2025/05/15 by Stuart J. Turnbull‐Dugarte, Alberto López Ortega · 1 voice · 3 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Psychology · #Affect (linguistics) #Business #Communication #Diverse Scientific and Economic Studies #Economics #Financial Markets and Investment Strategies #Monetary Policy and Economic Impact #Monetary economics #Normalization (sociology) #Psychology #Sociology
paper · open access · doi:10.1086/736698
published in The Journal of Politics (University of Chicago Press)
openalex publication_date 2025/05/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
Are radical right supporters penalized by a social norm against the radical right on the dating market? This paper investigates this question by leveraging diverse empirical sources, including a unique and behavioral visual conjoint experiment conducted in Britain and Spain. Theoretically, we argue that the radical right is accommodated within the dating market as a result of the affective spillovers among those on the center-right who view dating those from the opposing ideological bloc as more socially costly than dating their own in-bloc partners. Empirically, we test this by examining the behavior of center-right partisans and assessing whether they follow a polity-based norm which places a premium on ostracizing stigmatized parties, or a bloc-logic norm which incentivizes the rejection of out-bloc partisans. The results demonstrate that center-right partisans accommodate the radical right and are actively expected to do so by fellow in-group partisans. Any dating market penalty for radical right partisans is based on the composition of those on the dating market rather than any polity-level norm enforcement. An accommodating bloc-logic<br/>in dating preferences among the mainstream right has large normative implications as it suggests that affective polarization and out-bloc rejection between overarching political camps contributes to facilitating the social normalization of radical right supporters who often hold preferences incompatible with liberal democracy.