Article

More Polarized but More Independent: Political Party Identification and Ideological Self-Categorization Among U.S. Adults, College Students, and Late Adolescents, 1970-2015

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  • Hogan Assessment Systems
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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.

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... Stoker and Jennings (2008) show that young Americans align their political orientations more closely with their partisan identities than older citizens, especially on emerging issues. Similarly, Levendusky (2009: Ch. 3 and Ch. 4) demonstrates that younger cohorts are better-sorted than older ones, while Twenge et al. (2016) find that the correlation between partisanship and ideological self-categorization is stronger for younger citizens. Although these studies suggest that generational replacement fuels partisan sorting, they have not distinguished between generational and life-cycle effects. ...
... Furthermore, the number of 'Independents' increases over time, with newer generations being historically more likely to identify as such (e.g. Abramson, 1976;Twenge et al., 2016). As argued by Lelkes (2016), the American electorate may polarize ideologically due to two distinct processes. ...
... Empirical research consistently demonstrates significant differences between these groups in their political behaviors and opinions (e.g. Fisher, 2017Fisher, , 2020LaCombe & Juelich, 2019;Stoker, 2014;Twenge et al., 2016). As one study argues, most Americans can correctly identify their generational membership, often think about themselves in generational terms, and even report changing their Table 1 Classification of generations and their formative experiences. ...
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American political elites have increasingly polarized over the past decades, which has inspired much research into mass polarization. We study whether there is a generational component to mass polarization by disentangling period, age, and cohort differences while distinguishing two forms of mass polarization: partisan sorting and ideological divergence. Drawing from General Social Survey and American National Election Studies data, we find that partisan sorting has increased across long-standing and emerging issues, while ideological divergence has not. Contrary to expectations, over-time increases in sorting are clearly driven by changes within generations rather than by generational replacement. On several issues, newer generations turn out to be less sorted than those they replace. This tentatively suggests that, partially as a consequence of demographic changes, generational replacement will gradually lead to less polarization in American public opinion as it converges toward more liberal positions.
... 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. ...
Article
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. ...
Article
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.
... Just as gender biases should be irrelevant to estimates of ambient temperature, and ingroup biases should be irrelevant to estimates of ceramic tensile strength, political biases would be irrelevant to topics that are not politicized. There is abundant evidence of increasing political polarization in the USA, increasing hatred of the other side, and strengthening of ideological "bubbles," where people primarily consume information from their own side and even ascribe increased credibility to experts on one's own side on completely non-politicized topics (e.g., Drummond & Fischoff, 2017;Finkel et al., 2020;Marks et al., 2019;Pew, 2014;Twenge et al., 2016). ...
... It takes minimal numeracy to recognize that this will almost inevitably lead to massive overrepresentation of far left activists and extremists. Most surveys indicate that 4-15% of Americans are on the far left (Hawkins et al., 2018;Pew, 2014;Twenge et al., 2016). So, heuristically, one might guess that the far left is overrepresented in academia because, with so few academics right of center, one could approximately double the estimates of the far left found in representative surveys of the general American public to arrive at an initial plausible estimate of the proportion of the far left to be found in academia. ...
Chapter
This chapter is a critical, theoretical, and empirical review of political bias. Herein it roundly criticizes the manner in which the social sciences have allowed political biases to undercut the validity and credibility of their scholarship. It is a theoretical review because the chapter presents two complementary and synergistic models of academic bias (one about its manifestations, the other about its processes). It is empirical because the chapter then uses those models to review the now vast evidentiary case for political bias, and because this chapter presents new data providing further evidence of such biases. This chapter also highlights when proposed manifestations of political bias are plausible but not yet demonstrated – thereby also identifying potential directions for future empirical research.
