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More Polarized but More Independent: Political Party Identification and Ideological Self-Categorization Among U.S. Adults, College Students, and Late Adolescents, 1970-2015
Abstract
In three nationally representative surveys of U.S. residents (N = 10 million) from 1970 to 2015, more Americans in the early 2010s (vs. previous decades) identified as Independent, including when age effects were controlled. More in the early 2010s (vs. previous decades) expressed polarized political views, including stronger political party affiliation or more extreme ideological self-categorization (liberal vs. conservative) with fewer identifying as moderate. The correlation between party affiliation and ideological views grew stronger over time. The overall trend since the 1970s was toward more Americans identifying as Republican or conservative. Older adults were more likely to identify as conservative and Republican. More Millennials (born 1980-1994) identify as conservative than either GenXers or Boomers did at the same age, and fewer are Democrats compared with Boomers. These trends are discussed in the context of social identification processes and their implications for the political dynamics in the United States.
... National surveys of adults show that political polarization-or felt divides between the major political parties in the United States-reached an alltime high during Trump's presidency (Dunn, 2020). In a large national 2017 study of high schools, over 20% of teachers reported an increase in polarization on campus (Rogers et al., 2017), and trends in party identification show increased polarization in adolescents and young adults (Twenge et al., 2016). Thus, adolescents across the political spectrum likely experienced political polarization, and one result may be stronger identification with the values and beliefs of one's own party (Rogers et al., 2017;Twenge et al., 2016). ...
... In a large national 2017 study of high schools, over 20% of teachers reported an increase in polarization on campus (Rogers et al., 2017), and trends in party identification show increased polarization in adolescents and young adults (Twenge et al., 2016). Thus, adolescents across the political spectrum likely experienced political polarization, and one result may be stronger identification with the values and beliefs of one's own party (Rogers et al., 2017;Twenge et al., 2016). For example, the beginning of Trump's presidency was dominated by immigration policy and rhetoric, which may have heightened divides in views of racial and societal equality. ...
... Trump likened Mexicans to drug-dealers and rapists, supported a border wall to prevent Mexicans and Latin Americans from entering the United States, and enacted a travel ban from mostly Muslim majority countries (C-SPAN, 2015a, 2015b). These statements and policies were politically polarizing and may have led youth supporters and detractors of Trump to further embrace their previously held political views (Twenge et al., 2016). Thus, adolescent Trump supporters may have decreased values of racial diversity and beliefs in inequality, whereas Trump detractors may have strengthened these values and beliefs. ...
This study examined whether appraisals of 45th U.S. President Donald J. Trump by 1433 adolescents (Mage = 16.1, SDage = 1.16, Female = 56.9%, Latinx = 43.6%, White = 35.7%, Black = 12.6%, Asian = 5.8%) predicted change from 2017 to 2018 across four dimensions of sociopolitical development (SPD): marginalization, critical analysis, civic efficacy, and political action. Trump supporters declined in awareness of inequality and race consciousness but increased in voting intentions. Trump detractors increased in awareness of inequality, race consciousness, and experiences of discrimination. Trump supporters and detractors increased in civic efficacy compared to youth with no opinion. Additional findings were moderated by race and ethnicity. Findings suggest adolescents’ SPD has been shaped in distinct ways by the Trump era.
... Baby Boomers. Baby Boomers are those born between 1946 and 1964 (Twenge, Honeycutt, Prislin, & Sherman, 2016). They received their namesake as the soldiers returning home from World War II quickly started families, creating a baby-boom (Seemiller & Grace, 2016). ...
... Gen X. Generation X (Gen X) includes those who were born between 1965 and 1979 (Twenge et al., 2016). Gen X grew up in a time where technology was advancing. ...
... The year that best marks the end of Gen X and start of the next generation is particularly unclear. Here, Millennials, otherwise referred to as Generation Y, are considered as those born between 1980 and 1994 (Twenge et al., 2016). According to Lukianoff and Haidt (2015), many parents of Millennials were alarmed by the surge of child abductions making news in the 1980's, making it appear that the world was not safe. ...
In modern America, political polarization is on the rise, especially among Millennials. This paper explores why, examining moral values, worldview, and other potential moderators. In addition to a literature review and theoretical discussion, this paper will present one study of online Americans (N=500). Results indicate that subtle yet potentially important differences exist among younger generations. Younger generations were more intellectually-egotistic (p = .000; d =.65), are more overconfident in their intellect (p =.000; d =.45), and adopt a hierarchical worldview (p =.001; d =.36). Further research might examine these factors over time with long-term studies that control for the effect of aging.
... Despite the great deal of research on these developments, surprisingly little attention has been given to whether they have been fueled by generational replacement. Exceptions include research on the Southern realignment (e.g., Stimson 1989, Osborne, Sears, andValentino 2011), Stoker and Jennings (2008) on partisan sorting, on presidential voting, and Twenge et al. (2016) on trends in party identification and ideology. I have found no research using a generational lens to study how Democrats and Republicans feel about their own or the other party. 1 If generational replacement is changing the U.S. partisan landscape, young people entering the electorate have partisan characteristics that differ substantially from those who are exiting via mortality. ...
... The analysis also found a robust association between age and the tendency to identify as a Republican rather than Democrat. This finding is notable in light of the mixed findings from previous research on the topic, though matches the finding of Twenge et al. (2016), who analyze non-ANES data, as well as those of Knoke and Haut (1974), who analyze data from ANES from the 1950s through 1972. It suggests that the aging of the American population has played a role in shifting the fortunes of the Democratic and Republican parties. ...
Analyzes ANES data from 1964-2016 to show the role of generational replacement in fueling trends in affective polarization, identification as an independent, and the decline of Democratic dominance in the distribution of party identifiers both inside and outside of the South.
... That is, when imagining a better society beyond the current state of affairs-the essence of utopian thinking-there is likely to be large-scale solidarity and consistency in what that might look like. In an increasingly polarized world [14], finding common ground would seem like a good place for planetary health to find its roots, especially as we seek to inspire those who will inherit the future ( Figure 2). ...
... Obviously, bridging the gap between ideation and implementation in the context of planetary health is exceedingly complicated; it involves a democratic span over the top of treacherous political waters, an industrial-media-marketing complex with vortexes of entrenched power relations, and cultish groups that reinforce the notion that failure to "keep up" or "stay healthy" in the accelerated modern world is the fault of the individual [119,120]. However, in an era marked by political polarization [14,121] and generalized incivility [122,123], identifying areas of convergence on what a "good society" might look like, seems essential [124]. ...
The concept of planetary health blurs the artificial lines between health at scales of person, place and planet. At the same time, it emphasizes the integration of biological, psychological, social and cultural aspects of health in the modern environment. Our grandest challenges in the Anthropocene ultimately stem from human attitudes to each other and to our environment. However, solutions rarely confront the underlying value systems that created these interconnected problems, or the attitudes that perpetuate them. Too often, the dominant focus is on the “worst of human nature”, and devalues or neglects the importance of empathy, kindness, hope, love, creativity and mutual respect—the deeper values that unite, empower and refocus priorities of individuals and groups. Here, we call to normalize more creative, mutualistic approaches—including the perspectives of traditional and indigenous cultures—to positively influence normative value systems. We revisit the power of inspiration with the profound example of the Apollo 8 Earthrise photo which galvanized a fledgling planetary health movement over 50 years ago. Through the inaugural Earth Day that followed, we are reminded that its early organizers were not constrained in how they defined the “environment”. They and their primary speakers were as concerned about value systems as they were about pollution—that we cannot hope to solve our problems without addressing the attitudes that created them in the first place. We explore the ways in which the awe of Earthrise—and the contemporary science of creativity and studies of utopian thinking—might reinvigorate imagination, kindness and mutualism. We revisit the fundamental challenge offered by Pulitzer-Prize-winning microbiologist Rene Dubos and others in the afterglow of the Earthrise photo, and the inaugural Earth Day. This is a question of imagination: What kind of world we want to live in?
... ideology and party affiliation at age 26 years were captured with survey questions drawn from the Monitoring the Future Study (Schulenberg et al., 2018). Other nationally representative longitudinal studies, such as the American Freshman survey and the General Social Survey, used similar survey questions (Twenge, Honeycutt, Prislin, & Sherman, 2016). Similar to the analytic strategies employed in these studies, we constructed three variables, one representing political ideology and two representing party affiliation. ...
... We found that childhood antecedents were differentially related to three aspects of political orientation: ideological conservativism, Republican Party affiliation, and Democratic Party affiliation. This is consistent with nationally representative studies that have found differences in the degree of congruence between political ideology and party affiliation (Twenge et al., 2016). Fearful temperament was associated with ideological conservativism, but not Republican Party affiliation. ...
This article examines early childhood antecedents of adults' political orientation. Using longitudinal data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, we investigate associations between parenting beliefs and behaviors, child temperament, and attachment security during early childhood in relation to adult political ideology and party affiliation at age 26 years (N = 1,364). Young children's fearful temperament and anxious attachment security, as well as mothers' authoritarian parenting beliefs in early childhood, predicted conservative political orientations at age 26. Children's abilities to focus attention and avoidant attachment security predicted liberal orientations. These findings provide evidence that multiple aspects of early developmental experience-temperament, parenting, and infant-mother attachment-are associated with later political orientations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
... The majority of evidence consists of survey data describing how generations differed at the same point in time in life, on average, with relation to (1) values, attitudes, beliefs, or motivations; (2) educational development and (3) personality characteristics. 3,5,[25][26][27] When compared to baby boomers at the same age, data suggest that millennials and A J P E A c c e p t e d D r a f t Generation X considers goals related to extrinsic values (eg, financial potential, image, fame) to be more important. 3,5 Additionally, millennials and Generation X have demonstrated slightly lower concern for others (eg, empathy) and less interest in civic orientation compared to baby boomers. ...
... 5 Other areas of generational differences identified include higher self-esteem and positive self-views and changes in sexual frequency or political party identification patterns overtime. [25][26][27] While these data suggest that generations vary as a whole, each person in the academy is a unique individual with multiple socio-cultural factors beyond generation that can influence his/her needs for recruitment, motivation and retention. Currently, additional pharmacy-specific data are needed to identify what generational differences, if any, exist among members of the academy. ...
Academic pharmacy spans several generations including traditionalists, baby boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y, commonly referred to as millennials. It has been suggested that leadership styles must change to accommodate these generational differences in academic pharmacy, yet there are no data of which we are aware, that support this assertion. We contend that leadership styles are derived from one's authentic self and are based on core beliefs and values; therefore, leadership styles must not change to accommodate a specific generation or other subset of academic pharmacy. Instead, effective leaders must change tactics (ie, methods or processes) to reach and influence a specific cohort. This article develops and supports the argument that leadership styles should not change to accommodate generational differences in academic pharmacy.
