Emotions and Affective Polarization: Evidence from Five Multiparty Democracies

Research on affective polarization (AP) has expanded rapidly. Studies consistently show that citizens' feelings toward ideological opponents have become colder, while affect toward their own group has grown warmer, with variation across countries and across political targets. However, we still know little about what these changing feelings actually mean. This limitation stems from the field's reliance on broad evaluations of general positivity and negativity, most commonly measured through feeling thermometers. Recent work has identified this affective gap and called for a systematic examination of the discrete emotions that underlie AP. Different emotions such as anger, hatred, and disappointment carry distinct appraisals and behavioral implications. Our paper offers the first comparative mapping of the emotional foundations of the ideological divide. We do so by assessing six discrete emotions and FT scores across multiple targets (parties, voters, and blocs), and their relation to policy preferences and intolerance toward political opponents, within five multiparty democracies: Germany, Hungary, Poland, Italy, and Israel (N≈5,151). The analysis yields demonstrable differences in the emotional landscape across targets and nations, thus supporting the importance of incorporating discrete emotions into the study of AP to enhance the understanding of AP affective component and its possible sociopolitical outcomes.