For years, pundits and observers had predicted that violence and democratic breakdown would inevitably result from the rise in polarization, ‘tribal politics’ and increasing hostility between those who hold liberal attitudes and those who hold conservative attitudes 1, 2, 3. On 6 January 2021, thousands of supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol in an effort to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. We conclude with a discussion of unanswered questions and ways in which our framework can be extended to the study of culture and institutions. These cognitive–motivational mechanisms interact with social influence processes linked to communication source, message and channel factors, all of which might contribute to increased or decreased polarization. Whereas conservative-rightist ideology is associated with valuing tradition, social order and maintenance of the status quo, liberal-leftist ideology is associated with a push for egalitarian social change. However, a distinct class of system-justifying motives contributes to asymmetric forms of polarization. Ego-justifying and group-justifying motives lead individuals to defend their own pre-existing beliefs and those of their in-group, respectively. In this Review, we provide a conceptual framework to integrate scientific knowledge about cognitive–motivational mechanisms that influence political polarization and the social-communicative contexts in which they are enacted. Despite a vast multidisciplinary literature, no coherent conceptual framework of the microlevel dynamics that increase or decrease polarization has been presented. Democracy is at risk when citizens become so polarized that an ‘us versus them’ mentality dominates. Healthy democratic polities feature competing visions of a good society but also require some level of cooperation and institutional trust.
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