... People who identify themselves as liberal or conservative behave in a way that is highly influenced by group cues (party identification) and not by their system of beliefs (ideological beliefs; Malka & Lelkes, 2010). 1 In recent decades in the U.S, political parties have sorted in terms of ideological identities, and people use their party-based identity as a heuristic for their ideological judgments . The ideology and party affiliation of Americans are highly correlated, and such correlation is getting stronger (Twenge et al., 2016). Self-identified liberals are overwhelmingly Democrats while self-identified conservatives are overwhelmingly Republican . ...
The COVID-19 pandemic poses an unprecedented risk to society. Studies suggested that people’s beliefs about COVID-19 are divided depending on partisan affiliations. Building on the belief gap hypothesis, this study adopts a nationally representative survey (N = 1,119) to examine whether political identity or support for Trump is more strongly related to having false beliefs about COVID-19. Results showed that support for Trump is a better predictor of having false beliefs about COVID-19 than conservative/Republican political identity. Support for Trump predicted having false beliefs, and such a tendency increased when they were more educated. Trust in scientific and news media institutions and conservative news use mediated the relationship between support for Trump and having false beliefs. Our findings bear implications on belief gap studies by introducing new mediators such as different dimensions of institutional trust and shed light on why people who support Trump are more susceptible to false claims about COVID-19.
... A polarização das identidades de esquerda e de direita entre os mais velhos é um fenômeno consistente com tendências identificadas em outros países, que mostram que as pessoas mais velhas têm identidades partidárias mais sólidas (Shively, 1979;Dalton, 2000), participam mais de eleições (Goerres, 2007) e são mais polarizadas (Boxel, Gentzkow e Shapiro, 2017). Há um grande debate sobre se esse fenômeno se deveria propriamente à idade ou a um efeito de coorte (Danigelis, Hardy e Cutler, 2007;Twenge et al., 2016). ...
Embora tenhamos muitas evidências anedóticas sobre a polarização política no Brasil, os estudos empíricos têm se concentrado, em grande parte, no padrão de voto. Partindo de duas séries históricas de pesquisas de opinião (Lapop e World Values Survey), investigamos o fenômeno da polarização política em quatro sentidos consagrados: polarização das opiniões sobre temas políticos, polarização das identidades políticas, alinhamento das opiniões com identidades e polarização afetiva. Verificamos que há polarização de opiniões sobre direitos dos homossexuais e sobre o divórcio, como processo e como estado, respectivamente. As identidades políticas também se polarizaram a partir de 2010, sobretudo entre os mais velhos e menos escolarizados, o que não implicou um aumento de alinhamento. Por fim, constatamos que, entre as pessoas engajadas, há polarização afetiva em torno de algumas identidades.
... Demographic differences in acceptance have been observed such that those from the American South, self-identified Republicans, and evangelical Christians have exhibited a significant decrease in acceptance of same-sex relationships and increase in support of sexuality-based discrimination in recent years (Becker, 2014;Jelen, 2017). Although students and faculty at American universities tend to have a more liberal political orientation compared with the general population (Mariani & Hewitt, 2008), current college students are more politically polarized and more likely to identify as conservative than previous generations (Twenge, Honeycutt, et al., 2016). Whereas campus climate has demonstrated overall improvements for sexual minorities (e.g., Garvey et al., 2017), this change in climate may have emboldened those who are not accepting to be more overtly hostile toward sexual minorities, potentially increasing disparities in mental health outcomes. ...
Sexual minority college students experience higher rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidality compared with their heterosexual peers. Significant social progress has been made in the last few decades, such that attitudes and policies toward sexual minorities in the United States have improved dramatically. It is unclear, however, whether this progress has decreased disparities in mental health outcomes between cisgender sexual minorities and heterosexuals. Therefore, the current study sought to determine whether disparities in depression, anxiety, and suicidality between cisgender sexual minority and heterosexual college students has decreased in the last 2 decades. Data were derived from the National College Health Assessment (NCHA), a national population-based survey of health outcomes among U.S. college students conducted every semester since 2000. Logistic regression was used to examine main and interaction effects of sexual orientation and time on lifetime and 12-month depression and anxiety diagnosis and treatment, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempt. As hypothesized, significant main effects of time and sexual orientation were observed such that sexual minorities had higher rates of all outcomes compared with heterosexuals, and rates of these outcomes increased over time for all participants. However, despite observed improvements in climate and policies toward sexual minority college students, disparities in rates of depression and anxiety diagnosis/treatment and suicidality among college students have expanded in recent years. These results indicate that further research is needed to determine the extent to which changes in minority stress and structural stigma lead to changes in rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidality in sexual minorities.
... One possible explanation for the discrepancy in studies related to the role of political identity and cultural worldview is that youth do not yet have strongly formed political ideology or affiliation. For youth, political party identification is not as strongly polarized as it is with adults; more youth identify as independent or no preference (Twenge et al. 2016). Research has indicated that youth and adolescents' worldview are not yet fully formed (vollebergh, Iedema, and Raaijmakers 2001). ...
In US school settings and materials, climate change is often framed as an uncertain phenomenon. However, the effect of such denialist representations on youth’s perceptions of climate change has not been empirically tested. To address this gap in the literature, this article reports on a survey-based experiment testing two framings of uncertainty about the causes and effects of climate change—one with a high level of uncertainty and one with a low level of uncertainty—on students’ knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours related to climate change. The experiment was conducted with 453 middle and high school students . Students who read a text portraying climate change with high uncertainty reported lower levels of certainty about human-caused climate change . To explore how the students engaged cognitive resources when reading the experimental texts, regression analyses were used to test two hypotheses. The Knowledge Thesis predicts that youth will use their prior knowledge to evaluate the text, and the Norms Thesis predicts that youth will use the perceived norms of their social group to evaluate the text. Results suggested that students did not respond to the treatment differentially, given their differing levels of prior knowledge nor social norms accepting of climate change . Implications for practice include the necessity of explicit scaffolds to support deep critical engagement with informational, or dis-informational, text about climate change.
... Although some evidence suggests conservatism increases with age (e.g., Cornelis et al., 2009), these studies often conflate age with cohort and period effects, including which administration is in office and other prominent national events (e.g., 9/11) that happened when young people are forming their political identities (Desilver, 2014). Cohort data from yearly nationally representative samples of high school seniors between 1976 and 2015 indicate that the likelihood of 12th graders being predominantly Republican or Democrat has dramatically changed over the past 40 years (Twenge et al., 2016). Youths' political leanings have varied throughout history, and American 18-year-olds are currently more moderate than liberal or conservative. ...
Debates about lowering the voting age often center on whether 16 and 17-year-olds possess sufficient cognitive capacity and political knowledge to participate in politics. Little empirical research has examined age differences in adolescents’ and adults’ complexity of reasoning about political issues. We surveyed N = 778 adults (Mage = 38.5, SD = 12.5) and N = 397 16 and 17-year-olds concerning judgements and justifications about whether the US should change the minimum voting age. Justifications for changing the voting age were coded for integrative (i.e., integrating multiple perspectives to form a judgment about changing the voting age), elaborative (i.e., providing multiple reasons to support the same judgement about changing the voting age), and dialectic (i.e., recognizing multiple differing perspectives on changing the voting age) complexity of reasoning. Bayesian regressions indicated that adolescents provided greater integrative and elaborative complexity in their reasoning to change the voting age than adults. Adolescents and adults did not meaningfully differ in their dialectic complexity. Findings are consistent with past research indicating that adolescents possess the cognitive capacity and political knowledge to vote in US elections.
... The youngest group of respondents considers implementation of Law on Alcohol Control as an absolutely negative phenomenon as answers to all questions display negative results. Such attitude may be attributed to reluctance of young adolescents to comply to various types of legislation (LeBlanc, Beattie and Culligan 2002), more liberal views (Twenge et al. 2016) and increased prevalence of alcohol related disorders among youngsters in Lithuania (Karpuskiene, Rasteniene and Liepuonius 2019). ...
The present study addresses the perceived effects of the implementation of the Law on Alcohol Control passed by the Lithuanian Parliament. The current study provides initial scientific insights into the rationale and the outcomes of that piece of legislation. The results of the research were analyzed from both economic and social perspectives. The study revealed that although the implementation of the Law on Alcohol Control did induce significant positive changes in society’s perception towards consumption of alcohol, it also provoked some side effects in economic and social perspectives.
... Furthermore, different countries are shaped by different cultures, which are partly reflected by their party systems (Grendstad 1995(Grendstad , 2001Bandelow et al. 2013). Even in the US, the ACF was developed at a time when the party system was not as polarized as it is today (Twenge et al. 2016). It is therefore necessary for applications outside the US but also within the US to relate more closely the notion of belief systems with partisanship. ...
To enhance comparative studies of the ACF, this contribution provides empirical evidence for the measurement of deep normative core beliefs and cultural theory through partisan affiliation. It assesses the interplay between cultural worldviews, partisanship, and policy core beliefs by means of linear regression analyses and correlation statistics to answer the question how deep normative core beliefs are best operationalized across and within European countries. The results methodologically advance and validate cultural theory and partisanship as conceptualizations of deep normative core beliefs and indicate that an appropriate measurement is dependent both on the national context and the policy subsystem. Under different conditions, either cultural worldviews or partisanship depict deep normative core beliefs and explain the formation of policy core beliefs as the basis for advocacy coalitions.
... The limitation is justified because the shaping of a generation, more than the age of birth, is influenced by certain cultural and economic conditions of a given country, which is for example, the scale of availability of new communication technologies. Comparisons to Europe as a whole seem to be overly generalizing, as for instance in this case of religiosity: "In Europe, half of the population is denying religion and many churches are standing empty" [Twenge 2019: 161] Adults, College Students, and Late Adolescents, 1970-2015[Twenge et al. 2016. ...
Review of: Jean M. Twenge, iGen. Dlaczego dzieciaki dorastające w sieci są mniej zbuntowane, bardziej tolerancyjne, mniej szczęśliwe – i zupełnie nieprzygotowane do dorosłości – i co to oznacza dla nas wszystkich [iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy – and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood – and What That Means for the Rest of Us], Smak Słowa, Sopot 2019, pp. 376.
... This time period also marked the beginning of the decline in trust of news media outlets [39] and a rise in polarity among followers of Republican and Democrat parties [40]. Today, political polarization in the United States is at the extreme [41] and as of 2019, only 13% of Americans have a "great deal" of trust in the mass media [42]. ...
