Identity Reconsidered: Do Psychological Attachments Drive Political Behavior?

• In Event: The Electoral Effects of Group Status and Identity

Abstract

Identity plays a prominent role in explaining political behavior. Studies of political behavior, however, typically operationalize identity ascriptively—subjects usually check a box indicating whether or not they are a group member. Some scholars, grounded in findings of research on identity as developed in other fields (e.g., psychology, sociology), employ a more fulsome definition of identity as a psychological attachment to a group. To what extent do these differences in how scholars operationalize identity affect our understanding of contemporary politics? We show that incorporating psychological components of identity changes our understanding of the attitudes and voting behavior of key racial and ethnic groups in recent presidential elections. We find that for several racial and ethnic groups, the degree to which the group supports a political candidate and participates varies dramatically depending on whether group membership is defined solely using ascriptive characteristics rather than measures of psychological attachments.

Authors

• Harry Muttram, University of California, Riverside

• Benjamin Bishin, University of California, Riverside