Political coherence and certainty as drivers of interpersonal liking over and above similarity

Abstract

Affective polarization and political segregation have become a serious threat to democratic societies. One standard explanation for these phenomena is that people like and prefer interacting with similar others. However, similarity may not be the only driver of interpersonal liking in the political domain, and other factors, yet to be uncovered, could play an important role. Here, we hypothesized that beyond the effect of similarity, people show greater preference for individuals with politically coherent and confident opinions. To test this idea, we performed two behavioral studies consisting of one-shot face-to-face pairwise interactions. We found that people with ambiguous or ambivalent views were nonreciprocally attracted to confident and coherent ingroups. A third experimental study confirmed that politically coherent and confident profiles are rated as more attractive than targets with ambiguous or ambivalent opinions. Overall, these findings unfold the key drivers of the affability between people who discuss politics.