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Title: Rooting for the same team: Shared social identities in a polarized context

Abstract: Does sharing affective identities build social cohesion in a politically polarized setting? We experimentally answer this during the Brazilian presidential elections of 2022. We use Twitter follow-backs and blocks as measures of social ties among congruent or incongruent individuals along political (supporting the same candidate) and affective (rooting for the same football team) dimensions of identity. Congruence in either dimension fosters tie formation, but the positive effect of sharing an affective identity becomes substantially less relevant when information about political identity is available. This suggests that, although affective congruence fosters ties among politically opposite individuals, political polarization limits such effect. Consistent with these results, we also show that a shared national identity might not help build cohesion in a polarized setting. Through text analysis of live-streamed tweets of Brazilian soccer fans during the 2022 World Cup, we document significant differences in the fans' reactions to positive (e.g., goals) and negative (elimination) events depending on their political alignment with the specific players that triggered the events. Taken together, our results indicate that, in a polarized setting, political identities can hinder the potential of other shared identities to increase social cohesion.