Rallying Around the Party: a Theory of Party Identity Linkage

Rallying Around the Party:

A Theory of Party Identity Linkage

Melanie S. Freeze

Department of Political Science Duke University

Date: Approved:

John H. Aldrich, Supervisor

D. Sunshine Hillygus

Christopher Johnston

Wendy Wood

Dissertation submitted in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Political Science in the Graduate School of Duke University 2012 Abstract Rallying Around the Party: A Theory of Party Identity Linkage

Melanie S. Freeze

Department of Political Science Duke University

Date: Approved:

John H. Aldrich, Supervisor

D. Sunshine Hillygus

Christopher Johnston

Wendy Wood

An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Political Science in the Graduate School of Duke University 2012 Copyright c 2012 by Melanie S. Freeze All rights reserved except the rights granted by the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License Abstract

This dissertation proposes that party identification, as a social identity, fundamentally alters individual processing of and reactions to political information and events. I present a party identity linkage theory in which I argue party identity can lead to heightened, specific emotional responses to threatening political competition and biased, polarized perceptions of politicalized objects if the link between self and party is sufficiently strong. Because people are strongly motivated to protect the positive perceptions they have of themselves, they should be motivated to maintain and protect their positive perceptions of groups that are linked to their self-concept through social identities. Furthermore, because people tend to engage in self-serving biases that result in a degree of positive illusions about themselves, especially when the positive self-view is threatened, evaluations of closely linked groups should also be subject to a degree of positive bias, especially when the positive image of the group is threatened. Drawing on both experimental and survey data, I provide evidence that strong partisans are fundamentally different from weak partisans and independents in the degree a party is included in their self-concepts, in their responses to candidates’ changed party status, and in their responses to threatening inter-party competition.

iv To my son, I. Will. Freeze

v Contents

Abstract iv

List of Tables xi

List of Figures xvi

List of Abbreviations and Symbols xx

Acknowledgements xxi

1 Introduction1

2 The Party Identity Linkage Theory7

2.1 The Self...... 10

2.1.1 Self-Enhancement Motive and Positive Bias...... 12

2.1.2 Association of Self with Objects, People, and Groups..... 17

2.2 Social Identities...... 20

2.2.1 Conceptualizations of Social Identity...... 20

2.2.2 Consequences of Social Identities...... 27

2.2.3 Distinctiveness of Strong Identiﬁers...... 29

2.3 Party Identity Linkage Theory...... 32

2.4 Alternative Explanations...... 44

2.5 Contributions to Existing Research...... 47

3 Who are Strongly Linked Partisans? 51

3.1 Measuring Party Identiﬁcation...... 52

vi 3.2 Conceptualizing Party Identiﬁcation...... 55

3.3 Data Sources...... 60

3.4 Who are Strong Partisans?...... 62

3.5 Strong Partisans’ Party Evaluations...... 80

3.6 Conclusions...... 86

4 Party Identity Strength and Evaluation Polarization 91

4.1 Pooled Analysis of Political Figure Evaluation Polarization...... 93

4.1.1 Data...... 93

4.1.2 Descriptive Statistics...... 95

4.1.3 Model...... 105

4.1.4 Results...... 110

4.2 Panel Analysis of Presidential Candidate Evaluation Polarization.. 114

4.2.1 Data...... 115

4.2.2 Descriptive Statistics...... 116

4.2.3 Models...... 120

4.2.4 Results...... 123

4.3 Conclusion...... 126

5 The Emotional Response to Party Identity Threat 129

5.1 Party Identity Threat...... 130

5.2 Emotions...... 133

5.3 Overview of Prior Research on Party Identity Threat...... 137

5.4 Study 1...... 141

5.4.1 Method...... 142

5.4.2 Results...... 143

5.4.3 Discussion...... 152

vii 5.5 Study 2...... 153

5.5.1 Method...... 153

5.5.2 Results...... 157

5.6 Study 3...... 161

5.6.1 Method...... 161

5.6.2 Results...... 163

5.7 Discussion...... 170

6 Threat to Identity and Candidate Evaluation Polarization 174

6.1 Identity Linkage, Identity Threat, and Post-Election Depolarization and Polarization of Presidential Candidate Evaluations...... 176

6.1.1 Hypotheses...... 177

6.1.2 Data...... 182

6.1.3 Post-Election Polarization and Depolarization of Presidential Candidate Evaluations Across the Years...... 183

6.1.4 Party Identity Strength and Post-Election Depolarization of Presidential Candidate Evaluations...... 186

6.1.5 Party Identity Strength and Post-Election Polarization of Pres- idential Evaluations...... 192

6.2 Protecting the Party’s Incumbent in Threatening House Elections.. 196

6.2.1 Data...... 198

6.2.2 Results...... 202

7 Conclusion 207

A Chapter 3 Appendix 213

A.1 Supplementary Analysis of Self-Party Inclusion Measure...... 213

A.2 Question Wording...... 215

A.3 Descriptive Statistics...... 217

A.4 Party Identity Strength and Protective Social Networks...... 228

viii B Chapter 4 Appendix 232

B.1 Pooled Analysis of Political Figure Evaluation Polarization...... 232

B.1.1 Descriptive Statistics...... 232

B.1.2 Unpooled Models...... 239

B.1.3 Random Eﬀects Models...... 242

B.2 Panel Analysis of Presidential Candidate Evaluation Polarization.. 246

B.2.1 Descriptive Statistics...... 246

B.2.2 Model Estimates...... 250

C Chapter 5 Appendix 253

C.1 Study 1 Appendix...... 254

C.1.1 Implicit Association Test Categories, Words, and Bogus Feed- back...... 254

C.1.2 Threatening Article...... 256

C.1.3 Identiﬁcation with a Psychological Group (IDPG) Question Wording...... 258

C.1.4 Identiﬁcation with a Psychological Group (IDPG) Summary Scale: PID Strength Condition and Party Identity Strength (corresponds with Table 5.1), Study 1...... 258

C.1.5 Other Additional Study 1 Output...... 262

C.2 Study 2...... 267

C.2.1 Intrade Introduction...... 267

C.2.2 Experimental Manipulation: Intrade Screenshots...... 268

C.3 Study 3...... 271

C.4 The Structure of Emotions in Studies 1, 2, and 3...... 274

C.5 Study 3: Party Evaluation Polarization in Response to Party Identity Threat...... 280

D Chapter 6 Appendix 283

ix D.1 Pre and Post-Election Mean Candidate Evaluations...... 283

D.2 Controlling for Ideological Proximity: Party Identity Threat, Party Identity Strength, and House Candidate Evaluation Polarization... 288

D.3 Intensity of Electoral Competition, Party Identity Threat, Party Iden- tity Strength, and House Candidate Evaluation Polarization..... 291

E Model Speciﬁcation Revisions Appendix 294

E.1 Chapter 4 Revisions...... 295

E.1.1 Revised Unpooled Models...... 295

E.1.2 Random Eﬀects Models...... 298

E.2 Chapter 6 Revisions...... 303

Bibliography 307

Biography 324

x List of Tables

3.1 Party Static Evaluation Polarization and Party Identity Strength, 1978-2008...... 89

3.2 Presidential Candidate Static Evaluation Polarization and Party Iden- tity Strength, 1968-2008...... 90

4.1 McCain’s First Dimension DW-NOMINATE Scores; 105 - 110 Congress103

5.1 Identiﬁcation with a Psychological Group (IDPG) Items: PID Strength Condition and Party Identity Strength, Study 1...... 146

5.2 Negative Emotions: PID Strength Condition and Party Identity Strength, Study 1...... 151

5.3 Negative Emotions: Threat Condition and Party Identity Strength, Study 2...... 159

5.4 Positive Emotions: Threat Condition and Party Identity Strength, Study 2...... 160

5.5 Negative Emotions: Threat Condition and Party Identity Strength, Study 3...... 166

5.6 Positive Emotions: Threat Condition and Party Identity Strength, Study 3...... 167

6.1 Year Eﬀects: Post-Election Polarization and Depolarization of Presi- dential Candidate Evaluations; 1972, 1980-2008...... 185

6.2 Year Eﬀects Predicted Values: Post-Election Polarization and Depo- larization of Presidential Candidate Evaluations; 1972, 1980-2008.. 186

6.3 Party Identity Strength and Post-Election Depolarization of Presiden- tial Candidate Evaluations; 1972, 1980-1996, 2004-2008...... 189

xi 6.4 Party Identity Strength and Post-Election Depolarization of Presiden- tial Candidate Evaluations; 1972, 1980-1996, 2004-2008 (With Controls)190

6.5 Party Identity Strength and Post-Election and Polarization of Presi- dential Evaluations, 2000...... 194

6.6 Ordered Probit: Party Identity Threat, Party Identity Strength, and Candidate Evaluation Polarization; 2008 House Incumbent Elections. 203

A.1 Logistic Regression of Non-Response to Party Inclusion Measures.. 214

A.2 Mean Inclusion of Self in Democratic and Republican Party by 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation (corresponds with Figure 3.4)...... 217

A.3 Mean Importance of Partisan Identiﬁcation by 7-Point Party Identiﬁ- cation (corresponds with Figure 3.5)...... 218

A.4 Mean Party Closeness to the Two Major Parties by 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation (corresponds with Figure 3.6)...... 218

A.5 Mean Identiﬁcation with a Psychological Group (IDPG) Summary Scale Responses by 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation (corresponds with Fig- ure 3.7)...... 219

A.6 Part 1: Mean Identiﬁcation with a Psychological Group (IDPG) Item Responses by 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation (corresponds with Figures 3.8 and 3.9)...... 220

A.7 Part 2: Mean Identiﬁcation with a Psychological Group (IDPG) Item Responses by 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation (corresponds with Figures 3.8 and 3.9)...... 221

A.8 Party Aﬃliation of Most Friends: Proportion Breakdown by 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation (column percentages correspond with Figure 3.10) 222

A.9 Preferred Party Aﬃliation of Other Person In Political Discussion by 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation (column percentages correspond with Fig- ure 3.11)...... 223

A.10 Mean Self-Reported Liberal-Conservative Ideology and Ideological Dis- tance from the Two Major Parties by 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation (corresponds with Figure 3.12)...... 224

A.11 Mean Major Party Evaluations and Static Evaluation Polarization by 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation (corresponds with Figure 3.13)...... 225

xii A.12 Mean Major Party Static Evaluation Polarization by 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation (corresponds with Figure 3.14), 1978-2008...... 226

A.13 Mean Presidential Candidate Static Evaluation Polarization by 7- Point Party Identiﬁcation (corresponds with Figure 3.15), 1968-2008. 227

