Why partisan warriors don’t listen: the gendered dynamics of intergroup anxiety and partisan conflict

Talking and listening to political opponents is central to the proper functioning of deliberative democracy. But the social identity dynamics of partisan intergroup conflict make party identifiers in the US – Democrats and Republicans alike – less likely to engage in these activities. We argue that those group dynamics are gendered such that men are more sensitive than women to intergroup conflict and competition. Consequently, men are more likely to experience “intergroup anxiety” at the prospect of political interaction with partisan opponents. Using survey data from the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study and experimental data, we found that men with higher intergroup anxiety were more likely than women to avoid cross-party political discussion, not listen when they did engage in such conversations, and reject information from outparty leaders. These results highlight the critical role that partisan social identities play in everyday democratic citizenship, but also emphasize the important and neglected gender aspect of mass interparty dynamics in the USA.