Type
Text
Type
Dissertation
Advisor
Feldman, Stanley | Huddy, Leonie | Lebo, Matthew | Abramowitz, Alan.
Date
2013-12-01
Keywords
activism, ideology, partisanship, polarization, social identity, sorting | Political Science
Department
Department of Political Science.
Language
en_US
Source
This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.
Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/11401/76769
Publisher
The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
Format
application/pdf
Abstract
Partisan sorting is capable of driving mass political behavior. As work in social psychology demonstrates, social identities such as party, ideology, religion and race are powerful motivators of bias, activism and anger. Furthermore, when multiple social identities come into alignment, this alignment strengthens the effects of these identities on behavior, and strengthens the cognitive and motivational bases of ingroup bias and negative emotion by increasing the perceived differences between the groups, regardless of the true differences between them. Thus the effect of political identities and the alignment between them can occur independently of the extremity or importance of an individual's held issue positions. Therefore, even if, as argued by many political scientists, the American electorate remains a relatively moderate nation in terms of issue positions, it is still possible for the psychological effects of political sorting to affect important political behavior such as partisan bias, political activism and anger at political opponents. This theory is supported by data from the ANES and with data drawn from a nationally-representative sample collected by Polimetrix from a National Science Foundation grant (Grant No. SES-1065054),230 pages
Recommended Citation
Mason, Lilliana Hall, "Behavioral Polarization and Partisan Sorting: How Identity Alignment Drives Polarized Politics" (2013). Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions). 2647.
https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/stony-brook-theses-and-dissertations-collection/2647