A.14 Protective In-Party Friend Networks and Party Identity Strength.. 229

A.15 Protective In-Party Friend Networks and Party Identity Strength.. 230

B.1 Mean Feeling Thermometer Ratings of Robert Dole by Year and 7- Point Party Identiﬁcation...... 233

B.2 Mean Feeling Thermometer Ratings of Ronald Reagan by Year and 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation...... 234

B.3 Mean Feeling Thermometer Ratings of John McCain by Year and 7- Point Party Identiﬁcation...... 235

B.4 Mean Feeling Thermometer Ratings of George McGovern by Year and 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation...... 236

B.5 Mean Feeling Thermometer Ratings of Jimmy Carter by Year and 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation...... 237

B.6 Mean Feeling Thermometer Ratings of Walter Mondale by Year and 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation...... 238

B.7 Separate OLS Regressions by Political Figure: Party Status, Party Identity Strength, and Political Figure Evaluation Polarization.... 241

B.8 Random Eﬀects Model of Party Status, Party Identity Strength, and Political Figure Evaluation Polarization...... 243

B.9 Marginal Eﬀects of Respondent Party Identity Strength and Politi- cal Figures’ Party Status on Political Figure Evaluation Polarization: Derived from the Random Eﬀects Model in Table B.8 Estimates... 244

B.10 Best Linear Unbiased Predictions (BLUPs) of the Random Eﬀects for the Political Figure-Level Parameter Estimates: Predicted for the Random Eﬀects Model in Table B.8...... 245

B.11 Mean John McCain Like/Dislike Ratings by 7-Point Party Identiﬁca- tion and Month, January 2008 - May 2009...... 246

B.12 Mean Barack Obama Like/Dislike Ratings by 7-Point Party Identiﬁ- cation and Month, January 2008 - May 2009...... 247

xiii B.13 Mean Democratic Party Like/Dislike Ratings by 7-Point Party Iden- tiﬁcation and Month, January 2008 - July 2009...... 248

B.14 Mean Republican Party Like/Dislike Ratings by 7-Point Party Iden- tiﬁcation and Month, January 2008 - July 2009...... 249

B.15 The Inﬂuence of Party Identity Strength on Pre-Election Candidate Evaluation Polarization, January to October 2008...... 251

B.16 The Inﬂuence of Partisan Identity Strength on Post-Election Candi- date Evaluation Depolarization, October 2008 to May 2009...... 252

C.1 Identiﬁcation with a Psychological Group (IDPG) Summary Scale: PID Strength Condition and Party Identity Strength, Study 1.... 261

C.2 Identiﬁcation with a Psychological Group (IDPG) Items: PID Strength Condition and Party Identity Strength, Study 1 (No Controls).... 263

C.3 Negative Emotions: PID Strength Condition and Party Identity Strength, Study 1 (No Controls)...... 264

C.4 Positive Emotions: PID Strength Condition and Party Identity Strength, Study 1 (No Controls)...... 265

C.5 Positive Emotions: PID Strength Condition and Party Identity Strength, Study 1...... 266

C.6 Negative Emotions: The Interaction of Party Identity Strength, Party Identity Threat, and Actual Electoral Loss, Study 3...... 272

C.7 Positive Emotions: The Interaction of Party Identity Strength, Party Identity Threat, and Actual Electoral Loss, Study 3...... 273

C.8 Measurement of Emotions: Model Factor Loadings...... 275

C.9 Measurement of Emotions: Model Comparisons...... 276

C.10 Study1: Combined Emotions...... 277

C.11 Study2: Combined Emotions...... 278

C.12 Study3: Combined Emotions...... 279

C.13 Party Evaluation Polarization: Threat Condition and Party Identity Strength, Study 3...... 282

xiv D.1 Ordered Probit: Party Identity Threat, Party Identity Strength, and Candidate Evaluation Polarization (Controlling for Ideology); 2008 House Incumbent Elections...... 290

D.2 Ordered Probit: Party Identity Threat, Party Identity Strength, Close- ness of Election, and Candidate Evaluation Polarization; 2008 House Incumbent Elections...... 293

E.1 (Revised Table B.7) Separate OLS Regressions by Political Figure: Party Status, Party Identity Strength, and Political Figure Evaluation Polarization...... 297

E.2 (Revised Table B.8) Random Eﬀects Model of Party Status, Party Identity Strength, and Political Figure Evaluation Polarization.... 299

E.3 (Revised Table B.9) Marginal Eﬀects of Respondent Party Identity Strength and Political Figures’ Party Status on Political Figure Eval- uation Polarization: Derived from the Random Eﬀects Model in Table E.2 Estimates...... 301

E.4 (Revised Table B.10) Best Linear Unbiased Predictions (BLUPs) of the Random Eﬀects for the Political Figure-Level Parameter Esti- mates: Predicted for the Random Eﬀects Model in Table E.2..... 302

E.5 (Revised Table 6.6) Ordered Probit: Party Identity Threat, Party Identity Strength, and Candidate Evaluation Polarization; 2008 House Incumbent Elections...... 304

E.6 (Revised Table D.1) Ordered Probit: Party Identity Threat, Party Identity Strength, and Candidate Evaluation Polarization (Controlling for Ideology); 2008 House Incumbent Elections...... 305

E.7 (Revised Table D.2) Ordered Probit: Party Identity Threat, Party Identity Strength, Closeness of Election, and Candidate Evaluation Polarization; 2008 House Incumbent Elections...... 306

xv List of Figures

2.1 Godfather’s Pizza Index by Political Party...... 8

2.2 Distribution of 7-point Party Identiﬁcation, 1952-2008...... 49

3.1 The Tropp and Wright(2001) Inclusion of In-Group in the Self Measure 62

3.2 The Swann et al.(2009) Measure of Identity Fusion...... 63

3.3 Inclusion of Self in Democratic and Republican Party Measure.... 63

3.4 Mean Inclusion of Self in Democratic and Republican Party by 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation...... 64

3.5 Mean (Weighted) Importance of Partisan Identiﬁcation (Republican, Democrat, or Independent) by 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation...... 67

3.6 Mean (Weighted) Party Closeness to the Two Major Parties by 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation...... 68

3.7 Mean (Weighted) Identiﬁcation with a Psychological Group (IDPG) Summary Scale Responses by 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation...... 69

3.8 Republican Party: Mean (Weighted) Identiﬁcation with a Psycholog- ical Group (IDPG) Item Responses by 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation.. 70

3.9 Democratic Party: Mean (Weighted) Identiﬁcation with a Psycholog- ical Group (IDPG) Item Responses by 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation.. 71

3.10 Party Aﬃliation of Most Friends: Proportion Breakdown by 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation Within Each Response Option...... 74

3.11 Preferred Party Aﬃliation of Other Person In Political Discussion: Proportion Breakdown by 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation Within Each Response Option...... 76

3.12 Mean (Weighted) Self-Reported Ideology and Ideological Distance from the Two Major Parties by Traditional 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation.. 77

xvi 3.13 Mean (Weighted) Major Party Evaluations and Static Evaluation Po- larization by 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation...... 82

3.14 Mean (Weighted) Party Static Evaluation Polarization by 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation, 1978-2008...... 84

3.15 Mean (Weighted) Presidential Candidate Static Evaluation Polariza- tion by 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation, 1968-2008...... 85

4.1 Polarization of Political Figure Evaluations: Mean Feeling Thermome- ter Ratings by 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation, Political Figure, and Year 96

4.2 Polarization of Political Figure Evaluations: Mean Positive Standard- ized Feeling Thermometer Ratings by Respondent Party Identity Strength, Political Figure, and Year...... 108

4.3 Table B.8 Coeﬃcient Plot: Random Eﬀects Model of Party Status, Party Identity Strength, and Political Figure Polarization...... 111

4.4 Marginal Eﬀects of Respondent Party Identity Strength and Politi- cal Figures’ Party Status on Political Figure Evaluation Polarization: Derived from the Random Eﬀects Model Estimates in Table B.8... 112

4.5 Mean Political Figure and Party Like/Dislike Evaluations by 7-point Party Identiﬁcation and Month, January 2008 - May 2009...... 117

4.6 Polarization and Depolarization Before and After the 2008 Election: Coeﬃcient Plots for Table B.15 Model 3 (Pre-Election) and Table B.16 Model 2 (Post-Election) Regression Estimates...... 124

4.7 Predicted values of Evaluation Polarization over Party Identity Strength: Calculated from Table B.15 Model 3 (Pre-Election) and Table B.16 Model 2 (Post-Election)...... 125

5.1 Identiﬁcation with a Psychological Group Items by PID Strength Con- dition and Party Identity Strength, Study 1...... 144

5.2 All Negative Emotions: Mean Response to Threat by Party Identity Strength and Strong-PID Condition, Study 1...... 149

5.3 All Positive Emotions: Mean Response to Threat by Party Identity Strength and Strong-PID Condition, Study 1...... 150

5.4 All Negative Emotions: Mean Response by Party Identity Strength and Party Identity Threat Level, Study 2...... 155

xvii 5.5 All Positive Emotions: Mean Response by Party Identity Strength and Party Identity Threat Level, Study 2...... 156

5.6 All Negative Emotions: Weighted Mean Response by Party Identity Strength and Threat Level, Study 3...... 164

5.7 All Positive Emotions: Weighted Mean Response by Party Identity Strength and Threat Level, Study 3...... 165

6.1 Mean Post-Election Polarization of Presidential Candidate Evalua- tions for the Entire Sample; 1972, 1980-2008...... 183

6.2 Mean Post-Election Polarization of Presidential Candidate Evalua- tions by Party Identity Strength; 1972, 1980-2008...... 187

6.3 Mean Post-Election Polarization of Presidential Candidate Evalua- tions by 7-Point Party Identity, 2000...... 193

6.4 Predicted Probabilities of House Candidate Evaluation Polarization by Party Identity Threat Level and Party Identity Strength, Derived from Table 6.6 Model 3 Estimates...... 205

B.1 Separate OLS Regressions by Political Figure: Party Identity Strength, Party Status, and Evaluation Polarization Coeﬃcient Plot for Table B.7 Regression Estimates...... 239

B.2 Separate OLS Regressions by Political Figure: Marginal Eﬀects of Party Identity Strength and Political Figures’ Party Status on the Polarization of Political Figure Evaluations: Derived from Table B.7 Regression Estimates...... 240

C.1 IAT Bogus Feedback Example...... 255

C.2 Identiﬁcation with a Psychological Group Summary Scale by PID Strength Condition and Party Identity Strength, Study 1...... 260