... This process of variable selection and elimination was iterated until we identified the best model (i.e., most parsimonious) with all significant variables using fit statistics including AIC/BIC scores. Since partisan identification and political ideology are distinct but highly correlated [53], we tested these variables in separate models and obtained consistently similar results. For the final models, we chose to focus on political ideology as it tended to return stronger results than partisan identity, which is not surprising given that our sample comprises younger respondents, who show signs of lower party affiliation in general [53]. ...
... Since partisan identification and political ideology are distinct but highly correlated [53], we tested these variables in separate models and obtained consistently similar results. For the final models, we chose to focus on political ideology as it tended to return stronger results than partisan identity, which is not surprising given that our sample comprises younger respondents, who show signs of lower party affiliation in general [53]. ...
Article
Full-text available
Mobilizing communities for environmental sustainability often involves engaging with religious values and beliefs, which can exert powerful influences on the attitudes, norms, and behaviors of the majority of people worldwide. Christianity is the largest world religion and, in some contexts, has also been among the most skeptical of climate and environmental concerns. A popular explanation for this skepticism focuses on eschatological views (i.e., end time beliefs) and posits that if the earth is going to be destroyed someday, there is little point in conserving it now. Empirical evidence is lacking, however, on the extent to which such beliefs actually influence environmental attitudes. We surveyed Christian undergraduate students in the US (N = 1520) and found that belief in the imminent return of Jesus Christ was not significantly associated with variables tested regarding biodiversity loss or climate change. Furthermore, a plurality responded that the earth will be renewed at the end (43%), not destroyed (24%), and beliefs about the fate of the earth were generally not related to attitudinal measures—except for a slim minority of respondents with strongest views that the earth will be destroyed—but were significantly associated with political ideology and literalist views of Scripture. These findings suggest that end time views may not be a major obstacle—at least among younger American Christians—to promoting socio-ecological sustainability.
... Just as gender biases should be irrelevant to estimates of ambient temperature, and ingroup biases should be irrelevant to estimates of ceramic tensile strength, political biases would be irrelevant to topics that are not politicized. There is abundant evidence of increasing political polarization in the USA, increasing hatred of the other side, and strengthening of ideological "bubbles," where people primarily consume information from their own side and even ascribe increased credibility to experts on one's own side on completely non-politicized topics (e.g., Drummond & Fischoff, 2017;Finkel et al., 2020;Marks et al., 2019;Pew, 2014;Twenge et al., 2016). ...
... It takes minimal numeracy to recognize that this will almost inevitably lead to massive overrepresentation of far left activists and extremists. Most surveys indicate that 4-15% of Americans are on the far left (Hawkins et al., 2018;Pew, 2014;Twenge et al., 2016). So, heuristically, one might guess that the far left is overrepresented in academia because, with so few academics right of center, one could approximately double the estimates of the far left found in representative surveys of the general American public to arrive at an initial plausible estimate of the proportion of the far left to be found in academia. ...
Preprint
This chapter is a critical, theoretical, and empirical review of political bias. It is “critical” in that it roundly criticizes the manner in which the social sciences have allowed political biases to undercut the validity and credibility of their scholarship. It is a theoretical review because the chapter presents two complementary and synergistic models of academic bias (one about its manifestations, the other about its processes). It is empirical because the chapter then uses those models to review the now vast evidentiary case for political bias, and because this chapter presents new data providing further evidence of such biases. This chapter also highlights when proposed manifestations of political bias are plausible but not yet demonstrated – thereby also identifying potential directions for future empirical research.
... 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. ...
Preprint
Full-text available
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]. ...
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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?
... National survey data demonstrated that both major party supporters in the U.S. disliked their respective out-group and even felt displeased with interparty marriage (Iyengar et al., 2012). Overall, political group prejudice is not uncommon and can be exacerbated in contexts marked by heightened political polarization, such as the U.S. in recent years (Pew Research Center, 2014;Twenge et al., 2016). Furthermore, it is relatively socially acceptable to express negativity toward one's political out-group (Hutson, 2017, Iyengar & Westwood, 2015, which can perpetuate this prejudice and avoidance of political outgroup members. ...
