Messages of Inclusion: Social Acceptance and Political Engagement

• In Event: Politics of Emotions and Race

Abstract

Psychologists have long established that the need to belong is one of the most powerful human motives (Maslow, 1943; Baumeister and Leary, 1995). As such, a sense of belonging to a group or social setting and recognition of social acceptance have been found to lead to positive self-assessment (Walton et al 2012). A sense of belonging has also been shown to motivate individuals to voluntarily assist and work on behalf of their group or community (Boeckmann and Tyler, 2002) and has led to increased education and health outcomes particularly among individuals from marginalized communities (Walton and Cohen 2011). However, despite a large body of research in political behavior that examines the role of discrimination and exclusionary policies, particularly as these relate to racial and ethnic groups, we know little about the role of social acceptance in shaping political behavior. To address this, I rely on two national surveys with unique measures of social belonging --the 2016 Collaborative Multi-racial Post-election Survey (CMPS) and the 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES)-- to examine the relationship between perceived social acceptance and political participation among Latinos, Blacks and Asians. Moreover, to further understand how messages of inclusion are causally linked to political behavior, I rely on experimental evidence that manipulates both the messages of inclusion or exclusion and the source of the messages. The results suggest that social acceptance is strongly associated to political behavior outcomes among all racial and ethnic groups. Moreover, the findings reveal that messages of inclusion are causally linked to greater interest in politics and political engagement.

Author

• Angela Ximena Ocampo, University of Michigan