Beyond Political Interest: When Political Engagement is an Identity

• In Event: Classic Concepts Revisited

Abstract

Existing research suggests that in America partisanship is now more of a dividing force than race or religion. That politics divides people suggests that politics itself holds a primary place in people’s lives. Moreover, while polarization is described as normatively negative, paying attention to and finding political events important is also often suggested to be a normative good. In this project, we analyze how people evaluate those who opt to place a heavy emphasis on their political and partisan identities. We begin by offering a new theory that what divides the public is not simply partisanship, but rather the belief that political identities should be weighted more heavily than other identities. We integrate research in political science and psychology to develop a new measure of political importance, and use several different representative samples to demonstrate the prevalence of these types of political importance beliefs among the American public. Second, we rely on a series of national experiments that ask participants to evaluate people who are heavily engaged in political participation. Our work suggests that while a (vocal) minority of Americans does believe in the primacy of politics, a majority is repelled by the idea that politics should be important to them. A further implication of our work is that messages that aim to increase political activity by shaming people who aren’t focused on political events may be especially likely to turn people away from politics.

Authors

• Yanna Krupnikov, Stony Brook University

• John Barry Ryan, Stony Brook University