C.3 Democratic High Threat Condition (Landslide Republican Win Pre- dicted for the 2012 Presidential Election)...... 268

C.4 Republican High Threat Condition (Landslide Democratic Win Pre- dicted for the 2012 Presidential Election)...... 269

C.5 Low Threat Condition (Too Close to Call Win Predicted for the 2012 Presidential Election)...... 270

C.6 Party Evaluation Polarization: Weighted Mean Response by Party Identity Strength and Threat Level, Study 3...... 280

xviii D.1 Mean Pre-Election and Post-Election Thermometer Ratings of Repub- lican and Democratic Presidential Candidates; 1972, 1980-2008.... 285

D.2 Mean Pre-Election and Post-Election Thermometer Ratings of Re- publican and Democratic Presidential Candidates Disaggregated by 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation; 1972, 1980-2008...... 286

D.3 Mean Change in Pre-Election and Post-Election Thermometer Rat- ings of Republican and Democratic Presidential Candidates for Entire Sample and Disaggregated by 7-Point Party Identiﬁcation and Party Identity Strength; 1972, 1980-2008...... 287

E.1 (Revised Figure B.1) Separate OLS Regressions by Political Figure: Party Identity Strength, Party Status, and Evaluation Polarization Coeﬃcient Plot for Table E.1 Regression Estimates...... 295

E.2 (Revised Figure B.2) Separate OLS Regressions by Political Figure: Marginal Eﬀects of Party Identity Strength and Political Figures’ Party Status on the Polarization of Political Figure Evaluations: De- rived from Table E.1 Regression Estimates...... 296

E.3 (Revised Figure 4.3) Table E.2 Coeﬃcient Plot: Random Eﬀects Model of Party Status, Party Identity Strength, and Political Figure Polar- ization...... 298

E.4 (Revised Figure 4.4) Marginal Eﬀects of Respondent Party Identity Strength and Political Figures’ Party Status on Political Figure Evalu- ation Polarization: Derived from the Random Eﬀects Model Estimates in Table E.2...... 300

E.5 (Revised Figure 6.4) Predicted Probabilities of House Candidate Eval- uation Polarization by Party Identity Threat Level and Party Identity Strength, Derived from Table E.5 Model 3 Estimates...... 303

xix List of Abbreviations and Symbols

Abbreviations

AI Aﬀective Intelligence theory

ANES American National Election Study

ANES CDF American National Election Study Cumulative Data File

CCES Cooperative Congressional Election Study

PID Party Identiﬁcation

SIT Social Identity Theory

SCT Self-Categorization Theory

IDPG Identiﬁcation with a Psychological Group

xx Acknowledgements

I would like to express my thanks to the many people who have helped me complete this stage of my dissertation. First, I would like to thank my advisors. John Aldrich, Christopher Johnston, D. Sunshine Hillygus, and Wendy Wood have provided in- valuable insights and advice that have been instrumental in helping me navigate the dissertation process and improve my work. I am especially grateful for the experience, optimism, and support given to me by John Aldrich. I could not ask for a better teacher and mentor. I would also like to thank Christopher DeSante and Brittany Perry for commenting on various chapters. I am grateful for the grants from the Duke Interdisciplinary Initiative in Social Psychology (DIISP) which helped fund several of my experiments. I extend a special thanks to the Program for Democracy, Institutions, and Political Economy (DIPE) which funded a survey conducted by John Aldrich, Mark Dudley, and McKenzie Young who graciously allowed me to include the two pictorial party identity questions in their survey. I am also grateful to Sunshine Hillygus and the Duke Initiative on Survey Methodology (DISM) for helping me purchase questions on the 2010 CCES. I would also like to thank the Duke Graduate School for the generous Child Care Subsidy and the financial resources which helped me attend a number of conferences through Conference Travel Fellowships. The Department of Political Science also provided a great deal of financial assistance in conference travel and other financial

xxi support, most notably by naming me the Robert R. Wilson Fellow in American Politics Without this assistance, my work would not have been possible. Finally, I would like to thank my past mentors and family. Faculty members from my undergraduate institution, especially Jeremy Pope and Quin Monson, provided mentoring and advice that sparked my passion for research and ﬁrst set me on this course. I thank my parents, Lori and Byron Walther, for their love and unfailing example of hard work and perseverance. To my husband, Kent Freeze, I express my deepest thanks. His support, conﬁdence, and love has given me motivation and purpose.

xxii 1

Introduction

What explains the wide variance in the intensity of emotional responses to political actors and events? What motivates presidential supporters to engage in heated yelling matches in which people scream that someone is “disgusting and dirty” because of their support of the rival candidate?1 When and why will people’s evaluations of political actors polarize above and beyond that which can be explained by policy and ideological preferences? These are the questions this dissertation seeks to address. Turning to social identity conceptualizations of party identity, I argue that understanding the psychological connections between individuals and political objects is central to understanding who becomes emotional and biased in response to politics and when emotions and biases

1 Following a McCain and Palin rally in Green, Ohio held on October 22, 2008, attendees con- fronted Obama supporters in a video that was later posted to YouTube (see “Angry McCain/Palin supporters confront Obama supporters after Ohio rally”: http://youtu.be/aOSON7i72u4). In addition to calling the Obama supporters “disgusting and dirty,” other emotional and derogatory comments targeting Obama supporters such as “You guys suck!” and “Go shove it!” were shouted. During the 5 minute and 31 second clip, supporters from both sides shouted chants and arguments with visible and audible anger (raised voices, furrowed brows, dramatic hand gestures). At one point, one rally attendee was so angry, he ripped one of the Obama supporter’s signs and stomped on it (while people cheered).

1 are most likely to occur. In this research, I find that when individuals are strongly committed to a certain party identity, an intimate linkage between the self and all corresponding party objects is formed. As a result of this linkage, a positive bias arises in people’s evaluations of party objects that are associated with the self and a negative bias arises in evaluations of rival party objects that are disassociated with the self. I also find individuals who are strongly linked to a political party are more likely to hold biased evaluations of party objects and be emotionally sensitive to inter-party competition that threatens the positivity of their party identities. In chapter 2, I draw on social psychology and political science research on the self and identity to develop a party identity linkage theory. From this theory, I derive the general hypothesis that strong partisans will engage in greater biased polarization of presidential candidate evaluations and heightened emotional responses, especially under conditions of increased inter-party competition. This chapter also considers alternative explanations of evaluation polarization and emotional responses to politics and places my dissertation in the broader research framework of motivated reasoning. Drawing on a wide range of party identity measures and other questions from nationally representative surveys, chapter 3 provides a clearer picture of who strong partisans are and argues that party identity is more than Converse’s definition of an affective attachment to a political party. Instead, I propose party identity, when strong, links the party to the self and fundamentally alters an individual’s motivational structure. Specifically, strongly linked individuals should be motivated to protect the positivity of their party just as they protect their own positive self-views. The fourth, fifth, and sixth chapters provide the empirical tests of the party identity linkage theory predictions. Chapter 4 addresses the question of whether greater party identity linkage polarizes presidential candidate evaluations above and beyond that which would be predicted by learning theories. Using pooled time

2 series data from the American National Election Studies (ANES), I examine the thermometer ratings over several years of six political actors: Ronald Reagan, Robert Dole, John McCain, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, and Walter Mondale. In a multilevel random effects model, evaluations of the political actors are found to be significantly more polarized in years when their connection with political parties, and as an extension, partisan identifiers, increased after being nominated or elected president or vice president. Furthermore, this polarization of evaluations is greater among individuals who report having strong party identities even when controlling for ideological extremity or political interest. This same temporary polarization produced by increased party identity linkage is again found in an analysis of Barack Obama and John McCain evaluations using data from the 2008-2009 ANES Panel Study. Strong partisans’ comparative evaluations of Obama and McCain grew significantly more polarized as the candidates became party symbols through their formal nominations. Yet, while the polarization persisted after the election for the Obama evaluations, I find McCain evaluations grew less polarized after the election when his connection to the party was reduced by his loss of the election. The fifth chapter considers the emotional response of strong partisans to party identity threat. Through three experimental studies, I show strong partisans’ personal emotions are more responsive to party identity threat than weak partisans’ and independents’ emotions. Threat to the competence and image of a party as well as to the potential and actual power status is found to depress positive emotions of satisfaction and happiness, and at times, increase the negative and polarizing emotion of anger more for strong partisans than for weak or independent partisans. This dif- ferential emotional response to party threat lends further evidence that strong party identities actually reflect an inclusion of the party in the self.

3 The sixth chapter continues to explore the interactive effect of identity linkage and identity threat in the context of the 2000 presidential post-election contest. I find that Republicans who were more linked to a political party responded to the threat of the extended post-election battle by polarizing their evaluations of the two presidential candidates. This post-election evaluation polarization in 2000 is distinctive compared to the norm of post-election evaluation depolarization or stability found in all other presidential elections since 1972.2 Finally, I consider the influence of threatening inter-party competition on candidate evaluations in House elections during 2008. Drawing on prior studies of negative advertising that reveal incumbent candidates are more likely to be targets of negative advertising than challenger candidates, I assume party identity threat to be asymmetrical in congressional elections that involve incumbents. I find that in races where an incumbent candidate is running, individuals’ evaluations of the two major party candidates are more polarized when they strongly identify with the incumbent candidate’s party. This difference in polarization holds even when accounting for polarization and depolarization of evaluations that might arise from the incumbent advantage. This dissertation provides two major contributions that can help guide future research. First, it further illuminates the construct of party identity strength as captured by the traditional 7-point Michigan party identification measure. While the traditional measure of party identification suffers from serious problems, especially in its ability to compare the identification of weak partisans and partisan independents, my research argues an informative and useful binary variable of party identity strength can be derived from the traditional measure. Specifically, strong partisans’ (as identified by the 7-point measure) psychological relationship to a political party

2 Note 1976 is excluded from the analysis because post-election presidential candidate thermometer ratings were not measured that year.

