Political Considerations in Nonpolitical Decisions: A Conjoint Analysis of Roommate Choice
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Political Considerations in Nonpolitical Decisions: A Conjoint Analysis of Roommate Choice Richard M. Shafranek1
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract Research shows the increasing tendency of partisan considerations to influence decisions outside the context of politics, including residential choice. Scholars attribute this tendency to affective distaste for members of the other party. However, little work has investigated the relative influence of political and nonpolitical factors in these situations—and it has not sufficiently ruled out alternative explanations for these phenomena. Do people mainly choose to socially avoid members of the other party for political reasons, or is partisanship simply perceived to be correlated with relevant nonpolitical considerations? In some settings, political affiliation may serve primarily as a cue for other factors. As a result, studies that manipulate partisanship but fail to include other individuating information may exaggerate partisanship’s importance in these decisions. To address this shortcoming, I assess the impact of political and nonpolitical considerations on roommate selection via conjoint analysis. I find that partisanship strongly influences this social decision even in the presence of nonpolitical-but-politically-correlated individuating information. Partisan preferences are also moderated by roommates’ perceived levels of political interest. Finally, other social traits do matter, but how they matter depends on partisanship. Specifically, partisans report increased willingness to live with counter-stereotypic out-partisans. This suggests that partisan social divides may be more easily bridged by individuals with cross-cutting identities. Keywords Partisanship · Affective polarization · Homophily · Conjoint
* Richard M. Shafranek [email protected] 1
Department of Political Science, Northwestern University, 601 University Place, Evanston, IL 60208, USA
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
Political Behavior
Introduction Partisan considerations sometimes influence decisions and interactions outside the context of politics. Scholars commonly attribute the spillover of political preferences into nonpolitical domains to affective distaste for members of the other party; as dislike for the out-party has grown, so too have preferences for partisan social distance and examples of partisan prejudice and discrimination in settings as varied as the workplace (e.g., Gift and Gift 2015), dating and romance (e.g., Huber and Malhotra 2017), and academia (e.g., Inbar and Lammers 2012). Thus far, however, little work has investigated the relative influence of political and nonpolitical factors in these situations, and extant research has not sufficiently ruled out alternative explanations for these findings. One possibility, implicit or asserted in most scholarship and popular commentary on the subject, is that people are choosing to socially avoid members of the other party for purely political reasons. However, an al
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