On the within-person effects of political attitudes on outgroup animosity: Evidence for Democratic-Republican asymmetry

On the basis of a within-person model of the relationship between political identity and outgroup dislike, Brandt and Vallabha (2025) suggested that changes in the strength of party identity, but not changes in the direction of this identity, are correlated with political animosity. These results are particularly interesting since they are consistent with the symmetric view of political ideology, which argues that partisans are similarly intolerant toward their political opponents. In this paper, we highlight conceptual and methodological issues that cast doubt on the validity of BV’s conclusions. We also propose an alternative model and apply it to BV’s data, alongside data from a second large dataset. Our findings indicate that Democratic and Republican respondents differ in the effect of identity strength on animosity, a result which is consistent with the asymmetric, rather than the symmetric, view. We conclude by discussing the methodological and conceptual insights gleaned from these findings.