I create and test three interventions that are meant to dampen negative partisanship without diminishing positive partisanship: the impact of cross-cutting identities, unifying identities, and the role of party leaders.

This chapter provides multiple examples of politically motivated hostility and violence in the U.S and four European multi-party systems. It also provides an introduction to the book and its content.

This chapter demonstrates the political consequences of strong positive and negative partisan identity, including their effect on turnout, vote choice, and various other forms of political participation, among partisans in the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Italy.

This chapter focuses on the measurement of positive partisanship. For that purpose, I introduce the reader to the (positive) partisan identity scale that captures crucial components of partisan identity such as partisans’ sense of belonging to the in-party, feeling connected to other party members, as well as the emotional significance of the party membership.

In this chapter, I offer a thorough review of the scholarship that investigates the impact of partisan identity (i.e., expressive partisanship) on political behavior, including political attitudes, turnout, voting, and other forms of political participation.

In this chapter, I introduce instrumental and expressive partisanship as well as its their different predictions for political behavior.

I introduce a multi-item index that captures negative partisan identity. Utilizing this new scale, I demonstrate the magnitude of negative partisan identity among the electorate in the United States and in four European multi-party systems.

I sketch out a few thoughts and suggestions on the complexities and caveats of current research on partisanship as well as possible avenues for future research. I conclude the book with a redeeming assessment of partisanship’s role in democratic societies.

Utilizing data from the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Italy, I examine to what extent positive and negative partisanship promote attitudes that are antithetical to a healthy democratic society, including the support for a ban of political parties as well as the desire to see politicians physically harmed.

Utilizing a sample of US adults and a sample of Swedish partisans, I examine the link between prominent personality traits—including Authoritarianism, Social Dominance Orientation, the Need for Closure, and the Big Five—and strong negative and positive partisanship.

Demand refers to the mobilizing potential in a society for protest; relating to the interest in a society in what a movement stands for. Is the movement addressing a problem people care for? Is there need for a movement on these issues? What personal grievances politicize and translate into political claims, and how? Usually, people who participate in a movement are only a small proportion of those caring about the issue. This is not necessarily a sign of weakness; for a movement to be viable, a large reservoir of sympathizers is needed to nourish its activists. We focus on the social-psychological core of the demand-side of protest, consisting of grievances, efficacy perceptions, identification, emotions, and social embeddedness. Protesters are aggrieved and openly contest established authorities, attempting to change existing power structures. They form the tip of larger masses who feel that their interests and/or values are violated. Indeed, passivity in the face of imperiled interests or violated values is more often the rule rather than the exception. Interestingly, passivity is mainly explained by the absence of theoretically renowned predictors, rather than theoretical approaches for non-participation. Special attention is devoted to theories on non-participation.

Emotion is vital part of our routine communication. The facial feedback hypothesis is the theory of how internal emotion is modulated by the external facial movements used to express it. Botulinum toxin injection is the most common aesthetic procedure in the United States. It has been studied extensively for its cosmetic use in wrinkle reduction, but its secondary psychological effects have only been elucidated gradually over the last two decades. Although neurotoxin is considered safe and effective, it may also potentially affect our facial expressions and communications. Similar to neurotoxin, another example that affects our social interactions is the facial mask, after the COVID-19 pandemic. In this chapter, we hereby discuss how neurotoxin affects our emotions and nonverbal communications.