From partisans to individuals: Lowering an opinion's diagnosticity via counterstereotypes can reduce categorization based on that opinion

Research has shown that individuals often infer political categories like Republican, Democrat, conservative, or liberal from behavioral cues. In polarized contexts, where political outgroups are evaluated very negatively, these political categorizations may lead to negative outcomes and exacerbate polarization. The current research investigated whether political categorization can be reduced via counterstereotypical exemplars. Across three experiments, we exposed participants to stereotype‐confirming vs. stereotype‐disconfirming category exemplars to make political opinions seem more or less diagnostic of different political categories. Our findings provide initial evidence that counterstereotypes that decrease the diagnosticity of an opinion can significantly reduce political categorization on the basis of this opinion. This reduction was more pronounced when making a cue appear more common in a category where it is rare, compared with making a cue appear less common in the category where it is frequent. We discuss these findings in light of their potential implications for polarization dynamics. We also consider potential reasons why the diagnosticity of political opinions is perceived as particularly high in polarized contexts and suggest that greater visibility of counterstereotypical individuals may help reduce political categorization and its negative consequences.