Whoever is Not With Me is Against Me: The ‘Moderate as Out-Group’ Effect

Common intuition suggests that expressing moderate views would allow people to appeal to the broadest audience possible. But is that really the case? Do moderates please all sides or please no side? Across five preregistered studies (N = 3,272), we show that people holding a partisan view on a sociopolitical issue perceive moderates (i.e., people disclosing a genuinely non-extreme position on such issue) as belonging to the out-group ideology. We find that the ‘moderate as out-group’ effect occurs when sociopolitical issues are moralized and at the same time the opposing side is perceived to be a threat to oneself, close ones, or society at large. We also present evidence that the effect is due to partisans’ perception that moderates lack out-group hate, rather than lack in-group love. In other words, partisans perceive that moderates agree with—or simply don’t condemn—the opposing (immoral and threatening) ideology, rather than disagree with their own. Consistent with this, the ‘moderate as out-group’ effect occurs when the moderate view is framed as pro-both sides, but it is attenuated when it is framed as pro-neither side.©American Psychological Association, 2026. This paper is not the copy of record and may not exactly replicate the authoritative document published in the APA journal. The final article is available, upon publication, at: 10.1037/xge0001957