["Political Psychology, Volume 47, Issue 4, August 2026. ", "\nAbstract\nWhat is the nature of affective partisan polarization? We answer this question in a preregistered laboratory study conducted in the United States measuring partisans' affective reactions to static images of US politicians with self‐reports and physiological indicators of valence and arousal. Consistent with prior research, participants reported substantially more negative evaluations of out‐party than in‐party politicians. However, we do not observe reliable physiological differentiation between in‐party and out‐party elites under these conditions. This disconnect between self‐reported negative affect and concurrent physiological responses suggests that, in the context of minimal elite exposure, affective polarization can be expressed without detectable visceral activation. These findings are consistent with constructivist and attitude retrieval accounts and constrain strong versions of the hot cognition thesis, though they do not logically exclude all possible roles for visceral affect under different conditions.\n"]