Compare methods

	Affective Polarization Measurement	Feeling Thermometer Analysis
Field	Political Psychology	Political Psychology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2012	1964
Originator	Shanto Iyengar, Gaurav Sood & Yphtach Lelkes	American National Election Studies / Aage Clausen
Type	Composite survey index	Affect rating instrument
Seminal source	Iyengar, S., Sood, G., & Lelkes, Y. (2012). Affect, not ideology: A social identity perspective on polarization. Public Opinion Quarterly, 76(3), 405-431.	Wilcox, C., Sigelman, L., & Cook, E. (1989). Some like it hot: Individual differences in responses to group feeling thermometers. Public Opinion Quarterly, 53(2), 246-257.
Aliases	Affective Polarization Index, Partisan Affect Gap, Thermometer Difference Measure	Feeling Thermometer, Affect Thermometer, Thermometer Rating Scale
Related	4	4
Summary	Affective polarization measurement quantifies the gap between how positively people feel toward their own political party (the in-party) and how negatively they feel toward the opposing party (the out-party). Iyengar, Sood and Lelkes (2012) showed that this affective divide has grown sharply even where issue positions have not, reframing polarization as a social-identity phenomenon of partisan like and dislike rather than ideological distance.	The feeling thermometer is a survey instrument that asks respondents to rate their warmth or favorability toward a person, group, or institution on a 0-to-100 scale, where 0 is very cold/unfavorable, 100 is very warm/favorable, and 50 is neutral. Introduced in the American National Election Studies in the 1960s, it is the standard measure of political affect, and its analysis underpins candidate evaluation, group affect, and affective-polarization research.