Americans have become increasingly likely to dislike, distrust, and derogate their ideological opponents on contemporary social and political issues. We hypothesized that a lack of exposure to compelling reasons, arguments, and evidence from ideological opponents might at least partly explain negative views of those opponents. Consistent with this hypothesis, we found that participants assume their ideological opponents, in comparison to their ideological allies, are less likely to have good reasons for their positions. Moreover, we found that the more strongly participants believe their opponents lack good reasons for their positions, the more likely they are to report that those opponents lack both intellectual capabilities and moral character. Critically, exposure to arguments favoring their opponents' position produced more favorable impressions of those opponents. We discuss possible implications of these results for the role of reasons and reasoning in political discourse, and for productive disagreement in a functioning democracy.

在当代社会和政治问题上，美国人变得越来越不喜欢，不信任和贬低意识形态反对派。我们假设缺乏意识形态反对者令人信服的理由，论点和证据，至少可以部分解释这些反对者的消极看法。与此假设相一致，我们发现参与者与意识形态盟友相比，他们的意识形态反对者不太可能有其立场的正当理由。此外，我们发现，参与者越强烈地相信他们的对手缺乏其职位的充分理由，他们就越有可能报告这些对手缺乏智力和道德品格。至关重要的是，面对有利于对手的争论 位置给那些对手留下了更好的印象。我们讨论了这些结果对政治话语中的原因和推理的作用以及在运转正常的民主制中产生生产性分歧的可能含义。