What do we feel toward people holding opposed views? – second report from the NCF x USWPS polarization study

How much aversion – and how much sympathy – do we feel toward co-citizens with different political views? What do we think about them? What do we feel toward them, and what are we willing to do with them? These are the questions we examined as part of a nationwide study on polarization conducted by NCF, in partnership with SWPS University.

The State of Polarization 2025 is the first comprehensive study of social and political divisions in Poland, based on a representative sample of 2,351 respondents. In total, we will publish three reports from this study. The first one described ideological differences, in the second report, published today in Polish, we show how these differences shape our attitudes toward people with opposing views. We also examine which of the 13 key socio-economic issues of 2025 generate the strongest aversion across political divides.

Key findings from the 2nd report:

• Citizens display a moderately negative attitude toward people who hold views different from their own. We feel more aversion toward such individuals than toward those who think similarly to us. According to our study, the difference in attitudes toward these two groups, measured using Cohen’s d, is 0.6, which constitutes a moderate effect size in statistical terms. We can therefore conclude that affective polarization in Poland in 2025 is moderate. This designation refers solely to this difference – it does not involve comparisons with other countries or with affective polarization in Poland in previous years, as our study employed a new, comprehensive measurement approach.

• We measured all three components of affective polarization: what people think about those with different views, what they feel toward them, and what they would be willing to do with them. We found that:

  • one in three people denies individuals with different views intelligence and an understanding of the world and politics, and one in four doubts their honesty and goodwill;

  • two-thirds of respondents feel mild or strong aversion toward people with different views;

  • people are less willing to befriend, cooperate with, help, talk to, or show kindness toward those who hold different views.

• Strong affective polarization – encompassing contemptuous beliefs, intense aversion, and a refusal to engage with people holding different views – affects a small, though by no means marginal, segment of society. In our study, 13 percent of respondents declared strong aversion toward people with different views. We may suspect that this group includes individuals who are prone to worldview-based hate speech and participation in radical actions and forms of protest—on different sides of Poland’s political divide.

• Our study shows that affective polarization in Poland has neither a gender nor a political color. Strong aversion toward people with different views occurs equally among women and men, residents of rural and urban areas, people with different levels of education, and across political orientations. It is slightly higher among older individuals, those more interested in politics, and those with lower socioeconomic status—and somewhat lower among religious individuals. It may therefore affect each and every one of us.

  The study was designed by Dr. Olga Białobrzeska (FNW/SWPS University), in cooperation with Prof. Ben Stanley (SWPS University), Prof. Marta Żerkowska-Balas (SWPS University), and Wawrzyniec Smoczyński (FNW). The research was conducted by the Ariadna Nationwide Research Panel and funded by a grant from the National Science Centre (NCN) no. 2020/39/B/HS6/00853.

  To read the full report in Polish, download the PDF.