Political partisans view moderates as enemies because they do not express enough hatred for the opposing side.
Moderate voters are frequently classified as members of the opposing out-group by people with strong political views. Most people assume that taking a middle ground makes them a neutral bridge between two extremes. In reality, partisans see a lack of hostility toward the enemy as a sign of betrayal. Moderates get punished for their neutrality because they fail to signal loyalty through performative anger. This creates a social environment where being reasonable is perceived as a direct act of aggression.
Whoever is Not With Me is Against Me: The ‘Moderate as Out-Group’ Effect
PsyArXiv · vgjs4_v1
Common intuition suggests that expressing moderate views would allow people to appeal to the broadest audience possible. But is that really the case? Do moderates please all sides or please no side? Across five preregistered studies (N = 3,272), we show that people holding a partisan view on a sociopolitical issue perceive moderates (i.e., people disclosing a genuinely non-extreme position on such issue) as belonging to the out-group ideology. We find that the ‘moderate as out-group’ effect occu