What is it about?
We used data collected from smartphones to examine whether liberals and conservatives behave differently in everyday life, even when it comes to ostensibly non-political lifestyle behaviors--socializing, moving, working, and leisure. We found that liberals and conservatives do behave differently in everyday life, but not as differently as people think. In fact, observers tended to overestimate lifestyle differences between liberals and conservatives in the same community.
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Why is it important?
Our results suggest that partisanship is seeping into everyday life in ways that cannot be ignored by those concerned by the polarization of American society.
Perspectives
It's striking that even when we look at behaviors that hold no stereotypically partisan content, we still find lifestyle polarization. It's even more striking that this lifestyle polarization is observable within a campus community where liberals and conservatives share many characteristics (e.g., age, location, etc.).
Sanaz Talaifar
Imperial College London
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This page is a summary of: Lifestyle polarization on a college campus: Do liberals and conservatives behave differently in everyday life?, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, May 2025, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/pspp0000545.
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