The term “Anthropocene Syndrome” describes the wicked interrelated challenges of our time. These include, but are not limited to, unacceptable poverty (of both income and opportunity), grotesque biodiversity losses, climate change, environmental degradation, resource depletion, the global burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), health inequalities, social injustices, the spread of ultra-processed foods, consumerism and incivility in tandem with a diminished emphasis on the greater potential of humankind, efforts toward unity, or the value of fulfilment and flourishing of all humankind. Planetary health is a concept that recognizes the interdependent vitality of all natural and anthropogenic ecosystems—social, political and otherwise; it blurs the artificial lines between health at scales of person, place and planet. Promoting planetary health requires addressing the underlying pathology of “Anthropocene Syndrome” and the deeper value systems and power dynamics that promote its various signs and symptoms. Here, we focus on misinformation as a toxin that maintains the syndromic status quo—rapid dissemination of falsehoods and dark conspiracies on social media, fake news, alternative facts and medical misinformation described by the World Health Organization as an “infodemic”. In the context of planetary health, we explore the historical antecedents of this “infodemic” and underscore an urgent need to remediate the misinformation mess. It is our contention that education (especially in early life) emphasizing mindfulness and understanding of the mechanisms by which propaganda is spread (and unhealthy products are marketed) is essential. We expand the discourse on positive social contagion and argue that empowerment through education can help lead to an information transformation with the aim of flourishing along every link in the person, place and planet continuum.
... Although some evidence suggests conservatism increases with age (e.g., Cornelis et al., 2009), these studies often conflate age with cohort and period effects, including which administration is in office and other prominent national events (e.g., 9/11) that happened when young people are forming their political identities (Desilver, 2014). Cohort data from yearly nationally-representative samples of high school seniors between 1976-2015 indicate that the likelihood of 12th graders being predominantly Republican or Democrat has drastically changed over the past 40 years (Twenge et al., 2016). Youths' political leanings have varied throughout history and currently, American 18-year-olds are more moderate than liberal or conservative. ...
Several US states have proposed bills to lower the minimum local and national voting age to 16 years. Legislators and the public often reference political philosophy, attitudes about the capabilities of teenagers, or past precedent as evidence to support or oppose changing the voting age. Dissenters to changing the voting age are primarily concerned with whether 16 and 17-year-olds have sufficient political maturity to vote, including adequate political knowledge, cognitive capacity, independence, interest, and life experience. We review past research that suggests 16 and 17-year-olds possess the political maturity to vote. Concerns about youths' ability to vote are generally not supported by developmental science, suggesting that negative stereotypes about teenagers may be a large barrier to changing the voting age.
... Scholars have argued that the USA is experiencing an increase in ideological polarization (Twenge, Honeycutt, Prislin, & Sherman, 2016) and that treatment of minorities poses one of the most divisive topics today (Schaffner, MacWilliams, & Nteta, 2018). This phenomenon occasionally makes for an explosive mix when combined with the often-discussed online disinhibition effect, which describes people expressing more anger and hatred online than they would in person (e.g. ...
To what extent are intergroup attitudes associated with regional differences in online aggression and hostility? We test whether regional attitude biases towards minorities and their local variability (i.e. intraregional polarization) independently predict verbal hostility on social media. We measure online hostility using large US American samples from Twitter and measure regional attitudes using nationwide survey data from Project Implicit. Average regional biases against Black people, White people, and gay people are associated with regional differences in social media hostility, and this effect is confounded with regional racial and ideological opposition. In addition, intraregional variability in interracial attitudes is also positively associated with online hostility. In other words, there is greater online hostility in regions where residents disagree in their interracial attitudes. This effect is present both for the full resident sample and when restricting the sample to White attitude holders. We find that this relationship is also, in part, confounded with regional proportions of ideological and racial groups (attitudes are more heterogeneous in regions with greater ideological and racial diversity). We discuss potential mechanisms underlying these relationships, as well as the dangers of escalating conflict and hostility when individuals with diverging intergroup attitudes interact. © 2020 The Authors. European Journal of Personality published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Association of Personality Psychology
... Polarization involves deliberate attempts to expand the gap between the political left and the political right and drive people away from the political center Groenendyk, 2018;Melki & Pickering, 2014;Prior, 2013;Twenge, Honeycutt, Prislin, & Sherman, 2016). In order to gain followers, young news sites often use polarization as a way to stake out a niche in the online media landscape. ...
This open-access book examines the phenomenon of fake news by bringing together leading experts from different fields within psychology and related areas, and explores what has become a prominent feature of public discourse since the first Brexit referendum and the 2016 US election campaign. Thanks to funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation, all chapters can be downloaded free of charge at the publisher's website:
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429295379
There is also an Amazon Kindle edition that's free of charge:
https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Fake-News-Correcting-Misinformation-ebook-dp-B08FF54H53/dp/B08FF54H53/ref=mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=
... Polarization involves deliberate attempts to expand the gap between the political left and the political right and drive people away from the political center Groenendyk, 2018;Melki & Pickering, 2014;Prior, 2013;Twenge, Honeycutt, Prislin, & Sherman, 2016). In order to gain followers, young news sites often use polarization as a way to stake out a niche in the online media landscape. ...
... Polarization involves deliberate attempts to expand the gap between the political left and the political right and drive people away from the political center Groenendyk, 2018;Melki & Pickering, 2014;Prior, 2013;Twenge, Honeycutt, Prislin, & Sherman, 2016). In order to gain followers, young news sites often use polarization as a way to stake out a niche in the online media landscape. ...
This chapter explores several proposed solutions to the problem of online misinformation, commonly referred to as “fake news”. We identify four categories of such solutions: algorithmic, legislative, corrective, and psychological. We explore the latter category in detail. Specifically, we investigate the possibility of inoculation against misinformation by preemptively exposing individuals to weakened examples of common strategies used in the production of fake news. We outline our program of research and revisit three of our studies testing the cognitive “inoculation” approach, including two game-based interventions. We provide empirical evidence that serious games can be leveraged as a novel psychological intervention to combat fake news across the political spectrum. Theoretical and practical implications for inoculation theory and research on fake news are discussed.
... It is important to examine political diversity in this group, for several reasons: The majority of graduate students in the mental health field may identify as liberal, but certainly not all do. 3 Further, graduate students in the field are likely to be taught in the classroom and trained clinically by individuals who identify primarily as liberal, 2 however, students in the field inevitably will work with clients and colleagues who themselves are not liberal. Finally, the mental health field values maximal impartiality when working with colleagues and clients, however some mental health professionals may not engage in self-examination and bias reduction regarding political diversity. ...
Objective
Examine associations between political diversity, health, and stress in a student sample for whom examining political biases is necessary. Participants: Graduate students in mental health (N = 512) from July 2017 to June 2018. Methods: Participants completed an online survey of political views, health, and stress. Descriptive statistics reported sample characteristics; stepwise regressions tested whether political affiliation and perceived political majority/minority status predicted health and stress. Results: Students identified primarily as liberal, and perceived their counterparts as liberal. Liberal political identification generally predicted more stress and poorer health in several domains; however, those identifying as most politically conservative also reported relatively high stress. Conclusions: Liberal academic environments may relate to stress for those who identify as most politically conservative, while also not protecting liberals against broader sociopolitical stress and related health sequelae. Graduate students in mental health may benefit from increased curricular and supervisory focus on political diversity and related biases.
... In fact, Goren (2005) found that party identification can actually constrain ideological beliefs, such as those revolving around equal opportunity, limited government, and moral tolerance. This finding, mixed with others determining a growing correlation between political ideology and party identification over time (Twenge et al., 2016), leads us to use the latter as a potentially clearer representation of how Arkansans may align their LGBT policy positions. ...
Objective. We investigate how one's party identification, religious identity, and contact experiences with LGBT-identifying individuals interactively shape one's LGBT-oriented policy positions.
Methods. We utilize binomial logistic regression and posterior simulation analyses to examine data from an Arkansas public opinion survey on same-sex marriage, same-sex adoption, and employment and housing anti-discrimination policies.
Results. We found limited importance of LGBT contact experiences for those who are already either highly supportive of, or opposed to, the policy in question, though these experiences can shift one's opposition to support for those who lie between the partisan and religious identity "poles" for same-sex marriage and adoption in particular.
Conclusion. There may be a significant effect of LGBT contact that exists only for the inverted relationships of party identity and evangelical affiliation, and only for LGBT policies considered moral in nature.
... As such, political harmony may require changing social identification. For instance, in the United States, an increasing number of people now self-identify as independents, yet continue to vote along partisan lines (Twenge, Honeycutt, Prislin, & Sherman, 2016). This shifting self-categorization may represent a strategy for avoiding partisan identity threat without altering ideology. ...
Contemporary U.S. politics is characterized by polarization and interpartisan antipathy. This is accompanied by a media landscape saturated with coverage of political scandals. Applying a social identity perspective, we examined whether exposure to scandals that threaten partisan's moral group image (i.e., in‐party scandals), may motivate defensive hostility against opposing partisans. Across three experiments we exposed U.S. partisans to scandals attributed to either in‐party or out‐party politicians. We then assessed partisan hostility using a variety of operationalizations, including anger at a real outgroup politician (Study 1), judgments about the alleged misdeeds of a fabricated outgroup politician (Study 2), and negative perceptions of opposing party members (Study 3). Strength of partisan identity was assessed as a predicted moderator (Study 3). As expected in‐ (vs. out‐) party scandals, were perceived as group‐image threats and elicited greater hostility towards opposing partisans, independent of partisans' ideological extremity or prior affective polarization.
... This trend of decoupling labor income from growth and rising asset prices has been obvious in Germany and Finland, as well. Younger generations no longer believe in their chances to achieve and surpass the standard of living of their parents (Pew Charitable Trusts, 2011;Pew Research Center/Global Attitudes and Trends, 2014;Luttrell and McGrath, 2015;Deal and Levenson, 2016;Kinnunen and Mäki-Fränti, 2016;Twenge et al., 2016;Brooks, 2017;Wichter, 2017). People mostly concerned about falling backward are those low enough but still with a significant measure of status to defend (Kuziemko et al., 2014). ...
The prospect of the social backsliding of middle-class groups in western countries has not benefited the left but fueled right-wing populism. This article examines mediating and moderating factors between economic threat and political choices. The shift of liberals toward conservatism and the activation of passive authoritarians explain sudden changes more than dispositional factors. Attachment to groups under stress activates coalitional mindsets, and coalitional competition for scarce resources matches the conservative propensity to detect threats from outgroups. Risk-averse right-wing authoritarians should recoil from social-dominance oriented risk-takers but they follow winners despite their mutual differences concerning family values. Authoritarian aggression unites RWA and SDO, but politically passive right-wing authoritarians can also follow their economic interests, when these are not entangled with cultural values. Right-wing populists have been able to compensate economic insecurity with epistemic security. Identity politics supports the coherence of right-wing populist parties but divides leftist/liberal groups due to intersectional competition for victimhood.
