While it may seem rational to assume that when it comes to politics, we’d accept benefits to our lives even if it came from an opposing party, research from the University of California San Diego shows that this isn’t always the case. Indeed, we would often rather see harm caused to our own party than to give money to our opponents.

“We sought out to understand the principles guiding decisions in group conflicts because it is essential to recognizing the psychological barriers to compromise and cooperation,” the researchers explain.

Political support

The researchers quizzed around 4,000 people about their political beliefs and actions. They were asked if they would rather give a financial donation to their opponent or have the same sum taken away from their own party. The results show that over 70% of participants, regardless of their chosen political affiliation, would rather harm their own party than provide any benefits to their opponents.

What’s more, the same was true when it came to politically charged causes, such as gun control or abortion rights.

“Remarkably, we saw these results even though both conservative and liberal respondents noted they thought their side was more effective with funding,” the authors explain. “In fact, our findings reveal that individuals are so averse to providing any support to the opposing group that they, on average, accepted triple the amount of financial loss to their group in order to avoid any gains for the other side.”

Polarized society

Interestingly, this level of polarization was even evident among people who stated that they didn’t have a strong affiliation with a political party, or indeed on a given issue. The study was replicated in other countries and similar results emerged.

“We were curious to know whether this phenomenon is unique to the U.S. or exists in other countries,” the researchers explain. “In future research, we are interested in exploring whether the pattern of preferences we found extends to more cultures and political environments.”

They believe that these differences are likely to be caused by fundamental issues surrounding our identity and how we create an image of ourselves and others.

“We find that participants do not make decisions in this context based on the expected real-world impact of their choice,” they explain. “Rather, they are influenced by the desire to protect their identity. They believe that supporting the opposing group will have a greater negative influence on their identity and therefore choose to harm their own group instead.”

Reducing division

They then examined ways in which this division could be reduced and conducted an experiment whereby they disclosed to the participants that the majority in their group had indeed provided a degree of support to their opponents. In other words, they had crossed the divide.

This act of communicating new group norms resulted in a noticeable change in behavior, with participants more willing to follow suit and also show more support for opponents.

“Our findings offer a practical approach that has the potential to increase cooperation: providing information about norms between like-minded individuals may reduce people’s identity concerns, thereby allowing for behaviors that support the opposing groups when it is advantageous for the collective good,” the researchers conclude. “In a period of high divisiveness, this work sheds light on the role of identity in polarized contexts and the psychological obstacles that may impede progress.”