... This limitation was in part due to the difficulty of delineating between in-group and out-group friends for participants who identified as being Independents, as this might vary from person to person depending on how far right or left they perceive themselves to be on the political ideology spectrum (Laloggia, 2019). In addition, other researchers speculated that individuals who identify as Independents are those who do not prefer to be associated with any of the two major parties (Twenge et al., 2016). Nonetheless, we preliminarily examined the general pattern for Independents (n ¼ 78) in our sample in Online Supplemental Material and found a general pattern of greater positivity for established than potential friends and a few cases where expectations about liberal (vs. ...
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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.
... Political 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 used 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. ...
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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).
... While political party affiliation pertains to people's formal or informal membership of a particular political party, ideological views encompass a wider range of beliefs, principles, and values that steer their political cognition and influence their stances on diverse issues. Yet, the two are highly correlated-both in the Garrett and Bond (2021) sample and in the U.S. population more broadly (Twenge et al., 2016). ...
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Political misinformation poses a major threat to democracies worldwide, often inciting intense disputes between opposing political groups. Despite its central role for informed electorates and political decision making, little is known about how aware people are of whether they are right or wrong when distinguishing accurate political information from falsehood. Here, we investigate people’s metacognitive insight into their own ability to detect political misinformation. We use data from a unique longitudinal study spanning 12 waves over 6 months that surveyed a representative U.S. sample (N = 1,191) on the most widely circulating political (mis)information online. Harnessing signal detection theory methods to model metacognition, we found that people from both the political left and the political right were aware of how well they distinguished accurate political information from falsehood across all news. However, this metacognitive insight was considerably lower for Republicans and conservatives—than for Democrats and liberals—when the information in question challenged their ideological commitments. That is, given their level of knowledge, Republicans’ and conservatives’ confidence was less likely to reflect the correctness of their truth judgments for true and false political statements that were at odds with their political views. These results reveal the intricate and systematic ways in which political preferences are linked to the accuracy with which people assess their own truth discernment. More broadly, by identifying a specific political asymmetry—for discordant relative to concordant news—our findings highlight the role of metacognition in perpetuating and exacerbating ideological divides.
... Political parties in the United States are increasingly polarized (e.g., Baldassarri & Gelman, 2008;Boxell et al., 2024;Desilver, 2022;Pew Research Center, 2014, 2022. Although some evidence suggests increasing ideological differences (Twenge et al., 2016), the main source of polarization in the U.S. public seems to be affective (e.g., Iyengar et al., 2012Iyengar et al., , 2019Iyengar & Westwood, 2015), with the largest shift coming not from an increase in liking for one's own party but an increase in feelings of coldness toward outparty members. This affective polarization has social consequences, driving greater social distance between members of different parties (Iyengar et al., 2019). ...
Article
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Amid heightened political polarization in the United States, have politics worked their way into the bedroom? An increase in political similarity between romantic partners has consequences not just for romantic relationships but for society as a whole; political homophily increases our political echo chambers and affects future generations. We drew upon 11 data sets with over 4,000 individuals (including more than 500 couples) to test four preregistered research questions about the prevalence, correlates, consequences, and potential buffers of political dissimilarity in modern-day relationships. Across measures of similarity (overall perceptions, partisanship matching, shared political ideology), couples in our sample showed high levels of political similarity (e.g., 23% were cross-partisan, with fewer than 8% composed of one Democrat and one Republican). Examining 18 potential correlates of political dissimilarity, we found little evidence that certain factors predispose people to end up in a politically dissimilar relationship. When considering the potential consequences of political dissimilarity, we found a small association between political dissimilarity and relationship quality in general and in daily life. The effect was evident when examining perceived political dissimilarity (over and above perceptions of overall similarity) and, to a lesser extent, dissimilarity in terms of partisanship and political ideology. Prosocial processes such as appreciation and perspective-taking may moderate these effects. Taken together, these findings speak to the need to further consider the ways in which the sociopolitical context is shaping the formation and maintenance of close relationships.
