which an individual's perception of their mate success in a niche is key. I argue that perceived mate success is a function of a niche's partisanship and one's out-party affect, which in turn, incentivizes sorting. The model is partially tested with conjoint experiments on multiple U.S. samples. Results show that partisans perceive a lower probability of mate success in niches with greater shares of out-partisans and that mate success interacts with negative out-party affect. I also replicate findings on political mate choice preferences with a more appropriate method. Lastly, this project links instrumentality and affect, which is a departure from past work. In doing so, it contributes to research on the consequences of mate pressures for political behavior.
美国选民中的党派人士在情感上存在两极分化，这与党派地理分化的趋势相吻合。配偶选择压力是否会导致这种地理倾向，以及它们如何与党外情感相互作用？我提出了一个模型，其中个体在利基市场中对配偶成功的感知是关键。我认为，感知到的配偶成功是利基市场的党派性和个体党外情感的函数，这反过来又激励了这种分化。该模型部分通过对多个美国样本的联合实验进行了测试。结果表明，党派人士认为在党外人士比例较高的利基市场中，找到配偶的成功概率较低，而且配偶的成功与负面的党外情感相互作用。我还通过更合适的方法复制了关于政治配偶选择偏好的发现。最后，该项目将工具性和情感联系起来，这与过去的工作有所不同。这样做有助于研究配偶压力对政治行为的影响。
