Ressentiment and the Moralization of Grievance: Understanding Affective Polarization Through an Emotional Mechanism

Recent scholarship on affective polarization has highlighted the emotional intensification of intergroup hostility in political contexts, particularly in two-party systems like the U.S. (Iyengar, Sood, & Lelkes, 2012; Iyengar et al., 2019). However, affective polarization is not limited to partisanship—it reflects deeper social dynamics of moral conflict and emotional antagonism (Garrett & Bankert, 2020; Schedler, 2023). We propose that ressentiment is a key emotional mechanism that socially amplifies affective polarization by transforming perceived injustice into morally charged grievance against outgroups. Ressentiment operates as a bridge between individual and collective emotional transformations: self-directed emotions such as envy, shame, humiliation, or inefficacious anger are reconfigured into other-directed indignation, resentment, contempt, and hatred —emotionally weaponizing the in-group as morally superior victims and framing out-groups as culpable aggressors (Salmela & Capelos, 2021). We hypothesize that this emotional mechanism deepens polarization and moralizes political conflict, making compromise and coexistence less viable. We test this hypothesis using new empirical data from Wave 2 of the PLEDGE Horizon Europe project (December 2025). The study includes a validated 6-item scale of ressentiment (Capelos & Demertzis, 2022) and a newly adapted affective polarization scale that extends U.S.-based measures (Campos & Federico, 2025) to reflect attachments to political groups. The cross-national survey enables us to analyze whether and how the impact of ressentiment varies across political cultures and affects emotional alignment and antagonism toward political out-groups. This project contributes to studies on affective polarization by tracing how emotions become collective, moralized, and politically consequential. Furthermore, it contributes to studies that examine how emotional mechanisms and their effects on status, identity, and grievance contribute to the escalation or moderation of political hostility.