Food for (political) thought: political inferences from apolitical cues and their social consequences in Italy

US-based research showed that individuals rely on apolitical cues, like cars or clothes, to form expectations about others’ political preferences. This article uses the concept of ‘politicultural linking’ — producing inferences about others from the perceived alignment between apolitical and political preferences — observing this behavior in Italy, a multi-party European context, through a survey vignette experiment on food preferences. We find that respondents associate vegan/ethnic foods with the political left and carnivore foods with the right. Moreover, ideological self-placement, news media exposure, and cultural consumption are associated with respondents’ willingness to do politicultural linking. Finally, we observe that this behavior affects the propensity to interact and converse with others, with implications for social distance and political polarization dynamics.