... Students' conceptualizations may have been influenced, to some extent, by the role-playing and serious gaming activities. However, the main influencers are likely to be (a) the overall content of the planning theory course in which the activities are embedded -with a number of the assigned readings cited throughout this article, (b) the local planning context and culture, which is relatively conservative (see Insch and Bowden 2016); and (c) the political tendency toward conservatism among Millennials and Gen Z members compared to Baby Boomers and Gen Xers when they were young (Twenge et al. 2016). In the future, it would be interesting to compare these results to students' conceptualizations of planning in a different cultural context outside the Anglosphere. ...
This exploratory study assesses the utility, in terms of learning and conceptualizing planning, of a role-playing exercise (the Great Planning Game [GPG]) and a serious game (Polis PowerPlays [PPP]) employed in a planning theory course offered at The University of Queensland in Australia. The study reveals that role-playing and serious gaming are equally engaging and help planning students learn and embody different roles while having fun. No great differences can be discerned in terms of learning effectiveness. With regard to teaching style, the GPG is more passive and tends to encourage collaboration, whereas the PPP is more dynamic and fosters competition. Both activities help students discover aspects of planning—and planning stakeholders—which they may not have considered before. Most participating students appear to regard planning as a pluralist pursuit. Communication and public participation are viewed as central to planning processes. However, traces of incrementalism and rationality are also present. While students believe in equity planning (i.e., advocacy from within the system), radical social justice approaches that challenge the status quo are notably absent. Overall, the authors conclude that these activities cannot fully replace guided and structured instruction but, as “whole task practices,” are a desirable complement to direct instruction.
... A cohort effect might also plausibly explain the observation that political orientation is not a predictor of church/ religious attendance in WLS, whereas it is in AddHealth. This effect might stem from secular trends toward greater levels of political polarization within the USA (Turchin 2016;Twenge et al. 2016) and may be associated with an increasing alignment between leftist politics and secularism, especially since the 1960s. ...
Participation in social behaviors that enhance group-level fitness may be influenced by mutations that affect patterns of social epistasis in human populations. Mutations that cause individuals to not participate in these behaviors may weaken the ability of members of a group to coordinate and regulate behavior, which may in turn negatively affect fitness. To investigate the possibility that de novo mutations degrade these adaptive social behaviors, we examine the effect of paternal age (as a well-established proxy for de novo mutation load) on one such social behavior, namely religious observance, since religiosity may be a group-level cultural adaptation facilitating enhanced social coordination. Using two large samples (Wisconsin Longitudinal Study and AddHealth), each of a different US birth cohort, paternal age was used to hierarchically predict respondent’s level of church attendance after controlling for multiple covariates. The effect is absent in WLS (β = .007, ns, N = 4560); however, it is present in AddHealth (β = − .046, p < .05, N = 4873) increasing the adjusted model R² by .005. The WLS respondents were (mostly) born in the 1930s, whereas the AddHealth respondents were (mostly) born in the 1970s. This may indicate that social-epistatic regulation of behavior has weakened historically in the USA, which might stem from and enhance the ability for de novo mutations to influence behavior among more recently born cohorts—paralleling the secular rise in the heritability of age at sexual debut after the sexual revolution.
... A series of one-way analyses of variance (ANOVA) were performed to further explore the influence of political ideology amongst the sample (Table 4). For data segmentation purposes, the single-item political ideology scale was recoded within these bivariate analyses to reflect the three most commonly referenced political ideologies in the United States: 1) liberals, 2) moderates, and 3) conservatives [67][68][69]. Within this recode, a response of 1-2 represented a 'liberal' political ideology, a response of 3-5 represented a 'moderate' political ideology, and responses of 6-7 represented a 'conservative' political ideology. ...
This study examined the influence of political ideology and perceptions of benefits and risks upon State Forest recreationists' support and opposition towards shale natural gas energy development (SGD) on public and private lands in Pennsylvania. Much of the ongoing and proposed Pennsylvania SGD infrastructure is either within or adjacent to public lands, waters, and protected areas, raising concerns about the potential environmental and social impacts upon recreation stakeholders. On-site face-to-face survey interviews were used to gather data from Pennsylvania State Forest recreationists from June to September of 2018 (n = 392). The predominantly local, educated, experienced, and politically moderate sample in this study demonstrated relatively low levels of support towards SGD on Pennsylvania public lands and relatively neutral stances towards support for SGD on private lands in Pennsylvania. Structural equation modeling results suggested that political ideology and perceptions of risks were significant predictors of support for SGD on both public and private lands in Pennsylvania. The relationship between political ideology and support for SGD on public and private lands was also partially mediated through the perceived risk of SGD in the model. Study findings contributed to previous research suggesting political attitudes may influence and supersede other factors when predicting support for SGD. A series of one-way analyses of variance further explored differences by political ideology in this study. In each of these analyses, a similar statistical trend prevailed. Those identifying themselves as conservative were significantly more likely than their moderate and liberal counterparts to support SGD on both public and private lands in Pennsylvania and perceive fewer risks from SGD on Pennsylvania State Forests. This research lent itself to the theory of landscape fit and construal level theory as State Forest recreationists may have perceived the 'fit' of SGD negatively and could have construed SGD abstractly, lending themselves to political ideology. From a policy and management standpoint, study findings highlight the importance of assessing and communicating State Forest recreationists' perceptions and subsequent opinions when planning, developing, and managing SGD and related decisions in the United States.
... self-esteem than other generations at the same age (Twenge, Carter, & Campbell, 2017), and also more narcissistic (Giambatista, Hoover, & Tribble, 2017;Twenge et al., 2016). ...
A major effect of globalization is one that occurs on the self-concept. This is especially the case for young consumers, and particularly for millennials. Despite this cohort’s idiosyncrasies, little attention has been paid to the study of their consumer identities, an important aspect of self-concept. The current research addresses this gap by examining the way millennial consumers’ global and national identities help explain two attitudinal outcomes associated with globalization: materialism and consumer ethnocentrism. Data were collected from millennials in two distinct socio-cultural contexts. A key finding suggests that distinct contexts (i.e., collectivist and ethnically homogeneous vs. individualistic and ethnically diverse) exhibit differences in the formation of materialism and consumer ethnocentrism among millennials. Additionally, results indicate that for similar consumer segments, each context’s configuration of millennials shows differences in global and national identities. Implications for future researchers and practitioners are discussed.
... A series of one-way analyses of variance (ANOVA) were performed to further explore the influence of political orientation among the sample (Table 4). For data segmentation purposes, the single single-item political orientation scale was recoded within these bivariate analyses to reflect the three most commonly referenced political ideologies in the United States: 1) conservatives, 2) moderates, and 3) liberals (Adams et al., 2017;Hamilton, 2015;Twenge et al., 2016). Within this recode, a response of 1-3 represented a conservative political ideology, a response of 4 represented a moderate political ideology, and responses of 5-7 represented a liberal political ideology. ...
This study examined the factors influencing water-based recreationists' perceptions of support and opposition towards off-shore wind energy development (OWD) on Lake Erie. Much of the proposed or future Lake Erie OWD infrastructure may either be within or adjacent to public lands, waters, and protected areas, raising concerns about the potential environmental and social impacts upon recreation stakeholders. The limited body of OWD research within the United States has suggested there are numerous factors that may influence overall perceptions of support and opposition such as political orientation and beliefs in climate change. Moreover, recent research has proposed that the perceived recreation impact of OWD may be the most important predictor of support and opposition. This study confirmed this premise and found the perceived recreation impact of OWD to be the strongest predictor of support. Results of a multiple linear regression suggested that political orientation (β = 0.135), beliefs in the anthropogenic causation of climate change (β = 0.207), beliefs in the occurrence of climate change (β = 0.213), and the perceived recreation impact of OWD among water-based recreationists (β = 0.439) were significant predictors of support for OWD on Lake Erie (R2 = 0.46). Study findings corroborated previous research which suggested that regional climate change beliefs and political attitudes may influence support for OWD. From a policy and management standpoint, study results highlight the importance of assessing and communicating recreation experience and use impacts when planning, developing, and managing OWD and related decisions in the United States.
... We assume that the tendency of older voters being less supportive of the new personalised electoral system has several reasons. First, older voters tend to have stronger attachments to parties (Twenge et al. 2017) and are less likely to split votes between parties (Schoen 2000;. Post-materialist values also tend to be higher among younger cohorts . ...
Which voters prefer having more choice between parties and candidates in an election? To provide an answer to this question, we analyse the case of a radical change from a closed-list PR system to a highly complex open-list PR system with cumulative voting in the German states of Bremen and Hamburg. We argue that the approval of a personalised electoral system is structured in similar ways as support for direct democracy. Using representative surveys conducted prior to all four state elections under cumulative voting in 2011 and 2015, we analyse which individual factors determine the approval, disapproval, or indifference towards the new electoral law. The results indicate that younger voters as well as supporters of left parties are much more likely to support a personalised electoral system. In contrast to previous studies, political interest only has an impact on the indifference towards the electoral system. More generally, our results show that a large proportion of voters does not appreciate personalised preferential electoral systems which seems to be a result of the complexity and magnitude of choice between parties and candidates.
... Worse yet, it may lead to a further narrowing of the minds as each side polarizes its position while professing toler- ance for the other. Some suggestive evidence in support of this possibility comes from the research on temporal trends in political views of the various segments of the U.S. population, which showed an increased polarization of the views on both sides of the political spectrum (Twenge, Honeycutt, Prislin, & Sherman, 2016), along with an increase in tolerance (Twenge, Campbell, & Carter, 2014). At a societal level, this has led to tolerance-professing but segregated communities that have all but ceased to interact (Dunkelman, 2014;Motyl, Iyer, Oishi, Trawalter, & Nosek, 2014). ...
... The social identity approach remains relevant in the modern political context as well in that party is a significant driver of social identity (Huddy, Mason, and Aarøe 2010;Iyengar, Sood, and Lelkes 2012). Notably, a complicating factor in projection of party ideologies or attitudes on risk perceptions is the evolving ideological self-categorization, for example as degree of liberal or conservative ideology (Twenge et al. 2016). Individuals' political or social identity is continually evolving through countless comparisons and negotiations between self and what or whom one experiences (Abrams 1992;Jenkins 2014;Koivula, Räsänen, and Saarinen 2017). ...
