Frühere Untersuchungen deuten darauf hin, dass Menschen auf der linken Seite aufgrund von Eigenschaften wie Empathie tendenziell weniger zu Aggression neigen. Die Verhaftung von Luigi Mangione nach der Ermordung des CEO von UnitedHealthcare führte zu einer zunehmenden Unterstützung für parteiische Gewalt unter Demokraten gegen Republikaner.

The “folk hero” narrative surrounding Luigi Mangione increased Democrats’ support for violence against Republicans, study finds

A recent study published in Public Opinion Quarterly suggests that highly publicized, morally framed acts of violence can influence public attitudes toward political aggression. The research provides evidence that the arrest of Luigi Mangione, following the assassination of the UnitedHealthcare chief executive officer, led to an increase in support for partisan violence among Democrats.

“First, violence itself didn’t immediately trigger more support for violence,” Vargiu said. “In fact, right after the killing, Democrats actually became slightly less supportive of partisan violence, not more.”

“The shift only happened later, after Luigi Mangione was arrested and identified, and public discourse began reframing him as a ‘folk hero,’” Vargiu noted. “That suggests that it wasn’t the act of violence itself that mattered most, but the narrative that followed.”

The reaction to the corporate executive’s murder also crossed over into the political sphere. “Second, and maybe more unsettling: even though the killing was not explicitly linked to partisan politics (the victim wasn’t a politician and the shooter wasn’t acting on behalf of either party) people still filtered it through a partisan lens,” Vargiu explained.

“Democrats became more supportive of violence against Republicans specifically, not violence in general. This shows that in a country as polarized as the US currently is, a formally non-partisan act of violence can still generate partisan reactions.”

“Third, the direction of that shift is itself telling,” Vargiu said. “We might have expected Republicans, whose side was more associated with the victim, to become more supportive of retaliatory violence (acting in defense of their own side). But that is not what happened.”

“Instead, it was Democrats, whose views aligned more closely with the perpetrator’s cause, who became more supportive of violence,” Vargiu explained. “This suggests that public acceptance of political aggression may have less to do with in-group defense, and more to do with hostility toward the opposing side. That is, people may not become more willing to endorse violence because their side was attacked, but because they already feel enough animosity toward the other side that violence against them seems justified.”

The researchers note that this data requires appropriate context to avoid misinterpretations. “We want to be very clear that our results should not be read as ‘Democrats are violent’ or ‘liberals are more prone to political violence,’” Vargiu cautioned. “That would be a misinterpretation of both our data and the broader research on this topic.”

“In fact, prior research (including some of the work we discuss in our paper) suggests that people on the left tend to be, on average, dispositionally less inclined toward aggression, thanks to traits like empathy and openness to experience that are more common on that end of the spectrum.”

“What our findings actually show is something different, and in some ways more concerning, namely that a compelling narrative around violence can be powerful enough to shift attitudes even among groups who are generally less likely to endorse violence in the first place,” Vargiu said. “The real takeaway is that moralizing narratives about violence can move public opinion regardless of where people start out, and not that one side is inherently more violent than the other.”

https://academic.oup.com/poq/advance-article/doi/10.1093/poq/nfag043/8723741

Does this mean republicans be encouraged to violence through hate and democrats through moral framing?

Kinda find it hard to believe unless we’re talking about only about the modern left…

Many of the rights people fought for were fought with blood…

A classic misunderstanding that empathy leads to non-violence. Empathy keeps people from engaging in inhumanizing behaviors, that helps keep from unnecessary violence, but that still means within the moral framework of the “rational citizen” there is still the capacity and justification for violence against another human for the greater good.

Inhumanization is a small part of violence, because it is a mental lubricant rather than a key ingredient.

> “The shift only happened later, after Luigi Mangione was arrested and identified, and public discourse began reframing him as a ‘folk hero,’” Vargiu noted. “That suggests that it wasn’t the act of violence itself that mattered most, but the narrative that followed.”

To posit an addendum to their hypothesis, I wonder if part of the increased positive view of political violence, was derived from the perceived outcome of the political violence.

I don’t know about everyone else, but for weeks after the assassination, I saw news articles and comments online, suggesting that after the assassination, United Health had been accepting far more health insurance claims than usual.

If people perceived an action as having a positive outcome (more people getting their healthcare covered by their health insurance), then that provides further incentive for the actions (political violence).

Moreover, I saw more talk about just how bad United Healthcare was and had been about their insurance coverage. Which may have generated further negative sentiment against the company, and therefore positive sentiment around the assassin. Which bled into wider support for political violence.

The fact that democrats are portrayed as ‚the left‘ is a massive miss, and I’m very surprised any journal would publish this at all.

Logically speaking, if the left leaves violence completely to the right, the left will be wiped out.

Could be a sign of the times. As wealth inequality becomes more apparent and the structures that were put up to prevent it become weaker, people get desperate. Desperate people may be more likely to shift their moral traits to align with what seems fair and meets their basic needs

Luigi did nothing wrong

Strange to use the words ‚left‘ and ‚democrats‘ as synonyms. Democrats are still to the right of the political compass on a global scale

Against the rich? And you are assuming the rich vote Republican?

What a horrible butchered title.

The whole article writes about how the democrats were more inclined towards violence when moral framing was added, which is far from just „left“ and the „prior research suggests“ is a gross deflection of what the article is about.

Did that CEO deserved to get shoot in the street? No.
Did that CEO deserved to die in prison? Yes.
And with him people whose directly choices dictated by profit bring to the death of people.

I’d wager its not just democrats vs Republicans it’s us vs them and typically the they/them are Republican by association

Not sure why Luigi is considered an assassin, he didn’t do it. The guy was helping me mend a fence in North Dakota the entire week the murder happened. Whoever did do the killing, it was not an assassination either, since there was no payment.

Hahahahaha, no. These titles are getting crazier by the day.

„a science thing has determined that the left people are actually really good and cool“

Wow. What a post.

It probably correlates positively to age.

What an insane misunderstanding of the whole situation. This didn’t have anything to do with democrat or republican. The apathy and violent intent is towards a specific wealth class of people, not a political one.