Agent Base Model: Political Homophily and Acrophily: Asymmetric Preferences for Extreme Responses to Reports of Police Brutality

Political segregation is a significant social problem, increasing polarization and impeding effective governance. Prior work views the central driver of segregation to be political homophily, the tendency to associate with others with similar political views. We propose that in addition to political homophily, people’s social tie decisions are also driven by political acrophily, the tendency to associate with others with more extreme political views (rather than more moderate). We examine this idea using a paradigm in which participants share emotions and attitudes on political policies, observe others’ responses, and choose which others to affiliate with. In four studies (N = 1235), we found that both liberal and conservative participants’ decisions indicated a tendency for acrophily. We found that participants who viewed peers who expressed more extreme views as more prototypical of their political group also tended to acroophilze more. These studies identify a previously overlooked tendency in political tie formation.

政治隔离乃一项重大的社会问题，加剧了社会极化并阻碍了有效治理。以往的研究将隔离的核心驱动力视为政治同质性，即与他人结伴而行的倾向，这些人持有与其相似的政治观点。我们提出，除了政治同质性之外，人们的社交联系决策亦受政治极端性所驱动，即与他人结伴而行的倾向，这些人持有更为极端的政治观点（而非更为温和的观点）。我们采用一种范式来检验这一观点，其中参与者分享对政治政策的情感和态度，观察他人的反应，并选择与哪些人结盟。在四项研究中（N = 1235），我们发现自由主义和保守主义参与者均显示出对极端性的倾向。我们发现，那些将表达更极端观点的同伴视为其政治群体典型代表的人，也倾向于表现出更强的极端性。这些研究揭示了政治联系形成过程中一种之前被忽视的倾向。