... Independent voters are the main focus of this article. Overall, they do not fully identify with the major parties but they are not apolitical (Twenge et al., 2016). The majority of independent voters lean consistently towards a specic party, although independent voters that lean towards a party are less likely than partisan voters to perceive that party favourably. ...
... Data show, for example, that by 1975 just over 60% of Americans identified with a political party, down from 70% to 75% in the 1950s (Dalton, 2016). Furthermore, according to the American National Election Survey, since about 1996, the proportion of people identifying as political 'independents' has outnumbered those identifying as Republican or Democrat (Twenge et al., 2016). The Pew Research Center (2019), for example, recently found that about 38% of the American electorate identified as independent compared with 31% identifying as Democrat and 26% identifying as Republican. ...
Article
While political scientists have investigated political non-affiliation and religious scholars have investigated religious non-affiliation, no work has yet examined the correlates of those identifying as both religiously and politically non-affiliated. Across two separate studies, we investigate the personality, social network, and cultural engagement correlates of political and religious non-affiliates. Some statistically significant effects found in Study 1 fail to replicate in Study 2, though replicated findings provide interesting avenues for future work. Notably, compared to those who report being both politically and religiously affiliated, we find that dual non-affiliates are more socially liberal, more fiscally conservative, far less likely to vote, and less religious across several attitudinal and behavioral measures. Crucially, we find no consistent evidence that dual non-affiliates suffer from social isolation or a lack of social support.
... The authors conclude that psychotherapists should be aware of and explore their patients' political attitudes. Given that more polarized societies currently prevail (Twenge et al., 2016), it seems plausible that inferred political attitudes and other convictions of the psychotherapist may play a significant role in the evaluation of current or future psychotherapeutic relationships and preferences. However, to the best of our knowledge, there are no studies investigating preferred experience levels (in both practice and research) or political attitudes. ...
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Despite a growing body of studies on therapist preferences, research so far remains limited to isolated characteristics, such as therapist gender or ethnicity that patients prefer. Furthermore, the interplay between participants’ characteristics and their preferences regarding therapists is unclear. The present study aims to identify previously neglected preferences regarding therapists and their predictors. We recruited a heterogeneous sample of N = 969 laypersons, including a respondent pool (n = 733) and a student sample (n = 236). Participants completed self-reports on sociodemographic characteristics, Big Five traits, and anxiety. Additionally, participants reported their preferences on sociodemographic and personality characteristics of their preferred psychotherapist. We identified predictors of preferences using logistic and linear regression models. Overall, for almost all characteristics, less than half of the participants reported any preference, except for preferred political attitude and practical experience. However, there was evidence of congruency effects (i.e., preferring therapists similar to oneself), especially concerning minorities, political convictions, and personality traits. Furthermore, older participants preferred more experienced psychotherapists, whereas trait anxiety predicted preferences for more stereotypical depictions of psychotherapists. Although many participants were inconclusive about their preferences, we identified important predictors of preference choices that are worth addressing in both psychotherapy practice and research. Our results imply that psychotherapy might benefit from considering patients’ preferences, especially if implemented with specific groups.
... Stoker and Jennings (2008) note that younger voting-age individuals surveyed tend to express more issue constraint, or alignment between their positions on major issues and those of their party, than older respondents. Also notable in recent years is a rise in Independent political identification alongside the rise in partisan polarization (Twenge et al., 2016). Independent political identity is often a symptom of frustration or disengagement (Klar and Krupnikov, 2016) and the uptick in Independent self-identification may represent a reaction to the present state of partisan politics. ...
Article
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.
... 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 . ...
Article
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). ...
Article
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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. ...
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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.
