The Elephant and Donkey in the Room: Time-Varying Effects of Political Dissimilarity on Social Interactions at Work During U.S. Elections

Political polarization is recognized as a global risk. Although emerging studies on political dissimilarity at work highlight important implications for how employees behave and interact, findings are at times inconsistent. To provide a more nuanced understanding of when and why political dissimilarity disrupts workplace interactions, we draw on the social identity approach and threat processing to examine how political dissimilarity shapes perceptions of work relationships and behavior before and after election events. Across three studies, we demonstrate that political dissimilarity’s effects depend on political macro events and thus become temporally activated. Study 1, an experience sampling field study during the 2020 U.S. presidential election, showed no significant impact of political dissimilarity on negative interpersonal interactions before the election, but significance emerged on election day and persisted for six days after the election. In Study 2, an online experiment during the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, we found that actual political dissimilarity indirectly influenced negative interpersonal interactions via reduced social mindfulness after the election but not beforehand. Study 3, a longitudinal experiment over four weeks during the 2024 U.S. presidential election, replicated the election effect, demonstrating that these effects persisted for at least two weeks and were mediated by cognitive (i.e., perspective-taking) and affective (i.e., empathic concern) subdimensions of social mindfulness. Our findings highlight political orientation as a critical dimension of workplace dissimilarity. Although its impact may be subdued, it becomes pronounced during macro-political events, shaping workplace interactions in significant ways, with the political dissimilarity effects being more easily reactivated in the postelection phase.