Affective Partisan Polarization and Moral Dilemmas During the COVID

Affective partisan polarization and moral dilemmas during the COVID-19 pandemic∗ Stoetzer, L. F.1, Munzert, S.2, Lowe, W.2, Çalı, B. 2, Gohdes, A.2, Helbling, M.3, Maxwell, R.4, and Traunmueller, R.3 1Humboldt University of Berlin 2Hertie School 3University of Mannheim 4University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill May 6, 2021 Recent scholarship on affective polarization documents partisan animosity that extends to people's everyday lives. But does partisan dislike go so far as to deny fundamental rights to political opponents? We study this ques- tion through a moral dilemma that gained worldwide notoriety during the COVID-19 pandemic: triage decisions on the allocation of intensive medical care. Using a conjoint experiment in Brazil, Germany, Italy, Poland, and the United States, we study the influence of patients' partisanship in addi- tion to commonly discussed factors determining access to intensive medical care. We find that while participants' choices are consistent with a utilitarian heuristic, revealed partisanship is a robust decision criterion across most countries. Supporters of left or right political camps are more likely to withhold support from partisan opponents, with right-party supporters being more strongly penalized. Our findings offer new comparative evidence on affective polarization in non-political contexts. ∗Corresponding auther Lukas F. Stoetzer, E-Mail: [email protected]. This research was generously funded by a grant from the Hertie School Faculty Activity Fund. We thank partipants of the WZB colloqium "Sociological Perspectives on the Corona Crisis" for valuable feedback on the paper. We thank Johannes Latmann for excellent research assistance. Finally, we are grateful to Respondi for supporting the data collection. 1 Affective partisan polarization in the US has risen in the last decades [Iyengar et al., 2012, Doherty et al., 2019]. While the global picture is more heterogeneous, similar trends have been documented in other contexts [Wagner, 2020, Westwood et al., 2018, Reiljan, 2020, Boxell et al., 2020, Helbling and Jungkunz, 2020]. These trends are worri- some in light of recent scholarship indicating that affective partisanship is consequential not only for political beliefs and behavior, but also pertain to a broad set of nonpolitical situations, affecting people's economic, relationship and health decisions [Iyengar et al., 2019, McConnell et al., 2018, Lerman et al., 2017, Huber and Malhotra, 2017]. How far can the dislike of political opponents go in established democracies? In the extreme, out-party animus degrades others as human beings and denies fundamental rights to the out-group, and partisanship turns potentially lethal [Kalmoe and Mason, 2019]. However, measuring such extreme attitudes in the population is difficult: There are seldom situations in which people's chance of surviving is directly and publicly debated. In this research note, we measure affective partisanship in such an extreme scenario, by studying a fundamental rights dilemma that has gained notoriety in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: the triage for access to intensive medical care. We conducted conjoint experiments in five countries (Brazil, Germany, Italy, Poland, and the United States) in August 2020 and presented respondents with the attributes of two hypothetical patients, asking them which patient they would prioritize for intensive care. In contrast to other triage experiments [see Helbling et al., 2021, Reeskens et al., 2021, Jin et al., 2021], we explicitly include the partisanship of the hypothetical patient. The triage setting arguably represents a least likely case for discrimination along partisan lines, but one were the political context might provide heuristics to nevertheless discriminate against out-group partisans. On the one hand, the right to life is a key fundamental right. Criteria to maximize survival in triage cases are part of published guidelines that were publicly discussed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Obviously, partisanship is not among them. At the same time, the fight against COVID-19 has become a politicized issue in several contexts, making it potentially plausible to punish out-group partisans for perceived misbehavior. Our results show that the partisanship of the patient indeed plays a measurable role in respondents' triage decisions. While respondents mainly rely on characteristics that are in the guidelines of medical associations, out-party animus also influences their priorities. Partisans on both the left and right are likely to withhold medical support from patients on the other political side. The results suggest that right-party patients are more heavily penalized. These findings add to our understanding of non-political consequences of affective partisan polarization. We can show that affective partisanship also plays an 2 important role in moral dilemmas over scarce health resources and therefore, ultimately, over life and death. This is one of the first empirical studies on nonpolitical consequences in a comparative perspective, showing that beyond the US, affective partisan polarization in moral dilemmas also plays a measurable role in continental European countries such as Germany and Poland. 