Moral Identity and Political Ambition

• In Event: Poster Session: Women and Politics Research I

Abstract

Although the study of political ambition has long taken into account the content of potential candidates’ political views, it has paid less attention to the ways in which holding these views might matter to the individuals in question and guide their intended actions. Given the relative intensity of holding political ambition in the context of wider patterns of political participation, it stands to reason that the extent to which someone sees their political beliefs (whatever these are) as core to their identity is likely to be linked to their attitudes towards running for office. In this paper, we adapt Aquino and Reed’s (2002) notion of ‘moral identity’ to examine how individuals internalize their political beliefs as part of their wider moral self-conception and how they attempt to symbolize these beliefs to others, hoping to influence their perception of their morality. In other words, if one’s political views play a greater role in one’s overall sense of self, they are likely to play a greater role in guiding intended action than if they do not. Related to this, we also build on Duncan’s (2005, 2007) Personal Political Salience scale – the extent to which an individual personally relates to national and global political events – and explore the association between PPS and Moral Identity.

We use original large-N survey data (N=10,202) collected by the authors in Great Britain in 2017, which contains a version of Duncan’s PPS scale adapted for use in Great Britain as well as a battery of survey items measuring Moral Identity adapted from Aquino and Reed. Using a Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) framework, we find a positive association between both PPS and Moral Identity and political ambition, confirming that personally associating with political events and considering one’s political beliefs to be central to one’s moral self-conception is linked to a greater desire to run for political office. We do, however, find no distinction in the data between internalization and symbolization, suggesting that political beliefs are considered in a distinct way to more traditional or obviously moral concerns. Additionally exploring the relationship between Moral Identity, Personal Political Salience and traditional predictors of political ambition, namely gender, we find evidence that these function in gendered ways and should be taken into account in future research.

Authors

• Peter Allen, University of Bath

• David Cutts, University of Birmingham