Replication Data for: Do External Threats Increase Bipartisanship in the United States? An Experimental Test in the Shadow of China's Rise

Do external threats increase American bipartisanship? While previous scholarship suggests they do, recent research argues that security threats from foreign adversaries may further polarize Americans amid hyperpartisanship, as information about external threats is often filtered through partisan lens. We subject these competing perspectives to an experimental test. Leveraging the Biden and Trump administrations' similar characterization of the China threat, we exposed American respondents to real-world primes about security threats from China, while randomizing the messenger of such primes. Our preregistered experiment shows that the threat primes—regardless of the partisan identity of their messenger—boosted Democrats' and Republicans' support for assertive foreign policy in a largely parallel manner, thereby failing to reduce preference polarization. Importantly, there were no measurable changes across multiple indicators of affective polarization. These findings clarify the limits of external threats in uniting Americans, while also challenging recent perspectives that external threats—often colored by elite rhetoric—will further polarize the American public.

外部威胁是否会提升美国的两党合作水平？尽管既往学术研究认为外部威胁确实可以达成这一效果，但近期研究则提出，在过度党派化的美国社会中，外国对手带来的安全威胁可能会进一步加剧民众的党派对立——这是因为关于外部威胁的信息往往会通过党派视角被过滤解读。我们针对这两种对立的学术观点开展了实验检验。依托拜登与特朗普两届政府对中国威胁的定性趋同这一条件，我们让美国受访对象接触到涉及中国安全威胁的现实启动刺激，并对这类启动刺激的发布主体进行了随机化处理。我们的预注册实验（preregistered experiment）结果显示，无论这类威胁启动刺激的发布主体具有何种党派身份，均以大体一致的方式提升了民主党与共和党受访者对强硬外交政策的支持度，因此并未降低政策偏好层面的党派极化。值得注意的是，在情感极化的多项衡量指标中均未出现可观测的变化。本研究结果既明确了外部威胁在凝聚美国民众方面的局限性，同时也对近期的相关学术观点提出了质疑——这类观点认为，往往被精英言论裹挟的外部威胁会进一步加剧美国民众的党派对立。