1 Affective Partisan Polarization During the COVID-19 Pandemic Partisan group identities trigger in-group and out-group thinking and, as a result, can have behavioral consequences [Tajfel et al., 1979]. Not only do partisans \view opposing partisans negatively and co-partisans positively" [Iyengar and Westwood, 2015, p.691], they further exert effects on nonpolitical judgments and behaviors. They are influential in dating behavior [Iyengar et al., 2012, Huber and Malhotra, 2017], in an economic activity like day-to-day bargaining and the evaluation of job applications [Michelitch, 2015, McConnell et al., 2018, Gift and Gift, 2015], as well as personal health decisions [Lerman et al., 2017]. While most studies have concentrated on the partisan divide in the US, recent research acknowledges that affective polarization might be at similarly high levels in Europe [Wagner, 2020, Gidron et al., 2019, Boxell et al., 2020, Reiljan, 2020, Helbling and Jungkunz, 2020] . We argue that the COVID-19 pandemic provides a unique opportunity to study the consequences of affective partisanship for individual behavior and attitudes from a comparative perspective. The pandemic is a globally relevant issue that has appeared on the social and political agenda in practically all countries. At the same time, it has created variation in policy responses, and several studies have outline clear partisan divides in beliefs about the risks and development of the pandemic [Allcott et al., 2020, Bhanot and Hopkins, 2020]. Importantly, partisan responses to the pandemic are not uniform across countries. In the US, the Republican party has largely opposed strict lockdown measures, and studies suggest that Republicans have been less likely to comply with social distancing measures [Clinton et al., 2021]. In contrast, Poland's right-wing PiS has supported strict lockdown measures (see supplementary material, 2.3.2). Partisan affec- tion has also influenced the belief formation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Druckman et al. [2020] show that the dislike of the opposite party drives partisan divides on the severity and handling of the crisis, but only in areas with no strong outbreaks of the virus. The pandemic, coupled with scarce medical resources, has generated moral dilemmas 3 that are not easily resolved. Triage decisions are such a moral dilemma, as providing life-saving support to all patients is a moral imperative, but limited medical resources make it impossible. Important public debates about the life-or-death consequences of triage decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic provide us with a way to study the prevalence of extreme partisan polarization that moves beyond unrealistic scenarios. It poses a difficult trade-off where the decision criteria have been broadly and transpar- ently discussed. Medical associations and scholars have issued clear guidelines for triage decisions. While some variation exists, most guidelines agree on "the role of justice and benefit maximization as core principles" [Jöbgeset al., 2020, p.948]. We discuss the guidelines for the countries under study in the supplementary material (SM), section 1.3. Indeed, recent studies show that public opinion seems to side with the utilitarian core of the guidelines [Kneer and Hannikainen, 2020]. We study whether affective partisan polarization influences peoples' judgment in triage decisions. The scarcity of medical resources can trigger affective in-group out- group thinking. In particular, we would expect that partisans prioritize co-partisans (in-party favoritism) and disfavor opposing partisans (out-party animus). But while previous findings highlight out-party animus in economic transactions, interpersonal relationships, or personal health decisions, it is not obvious to what extent partisan dislike extends to a trade-off that decides about another person's chance for survival. While previous research has found partisans' willingness to dehumanize members of the out-party [Martherus et al., 2019] and to rationalize physical harm against opponents [Kalmoe and Mason, 2019], we measure out-group animus in a extreme nonpolitical setting, representing a least likely case for the manifestation of partisan affect. 2 A conjoint experiment on triage decisions Case Selection and Samples. We conducted a conjoint experiment in five countries (Brazil,

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