Is Hatred Really the Main Emotional Source of Political Intolerance?

Abstract

An important paper (Halperin, Canetti-Nisim, & Hirsch-Hoefler, 2009) brings emotion squarely into the study of political intolerance, finding that:

(1) hatred of outgroups, but not anger or fear, leads directly to intolerance;

(2) group-based anger and fear influence intolerance but through the mediation of hatred; and

(3) hatred has a markedly stronger influence among the unsophisticated.

These conclusions challenge much of the conventional wisdom in the study of intolerance. Yet we suspect that the findings may primarily be a function of the context of the study: Israel, a deeply divided society where intergroup hatred likely plays an outsized role in political life. Using a large representative sample of the American population, we re-examine the influence of emotion and sophistication on intolerance. Our findings differ dramatically and in nearly every respect from those of Halperin, Canetti-Nisim & Hirsch-Hoefler. Hatred is indeed associated with intolerance, but only quite modestly, and no more so than are anger or fear; emotions play a less significant role than traditional predictors of intolerance; finally, we find that the effects of emotion on intolerance are not consistently stronger among the unsophisticated. All of these findings speak to the role political contexts play in structuring mass political intolerance.

Keywords: political tolerance, emotion, sophistication