Political party member perceptions of risk continue to attract a great deal of attention in current public discourse and media coverage, yet little research exists in terms of a comparative analysis of Finnish political parties’ views on the issue. Party members are in many ways a highly significant social group, one that exercises a great deal of decision-making power in modern civil societies. This article provides a novel and up-to-date look into the key areas of perceived risk held by the members of Finland’s political parties, in addition to a comparison of inter-party differences and similarities. The analysis is based on a unique survey data-set of the members of Finland’s six major political parties (N = 12,427). Included are the Finns Party, Centre Party, Left Alliance, Social Democratic Party, Green League and National Coalition Party. Together, these represent the political spectrum in Finland. Risk factors included primary categories dealing with various national, institutional, cultural and economic issues. Also included in the analysis was a look into whether length of party membership affects risk concern for the included issues. Findings showed that national and external risks were more of a concern for the Finns Party, while the Left and the Social Democrats considered economic issues a greater risk than did others. Furthermore, economic risk was most concerning to the left while external risks were generally viewed in line with the current centre-right administration. Some notable differences between old and new party members were also found. Findings emphasize the importance of understanding how political party members differ in their views of various societal risks while providing new points of comparison between those parties toward improved clarity of the national political landscape.
... People's concerns about modern life are finding political expression in increasing extremism, especially on the right, but also the left. A US study found that Americans had since the 1970s become both more independent of political parties and more ideologically extreme (Twenge et al. 2016). The overall trend has been towards more Americans identifying as Republican or conservative. ...
Global politics is based on an outmoded and increasingly destructive model of human progress and development. Can science change a dire situation?
... The present study helps address the need for research in the area by linking factors thought to impact one's character to a robust college impact model of cognitive development among undergraduates (Pascarella, 1985), which is discussed later. Recently, a publication emerged to signify growing polarization in political self-identification among US adults, college students, and late adolescents (Twenge, Honeycutt, Prislin, & Sherman, 2016). However, little evidence exists to shed light on formative events, although there is some support that college coursework may affect students' political competency and engagement (Beaumont et al., 2006;Longo, Drury, & Battistoni, 2006;Sax, 2004). ...
Researchers have unpacked the ways in which students participate in democracy through voting and other forms of civic engagement. However, very little empirical work has delved into how students develop socially progressive values, despite their unprecedented importance to young people during their years in higher education. Rooted in a rich historical context of campus demonstration spanning the past 75 years and current events in the United States, this inspection of college students’ social progressivism was grounded by Pascarella’s model of students’ learning and cognitive development, and uses OLS (ordinary least squares) regression to investigate the phenomenon. Analyzing data collected by the Cooperative and Institutional Research Program from 159 institutions across the United States, this study explored the predictive capacity of students’ interaction with influential agents of socialization and other variables central to undergraduates’ college experiences. Results indicate that socially progressive students tended to interact more with faculty outside of office hours and had a higher cumulative GPA. Additional findings and implications are discussed.
Civic education is often touted as a counterweight to the contentiousness of American politics. Yet, civic education’s relationship to dislike and distrust of opposing partisans (affective polarization) remains largely untested. Simultaneously, there are calls for educators to promote more civic informed action, taking civic education beyond the walls of the classroom. This study utilizes data from a survey of the 2016 election to examine the relationship between individuals’ recalled civic education experiences (classroom pedagogy and community service) and affective polarization. In addition, this study explores two potential moderators of the relationship between civic education and affective polarization, partisan social identity strength and age. Analysis of the sample shows a significant relationship between both types of civic education experience and affective polarization, though the nature of that relationship may depend on respondents’ partisan social identity and age.
Civil liberties and rights such as freedom of expression, press, thought, religion, association, lifestyle, and equality against the law are being subjected to controversies in Western countries. We developed two hypotheses aimed at explaining divergent attitudes toward civil liberties among politically charged online communities on each side of the political spectrum. A study using a cross-sectional sample of social media users (N = 902) suggest that, as expected by our hypotheses, support for civil liberties tend to be higher among online groups of rightists-with economic conservatism being the only direct positive predictor and left-wing authoritarianism being a strong negative predictor. These results are discussed in relation to polarization over civil liberties and perceived power imbalances between online groups.
Adolescent internalizing symptoms (e.g. depressive affect) have increased over the past decade in the US, particularly among girls. The reasons for these increases are unclear. We hypothesize that increasing exposure to politicized events has contributed to these trends in adolescent internalizing symptoms, and that effects may be differential by political beliefs and sociodemographic characteristics. We analyzed nationally-representative data from 2005 to 2018 Monitoring the Future annual cross-sectional samples of 12th-grade students (N = 86,138). We examined self-reported political beliefs, sex, and parental education as predictors of four internalizing symptom scales over time, including depressive affect. From 2005 to 2018, 19.8% of students identified as liberal and 18.1% identified as conservative, with little change over time. Depressive affect (DA) scores increased for all adolescents after 2010, but increases were most pronounced for female liberal adolescents (b for interaction = 0.17, 95% CI: 0.01, 0.32), and scores were highest overall for female liberal adolescents with low parental education (Mean DA 2010: 2.02, SD 0.81/2018: 2.75, SD 0.92). Findings were consistent across multiple internalizing symptoms outcomes. Trends in adolescent internalizing symptoms diverged by political beliefs, sex, and parental education over time, with female liberal adolescents experiencing the largest increases in depressive symptoms, especially in the context of demographic risk factors including parental education. These findings indicate a growing mental health disparity between adolescents who identify with certain political beliefs. It is therefore possible that the ideological lenses through which adolescents view the political climate differentially affect their mental wellbeing.
The level of representativeness of political parties and the demand for new parties in the Polish party system
This paper explores whether the Polish electorate feels that political parties represent their interests and how many voters expect the emergence of new non-parliamentary political movements. A nationwide survey study (N=970) confirms that over 30% of a study sample has no party that could be perceived as representing their interests. Moreover, the results suggest that this may generate the demand for new non-parliamentary parties. With regard to political practice, the study, to some extent, explains why Law and Justice (PiS) won the 2019 parliamentary elections. Unlike other parties, the voters of Law and Justice declare that they have their representatives on the political scene. The one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) reveals that this opinion is more often expressed by elderly, poorly educated, very religious and right-wing voters. The formation of a new non-parliamentary party was more often expected by people describing themselves as center-left, non-religious, average earners and secondary-educated.
Civil liberties and rights such as freedom of expression, press, thought, religion, association, lifestyle, and equality against the law are being subjected to controversies in Western countries. We developed two hypotheses aimed at explaining divergent attitudes toward civil liberties among politically charged online communities on each side of the political spectrum. A study using a cross-sectional sample of social media users (N = 902) suggest that, as expected by our hypotheses, support for civil liberties tend to be higher among online groups of rightists-with economic conservatism being the only direct positive predictor and left-wing authoritarianism being a strong negative predictor. These results are discussed in relation to polarization over civil liberties and perceived power imbalances between online groups.
In this chapter, we explore factors that contribute to the electoral support of the pro-establishment camp. We analyze the post-election survey data provided by the Hong Kong Election Study (HKES), which tracks public opinions during each major election since 2015. Using machine learning techniques, we find that satisfaction with civil liberties and cultural identity are the most crucial factors behind the electoral support for pro-establishment parties.
In recent decades, we have witnessed increasing polarization, divisiveness and hostility in political discourse. This paper outlines a relational-dialectical approach to constructive political discourse. Instead of treating political discourse as competition over clashing positions, the relational approach seeks ways to bridge political differences through dialectical engagement. The process is organized around three principles: (a) the focus on needs and problems rather than political positions, (b) deep sociality, and (c) the dialectical construction of novel forms of thinking through the integration of opposites. I illustrate these principles in the context of political discourse related to gun violence in the United States.
Republican or Democrat participants imagined how they would respond upon learning about the political group membership of a potential or established friend. Four vignettes (friend political in-group; friend political out-group; potential friend political in-group; potential friend political out-group) were presented in a random order. After each, participants provided expected reactions. Overall, reactions (e.g., hope of the relationship lasting, intentions to engage in friendship maintenance behaviors, trust) were most positive toward the established in-group friend, followed by potential in-group friend, then the established out-group friend, and lastly the potential out-group friend. That is, participants expected to be more positive toward a person they just met than an established close friend, simply due to knowing these individuals’ political group memberships. Some of these differences were moderated by intergroup attitudes or political identification. Discoveries of political group membership may influence the development or maintenance of friendships.
Background
In North Carolina (NC), a political swing state that permits both medical and religious exemptions to school vaccination, rapid changes in the electorate have coincided with a vigorous political debate over vaccine laws and an increase in the number of exemptions claimed from vaccine requirements.
Objective
We aimed to determine whether county-level changes in political affiliation, determined from publicly available voting records, were associated with changes in the rate of vaccine exemptions reported at kindergarten entry in NC.
Methods
We analyzed data from the 2009-2010 to the 2016-2017 school years for each of 100 NC counties. We used NC State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement data to track voter registration trends at the county level, comparing the percent of voters registered as Republican, Democrat, or other (mostly unaffiliated). Vaccination exemption rates were obtained via the NC DHHS and represented a percentage of the cohort entering kindergarten in that year.
Results
Statewide, the rate of religious vaccine exemptions increased from 0.68% in 2009-2010 to 1.10% in 2016-2017. On multivariable analysis including 800 county-years, a 1% increase in voters with neither Republican nor Democratic affiliation was associated with 0.04% increase in the county’s vaccine exemption rate.
Conclusions
In NC, the increase in vaccine exemption rates was primarily associated with an increasing share of voters affiliating with neither major party. This finding suggests mistrust in social institutions, including both government and medicine, extends beyond the platforms of traditional political parties.
We build on the finding of accumulating deleterious mutations with the SEAM (the social epistasis amplification model), which posits that the fitness costs of deleterious mutations are not limited to the organisms that carry them. This is possible in light of the existence of interorganismal genomic interactions, that is, social epistasis, whereby the genome of an organism (or the genomes of organisms) can influence another organism’s (or other organisms’) gene expression and therefore phenotypic traits.
This study considered how older adults’ parasocial relationships with disliked television characters predict depressive symptoms and loneliness, as well as how attachment styles and real-life romantic relationship quality moderate these associations. Adults aged 55 and older reported on their most disliked television character and romantic relationship functioning in a self-administered survey, and hierarchical multiple regressions were used to test the data. Results revealed that older adults with low attachment avoidance and low-quality romantic relationships demonstrated the largest increases in their depressive symptoms and loneliness as their antagonistic parasocial relationships increased in intensity. Applied implications of these findings are considered, such as alternative outlets to which older adults with low attachment avoidance and low-quality romantic relationships might turn (e.g. community volunteering, relationships with children, grandchildren, and friends) if their romantic and parasocial relationships are not conducive to fostering mental well-being.