... Increases in internalizing symptoms among adolescents are likely due to multiple causes, including a growing prevalence or impact of existing risk factors and the emergence of new risk factors. A range of these factors, including substance use, online bullying, digital media use, economic distress, or political beliefs (Keyes et al., 2019;Mojtabai et al., 2016;Ozmen, Brelsford, & Danieu, 2018;Twenge et al., 2016, might be influencing worsening trends in adolescent mental health. Recent studies have focused on digital engagement and social media (Augner & Hacker, 2012;Twenge & Campbell, 2019), but research into adolescent wellbeing and depression has not convincingly demonstrated that digital technology use is driving these observed trends (Kreski et al., 2020;Odgers, 2018;Orben & Przybylski, 2019). ...
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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.
... 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). ...
Article
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. ...
Preprint
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). ...
Article
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. ...
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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. ...
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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]. ...
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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. ...
Article
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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. ...
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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. ...
Book
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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. ...
Chapter
Full-text available
... 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. ...
Chapter
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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. ...
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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. ...
Article
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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. ...
Article
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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.
... Given that we do not find such political ideology moderations in our other studies, it is possible that the presidential election season (during which this study was run) temporarily amplified effects of political ideology. Alternatively, this result suggests the idea of class privilege, like many beliefs and behaviors (Twenge, Honeycutt, Prislin, & Sherman, 2016), may be becoming politicized, such that evidence of personally benefitting from class privilege is more widely accepted among liberals than conservatives. Future work might delve into the politicization of privilege acknowledgment further. ...
Article
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Invisibility makes privilege powerful. Especially when it remains unexposed, privilege perpetuates inequity by giving unearned advantages to certain groups over others. However, recent social movements (e.g., Occupy) attempt to expose class-based privilege, threatening its invisibility. Across 8 experiments, we show that beneficiaries of class privilege respond to such exposure by increasing their claims of personal hardships and hard work, to cover privilege in a veneer of meritocracy. Experiments 1a-c show that when people are provided evidence of their own class privilege, they claim to have suffered more personal life hardships. Experiment 2 suggests that these claims are driven in part by threats to self-regard. Experiment 3 finds that such self-defense is motivated specifically by a desire to attribute positive outcomes to the self (i.e., sense of personal merit). When given the chance to first bolster their sense of personal merit, those benefitting from privilege no longer claim hardships in response to evidence of privilege. Experiments 4 and 5 further suggest self-concerns are at play: only self-relevant privilege evokes defensive responses, and self-affirmation reduces hardship claims more than does system-affirmation. Finally, Experiment 6 suggests that people claim hardships because they believe these imply personal merit on their part. Preventing the privileged from claiming hardship leads them to claim increased effort in the workplace and to increase effort on a difficult task. Overall, results suggest that even when those benefitting from class privileges are confronted with evidence of their "invisible knapsack," ideologies of personal merit help them cover the privileges of class once again. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
... 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). ...
Article
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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. ...
Article
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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. ...
Article
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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.
Article
Prejudices intercorrelate positively and can be modeled as a generalized prejudice (GP) factor that is considered robust and central to postulating that some people are relatively more prejudiced than others (i.e., prejudice is not purely contextual). Although past research documents changes in specific prejudices over time, the field tacitly assumes GP stability/robustness, an untested notion. Using nationally representative American National Election Survey 2004–2020 data ( N = 21,998) assessing attitudes toward Black people, illegal immigrants, gay people, and feminists, we discovered that prejudices have become increasingly correlated over time. Initially invariant, from 2012 onward GP became variant and required correlated residuals between prejudices (outside of GP). GP vastly increased its association with political conservatism (≈.41 in 2004–2008, ≈.70 by 2016–2020) but less so with age, sex, and education. Indeed, best fit in 2020 involved a “GP 2.0” factor indicated by specific prejudices and conservatism. Implications regarding the nature of prejudice are discussed.
