Note to the author; As a fellow social scientist I recommend you take note of the specific rhetoric in the comments here. Several people have heard your message, acknowledged that you have a point, and then argued that the present situation is an exception because the other side is a genuine threat.

You probably have explored this in your research but, if not, I think it would be helpful for you to address the point that affect is not enough to explain polarization, and that understanding it is not enough to diffuse it. You can’t separate affect from the content of cognition; people don’t just polarize because they feel angry. They also polarize because they believe the other side is an active threat to them.

The fact that you’re getting these responses on your current article suggests that you would benefit from devoting a lot more time in future rhetoric to pinning down and explaining the links between affective polarizations and these beliefs. That includes accounting for the ways in which the beliefs are true, as well, because many of the inflated, apocalyptic beliefs that we form about our political opponents are grounded in real actions and policies of the opposing party.

Basically, the question is this; how do people on both sides of the political party move from simply seeing their opponents doing things and endorsing policies that make them angry, to believing wholeheartedly that the opposing political party as a whole cannot be spoken with, cannot be reasoned with, and cannot be compromised with on anything — and must instead be attacked, always.

It’s not JUST emotion that does this to us. There’s a process by which cognitions get twisted and inflated until people who we disagree with, and who we genuinely don’t like, become viewed as demons that we can‘t imagine doing anything with except fighting.

Part of understanding that process, I think, includes accounting for the ways in which both beliefs and emotions are deliberately manipulated by party leadership to galvanize their members to action. There are a lot of things that would make sense, for example, if more people know that party leadership cherry picks issues based on their potential to generate enmity and rage because research has shown that anger against an imminent threat is one of the most powerful triggers for galvanizing their voters.

(The most obvious example of this in my memory is the Republican party under Newt Gingrich, and how they gained ground in Congress after they adopted a party practice of demonizing their opponents. But even though that example is drawn from the Republican party, the practice is used by both parties.)

You also need to address the "both sides" critique. You’ll need to show the ways in which the mechanisms of polarization are separate from the real actions of parties while also acknowledging that those actions matter and that at any given time one party may actually be doing things that are genuinely worse than the other.

It might also be worth exploring how real actions vs. propaganda inform polarization. For example, how much actual (vs. fabricated) stuff does one party have to do before it creates more polarization?

These points are meant to be constructive, not critical. I think you’ve got a great line of research here and I hope you knock it out of the park. People need to hear it. Burden is on you, though, to be the voice answering the objections they need to hear answered.