This study explores the mediating role political visualization – the process of imagining future political scenarios – plays in determining how political advertising affects voting behaviour. Specifically, we theorize that when partisans are exposed to political ads that are narrative (compared to non-narrative) in nature, they will engage in more political visualization. Partisans will then experience emotional reactions to these imagined futures – specifically, enthusiasm for the in-group candidate and anger towards the out-group candidate. These emotional reactions, in turn, will make a partisan more likely to vote for the in-group candidate and less likely to vote for the out-group candidate. We test this model by employing an experimental design where American partisans were presented a political ad (in the form of an email) that is either narrative or non-narrative. Results provide support for most of our expectations and suggest that visualization may play an important role in determining the influence of a political ad.
The psychology of cultural dynamics is the psychological investigation of the formation, maintenance, and transformation of culture over time. This article maps out the terrain, reviews the existing literature, and points out potential future directions of this research. It is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on micro-cultural dynamics, which refers to the social and psychological processes that contribute to the dissemination and retention of cultural information. The second part, on micro–macro dynamics, investigates how micro-level processes give rise to macro-cultural dynamics. The third part focuses on macro-cultural dynamics, referring to the distribution and long-term trends involving cultural information in a population, which in turn enable and constrain the micro-level processes. We conclude the review with a consideration of future directions, suggesting behavior change research as translational research on cultural dynamics.
While most college students opposed campus gun carrying in past U.S. studies, reasons for these views remained underexplored. This study examined the role of perceived safety. Data were collected with a web survey of 520 students across the U.S. Both open-ended and closed-ended items were included. On average, respondents disagreed that they would carry a gun on campus if policy permitted. This study found no empirical evidence of a significant association between perceived campus safety and intent to carry, or between perceived safety and perceptions of campus carry policies. Student responses to open-ended questions revealed themes in reasoning related to personal safety that were not otherwise apparent in the statistical data.
Objectives
This study examines individual characteristics associated with suicide acceptability in the United States and how (1) effects of these characteristics on attitudes have changed over time and (2) the degree to which shifts in attitudes are explained by changes in population characteristics.
Methods
We use General Social Survey (GSS) data from the 1980s (n = 4,840) and 2010s (n = 5,607) and conduct an Oaxaca decomposition.
Results
Although Americans remain largely unaccepting of suicide, except in the case of incurable disease, a greater percentage found suicide to be acceptable in 2010s than in 1980s. Individuals who are male, white, more educated, less religious, and more politically liberal find suicide more acceptable. Changes over time in population composition (e.g., rising education levels and declines in religion) account for about 50 percent of the rise in suicide acceptability between 1980s and 2010s.
Conclusions
Results hint at shifting societal patterns, but the causal direction between attitudes and behavior cannot be determined.
Age-Period-Cohort Analysis: New Models, Methods, and Empirical Applications is based on a decade of the authors’ collaborative work in age-period-cohort (APC) analysis. Within a single, consistent HAPC-GLMM statistical modeling framework, the authors synthesize APC models and methods for three research designs: age-by-time period tables of population rates or proportions, repeated cross-section sample surveys, and accelerated longitudinal panel studies. The authors show how the empirical application of the models to various problems leads to many fascinating findings on how outcome variables develop along the age, period, and cohort dimensions. The book makes two essential contributions to quantitative studies of time-related change. Through the introduction of the GLMM framework, it shows how innovative estimation methods and new model specifications can be used to tackle the "model identification problem" that has hampered the development and empirical application of APC analysis. The book also addresses the major criticism against APC analysis by explaining the use of new models within the GLMM framework to uncover mechanisms underlying age patterns and temporal trends. Encompassing both methodological expositions and empirical studies, this book explores the ways in which statistical models, methods, and research designs can be used to open new possibilities for APC analysis. It compares new and existing models and methods and provides useful guidelines on how to conduct APC analysis. For empirical illustrations, the text incorporates examples from a variety of disciplines, such as sociology, demography, and epidemiology. Along with details on empirical analyses, software and programs to estimate the models are available on the book’s web page.
Formally, the law purports to be based solely in reasoned analysis, devoid of ideological bias or unconscious influences. Judges claim to act as umpires applying the rules, not making them. They frame their decisions as straightforward applications of an established set of legal doctrines, principles, and mandates to a given set of facts. As scholars who carefully study the law understand, that frame is a façade, and the impression that the legal system projects is an illusion. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. made a similar claim more than a century ago when he wrote that “the felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy, avowed or unconscious, even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow-men, have a good deal more to do than the syllogism in determining the rules by which men should be governed.” A century later, though, we are much closer to understanding the mechanisms responsible for the gap between the formal face of the law and the actual forces shaping it. Over the last decade or so, political scientists and legal academics have begun studying the linkages between ideologies, on one hand, and legal principles and policy outcomes on the other. During that same period, mind scientists have turned to understanding the psychological sources of ideology. This book is the first to bring many of the world’s experts on those topics together to examine the sometimes unsettling interactions between psychology, ideology and law.
We examine time period and generational differences in attitudes toward women’s work and family roles in two large, nationally representative U.S. samples, the Monitoring the Future survey of 12th graders (1976–2013) and the General Social Survey of adults (1977–2012). Twelfth graders became more accepting of working mothers and equal roles for women in the workplace between the 1970s and the 2010s, with most change occurring between the 1970s and the late 1990s. Acceptance of dual-income families and fathers working half-time or not at all (stay-at-home dads) also increased. Thus, for the most part, Millennials (born 1980s–1990s) have continued trends toward more egalitarian gender roles. However, slightly more 12th graders in the 2010s (vs. the late 1990s) favored the husband as the achiever and decision maker in the family. Adults’ attitudes toward working mothers became more egalitarian between the 1970s and the early 1990s, showed a small “backlash” in the late 1990s, and then continued the trend toward increased egalitarianism in the 2000s and 2010s. In hierarchical linear modeling analyses separating the effects of time period, generation/cohort, and age, trends were primarily due to time period with a generational peak in egalitarianism among White women Boomers (born 1946–1964). Policy makers should recognize that support for working mothers is now a solid majority position in the United States and design programs for working families accordingly.
We propose that generational differences are meaningful despite some theoretical and methodological challenges (cf. Costanza & Finkelstein, 2015). We will address five main issues: operationalizing generations, measuring generational differences, theoretical models of generations, mechanisms of generational change, and the importance of science versus stereotypes.
This article accounts for two puzzling paradoxes. The first paradox is the simultaneous absence and presence of attitude polarization - the fact that global attitude polarization is relatively rare, even though pundits describe it as common. The second paradox is the simultaneous presence and absence of social polarization - the fact that while individuals experience attitude homogeneity in their interpersonal networks, their networks are characterized by attitude heterogeneity. These paradoxes give rise to numerous scholarly arguments. By developing a formal model of interpersonal influence over attitudes in a context where individuals hold simultaneous positions on multiple issues, we show why these arguments are not mutually exclusive and how they meaningfully refer to the same social setting. The results from this model provide a single parsimonious account for both paradoxes. The framework we develop may be generalized to a wider array of problems, including classic problems in collective action.
Americans have become increasingly tolerant of controversial outgroups in results from the nationally representative General
Social Survey (1972–2012, N = 35,048). Specifically, adults in the 2010s (versus the 1970s and 1980s) were more likely to agree that Communists, homosexuals,
the anti-religious, militarists, and those believing Blacks are genetically inferior should be allowed to give a public speech,
teach at a college, or have a book in a local library. Cross-classification hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analyses separating
the effects of time period, cohort/generation, and age show that these trends were driven by both a linear time period effect
and a curvilinear cohort effect, with those born in the late 1940s (Boomers) the most tolerant when age and time period were
controlled. Tolerance of homosexuals increased the most, and tolerance of racists the least. The increase in tolerance is
positively correlated with higher levels of education and individualistic attitudes, including rejecting traditional social
rules, but is negatively correlated with changes in empathy.
An important component of political polarization in the United States is the degree to which ordinary people perceive political polarization. We used over 30 years of national survey data from the American National Election Study to examine how the public perceives political polarization between the Democratic and Republican parties and between Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. People in the United States consistently overestimate polarization between the attitudes of Democrats and Republicans. People who perceive the greatest political polarization are most likely to report having been politically active, including voting, trying to sway others' political beliefs, and making campaign contributions. We present a 3-factor framework to understand ordinary people's perceptions of political polarization. We suggest that people perceive greater political polarization when they (a) estimate the attitudes of those categorized as being in the "opposing group"; (b) identify strongly as either Democrat or Republican; and (c) hold relatively extreme partisan attitudes-particularly when those partisan attitudes align with their own partisan political identity. These patterns of polarization perception occur among both Democrats and Republicans.
© The Author(s) 2015.
The current study analyzes data from a national probability panel sample of New Zealanders (N = 5,091) to examine stability and change in political orientation over four consecutive yearly assessments (2009-2012) following the 2007/2008 global financial crisis. Bayesian Latent Growth Modeling identified systematic variation in the growth trajectory of conservatism that was predicted by age and socio-economic status. Younger people (ages 25-45) did not change in their political orientation. Older people, however, became more conservative over time. Likewise, people with lower socio-economic status showed a marked increase in political conservatism. In addition, tests of rank-order stability showed that age had a cubic relationship with the stability of political orientation over our four annual assessments. Our findings provide strong support for System Justification Theory by showing that increases in conservatism in the wake of the recent global financial crisis occurred primarily among the poorest and most disadvantaged.
© 2014 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.
Between 1972 and 2012, Americans became significantly less trusting of each other and less confident in large institutions, such as the news media, business, religious organizations, the medical establishment, Congress, and the presidency. Levels of trust and confidence, key indicators of social capital, reached all-time or near-all-time lows in 2012 in the nationally representative General Social Survey of adults (1972-2012; N = 37,493) and the nationally representative Monitoring the Future survey of 12th graders (1976-2012; N = 101,633). Hierarchical modeling analyses separating the effects of time period, generation, and age show that this decline in social capital is primarily a time-period effect. Confidence in institutions is also influenced by generation, with Baby Boomers lowest. Trust was lowest when income inequality was high, and confidence in institutions was lowest when poverty rates were high. The prediction of a sustained revival in social capital after 2001 seems to have been premature.
Despite ample research linking conservatism to discrimination and liberalism to tolerance, both groups may discriminate. In two studies, we investigated whether conservatives and liberals support discrimination against value violators, and whether liberals’ and conservatives’ values distinctly affect discrimination. Results demonstrated that liberals and conservatives supported discrimination against ideologically dissimilar groups, an effect mediated by perceptions of value violations. Liberals were more likely than conservatives to espouse egalitarianism and universalism, which attenuated their discrimination; whereas the conservatives’ value of traditionalism predicted more discrimination, and their value of self-reliance predicted less discrimination. This suggests liberals and conservatives are equally likely to discriminate against value violators, but liberal values may ameliorate discrimination more than conservative values.