4 is shown to be fundamentally diﬀerent from that of weak partisans or partisan independents. That is, strong partisans are more likely to consider their political party to be a fundamental part of how they deﬁne themselves as individuals, and they are more likely than other individuals to view their party as an object internal rather than external to the self. This merging of self and party has clear motivational implications derived from social identity research that suggests strong partisans will be more likely to be biased in favor of their parties. Therefore, in studies of citizens’ political attitudes and behavior, strong partisans should not be clumped with weak partisans and independent partisans. Instead, party identity strength should be always be incorporated into models of partisan attitudes and behaviors as a control variable or, when appropriate, as a moderating variable. Second, by clearly revealing strong partisans’ party identities are important and central parts of their self-views, the motivational implications of party identity strength emerge and lead to novel predictions regarding the dynamics of biased, motivated reasoning and responses to politics. While Green et al.(2002) sweep the motivational implications of party identity, as a social identity, under the rug, I hold them up as critical components of party identity for individuals who strongly identify with a political party. In contrast to unbiased Bayesian updating and learning theories (Gerber and Green, 1998, 1999; Zechman, 1979), my research assumes motivated reasoning exists and potentially biases citizens’ attitudes and opinions. However, in an expansion of existing motivated reasoning research (Cassino and Lebo, 2007; Fischle, 2000; Lavine and Sullivan, 2000; Lodge and Tabor, 2000; Redlawsk, 2002; Slouthuus and de Vreese, 2010; Taber and Lodge, 2006), the party identity linkage theory leads to expectations of conditional motivated reasoning. Bias is predicted to be more likely to occur under certain settings and for particular people. Strong partisans are held up as a unique subgroup with regards to their sensitivity

5 and motivated responsiveness to political events and information. As researchers consider the dynamics of public opinion, the party identity linkage theory should motivate researchers to account for changes in the relative psychological relationship between individuals (especially strong partisans) and the attitude targets. As people, objects, or issues become more central to a party’s image, attitudes surrounding the people, objects, or issues should be tainted with more bias. Furthermore, the party identity linkage theory draws more attention to the concept of party identity threat and possible heterogeneity and dynamics surrounding the ability of elite-level events to shape citizen’s attitudes and behaviors. At its core, the party identity linkage theory draws on research that ﬁnds people are are intensely motivated to maintain consistently positive view of themselves. Thus, when the self becomes linked to political objects, issues, and events through strong party identities, the biases surrounding the self can spread and infuse the political domain with more emotional biased participants.

6 2

The Party Identity Linkage Theory

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; — John Donne

Before Herman Cain’s bid for the 2012 Republican Party’s presidential nomination, public evaluations of Godfather’s Pizza, a fast food restaurant chain of which he was CEO from 1986 to 1996, were virtually identical among Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike. However, as shown in Figure 2.1, evaluations of Godfather’s Pizza clearly split along party lines after Cain’s announcement, on May 21, 2011, of his plans to run for president as a self-identiﬁed Republican. Democrat and Republi- can evaluations of Godfather’s Pizza measured through daily tracking interviews by YouGov BrandIndex, a consumer research ﬁrm, polarized dramatically as the pizza chain became connected to partisans’ identities. And when Cain was threatened by negative allegations of sexual harassment in late October 2011, the scores of God- father’s Pizza became even more polarized. Independent’s evaluations of the pizza chain declined slightly in response to the scandal, Democrats’ evaluations plunged,

7 Figure 2.1: Godfather’s Pizza Index by Political Party but Republican scores actually increased by a slight amount. The politicization and polarization of evaluations of Godfather’s Pizza, a non- political object, illustrates the powerful role party linkage can play in biasing perceptions. In this dissertation, I explore some of the mechanisms and causes underlying affective responses to politics and candidate evaluation polarization. I argue that changes in the linkage between objects and political parties, and as a result partisan identifiers, is central to understanding the dynamics of evaluation polarization. In the above example, as Cain became more associated with the Republican Party through his presidential campaign, I would argue he became more linked to partisans’ identities and thus transformed into a polarizing figure. And because God- father’s Pizza was a fundamental component of Cain’s image, it too became linked to partisans’ identities and transformed into an object to be either protected by Re- publicans or battled by Democrats. Even though the pizza chain has no substantive

8 policy platform that might contribute to evaluation polarization through the process of learning, I argue evaluations of the company polarized simply because it became associated or disassociated to the self through party identities. The association of political actors to the party and self should inspire motivated reasoning that leads to biased responses to politics. These biases caused by party links are normatively important as they can potentially lead to a public that is less open to compromise and unable or unwilling to participate in democratic deliberation. This chapter presents a party identity linkage theory, in which I argue party identity, as a social identity, can lead to heightened emotional responses to political competition and biased, polarized perceptions of politicalized objects if the link between self and party is sufficiently strong. Central to the theory is the assumption that party identities alter people’s psychological motives to enhance or derogate political objects. Because people are strongly motivated to protect the positive perceptions they have of themselves, they are also motivated to maintain and protect the positive perception of groups that are linked to their self-concept through social identities. Furthermore, because people tend to engage in self-serving biases that result in a degree of positive illusions about themselves, evaluations of closely linked groups should also be subject to a degree of positive bias. From this linkage theory, I first hypothesize that as political actors assume salient and prominent party positions, they become more linked to partisans’ identities and their evaluations of the political actors polarize (biased evaluation polarization) above and beyond what would be predicted by relative issue and ideological proximity. Second, because parties become closely linked to the self when the party identity as a social identity is strong, strong party identifiers should also be more emotionally responsive than weaker identifiers to events, such as inter-party competition, that may threaten the positive value of their partisan identities.

9 To further develop the party identity linkage theory, this chapter first discusses theories from the field of social psychology that provide models of how people think of themselves, their relationships to the world around them, and the influences these psychological constructs have on peoples’ emotional states and inter-group evaluations. Drawing on these theories, I construct the party identity linkage theory and derive specific hypothesis which will be tested in later chapters. Finally, I place my dissertation within the existing research that examines the polarization of political attitudes and evaluations.

2.1 The Self

The self, or a person’s mental representations of himself or herself, has a powerful influence on the individual’s cognitions, affect, and behaviors. The self is more precisely defined as the “process and organization born of self-reflection” (Owens, 2003, p. 206) and “the entire set of beliefs, evaluations, perceptions, and thoughts that people have of themselves” (Swann and Bosson, 2010, p. 591). Within the broader construct of the self are more specific, subordinate components such as self- concept, self-esteem, and identity. Self-concept tends to be cognitive, or grounded in thought, and refer mostly to the beliefs and perceptions of the self. It is formed when “I” as a subject considers “me” as an object and includes beliefs and appraisals about one’s attributes, roles, experiences, goals, abilities, and other self-related objects (Rosenberg, 1979). In contrast, self-esteem tends to refer more to the affective and emotional aspect of the self-construct. Self-esteem includes how one feels about oneself and the value of the self (self-worth). Self-esteem may reference more specific aspects of the self- concept as well as the more global self-concept. Finally, identity is the categorical and relational component of the self. Identity has been defined generally as a “categories

10 people use to specify who they are and locate themselves relative to other people” (Owens, 2003, p. 207). The centrality of the self to human thought and behavior was first recognized in the classic text, The Principles of Psychology, written by William James in 1890. Acknowledging that the self is “the most puzzling puzzle” (James, 1890, p. 330), James saw the self as a relatively stable phenomenon that could arouse feelings and prompt action. However, James’ conceptualization of the enduring sense of self only began to be adopted by the wider social psychology community in the 1970s.1 From this time forward, self-related research has flourished and produced greater understanding of self-representation, the motivational processes of the self, and how the self and society dynamically interact. The self’s potential to shape human thought and action lies first in the centrality of the self to an individual’s memory and the ease of accessing self-related information from memory. Because people are familiar with themselves, self-relevant information is accessed often, causing the processing and recall of information as it relates to the self to be much faster than as it relates other people (Kuiper and Rogers, 1979; Rogers et al., 1977; Rogers, 1981). The self is so central to information processing and recall that it is often manifested in an uncontrolled and automatic manner (Fazio et al., 1986; Greenwald and Banaji, 1995; Greenwald and Farnham, 2000; Koole et al., 2001). Second, the self is a powerful predictor of individuals’ emotions, thoughts, and behaviors because it serves as an important focus of individuals’ goals and desires. From the Jamesian perspective comes the assumption that self-knowledge has in itself motivational properties which produce systematic cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses. The three primary self-motivations include the need for an accurate (self-

1 For extensive reviews of the self and identity see Fiske and Taylor(1991), Owens(2003), and Swann and Bosson(2010).

11 assessment), consistent (self-verification), and positive (self-enhancement) self-view (Fiske and Taylor, 1991; Taylor et al., 1995).2 First, people want to have accurate information about themselves and their abilities in order to reduce uncertainty of future outcomes (Festinger, 1954; Trope, 1975). Second, people are often motivated to maintain consistent self-impressions (Swann, 1983, 1990; Swann and Bosson, 2010). Third, the self-enhancement theory posits people have a need to obtain and maintain a positive self-view (Taylor and Brown, 1988; Tesser, 1988). Both the self-verification and self-enhancement motives, while fundamentally different, may result in individuals pursuing biased cognitive and behavioral strategies. I now turn to an examination of the self-enhancement, and to a lesser degree, the self-verification motivations and their role in the development and maintenance of illusionary and self-serving biases of the self. As will be demonstrated later, I argue positive self-bias has important and widespread consequences for other identities and attitudes.

2.1.1 Self-Enhancement Motive and Positive Bias

James elevated the self-enhancement motive to the forefront in his recognition that, “each of us is animated by a direct feeling of regard for his own pure principle of individual existence” (James, 1890, p. 318). People want to feel good about themselves and this desire is one that “animates” and shapes many cognitions and behaviors. Indeed, the self-enhancement motive has been argued to be the most powerful force shaping the process of self-evaluation (Sedikides, 1993). One consequence of the desire for a positive self-image is a level of systematic and directed bias when it comes to self-evaluations and perceptions. People’s self- evaluations are often unrealistically positive, their belief of how much control they

2 Other motives such as the self-improvement motive (Taylor et al., 1995) or the need for belonging/communion and distinctiveness/agency have also been oﬀered (Swann and Bosson, 2010; Brewer, 1991), but the self-assessment, self-veriﬁcation, and self-enhancement motives have received the most consistent treatment as related motives.

