“They Saw an Arrest”: Situation Definition, Polarization, and Affect Control Theory

Political affiliation impacts how people understand and describe events, but it is unclear where in the event understanding process these differences originate. Using the framework of affect control theory, the authors test for political differences in three places relevant to event understanding: labeling, fundamental sentiments about labels, and transient impressions about actors and behaviors in events.

To test for political differences in fundamental sentiments, the authors survey Democrats and Republicans about their views of a set of social identities and behaviors. To test for political differences in labeling and transient impressions, and how such differences may vary across events, the authors show a separate sample of participants animated videos of a police officer interacting with a civilian portrayed as either a lost child (nonpolitical condition) or an immigrant (political condition). The authors ask them to label and rate the affective meanings of the characters and their behaviors.

The authors find limited political differences in fundamental affective meanings of political actors. In the political but not the nonpolitical condition, the authors find substantial political differences in situation labeling and differences in transient impressions on the evaluation dimension.

The authors cannot determine what precisely about the authors’ two events led to differences in the effects of political affiliation on labeling and transient sentiments. In addition, the authors only measured fundamental meanings on a relatively small set of terms.

Research in affect control theory has rarely considered partisan differences in meanings or processes of situation definition.