Decades of research in social and political psychology have demonstrated that political conservatives appear more intolerant and prejudiced toward a variety of groups than do political liberals. Recent theory and research from three independent labs (Chambers, Schlenker, & Collisson, 2013; Crawford & Pilanski, in press; Wetherell, Brandt, & Reyna, in press), however, challenge this conventional wisdom by arguing that the psychological underpinnings of intolerance and prejudice — e.g., biased reasoning, the desire to promote cherished values, and perceived social threat — are not exclusive to people on either end of the political spectrum. In fact, these studies demonstrated that both liberals and conservatives express similar levels of intolerance and prejudice towards ideologically dissimilar and threatening groups. We review these recent findings, suggest future research, and discuss psychological and political implications of these studies’ conclusions.
Prevailing stereotypes of older people hold that their attitudes are inflexible or that aging tends to promote increasing conservatism in sociopolitical outlook. In spite of mounting scientific evidence demonstrating that learning, adaptation, and reassessment are behaviors in which older people can and do engage, the stereotype persists. We use U.S. General Social Survey data from 25 surveys between 1972 and 2004 to formally assess the magnitude and direction of changes in attitudes that occur within cohorts at different stages of the life course. We decompose changes in sociopolitical attitudes into the proportions attributable to cohort succession and intracohort aging for three categories of items: attitudes toward historically subordinate groups, civil liberties, and privacy. We find that significant intracohort change in attitudes occurs in cohorts-inlater- stages (age 60 and older) as well as cohorts-in-earlier-stages (ages 18 to 39), that the change for cohorts-in-later-stages is frequently greater than that for cohorts-inearlier-stages, and that the direction of change is most often toward increased tolerance rather than increased conservatism. These findings are discussed within the context of population aging and development.
This article uses data from the American National Election Studies and national exit polls to test Fiorina's assertion that ideological polarization in the American public is a myth. Fiorina argues that twenty-first-century Americans, like the midtwentieth-century Americans described by Converse, “are not very well-informed about politics, do not hold many of their views very strongly, and are not ideological” (2006, 19). However, our evidence indicates that since the 1970s, ideological polarization has increased dramatically among the mass public in the United States as well as among political elites. There are now large differences in outlook between Democrats and Republicans, between red state voters and blue state voters, and between religious voters and secular voters. These divisions are not confined to a small minority of activists—they involve a large segment of the public and the deepest divisions are found among the most interested, informed, and active citizens. Moreover, contrary to Fiorina's suggestion that polarization turns off voters and depresses turnout, our evidence indicates that polarization energizes the electorate and stimulates political participation.
Reporting an Independent political identity does not guarantee the absence of partisanship. Independents demonstrated considerable variability in relative identification with Republicans versus Democrats as measured by an Implicit Association Test (IAT; M = 0.10, SD = 0.47). To test whether this variation predicted political judgment, participants read a newspaper article describing two competing welfare (Study 1) or special education (Study 2) policies. The authors manipulated which policy was proposed by which party. Among self-proclaimed Independents, those who were implicitly Democratic preferred the liberal welfare plan, and those who were implicitly Republican preferred the conservative welfare plan. Regardless of the policy details, these implicit partisans preferred the policy proposed by "their" party, and this effect occurred more strongly for implicit than explicit plan preference. The authors suggest that implicitly partisan Independents may consciously override some partisan influence when making explicit political judgments, and Independents may identify as such to appear objective even when they are not.
For more than two decades political scientists have discussed rising elite polarization in the United States, but the study of mass polarization did not receive comparable attention until fairly recently. This article surveys the literature on mass polarization. It begins with a discussion of the concept of polarization, then moves to a critical consideration of different kinds of evidence that have been used to study polarization, concluding that much of the evidence presents problems of inference that render conclusions problematic. The most direct evidence - citizens' positions on public policy issues - shows little or no indication of increased mass polarization over the past two to three decades. Party sorting - an increased correlation between policy views and partisan identification - clearly has occurred, although the extent has sometimes been exaggerated. Geographic polarization - the hypothesized tendency of like-minded people to cluster together - remains an open question. To date, there is no conclusive evidence that elite polarization has stimulated voters to polarize, on the one hand, or withdraw from politics, on the other.
What influences perceptions of political polarization? The authors examine the polarization of people's own political attitudes as a source of perceived polarization: Individuals with more extreme partisan attitudes perceive greater polarization than individuals with less extreme partisan attitudes. This "polarization projection" was demonstrated in 3 studies in which people estimated the distribution of others' political attitudes: one study with a nationally representative sample concerning the 2008 presidential election, and 2 studies concerning university students evaluating a policy regarding scarce resource allocation. These studies demonstrate that polarization projection occurs simultaneously with and independently of simple projection, the tendency to assume that others share one's partisan political attitudes. Polarization projection may occur partly because people assume that others engage in similar attitudinal processes as the self, such as extensive thought and emotional arousal. The projection of various attitudinal processes was demonstrated in a study concerning health care reform policies. Further supporting this explanation, polarization projection increased when people introspected about their own attitudinal processes, which increased the accessibility of those processes. Implications for perceptions of partisanship, social judgment, and civic behavior are discussed.
Ideology has re-emerged as an important topic of inquiry among social, personality, and political psychologists. In this review, we examine recent theory and research concerning the structure, contents, and functions of ideological belief systems. We begin by defining the construct and placing it in historical and philosophical context. We then examine different perspectives on how many (and what types of) dimensions individuals use to organize their political opinions. We investigate (a) how and to what extent individuals acquire the discursive contents associated with various ideologies, and (b) the social-psychological functions that these ideologies serve for those who adopt them. Our review highlights "elective affinities" between situational and dispositional needs of individuals and groups and the structure and contents of specific ideologies. Finally, we consider the consequences of ideology, especially with respect to attitudes, evaluations, and processes of system justification.
Various research designs employed in developmental psychology for the investigation of maturational and aging effects are examined. Discrepancies and contradictions in the conclusions derived from cross-sectional and longitudinal studies are consequences of the violation of assumptions implicit in these research designs. The conventional methods are shown to be special cases of a general model for research on behavior change over time. The properties of the general model are explicated and the assumptions for the customary designs are reviewed in the light of these properties. The complete model requires consideration of the components of age, time and cohort differences in the identification of developmental change. Both the longitudinal and cross-sectional methods in this context require strong assumptions which can rarely be met.
The present study used meta-analytic techniques (number of samples = 92) to determine the patterns of mean-level change in personality traits across the life course. Results showed that people increase in measures of social dominance (a facet of extraversion), conscientiousness, and emotional stability, especially in young adulthood (age 20 to 40). In contrast, people increase on measures of social vitality (a 2nd facet of extraversion) and openness in adolescence but then decrease in both of these domains in old age. Agreeableness changed only in old age. Of the 6 trait categories, 4 demonstrated significant change in middle and old age. Gender and attrition had minimal effects on change, whereas longer studies and studies based on younger cohorts showed greater change.
We build a model of American presidential voting in which the cumulative impression left by political events determines the preferences of voters. The impression varies by voter, depending on their age at the time the events took place. We use the Gallup presidential approval‐rating time series to reflect the major events that influence voter preferences, with the most influential occurring during a voter's teenage and early adult years. Our fitted model is predictive, explaining more than 80% of the variation in voting trends over the last half‐century. It is also interpretable, dividing voters into five meaningful generations: New Deal Democrats, Eisenhower Republicans, 1960s Liberals, Reagan Conservatives, and Millennials. We present each generation in context of the political events that shaped its preferences, beginning in 1940 and ending with the 2016 election.
While it is widely agreed that Congress has polarized over the past 40 years, there is considerable disagreement about the extent of public polarization and its connection to congressional polarization. We present the first estimation of time series of polarization using the same method on the most comprehensive data for both the public and the Senate. With statistics of various definitions of polarization, we find little increase in the dispersion of views in the public from 1956 to 2012 but do find an increase in ideological sorting starting around 1980. The two time series bear little resemblance to one another with respect to divergence. Further, while congressional sorting exceeds that in the public today, we find that Congress has always been unrepresentative of the public. These results suggest that it is unlikely that changes in public preferences alone explain the widening gulf between the two parties in Congress.
From a cohort analysis spanning twenty-four years, Glenn and Hefner conclude that there is no evidence for the proposition that the process of aging leads to Republican party identification. Their findings also cast doubt on the belief that aging cohorts tend to become more conservative in their political attitudes and values.
In order to determine the extent to which the widespread perception of growing American conservativism is accurate, 36 NORC opinion items were examined in each survey year they appear from 1972 to 1980. Twenty-nine of these items factored on three dimensions: the Civil Liberties, Abortion, and Economic scales. A conservative trend was found only in the case of the Economic scale, and it peaked in 1977, subsequently remaining unchanged. Multiple regression analyses controlling for sex, religion, age, education, occupational prestige, and three residence measures were used to determine whether patterns of attitude change or stasis over time were general in the population or specific to certain categories of people. While ambiguous, findings generally fail to identify population segments uniquely characterized by growing conservatism, with the likely exception of Jews and possibly youth. However, conservative trends were noted in items that concerned problems that were most serious in the later years of the 1970s: inflation, crime, and international "weakness."
This essay explores the theoretical implications of Freud's notion of `the narcissism of minor differences' - the idea that it is precisely the minor differences between people who are otherwise alike that form the basis of feelings of strangeness and hostility between them. A comparative survey shows that minor differences underlie a wide range of conflicts: from relatively benign forms of campanilismo to bloody civil wars. Freud's tentative statements link up with the insights of Simmel, Durkheim, Lévi-Strauss, Dumont, Elias, and Girard. Especially helpful is what Bourdieu writes in Distinction: social identity lies in difference, and difference is asserted against what is closest, which represents the greatest threat. An outline of a general theory of power and violence should include consideration of the narcissism of minor differences, also because its counterpart - hierarchy and great differences - makes for relative stability and peace.
According to moral foundations theory (Haidt & Joseph, 2004), five foundations are central to moral intuition. The two individualizing foundations—harm/care and fairness/reciprocity—hinge on the rights of the individual, whereas the three binding foundations—in-group/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity—focus on communal bonds. Recent work suggests that reliance on the various foundations varies as a function of sociopolitical orientation: liberals consistently rely on the individualizing foundations, whereas conservatives rely on both the individualizing and binding foundations. In an effort to further explore the relationship between sociopolitical orientation and morality, we argue that only certain types of sociopolitical attitudes and beliefs should relate to each cluster of foundations. Drawing on dual-process models of social and political attitudes, we demonstrate that the individualizing foundations are aligned with attitudes and beliefs relevant to preferences for equality versus inequality (i.e., SDO and competitive-jungle beliefs), whereas the binding foundations are aligned with attitudes and beliefs relevant to preferences for openness versus social conformity (i.e., RWA and dangerous-world beliefs). We conclude by discussing the consequences of these findings for our understanding of the relationship between sociopolitical and moral orientations.