12 have over matters is exaggerated, and their predictions of the future are overly positive (Taylor and Brown, 1988). Positive self-illusions are most clearly apparent in studies that explore what has come to be called the better-than-average effect (see Alicke and Govorum, 2005; Leary, 2007). In general, people see themselves as better than the average person, and most individuals see themselves as better than others see them. Among the first studies of this tendency, was that of Alicke(1985) which found people tend to think positive traits are more descriptive of themselves than negative traits. Other studies have found that self-evaluations are consistently higher than ratings made by friends or trained examiners (Colvin et al., 1995). Furthermore, individuals’ evaluations of themselves tend to be higher than their evaluations of other people. For example, Robins and Beer(2001) show that people rate their own academic abilities as greater than their peers’. Similarly, self-evaluations are higher when people are asked to evaluate themselves after reading a list of self-observations they generated themselves compared to a list about them created by someone else (Dunning et al., 1989). People also see themselves as more moral than other people, but the self-estimation of moral behaviors is found to be more inaccurate compared to the others-estimations (Epley, 2000). In addition to having positive illusions about themselves, people work to maintain these positive self-views through self-serving attributions and motivated reasoning. When people protect their artificially inflated self-views, they satisfy both their need for self-enhancement as well as their need for self-verification. The positive bias of self-views is first fortified as individuals give positive information preference in the processing and recall of information about the self (Kuiper and Rogers, 1979; Kuiper and Derry, 1982; Kuiper and MacDonald, 1982). Recall of personal failures tends to be be poorer than recall of personal successes which also contributes to self-esteem

13 maintenance (Crary, 1966; Silverman, 1964). The positivity of the self is further protected by attributing personal failure to people or events external to the self and personal successes to the self (Forsyth and Schlenker, 1977; Green and Gross, 1979; Mirels, 1980; Schlenker and Miller, 1977; Taylor and Koivumaki, 1976; Blaine and Crocker, 1993). Finally, when the self is attacked and its positive value threatened, individuals respond in ways that reaffirm the self. Fein and Spencer(1997) found that when individuals participated in a task that affirmed their self-views, their evaluations of a negatively stereotyped person became more positive. Conversely, when the individuals received negative feedback from a bogus intelligence test, they derogated the person to feel better about themselves. Kunda(1990) defines motivated reasoning as any information processing that is influenced by an individual’s goals or motives. Whether or not the motivated reasoning produces self-serving biases depends on the type of motives shaping the reasoning process. When the goal of accuracy drives information processing, reasoning should be non-directional and outputs relatively free of bias. In contrast, when individuals are motivated by the need to protect their positive self-esteems or verify their existing attitudes, reasoning becomes directional, biased, and self-serving. The three primary mechanisms of directional motivated reasoning include selective exposure, selective skepticism, and selective perception (Cassino and Lebo, 2007). While all three of these strategies result in biased information processing and outcomes, individuals engaging in motivated reasoning do not think they are being biased. Through selective exposure, skepticism, and perception, individuals can preserve illusions of objectivity while still reaching the desired conclusion (Kunda, 1990, p. 483). Because biased motivated reasoning requires an individual to believe he or she is being objective, motivated reasoning will not occur in every situation where a person is motivated by directional goals. Tipping points exist in which the volume

14 and/or quality of information that counters an individual’s goals overrides the ability of an individual to engage in motivated reasoning (Redlawsk and Civettini, 2010). Ignoring information that counters existing beliefs or choosing to look only at re- assuring or conﬁrming information protects existing beliefs and attitudes through the means of selective exposure (Mills and Jellison, 1968; Taber and Lodge, 2006; Schultz- Hardt et al., 2000; Sweeney and Gruber, 1984; Valentino et al., 2008). Kinder(2003) argues selective exposure in reality rarely happens, and directional motives are pursued more through the route of counter-arguing. Motivated skepticism, or selective judgement, occurs when individuals either counter-argue or downplay threatening or incongruent information (Ditto and Lopez, 1992; Ditto et al., 2003; Fischle, 2000; Lavine and Sullivan, 2000; Lodge and Tabor, 2000; Rucker, 2004). Finally, through selective perception, individuals may be selective in what information they notice, the information they recall from memory, or frames they use to interpret information in order to satisfy their directional goals. For example, partisans are more likely to notice media’s negative treatment of their own group (Vallone et al., 1985), and fans are more likely to see rule infractions of the other team (Hastorf and Cantril, 1954). Individuals can maintain and even bolster their attitudes and beliefs through motivated reasoning. As a result of selective skepticism and perception, attitudes may actually become more biased and self-serving. Rather than just verifying existing attitudes, these forms of selective reasoning can potentially amplify the attitudes. For example, Redlawsk(2002) ﬁnds less cognitively engaged individuals actually become more favorable toward a candidate after reading negative information about the candidate. Also following counter-arguing, attitudes have been found to be held with more certainty which suggests motivated reasoning may actually enhance rather than just protect and maintain existing attitudes (Rucker, 2004). Motivated reasoning research is grounded mostly in the motivational need for self-

15 consistency, however studies have also found evidence suggesting it is also produced by self-enhancement needs. Ditto et al.(2003) had people participate in a self- administered bogus medical test to examine motivated responses to threatening news. Participants were told a paper slip would change colors after coming into contact with their saliva if their bodies contained an enzyme that was supposed to influence how their pancreas functioned in the future. The results suggested that all participants lacked the enzyme, but participants were more likely to check the test results, take longer to accept the validity of the test, and think the results were unexpected when they thought the lack of the enzyme produced negative rather than positive health benefits. This asymmetrical response is argued to be motivated by a desire to maintain a positive self-image because there was no difference in the response to negatively or positively framed test results assigned to another person. Only when people believe unfavorable results are about themselves do they become more attentive to and skeptical of the results. Research regarding the self clearly demonstrates that the motives surrounding how people view themselves are pervasive and powerful. People are so motivated to maintain consistently positive self-esteems that they often engage in biased information processing that not only maintains, but may even amplify false positive illusions about the self. While motivational properties of the self ultimately shape cognitions and affect directed at the self, they also have the potential to influence the thoughts regarding, emotional reactions to, and interactions with other people. To explore how the self shapes social thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, the next section turns to research that examines the occurrence and consequences of associations between the self and external objects, people, and groups.

16 2.1.2 Association of Self with Objects, People, and Groups

Greenwald and Banaji(1995, p. 11) define implicit self-esteem as “the introspec- tively unidentified (or inaccurately identified) effect of the self-attitude on evaluation of self-associated and self-disassociated objects.” In other words, implicit self-esteem occurs when the positive bias associated with the self spreads in an unconscious and automatic manner to other people, places, or things that are somehow connected to one’s self-view. This implicit self-esteem has been found to occur in artificial labo- ratory settings in which associations between self and attitudes, objects, or people are manipulated, but it also is found in naturally occurring associations (Greenwald and Banaji, 1995). Nuttin(1985) was among one of the first to recognize positive and biased perceptions were not restricted to the self, but also touched stimuli associated with the self. In a series of experiments, the name letter effect was discovered in which letters contained in a person’s name are seen as belonging to the self and viewed as more attractive than other letters (Nuttin, 1985). This effect proved to be extremely robust, replicable in multiple cultures and applicable to other objects, such as birth dates, that were closely linked to the self (Hodson and Olson, 2005; Kitayama and Karasawa, 2001). The positive biases associated with the name letter effect have even been found to extend to important life decisions. For example, people are dis- proportionately more likely to live in states or choose careers that resemble their names (e.g., Denise and Dennis are more likely to become dentists) (Pelham et al., 2002). In a related vein, people’s like of self-associated things also results in people being more likely to be attracted to people who look similar to them (Jones et al., 2004). An important caveat to the bias in favor of self-associated objects is its implicit and automatic nature (Paulhus et al., 1989; Swann et al., 1990). Although the

17 automatic nature of the self-enhancement motives suggests it has the ability to color many attitudes unconsciously, reasoning and careful thinking about one’s motives appears to inhibit the bias (Koole et al., 2001). Similar to motivated reasoning, when illusions of self-objectivity are questioned, self-serving biases are less likely to occur. Other research regarding the endowment effect finds that when people gain ownership over objects, the objects become seen as social entities connected to the person and thus valued more (Beggan, 1992; Kahneman et al., 1990). For example, people see items such as coffee mugs as more valuable when they claim ownership of the mug compared to when they are wanting to buy it (Kahneman et al., 1990). Beggan (1992) also provides evidence this endowment effect is not a function of increased familiarity with an object, but a function of increased association with the object. In addition to forming associations between objects, such as name letters and coffee mugs, and the self, associations between the self and close others have also been found to occur and lead to biases in favor of these people (Aron and Aron, 1996, 1997; Aron and Fraley, 1999). People tend to adopt the attitudes, beliefs, and perspectives of people with whom they have close relationships (e.g., mother, friend, romantic partner) (Aron et al., 1991). When asked to provide open-ended self-descriptions, Aron et al.(1995) find the lists are more extensive and diverse after people report falling in love. The authors argue this expansion of the self- concept occurs as the individual’s perceptions of the significant other becomes linked with the individual’s self-concept. This cognitive overlap in close relationships is so significant it leads to similar processing of information of the self and a close other— people sometimes even confuse attributes of close others with their own self-attributes (Mashek et al., 2003). Finally, the linking of self with close others has been found to produce biases in favor of the close other. For example, (Aron et al., 1991) asked

18 people to conduct resource allocation tasks and found that the difference in money allocation to self and another person was much smaller when the other person was a friend rather than a stranger. Similar to the self-expansion theory’s findings that close others can be incorporated into people’s self-concepts, evidence has also been found that suggests views of the self can be merged with views of groups (Smith and Henry, 1996; Tropp and Wright, 2001). Drawing on response time evidence, Smith and Henry(1996) show that a group becomes a part of a person’s cognitive self-representation when he or she identifies with the group. In an experimental setting, individuals were asked to report whether a list of traits described them personally or not, and their response to each trait was timed. Before this response task, participants were asked to report how well the traits described a group with which they identified and the corresponding out-group. Smith and Henry find that people are faster at the self-description trait task when they also believe the trait describes the in-group well, but slower when they think the trait does not describe the in-group well. However, the corresponding out-group trait match or mismatch had no influence on response time. The authors conclude from this evidence that cognitive representations of the in-group and self are directly linked in an individual’s mind. The next section examines the role of social identities in shaping inter-group interactions and evaluations. From the perspective that social identities link the self with groups and thus motivate the existence of group-serving biases, I consider party identities and develop several predictions regarding biased polarization of candidate evaluation and emotional responses to inter-party competition.

19 2.2 Social Identities

Situated within complex social settings, individuals are not islands unto themselves, and the self-concept is not a self-contained entity. Defined as the “process people use to link themselves and others to groups,” identification creates a dynamic relationship between individuals and their environment (Owens, 2003, p. 216). Through the mechanism of social identities, the self becomes both a “social force” and “social product” (Owens, 2003, p. 210). Social identities link individuals with groups and enable self-serving biases to spread to the group. Just as people engage in self-serving biases to protect the positivity of their self-views, people also exhibit bias in favor of groups to which they belong. In this section, I first review common definitions and measures of social identity and turn to those that conceptualize social identities as an inclusion of group in self. From this perspective, I consider the importance of party identity strength and review literature that has shown high identifiers to be distinctive in how they perceive, interpret, and respond to social situations. Drawing on these findings and theories, I consider party identification as a social identity that links citizens with political parties and derive general expectations regarding biased candidate evaluation polarization and emotional reactions to threatening inter-party competition.

