Love Him for the Enemies He Has Made: Signaling by Inflammatory Pro-Gun Rhetoric

Abstract: American politics is rife with messages designed to anger one’s political enemies. In this paper, we propose and test a model suggesting that such inflammatory messages are effective because they signal that the messenger is unwilling to compromise with the groups they have offended. Taking the example of inflammatory pro-gun messaging, we show, in three preregistered experiments with American conservatives (total n = 1742) that conservatives view such messages as offending liberals, and, to the extent that they feel negatively toward Democratic politicians, they view the producers of these inflammatory messages positively, seeing them as the sort of politician who should be trusted by conservatives and as the sort of politician that they would be willing to vote for. However, this is not true across the entire conservative electorate, as conservatives who feel more warmly toward Democratic politicians view politicians posting inflammatory messages (and therefore offending liberals) as less trustworthy and less vote-worthy. As affective polarization is on the rise in the United States, these inflammatory, bridge-burning messages may become more prevalent with politicians trying to appeal to voters who are increasingly suspicious of anyone who might be tempted to compromise.