Separated by Politics? Disentangling the Dimensions of Discrimination

How rampant is political discrimination in the United States, and how does it compare to other sources of bias in apolitical interactions? We employ a conjoint experiment to juxtapose the discriminatory effects of salient social categories across a range of contexts. The conjoint framework enables identification of social groups' distinct causal effects, ceteris paribus, and minimizes 'cheap talk,' social desirability bias, and spurious conclusions from statistical discrimination. We find pronounced discrimination along the lines of party and ideology, as well as politicized identities such as religion and sexual orientation. We also find desire for homophily along more dimensions, as well as specific out-group negativity. We also find important differences between Democrats and Republicans, with discrimination by partisans often focusing on other groups with political relevance of their own. Perhaps most striking, though, is how much discrimination emerges along political lines - both partisan and ideological. Yet, counter-stereotypic ideological labels can counter, and even erase, the discriminatory consequences of party.