2.2.1 Conceptualizations of Social Identity

Ashmore et al.(2004) provide a general review of the various conceptualizations of collective identities and ﬁnd some ambiguity, confusion, and inconsistency exists in the deﬁnition and conceptualization of identities based on group memberships. Describing collective identity as an individual’s psychological, subjective claim or acknowledgement of group membership, they review a wide range of studies that

20 purport to measure social and collective identities and suggest collective identities are potentially multidimensional constructs. While Ashmore et al. do not present a formal theory regarding the multi-dimensionality of collective identities, their relatively broad review suggests collective identities can potentially contain elements of self- categorization, evaluation, importance, attachment and sense of interdependence, social embeddedness, behavioral involvement, and content and meaning (Ashmore et al., 2004, p.83). Perhaps one consequence of potentially multi-dimensional collective identities is the rise of related but distinct definitions and measurements of the social identity construct. The majority of social psychology studies examining the causes and consequences of social identities turn to the classic definition proposed by Tajfel and colleagues in the social identity theory (Tajfel, 1974, 1975, 1978, 1981, 1982; Tajfel and Turner, 1979). Tajfel defines social identity as “that part of an individual’s self- concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership of a group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significance attached to the membership” (Tajfel, 1981, p. 255). Yet while most studies begin at this common definition, interpretations and measures produced in subsequent research have all differed slightly and obscured the social identity construct. Some argue that social identity is composed of three dimensions: self-categorization, commitment to the group, and group self-esteem (Ellemers et al., 1999). Others have referred to social identity as the importance of the group membership to an individual’s sense of self (Luhtanen and Crocker, 1992). In the self-categorization theory, an offshoot of the social identity theory developed by Turner(1987), social identity is conceptualized as more of a cognitive rather than a motivational construct. Social identity is portrayed by the self-categorization theory as the degree people think of themselves as similar to an actual or fictional prototypical group member and the

21 salience of the identity given a certain social context. In a related vein, social identity has been presented as a tendency of people to see themselves and a group as “intertwined, sharing common qualities and faults, successes and failures, and common destinies” (Mael and Tetrick, 1992, p. 813). Based on this definition of social identity, Mael and Tetrick(1992) develop an Identification with a Psychological Group scale (IDPG) which contains a set of items measuring perceptions of shared characteristics and shared experiences with a group. Other scholars present social identity as a sense of pride in one’s group (Smith and Tyler, 1997) or an attraction to one’s group (Jackson and Smith, 1999). Finally, Green et al.(2002) and Lau(1989) conceptualize social identity as an enduring psychological attachment of the self to a group that results from and then contributes to feelings of closeness to the group. Recently, scholars influenced by both self-expansion research of Aron et al.(2001); Aron and Aron(1996, 1997) and the social identity research approach have framed and measured social identities as the degree a group is included in the self (Smith and Henry, 1996; Tropp and Wright, 2001; Swann et al., 2009, 2010). Tropp and Wright(2001) argue that the different takes on social identity can all be subsumed within a single perspective in which social identity is shown to be the degree a group is included in the self. While highly correlated with other related social identity measures, the measure of inclusion in self advocated by Tropp and Wright(2001) is more parsimonious and theoretically useful in generating predictions about social behaviors. The degree of in-group inclusion in self is measured by Tropp and Wright (2001) and Swann et al.(2009) through a set of Venn-like diagrams representing the self and group that vary in the amount of overlap between each circle. Individuals select one of the five or seven possible self/group combinations to indicate how merged the group is with the self-concept. The final measure of inclusion of group in self

22 is viewed by this perspective as a relatively constant individual-level characteristic that shapes a person’s “perception, interpretations, and responses” to a variety of contexts (Tropp and Wright, 2001, 586). Similar to Smith and Henry(1996), Tropp and Wright find people who report high levels of group inclusion in self display faster response times to self-description tasks for words that identify both the in-group and self compared to those that people report not descriptive of the self or in-group. No difference in response time was found for participants who report low inclusion of the group in the self-concept. The response time task suggests that people who consider a group to be part of their self-concepts have fundamentally different psychological relationships with the group. Tropp and Wright also found, in a comparisons of the inclusion scale to a wide range of existing measures of identity, that the psychological connection to an in-group is not equivalent to evaluations of the in-group. This implies that the link between the self and group may moderate an individual’s evaluations of the group and shape the biases exhibited in favor of the in-group and against the out-group. Social categorization theorists argue depersonalization occurs when “people come to perceive themselves more as the interchangeable exemplars of a social category than as unique personalities defined by individual differences (Turner, 1987, p. 50). Depersonalization is a cognitive process in which the identifier sees herself as a prototypical group member. In contrast to the self-categorization expectations that social identities produce a depersonalization of the self, the inclusion perspective instead argues identification with a social group leads to a personalization of the group. That is, the group is included in the self-concept and an individual’s sense of personal identity is preserved. For the purposes of measurement, personalization and depersonalization may be measured similarly (e.g., the IDPG scale claims a measure asking if people talk about parties in terms of “we” could be argued to measure ei-

23 ther depersonalization or personalization). However, the different perspectives lead to unique expectations of the consequences of identification. Depersonalization mostly differs from personalization in the underlying motivational expectations. By framing social identities as a personalization of groups rather than a depersonalization of self, biases associated with the self are expected to become associated with the group. That is, groups should be surrounded by more positive illusions under the personalization framework. The depersonalization framework is less able to speak to in-group biases produced by motivational structures of the self. This assumption that social identities (if sufficiently strong) can lead to a personalization of groups produces predictions of a more intense, sensitive, and potentially biased relationship between strong identifiers and the group with which they identify. The self-categorization theory from which the depersonalization concept is derived is based more in the cognitive underpinnings of identity and places less emphasis on the motivational implications of identity. Therefore, reframing identity as a personalization process provides more emphasis on the motivational structure of a social identity and leads to clear expectations of in-group biases independent from that predicted by in-group similarity. Second, the personalization perspective leads to novel expectations that individual- level factors can influence group-level attitudes and behaviors. Swann et al.(2009) describe individuals whose distinction between the self and a social group has become blurred to the point that group is seen as equivalent with the self as fused with the group. Identity fusion occurs when people do not merely identify with a group but are absolutely committed to it to the point that they feel at one with the group. This results in an intensely personal group membership that induces people to care as much about the group’s outcomes as they do about the individual outcomes. When the group is regarded as an externalization of the self, a person is found to be more

24 willing to endorse extreme behaviors supporting the group when either the self or group identity is activated (Swann et al., 2009). Furthermore when experiencing a state of arousal (elevated heart rates induced by exercise), fused individuals are more likely to endorse extreme and helping behaviors in behalf of the group (e.g., fighting for the in-group and donating money) (Swann et al., 2010). Thus viewing identity as a personalization of group, leads to the novel expectation that a challenge to the individual can result in group-level responses. Finally, the depersonalization and personalization perspectives lead to different predictions regarding attitude conversion and projection. Depersonalization predicts individuals will adopt in-group beliefs and norms. Personalization predicts individuals will project their own beliefs and preferences onto the group. Past research finds evidence of both projection and conversion as would be expected by the personalization and depersonalization approaches to party identity. For example, Markus and Converse(1979) find partisans project their personal issues stances upon their party’s candidates. Thus through projection, the self is imposed upon the group as would be predicted by a personalization effect of party identity. However, parties also seem to shape partisans’ attitudes as well. For example, the conversion of strong partisans to their party’s position on social welfare, racial, and cultural issues found by Layman et al.(2010) is more in line with a depersonalization of self into party. More research regarding the cognitive implications of social identities on conversion and projection will need to be conducted in future research to better understand the cognitive nature of the individual-party relationship. While outside of the scope of this dissertation, it may be that for issues that are more salient and important to the individual, identity results in a personalization of the group and individual preferences are projected on the group. However, for less salient issues, the identifier is depersonalized into the group and is more likely to

25 convert to group’s prototypical position. Although the difference between the inclusion perspective and other social identity approaches is subtle, the identity inclusion and fusion interpretations of social identity do lead to more precise and theoretically grounded expectations of who should be biased in favor of in-groups and when these biases might be expected to escalate. The inclusionary models of social identity provide more theoretical founda- tion for the self-enhancement theory that drives the primary predictions of in-group bias made by the party identity linkage theory. Specifically, the inclusion models first suggest strong identifiers, whose self-views are more linked with their views of a social group, will be distinctive in their biases regarding the in-group. Even when controlling for perceptions of self-group similarity, identity strength will continue to produce in-group biases. Second, this perspective implies that in times of threat to the group or self, these linked individuals will respond with more group-serving biases to protect the self. While existing theories of social identity point to self-enhancement motives as leading to increased in-group bias, the inclusion perspective adds theoretical clarity to the underlying mechanisms and helps us identify certain measures as more likely moderators of biased responses. That is, measures that capture the degree of inclusion or importance of an identity should be stronger predictors of in-group bias than those that merely measure self-categorization or recognition of similarity with a group. Furthermore, the fusion literature suggests that another implication of the inclusion of the group in the self is that threats to the individual that are unrelated to the group may also lead to manifestations of more group-serving biases when that person feels personally linked with the group. Before considering the implications of party identity, as a social identity, that links political parties and party actors to a partisans’ self-concept, the next two

26 sections review the consequences of social identities on inter-group behaviors and a body of research which suggests strong identiﬁers’ social responses and behaviors are distinctive from weaker identifers’ and non-identiﬁers’ social responses and behaviors.

2.2.2 Consequences of Social Identities

Just as people engage in motivated reasoning and other self-enhancement processes to maintain an overly positive self-esteem, they also seek to promote positive and ward oﬀ negative evaluations and perceptions of social groups with which they identify (Brewer and Kramer, 1985). Tajfel and Turner(1979) outline the consequences of the motivational link between the self and social groups by ﬁrst noting three assumptions and then deriving three principles:

“1) Individuals strive to maintain or enhance their self-esteem: they strive for a positive self-concept.

2) Social groups or categories and the memberships in them are associated with positive or negative value connotations. Hence, social identity may be positive or negative according to their evaluation.

3) The evaluation of one’s own group is determined with reference to speciﬁc other groups through social comparisons...

1) Individuals strive to achieve or to maintain positive social identity.

2) Positive social identity is based to a large extent on favorable comparisons that can be made between the in-group and some relevant out- groups: the in-group must be perceived as positively diﬀerentiated or distinct from the relevant out-groups.

3) When social identity is unsatisfactory, individuals will strive either to leave their existing group and join some more positively distinct group

27 and/or to make their existing group more positively distinct” (Tajfel and Turner, 1979, p. 4).

