Psychological Underpinnings of Partisan Bias in Tie Formation on Social Media

Individuals preferentially reciprocate connections with copartisans versus counter-partisans online. However, the mechanisms underlying this partisan bias remain unclear. Do individuals simply prefer viewing politically congenial content, or do they additionally prefer socially connecting with copartisans? Is this driven by preference for in-party ties or distaste for out-party ties? In a Twitter (now called X) field experiment, we created bot accounts varying by partisanship and whether they identified as bots or humans. We randomly assigned Twitter users (N = 3,013) to be followed by one of these accounts. We found evidence for social motivation-users were much more likely to reciprocate links to copartisan relative to counter-partisan accounts when the accounts identified as humans versus bots. We also found evidence for both in-party preference and out-party dispreference-users were as likely to follow back copartisan accounts as they were unlikely to followback counter-partisan accounts, compared to politically neutral accounts. A follow-up survey experiment (N = 990) provides further evidence for distinct roles of issue polarization, out-party animosity, and in-party affinity in moderating follow-back decisions online.