Do External Threats Reduce Affective Polarization? An Experiment on Russia's Invasion of Ukraine

Abstract

In many countries, citizens have become increasingly biased in how they evaluate others based on political affiliation. We argue that this increase in affective polarization may in part be caused by changes in global power structures, which caused many countries to experience a long period without external (military) threats. To study the importance of external threats, we conduct a priming experiment to examine how making Russia’s invasion of Ukraine salient causally influences affective polarization and collaboration in the U.S. We find that priming Americans with Russia’s military aggression leads to a modest reduction in affective polarization as well as an increase in cooperativeness as measured by people’s behavior in an incentivized coordination game. Surprisingly, the effect of making Russia’s invasion salient does not depend on perceived cross-party disagreement about the conflict. These results suggest that one must also look to global changes in international relations to understand within-country developments in polarization and willingness to collaborate.