From these assumptions and principles, clear consequences of social identity emerge. Tajfel and Turner argue the positivity of a social identity is based on the relative evaluations of the in-group and out-group. However, group evaluations are not necessarily unbiased attitudes. Therefore, as a group becomes an extension of the self through a social identity, group-esteem is intertwined with the self-esteem, and identifiers “differentiate their own group positively from others to achieve a positive social identity” (Turner et al., 1987, p. 42) and exhibit other group-serving biases. A number of group-serving biases are connected to the maintenance of self-esteem. For example, people whose personal self-esteems have been negatively manipulated tend to provide more favorable evaluations of groups to which they belong even when there is no substantive difference between the in-group and out-group or when the in- group is objectively less favorable than the out-group (Gramzow and Gaertner, 2005). Negative or bad outcomes of a group, like losing a sport competition, tend to be attributed by group members to factors external to the group or outside of the group’s control while the group is held personally responsible for positive outcomes (Sherman and Kim, 2005). Sherman and Kim(2005) argue group-serving judgements work to protect self-esteem because group-serving attributions are diminished when someone is affirmed on individual-level characteristics. To bolster personal self-esteem, people also bask in the reflected glory (BIRG) of the successes of groups or other members that belong to a group with which they identify (Cialdini et al., 1976; Snyder et al., 1986). For example, following a victory by a university’s sports team, students were more likely to wear school-identifying apparel and use the pronoun “we” than in times when the school’s team was defeated by the rival team (Cialdini et al., 1976).

28 One of the key findings of social identity theory research is that of in-group bias under the minimal intergroup paradigm (Billig and Tajfel, 1973; Tajfel and Turner, 1979). Even when groups have been constructed on the most minimal and uninformative grounds, people who self-categorize as group members tend to favor in-group members over out-group members. That is, in-group identifiers tend to be biased in favor of the in-group over the out-group in group evaluations (Brewer, 1979; Brown et al., 1980; Mullen et al., 1992) as well as resource allocation (Billig and Tajfel, 1973). Billig and Tajfel(1973) find that even when group assignment is determined by a purely random method instead of on the basis of shared preferences or other similarity (e.g., group assignment based on painting preference or bogus test performance), individuals exhibit in-group bias in resource allocation tasks.

2.2.3 Distinctiveness of Strong Identiﬁers

While minimal intergroup situations have shown that self-categorization can produce in-group bias in artificial groups, other research suggests the display of in-group bias is different for naturally occurring groups compared to artificial or minimal groups (Mullen et al., 1992). In real groups, identities are more likely to be self- selected rather than artificially assigned and identities are more established rather than those in groups created in experimental settings (Huddy, 2001). When identities are chosen, identification with a group is stronger and out-group discrimination more likely (Perreault and Bourhis, 1999). Jetten and Manstead(1996) find that natural group identifers were more likely to try to defend and assert their identities by engaging in in-group biases than artificial group identifers because the degree of in-group identification was higher for real groups. Indeed, strong group identifiers appear to engage in identity management strategies that are distinct from those pursued by low identifiers (Doosje et al., 1995;

29 Ellemers and Rijswijk, 1997; Spears et al., 1997). In response to the threat of low group status, low identifiers are more likely to perceive the groups as more variable, but strong identifers respond by perceiving the members within each group to be more similar to each other and cohesive (Doosje et al., 1995). Spears et al.(1997) also find that strong identifers are more likely to see themselves as prototypical group members when the value or distinctiveness of the group is threatened while low identifiers distance themselves from the group and are more likely to describe themselves as distinctive. Finally, in response to the low status of an in-group, only strong identifiers, not weak identifiers, attempted to bolster the in-group by shifting attention to other dimensions in which the in-group was superior and had high status relative to the rival group (Ellemers and Rijswijk, 1997). The differences between strong and weak identifiers also extend to their behaviors in addition to their inter-group perceptions. For example, in a study of sports fans, fans who identify more strongly with a team respond more positively to wins but are not as negative in the face of loss compared to weak identifers (Wann and Branscombe, 1990, 1993). That is, compared to less committed fans, die-hard fans are more likely to bask in the reflected glory of their teams wins but are less likely to cut themselves of from reflected failure when the team loses. In another study, Americans shown video clips of a boxing match in which the American boxer won or loss were more likely to derogate Russians (the nationality of the other boxer) when they strongly identified as American and were assigned to the condition where their identity as an American was threatened by loss (Branscombe and Wann, 1994). The social identity theory, especially under the minimal intergroup paradigm, leads to clear predictions of in-group bias, but its ability to explain variation in the occurrence and consequences of identity strength are not as clearly articulated. Peo- ple who strongly identify with social groups have been found to be more likely to

30 exhibit motivated cognitive processing and responses that contribute to intergroup conflict (Branscombe and Wann, 1994; Doosje et al., 1995; Ellemers and Rijswijk, 1997; Spears et al., 1997). Strong identifiers’ negativity toward out-groups is un- changed by the publicity of their negative responses, but weak identifiers’ negativity is significantly reduced when responses are believed to be public (Noel et al., 1995). Furthermore, Ellemers et al.(1999) find that of measures of self-categorization, group self-esteem, and commitment to a group, only the commitment dimension of social identity appears to mediate the display of in-group favoritism (relative difference between the in-group and out-group evaluations and in-group bias in a resource allocation task). The perspective of the inclusion/fusion studies (Smith and Henry, 1996; Swann et al., 2009; Tropp and Wright, 2001) that conceptualize social identities as a spec- trum of self and group linking provide a clear theoretical framework for the findings that strong identifiers differ from weak identifers in their response to identity threat and displays of in-group bias. Indeed, identity strength researchers have themselves described identification in a manner that corresponds with the inclusion model. In a comparison to low identifers Spears et al.(1997) surmises that:

“High identiﬁers, in contrast, derive their self-image to a large extent from group membership, and they are less likely to disassociate themselves from the group in the face of threat as this implies denying or rejecting an important part of themselves” (Spears et al., 1997).

Implicit in this statement is the assumption that strong identiﬁers’ distinctiveness is grounded in their own self-views and the close relationship the group has with those views. While mere self-categorization may produce in-group biases for all identiﬁers in low information, minimal group settings, in natural groups identity strength should clearly moderate the expression of in-group biases. Only when the

31 link between people’s self and group images is sufficiently strong should we expect to see biased inter-group perceptions and behaviors in natural settings. Huddy(2001, p. 146) speculates that variations in identity strength “arise from feeling closer to or farther away from a group prototype or key values endorsed by prototypic members.” However, (Spears et al., 1997) show similarity and identity strength/committement load onto two separate factors which suggests they are distinct. Additionally, Billig and Tajfel(1973) show group identification produces more in-group favoritism than is predicted by perceptions of similarity with a group. Strongly identifying with a social group is more than just feeling similar – it is a merging of self and group. From this linking, or merging of views of a social group with the self-view, comes clear implications for biased behaviors among strong identifiers, especially under conditions of threat. In the following section, I consider the implications of party identities, when sufficiently strong, for emotional responses to threatening electoral competition and evaluations of political candidates. I argue that strong identifers are more likely to infuse the political scene with emotional discourse and biased perceptions, especially during periods of threatening inter-party competition, because they are motivated to rally around the party in order to protect their own positive self-esteems.

2.3 Party Identity Linkage Theory

Several theories of party identification have been developed (e.g., partisan identification as an affective orientation (Campbell et al., 1960), a standing decision (Key, 1966), or a running tally (Fiorina, 1981, 2002)). In this dissertation, I turn to theories that model party identity as a social identity (Weisberg and Greene, 2003; Greene, 1999, 2002) to better understand the heterogeneity in public responses to politics. Rather than just being an “affective attachment to an important group object in

32 the environment” (Campbell et al., 1960, p. 143) or a more cognitive and objective judgement of a party as a provider of goods and services (Key, 1966; Fiorina, 2002), the social identity perspective, especially as presented by Tropp and Wright(2001), suggests that a party identity has the potential to be a valued self-categorization into a party group and a critical component of a person’s self-concept. From this perspective party identity is not just an information heuristic, or filter, but party identity is a potential motivator of biased perceptions of and responses to politics. While the affective orientation perspective suggests party identity is merely a positive affect and allegiance felt toward a party object which is external to the individual, party identity as a social identity suggests the association between individual and political party can actually lead the individual to feel at one with the party. Rather than being an external object that is separate from the individual and objectively evaluated, the party becomes linked to the individual, internalized, and subjectively evaluated for strong identifiers. As discussed in prior sections, the consequences of such a linkage between self and object are biases that favor the self-associated object and discriminate against the disassociated object. The linkage perspective of party identities leads to strong expectations regarding the differences between strong and weak party identifiers or independents. Strength of a party identity should play an important role in determining cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses to politics. I argue that when the value or commitment to a political party is sufficiently strong, the party is linked with the positively biased self-concept, and an individual should be motivated to protect the positive value of the political party. From the inclusion perspective of social identity, which I refer to as a party identity linkage theory, I first expect strong party identifiers, as measured by the traditional 7- point Michigan party identification scale, to be different compared to weak partisans

33 or independents in their psychological connection with the political parties.

Hypothesis 2.3.1. If a self-reported label of “strong” partisan indicates a greater link between party and self, strong partisans should be diﬀerent from weak partisans and independents on other alternative measures of party identity.

Strong partisans should be more likely to portray their self-constructs as overlapping with party-constructs, see their party identities as central to their self- definitions, and think about political parties from an inclusive “we” perspective. Furthermore, if party identity strength indicates an inclusion of party-in-self, strong partisans should be more likely to have friend networks and preferences for social interactions that protect the positivity of their party identities. That is, strong partisans should be more likely to have and prefer social interactions with people affiliated with their own party. However, while the strong partisan indicator created by the traditional party identity measure should reflect a stronger party-social identity and more motivated social interactions, strong partisans’ distinctiveness is not expected to extend to ideological self and self-party placement. That is, strong partisans may not necessarily see themselves as prototypical party members (at least in terms of liberal-conservative ideology). Identity strength is predicted to be a reflection of a psychological relationship with a party rather than a perception of being similar to a party. The clear demarcation of the meaning of “strong” partisan as measured by the traditional 7-point Michigan party identity measure must be established before I can address how party identity shapes and defines the emotional intensity and polarization that can arise over politics in the public. If strong partisans’ self-images are found to be more linked with their party images, strong partisans’ static evaluations

34 of political parties and presidential candidates should also be more polarized than weaker partisans’ or independents’ evaluations.3 Even when controlling for political sophistication, similarity to a party (ideological proximity to a party), and perceptions of party and candidate ideological polarization, the psychological implications of identifying with a political party should lead to biased evaluation polarization.