Article
Political partisanship is often conceived as a lens through which people view politics. Behavioral research has distinguished two types of “partisan lenses”—policy-based and identity-based—that may influence peoples’ perception of political events. Little is known, however, about the mechanisms through which partisan discourse appealing to policy beliefs or targeting partisan identities operate within individuals. We addressed this question by collecting neuroimaging data while participants watched videos of speakers expressing partisan views. A “partisan lens effect” was identified as the difference in neural synchrony between each participant’s brain response and that of their partisan ingroup vs. outgroup. When processing policy-based messaging, a partisan lens effect was observed in socio-political reasoning and affective responding brain regions. When processing negative identity-based attacks, a partisan lens effect was observed in mentalizing and affective responding brain regions. These data suggest that the processing of political discourse that appeals to different forms of partisanship is supported by related but distinguishable neural—and therefore psychological—mechanisms, which may have implications for how we characterize partisanship and ameliorate its deleterious impacts.
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There is a long history of academic and non-academic activism directed against those areas of social-scientific research, specifically behavior genetics and differential psychology (especially intelligence research) , that seek to understand the determinants of variation in socially significant psychological and behavioral traits and outcomes. This research becomes particularly controversial when it addresses the potential genetic contributions to differences between population groups, e.g. studies of socially important variables such as intelligence and any variation in them between "racial" or "ethnic" groups. . We consider recent controversies related to these areas of inquiry. Crucial among these is an attempt to brand science on population differences as part of a particular form of rightist political activism, aiming to insert justifications for “White nationalism” and related ideologies into scientific, political, and public discourse. Unfortunately, the coherence of this thesis depends heavily on guilt-by-association allegations and suppression of conflicting evidence. We begin with a more general review of controversies in the disciplines at issue and then review, and further challenge, the specific argument concerning such political activism. We subsequently argue that these criticisms might themselves be embedded within a program of egalitarian activism/left-wing activism, which includes certain scholars and scientists working in relevant fields (e.g., sociogenomics), who aim to ensure that science is both conducted and presented to the public in ways that could only further egalitarian moral-political goals. Ultimately, this egalitarian activism is harmful, as it has broader chilling effects on research and science communication (claims for which we offer empirical evidence), and ethics, as it risks fomenting political polarization. To be sure, those on the political right are not innocent either. Many have engaged in behavior that has fanned the flames of controversy in these areas of science and have spread erroneous ideas about findings in them. It would be ideal if efforts were made to depoliticize social science in particular to the greatest extent possible, but a more productive course of action might involve critical introspection and the active pursuit of lines of research that challenge potential misconceptions.
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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) suggests 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Article
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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Organizational Identity presents the classic works on organizational identity alongside more current thinking on the issues. Ranging from theoretical contributions to empirical studies, the readings in this volume address the key issues of organizational identity, and show how these issues have developed through contributions from such diverse fields of study as sociology, psychology, management studies and cultural studies. The readings examine questions such as how organizations understand who they are, why organizations develop a sense of identity and belonging where the boundaries of identity lie and the implications of postmodern and critical theories' challenges to the concept of identity as deeply-rooted and authentic. Includes work by: Stuart Albert, Mats Alvesson, Blake E. Ashforth, Marilynn B. Brewer, George Cheney, Lars Thoger Christensen, C.H. Cooley, Kevin G. Corley, Barbara Czarniawska, Janet M. Dukerich, Jane E. Dutton, Kimberly D. Elsbach, Wendi Gardner, Linda E. Ginzela, Dennis A. Gioia, E. Goffman, Karen Golden-Biddle, Mary Jo Hatch, Roderick M. Kramer, Fred Rael, G.H. Mead, Michael G. Pratt, Anat Rafaeli, Hayagreeva Rao, Majken Schultz, Howard S. Schwartz, Robert I. Sutton, Henri Taijfel, John Turner, David A. Wherren, and Hugh Willmott. Intended to provide easy access to this material for students of organizational identity, it will also be of interest more broadly to students of business, sociology and psychology.
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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.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Article
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.
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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.
Article
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.
Article
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.
Article
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.
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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.