This study conducts a systematic age, period, and cohort analysis that provides new evidence of the dynamics of, and heterogeneity in, subjective well-being across the life course and over time in the United States. I use recently developed methodologies of hierarchical age-period-cohort models, and the longest available population data series on happiness from the General Social Survey, 1972 to 2004. I find distinct life-course patterns, time trends, and birth cohort changes in happiness. The age effects are strong and indicate increases in happiness over the life course. Period effects show first decreasing and then increasing trends in happiness. Baby-boomer cohorts report lower levels of happiness, suggesting the influence of early life conditions and formative experiences. I also find substantial life-course and period variations in social disparities in happiness. The results show convergences in sex, race, and educational gaps in happiness with age, which can largely be attributed to differential exposure to various social conditions important to happiness, such as marital status and health. Sex and race inequalities in happiness declined in the long term over the past 30 years. During the most recent decade, however, the net sex difference disappeared while the racial gap in happiness remained substantial.
Democrats and Republicans in the US Congress are as ideologically consistent and distinct as they have been at any point in the past three decades. Since 1973, the Senate has become 29 percent more polarized and House polarization has increased 47 percent. This investigation of party polarization finds that member adaptation accounts for one-third of the total party polarization in both the House and Senate. Member replacement accounts for the other two-thirds, the lion's share of which has been the replacement of moderate southern Democrats by conservative Republicans. Republicans in both chambers are polarizing more quickly than Democrats. If the Democratic senators have taken one step toward their ideological home, House Democrats have taken two steps, Senate Republicans three steps and House Republicans four steps.
The notion that aging beyond adolescence and young adulthood leads to conservatism is part of the conventional wisdom, and there are theoretical reasons to believe that certain dimensions of biological, social and psychological aging contribute to some kinds of conser vatism. For instance, with the assumption of family respon sibilities, a diffuse liberalism-humanitarianism is likely to be overshadowed by concern for specific others. Or, aging persons may become more conservative in the sense that their attitudes and values become more resistant to change, because each subsequent experience is a smaller proportion of the total background of experiences. Empirical evidence on the topic is not definitive; moreover, in view of intransigent methodological problems which plague the study of aging effects, the evidence may never be definitive. However, cohort analysis of United States survey sample data reveals that in recent years persons aging beyond young adulthood and beyond middle age have tended to become more liberal in many respects, in conformity with general societal trends. However, these people have tended to become more conservative in a relative sense since their liberalization has not kept pace with changes in the total adult population. Although the evidence suggests that attitudes probably become somewhat less susceptible to change as people grow older, there is scant evidence for any other contribution of aging to conservatism.
Self-categorization theory (Turner, 1985; Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987) explains group polarization as conformity to a polarized norem which defines one's own group in contrast to other groups within a specific social context. Whether the ingroup norm is polarized or not depends on the social comparative context within which the ingroup defines itself. It was predicted from self-categorization theory that an ingroup confronted by a risky outgroup will polarize toward caution, an ingroup confronted by a caution outgroup will polarize toward risk, and an ingroup in the middle of the social frame of reference, confronted by both risky and cautious outgroups, will not polarize but will converge on its pretest mean. Our experiment adopted a modified version of the risky-shift paradigm, in which subjects gave pretest, posttest, and group consensus recommendations on three choice dilemma item-types (risky, neutral, or risky). The frame of reference was manipulated by confronting the ingroup with an outgroup lying on one or the other side, or both sides, of the ingroup distribution. This procedure was successful in producing a polarized theoretical ingroup norm in the appropriate conditions. Subjects' posttest opinions converged on their estimations of the consensual ingroup position, which in turn was polarized or not in line with the theoretical norm. There was some evidence that the degree of behavioral convergence and estimations of the ingroup consensus were a partial function of the extent to which subjects identified the group. There was also the usual main effect for item-type: Subjects converged on a norm polarized toward risk on risky items and toward caution on catious items. The results are consistent with self-categorization theory.
I assess the extent of "partisan voting" in American national elections since 1952 using a series of simple probit analyses. My measure of partisan voting is sensitive both to changes in the distribution of partisanship and to changes in the electoral relevance of partisanship. I find that the impact of partisan loyalties on voting behavior has increased in each of the last six presidential elections, reaching a level in 1996 almost 80 percent higher than in 1972-and significantly higher than in any presidential election in at least 50 years. The impact of partisanship on voting behavior in congressional elections has also increased markedly, albeit more recently and to a level still well below that of the 1950s. I conclude that the conventional wisdom among scholars and commentators regarding the "decline of parties" in American politics is badly outdated.
The study of culture and self casts psychology's understanding of the self, identity, or agency as central to the analysis and interpretation of behavior and demonstrates that cultures and selves define and build upon each other in an ongoing cycle of mutual constitution. In a selective review of theoretical and empirical work, we define self and what the self does, define culture and how it constitutes the self (and vice versa), define independence and interdependence and determine how they shape psychological functioning, and examine the continuing challenges and controversies in the study of culture and self. We propose that a self is the "me" at the center of experience-a continually developing sense of awareness and agency that guides actions and takes shape as the individual, both brain and body, becomes attuned to various environments. Selves incorporate the patterning of their various environments and thus confer particular and culture-specific form and function to the psychological processes they organize (e.g., attention, perception, cognition, emotion, motivation, interpersonal relationship, group). In turn, as selves engage with their sociocultural contexts, they reinforce and sometimes change the ideas, practices, and institutions of these environments.
© The Author(s) 2010.
Political polarization is commonly measured using the variation of responses on an individual issue in the population: more variation corresponds to more people on the extremes and fewer in the middle. By this measure, research has shown that - despite many commentators' concerns about increased polarization in recent decades - Americans' attitudes have become no more variable over the past two or three decades. What seems to have changed is the level of partisanship of the electorate. We define a new measure of political polarization as increased correlations in issue attitudes and we distinguish between issue partisanship - the correlation of issue attitudes with party ID and liberal-conservative ideology - and issue alignment - the correlation between pairs of issues. Using the National Election Studies, we find issue alignment to have increased within and between issue domains, but by only a small amount (approximately 2 percentage points in correlation per decade). Issue partisanship has increased more than twice as fast, thus suggesting that increased partisanship is not due to higher ideological coherence. Rather, it is parties that are more polarized and therefore better at sorting individuals along ideological lines; the change in people's attitudes corresponds more to a re-sorting of party labels among voters than to greater constraint on issue attitudes. We conclude suggesting that increased issue partisanship, in a context of persistently low issue constraint, might give greater voice to political extremists and single-issue advocates, and amplify dynamics of unequal representation.
Two experiments examined the typicality structure of contrasting political categories. In Experiment 1, two separate groups of participants rated the typicality of 15 individuals, including political figures and media personalities, with respect to the categories Democrat or Republican. The relation between the two sets of ratings was negative, linear, and extremely strong, r = -.9957. Essentially, one category was treated as a mirror image of the other. Experiment 2 replicated this result, showing some boundary conditions, and extending the result to liberal and conservative categories. The same method was applied to two other pairs of contrasting categories, healthy and junk foods, and male and female jobs. For those categories, the relation between contrasting pairs was weaker and there was less of a direct trade-off between typicality in one category versus typicality in its opposite. The results are discussed in terms of implications for political decision making and reasoning, and conceptual representation.
Do people really get more conservative as they get older? Or is the observation of old-age conservatism an artifact of the cross-sectional method of stirvey research? Questions such as these, concerning the relationship of a basic and irreversible behavioral phenomenon—chronological aging-to attitudes and predispositions (e.g. conservatism), are highly significant for under standing change in social and political systems. The cross-sectional photo graph of human behavior usually given by survey research may in fact show that the older members of a population are more conservative than the younger. But a longitudinal look at this behavior reveals that differences in age are more strongly related to generational than to maturational differences.
Aging is commonly assumed to be associated with the adoption of increasingly conservative social and political attitudes. Empirical tests of this assumption have provided little support, but most analyses have focused on attitude domains where public opinion was shifting in a liberal direction. Using three items about law and order, a domain marked by conservative trends, this paper evaluates the aging-conservatism hypothesis with data drawn from 18 national surveys covering the period 1959–85. Attitude changes in four cohorts are analyzed with Tay lor's hierarchical goodness-of-fit procedures for evaluating trends in public opinion. The findings show that each of the cohorts has participated in the shift toward more conservative opinions on law and order issues, and that either constant or zero differences characterize the trends in percentage differences between the oldest and the other cohorts. In the absence of differential rates of change, we conclude that older cohorts are no more likely than younger cohorts to adopt conservative law and order attitudes and that period effects are influencing each of the cohorts equally.
Four studies demonstrated both the power of group influence in persuasion and people's blindness to it. Even under conditions of effortful processing, attitudes toward a social policy depended almost exclusively upon the stated position of one's political party. This effect overwhelmed the impact of both the policy's objective content and participants' ideological beliefs (Studies 1-3), and it was driven by a shift in the assumed factual qualities of the policy and in its perceived moral connotations (Study 4). Nevertheless, participants denied having been influenced by their political group, although they believed that other individuals, especially their ideological adversaries, would be so influenced. The underappreciated role of social identity in persuasion is discussed.
The "end of ideology" was declared by social scientists in the aftermath of World War II. They argued that (a) ordinary citizens' political attitudes lack the kind of stability, consistency, and constraint that ideology requires; (b) ideological constructs such as liberalism and conservatism lack motivational potency and behavioral significance; (c) there are no major differences in content (or substance) between liberal and conservative points of view; and (d) there are few important differences in psychological processes (or styles) that underlie liberal versus conservative orientations. The end-of-ideologists were so influential that researchers ignored the topic of ideology for many years. However, current political realities, recent data from the American National Election Studies, and results from an emerging psychological paradigm provide strong grounds for returning to the study of ideology. Studies reveal that there are indeed meaningful political and psychological differences that covary with ideological self-placement. Situational variables--including system threat and mortality salience--and dispositional variables--including openness and conscientiousness--affect the degree to which an individual is drawn to liberal versus conservative leaders, parties, and opinions. A psychological analysis is also useful for understanding the political divide between "red states" and "blue states."
Generational differences are real and useful. Industrial and Organizational Psychology
- W K Campbell
- S M Campbell
- L Siedor
- J M Twenge
Campbell, W. K., Campbell, S. M., Siedor, L., & Twenge, J. M.
(2015). Generational differences are real and useful. Industrial
and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and
Practice, 8, 324-331.