Resources and Partisanship: Response to Commentaries

Abstract

We thank all the commentators for their diligent and thoughtful efforts on our article. The detailed and scholarly work by several of them went far beyond the call of duty, which was most gratifying. In this brief response, we seek to articulate what can be learned from them and to resolve some misunderstandings. Our article was motivated by the recognition that partisan hostility has increased in recent years, particularly in the United States of America (USA). We thought social psychologists might be well positioned to seek ways of reducing the conflict, given the field’s accumulated expertise regarding human interactions and group processes. Judging by these commentaries, we were perhaps overly optimistic about social psychology’s potential for promoting social harmony in this fashion. Indeed, only the Aquino et al. (this issue) commentary took up the theme of how to reduce partisan conflict.