Self-Affirmation and Identity-Driven Political Behavior

IF 3.2 Q1 POLITICAL SCIENCE

Journal of Experimental Political Science Pub Date : 2021-02-08 DOI:10.1017/XPS.2020.46

Benjamin A. Lyons, Christina E. Farhart, Michael P. Hall, J. Kotcher, Matthew Levendusky, Joanne M. Miller, B. Nyhan, K. Raimi, Jason Reifler, Kyle L. Saunders, Rasmus Skytte, Xiaoquan Zhao

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引用次数: 5

Abstract

Abstract Psychological attachment to political parties can bias people’s attitudes, beliefs, and group evaluations. Studies from psychology suggest that self-affirmation theory may ameliorate this problem in the domain of politics on a variety of outcome measures. We report a series of studies conducted by separate research teams that examine whether a self-affirmation intervention affects a variety of outcomes, including political or policy attitudes, factual beliefs, conspiracy beliefs, affective polarization, and evaluations of news sources. The different research teams use a variety of self-affirmation interventions, research designs, and outcomes. Despite these differences, the research teams consistently find that self-affirmation treatments have little effect. These findings suggest considerable caution is warranted for researchers who wish to apply the self-affirmation framework to studies that investigate political attitudes and beliefs. By presenting the “null results” of separate research teams, we hope to spark a discussion about whether and how the self-affirmation paradigm should be applied to political topics.

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自我肯定与身份驱动的政治行为

摘要对政党的心理依恋会使人们的态度、信仰和群体评价产生偏见。心理学的研究表明，自我肯定理论可以通过各种结果衡量来改善政治领域的这一问题。我们报告了由独立研究团队进行的一系列研究，这些研究考察了自我肯定干预是否会影响各种结果，包括政治或政策态度、事实信念、阴谋信念、情感两极分化和对新闻来源的评估。不同的研究团队使用各种自我肯定干预、研究设计和结果。尽管存在这些差异，但研究小组一致发现，自我肯定治疗效果甚微。这些发现表明，对于那些希望将自我肯定框架应用于调查政治态度和信仰的研究的研究人员来说，有必要格外谨慎。通过呈现不同研究团队的“无效结果”，我们希望引发一场关于自我肯定范式是否以及如何应用于政治主题的讨论。

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来源期刊

Journal of Experimental Political Science Social Sciences-Sociology and Political Science

CiteScore

5.10

自引率

8.30%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Journal of Experimental Political Science (JEPS) features cutting-edge research that utilizes experimental methods or experimental reasoning based on naturally occurring data. We define experimental methods broadly: research featuring random (or quasi-random) assignment of subjects to different treatments in an effort to isolate causal relationships in the sphere of politics. JEPS embraces all of the different types of experiments carried out as part of political science research, including survey experiments, laboratory experiments, field experiments, lab experiments in the field, natural and neurological experiments. We invite authors to submit concise articles (around 4000 words or fewer) that immediately address the subject of the research. We do not require lengthy explanations regarding and justifications of the experimental method. Nor do we expect extensive literature reviews of pros and cons of the methodological approaches involved in the experiment unless the goal of the article is to explore these methodological issues. We expect readers to be familiar with experimental methods and therefore to not need pages of literature reviews to be convinced that experimental methods are a legitimate methodological approach. We will consider longer articles in rare, but appropriate cases, as in the following examples: when a new experimental method or approach is being introduced and discussed or when novel theoretical results are being evaluated through experimentation. Finally, we strongly encourage authors to submit manuscripts that showcase informative null findings or inconsistent results from well-designed, executed, and analyzed experiments.