On Similar Political Preferences: Subjective Valence and the Density Hypothesis

Valence-based differences in information processing are an important theme in social cognition research. The density hypothesis (Unkelbach et al., 2008), for example, states that “good is more alike than bad” (Koch et al., 2016) with consequences for processing and interpretation of information. This paper investigates whether this feature replicates in subjective contexts, namely political views. In two studies (total N = 281), participants rated 30 political statements from an official voting advice application (VAA) on three political dimensions, before and after the Dutch national elections of 2023. Contrary to the density effect, both studies showed that people classified political statements they disagreed with as more similar to one another than statements they agreed with. We discuss some possibilities why our results diverge from typical density hypothesis findings.