Political Independents: Are They Capable of Being Emotionally Provoked?

• In Event: Emotions and Political Psychology

Abstract

Most research in social psychology in the U.S. focuses on partisans to understand growing party polarization, affective polarization, and biases in decision making. Not only is partisanship a psychological attachment to a group, but it is one the most important heuristics in voting decisions (Campbell et al 1960). We know much less about political independents. Independents, not affiliated with either of the two major parties, are often dismissed as outliers in America's hyperpolarized politics or omitted as a focus of study. Klar and Krupnikov (2016) argue that independents who lean towards one of the two political parties are “hidden partisans;” politics is a private decision and while they may hold policy opinions similar to partisans (or even be stronger in their partisanship) they don’t want to voice these opinions publicly. How do independent leaners and pure independents make political decisions? Are they more or less emotional in their reasoning about politics than traditional partisans? Expanding on previous work, this study uses a series of unique unobstructed survey experiments, including an item-count or list-experiment, designed by the authors and placed on a 2020 Yougov/ Cooperative Comparative Election Study (CCES) survey of 1000 respondents nationally.

Political polarization or divisions among the two U.S. political parties reached a nadir in the 2020 presidential election. A Gallup July 2020 survey found an 89-point difference between Republicans' and Democrats' ratings of former President Trump is the largest partisan gap Gallup has ever measured for a presidential approval rating in a single survey, dating back to 1936. Since 2016 Pew surveys found partisan views of the opposing party were more negative than at any point in the previous 25 years. Why has polarization become so extreme? Building on social identity theory (Tejfel 1981), Mason (2018) argues current polarization is rooted in a primal sentence of "team" or social identification. For many people, being a Democrat or a Republican has become increasingly important to their sense of self. Individual's psychological identity with their party drives animosity towards members of the other party (or political team) and a desire for partisan victory becomes the end game, even when people don't have a strong feeling about policy issues.

What about independents? Are political independents more or less likely to be emotionally activated decision-makers? Some research suggests they may be less emotionally activated. Research has found individuals with more cross-cutting identities (members of in-group also are members of different out-groups) are more civil in face of insults to their group or party (Mason 2016, a “Cross-Cutting Calm”). Pew reports that nearly 4 in 10 Americans (38%) are political independents, not affiliated with the Republican or Democratic Parties (LaLoggia 2019). Unlike leaners, survey research suggests that pure independents may seek a compromise over political ideology. We also don't know whether partisan leaners and/or pure independents are emotionally engaged in politics, and or how it affects their decision making.

Klar and Krupnikov (2016) argue that independents who lean towards one of the two political parties are "hidden partisans." A list-experiment is designed to overcome problems of social desirability effects when respondents don't want to expose in an interviewer their true opinions. List experiments are successfully used in cross-national surveys and in non-democratic regimes where respondents may fear punishment/reprisal for exposing their preferences or behavior. The experiment in this study is designed to emotionally activate independents, where the treatment--party polarization will lead to civil war--is used to measure which group (partisans or non-partisans) are most likely to hide their feelings about politics.

In the experiment, one randomly assigned control group receives a list of items to which they are asked to respond, indicating how many (in our case) “trouble” them. Respondents are not asked which items or statements trouble them, only to name how many. The treatment group receives the same list plus an additional target item and is also asked to report how many items are troubling. The simple difference in group means between treatment and control groups provides a true measure of the percentage of the treatment group that is troubled by the target item since other than the target item all items are the same between groups. The experiment is used to test the following hypotheses: If independents are truly hidden partisans, they should respond just as strongly, or more strongly, as self-identified Democrats and Republicans. A second randomized experiment measures if independents do a better job than partisans in ranking partisan and non-partisan hypothetical candidates than partisans? Because there are so many biases in partisanship, do independents do a better job ranking non-partisan candidates than partisan candidates?

Author

• Ev Marie Dowling, University of California, Davis