Social Resentment, Ressentiment, and Affective Polarization

Social resentment, deep-rooted and chronic feeling of bitter anger about an unfair disadvantage in society paired with a sense of being in no power to overtly express and challange this illegitimate harm and hostility as well as one of its more specific counterparts ressentiment were demonstrated to relate to populism and anti-democratic attitudes (Abts & Rogenhofer 2024; Capelos et al. 2024; Capelos & Katsanidou 2018). In comparison to only resentful individuals whose grievances may to some extent still be solved by the politics, ressentimentful people are in a mode of political dissatisfaction if not alienation (Capelos & Salmela 2022). They are also ascribed hostile and aggressive action tendencies (Capelos & Demertzis 2018). This leads us to believe that there is a strong connection between social resentment and affective polarization, both in a sense of political animosity and social antagonism. This relationship, however, has not been thoroughly explored so far and leaves many open questions, mainly resulting from the fact that resentment and ressentiment theories, both of which contributed to social resentment concept, lead to different predictions. For resentment, positive mobilization is possible; whereas ressentiment literature would mostly emphasize the chronic character of this emotion mechanism which cannot be overcome by short-term campaign since it does not solve the foundational reasons for the emotional misery. Therefore, identities based on ressentiment are just attempts to hide the real pain. The question, then, is whether people feeling social resentment could develop a positive political identity which might result in democratic system support if e.g. that party becomes part of the government, or does it lead to more anti-political attitude which cannot be changed by any political identity thus leading to a constant circle of populist mobilization and disappointment? Thus, would social resentment result in strong ingroup identity and outgroup animosity and therefore strong affective polarization or a generally negative attitude towards all the parties and therefore low polarization? Second, in terms of societal polarization between different groups, e.g. rich/poor, natives/migrants, does social resentment lead to more social animosity upward, i.e. against powerful and better-offs, or downward, against the socially weak and disadvantaged? The possibility that both directions of antagonism co-exist is also theoretically feasible: Ressentiment is known for its mechanism of transvaluation (Salmela & Capelos, 2021; Salmela & von Scheve, 2018), i.e. the ability to turn the desired, e.g. wealth, into something undesirable and therefore to increase one’s worth. A similar pattern is established in social comparisons: to maintain higher self-esteem people switch from upward to downward comparison (Smith 2000). Thus, does resentment end up in loathing those we envy, above, or also despising all groups equally strongly resulting, again, in no overall polarization? The relationship between ressentiment, social resentment and affective polarization will be analyzed using mixed methods. For a more general causal picture we use data of the post-electoral survey conducted in Lithuania in November 2024. The results of quantitative analyses we will saturate with the interview data from August 2024 which may allow a more thorough depiction of found patterns.