Hypothesis 2.3.2. If a stronger link with a party motivates more in-party biases, strong partisans’ static aﬀective evaluations of the political parties and presidential candidates should be more polarized than weak partisans and independents, even when controlling for other potential sources of evaluation polarization.

This exaggerated polarization of static party evaluations that should be found among strong partisans is theorized to result from past motivated reasoning, not just learning. That is, the diﬀerence between strong partisans’ global evaluations of the in-party relative to their evaluations of the out-party should be much larger than weak partisans’ and independents’ because of their biased cognitive treatments of political parties. For the diﬀerence in evaluation polarization between strong and weaker or non-partisans to be attributed to bias, it must persist even when accounting for other sources of polarization, such as ideological proximity to a party, that may vary between strong and weaker or non-partisans. While I expect strong partisans’ party evaluations of political parties to be more polarized than weak partisans’ or independents’, because Hypothesis 2.3.2 deals with static evaluation polarization two problems cannot be addressed. First, a relationship between party identity strength and party evaluation polarization may be spurious.

3 Static evaluations are those that are measured at one point in time, in comparison to dynamic evaluations which consider how the polarization level of evaluations changes over time.

35 Some other factor, such as core values, may be the actual causal force driving the relationship. While I attempt to control for alternative causes, the static nature of the model decreases the clarity of the causal connection between party identity strength and evaluations. Second, it may be that more polarized party evaluations produce stronger identification with a party rather than identity strength producing greater party evaluation polarization. To circumvent such endogeneity problems, a dynamic analysis which examines how changes in identity strength relate to changes in evaluation polarization would provide stronger evidence that the strength of a party identity linkage drives evaluation polarization. Unfortunately, isolating the effect of party identity strength on party evaluation polarization is problematic because of the relatively stable nature of individual level partisan identities (Green et al., 2002). To better isolate how changes in strength of identity linkage influence changes in evaluation polarization, I turn to candidate evaluations under the assumption that the degree of a partisans’ party identification and link with a candidate actually increases as a candidate becomes a party symbol after being nominated or elected president or vice-president. Similar to the polarization of Godfather’s Pizza that was addressed in the introduction of this chapter, evaluations of actors and objects that become more or less connected to a political party over time should polarize or depolarize in response to the changed relationship with the party. That is, I can indirectly examine a temporal change in identification between partisans and political elites when an elite’s connection with a party is altered. When a politician is selected as a party’s presidential nominee (or vice-presidential candidate) or elected president (or vice president), that figure becomes more symbolic of a political party and should be more linked to individuals’ party identities. Although the strength of an individual’s identification with a political party may remain static, the strength of identification with the candidate should theoretically change when the candidate

36 becomes a political party’s standard bearer. Because strong partisans are initially more linked to a political party, the change in the connection between an elite and party should have a larger effect on strong partisans’ evaluations of that elite. This leads to the main prediction of the identity linkage theory that as party identification with political figures increases, evaluations become more biased and polarized. More specifically, strong partisans’ evaluations of a political figure are hypothesized to be the product of biased reasoning and thus more polarized than weaker partisans’ when that figure becomes a salient party symbol (e.g., presidential candidate) than when the figure has less connection to the party. Thus two specific hypotheses regarding who is expected to polarize and when polarization is expected to occur are derived from the party identity linkage theory.

Hypothesis 2.3.3. Who? Strong partisans’ static level and rate of polarization in response to a changed party status of a political ﬁgure is predicted to be greater than weaker partisans.’

Hypothesis 2.3.4. When? Candidate evaluations are predicted to be polarized above and beyond normal polarization levels only as long as individuals identify with the candidate because he or she is a salient party symbol. Thus, biased evaluation polarization should be temporary when party status is temporary.

Given the party identity linkage theory’s assumption that parties are actually included in the self through strong party identities, events that threaten the party should be seen as personally threatening to strong identiﬁers. Therefore, strong partisans’ more personal link to a political party should result in their being more

37 emotionally responsive to party identity threat, when party identity threat is deﬁned as possible or actual changes in the relative standing of political parties that threaten the positive value of respective party identities.

Hypothesis 2.3.5. Strong partisans should be more emotionally responsive to potential or actual threats to a party’s power status.

To understand how party identity strength and threat interact to influence emotions, emotions must first be clearly understood and differentiated from the more general concept of affect. To do this, I turn to the definitions set forth by Fiske and Taylor(1991). Affect is a broad umbrella term that encompasses the specific concepts of preferences, evaluations, moods, and emotions (Fiske and Taylor, 1991). Fiske and Taylor(1991) first define preferences as relatively moderate pleasant or unpleasant reactions to stimuli. One type of preference is evaluation which refers to a positive or negative reaction to people or other objects. While preferences and evaluations have clear targets, a mood is a more generalized positive or negative state with no specific source. Preferences, evaluations, and moods are all relatively durable affective states that can be captured by a single positive/negative dimension. In contrast to these three types of affect, emotions contain a clear cognitive component arising from an individual’s interpretation of situations, cannot be modeled well with a single dimension, and tend to be more fleeting states that comes and go in response to particular environmental conditions.4 Central to the party identity linkage theory is the assumption that the positivity

4 The definition of mood put forward by Lazarus(1991) presents mood as more similar to emotions with an organizational structure more complicated than one defined by a single dimension and produced by responses to the environment. However, Lazarus separates mood from emotion by saying “mood refers to the larger, pervasive, and existential issues of one’s life, whereas acute emotions refer to an immediate piece of business, a specific and relatively narrow goal in an adaptations encounter with the environment” (Lazarus, 1991, p. 48).

38 of an individual’s personal identity is threatened when a party is threatened and the individual identiﬁes strongly with the party. While strong partisans’ self-esteems are predicted to be personally threatened by potential or actual in-party electoral loss which threatens the in-party, their self-esteems should remain stable and positive as strong partisans engage in cognitive and aﬀective strategies to combat the threat. If party loss involves potential personal self-esteem damage for those who strongly identify with a party, as is predicted by the party identity linkage theory, theories of emotions argue such ego-involvement will generate emotions that motivate coping processes designed to protect the self (Lazarus, 1991, p. 40). Coping mechanisms, such as motivated reasoning, may stabilize self-esteem in the face of threat, but if party identity strength represents a personal link between party and partisan, I should still expect to see strong partisans be more emotionally responsive to in-party threat compared to weak partisans and independents. Self-esteem has been shown to be strongly connected to emotional states (Brown and Marshall, 2001). Emotions are especially responsive to threats to positive self- esteem. For example, individuals with high self-esteems tend to feel more anger and hostility when their self-esteems are threatened by instability than those with low self-esteems (Kernis et al., 1989). Therefore, emotional responses to threat should serve as an indirect measure of how threatening potential or actual in-party loss is to an individual. Individuals personally threatened by potential or actual party loss should feel less positive emotions and more negative emotions. While the linkage theory generally predicts party identity threat will lead to feeling less positive emotions and more negative emotions, the discrete nature of emotions may result in only certain positive and negative emotions changing. Draw- ing on cognitive-appraisal models of emotions (Lazarus, 1991; Ortony et al., 1988; Roseman, 1984; Scherer, 1988; Smith and Ellsworth, 1985; Weiner, 1980), emotions

39 are approached in this dissertation as discrete responses to stimuli that result from specific appraisal patterns. Cognitive appraisal theories of emotions lead to expectations that people engage in various actions or cognitions to cope with the specific emotions they feel after they appraise certain events (Lazarus, 1991). More precisely, “appraisal tendencies are goal-directed processes through which emotions exert effects on judgement and choice until the emotion-eliciting problem is resolved” (Learner and Keltner, 2000, p. 477). Of the many negative emotions, anxiety and fear have been clearly separated within discrete models in terms of their antecedent responses. Anxiety has been found to produce withdrawal and more flight-like responses while anger produces greater engagement and fight-like responses (Brader and Valentino, 2011; Learner and Keltner, 2000). For example, people who report feeling anxious about political candidates are more likely to pay attention to new information, rely more on issue cues over partisan cues, and fail to vote for the in-party candidate (Marcus et al., 2000). And while fear depresses campaign involvement and participation, anger appear to motivate these goal-preservation actions of political participation (Valentino et al., 2011). From the discrete perspective of emotions and the party identity linkage theory, because strong partisans are motivated to protect the positivity of the party and self-esteem, they should also be more likely to experience emotions, like anger, that motivate “fight-like” responses bolster the party’s image. Finally, because party identity threat threatens a partisan’s self-esteem, positive emotions that reflect the individual’s well being such as happiness and satisfaction should be more likely to be depressed than positive emotions that are externally (e.g., pride) or future (e.g., hope) focused.

40 Hypothesis 2.3.6. Strong partisans are particularly expected to feel more anger and less happiness or satisfaction in response to party identity threat.

Thus the type and intensity intensity of strong partisans’ emotions should serve as further evidence of their more personal link with political parties. Finally, the party identity linkage theory leads to the expectation that heightened inter-party electoral competition which threatens the positive value of a party identity will lead to more polarized candidate evaluations as people attempt to maintain a positive party identity through motivated reasoning. This expectation of increased in-group bias under conditions of party identity threat is supported by research that finds biases along the lines of group membership, especially out-group devaluation, are more likely to exist under conditions of inter-group competition (Brewer, 1979; Duckitt, 2003; Insko et al., 1992; Rabbie et al., 1989; Flippen et al., 1996). Addi- tionally, when the positivity of social identities is threatened by negative feedback, studies have found high identifiers attempt to compensate by increasing in-group evaluations and derogating the out-group. For example, when workers were told they performed worse than another group, high identifiers evaluated the in-group higher and the out-group lower compared to workers who were not given negative feedback (Cadinu and Cerchioni, 2001). Branscombe and Wann(1994) find that when a valued group power status is threatened, in-group members respond with increased derogation of the group responsible for the threat and increased subsequent self-esteem. Specifically, they found that people who strongly identify as American were more likely to dislike and distance themselves from Russians when shown a video where a Russian boxer beat an American boxer (threat condition) compared to people who saw the reverse sce-

41 nario (no-threat condition). Finally, Flippen et al.(1996) find that in-group bias only occurred in conditions when threat originated from an out-group member compared to conditions where the threat originating from an in-group member or where there was no threat. In the realm of party identity, identification with a political party is assumed to link the individual’s cognitive representation of the self and party. Consequently, party identifiers should also be motivated to protect the positivity of their party to a similar degree that they protect their own self-esteem. Social identities are positive when the in-group trumps the out-group on a salient dimensions. When the positivity of party identifications is threatened by potential loss caused by inter-party competition, one way partisans can cope with the threat is through selective exposure, selective judgment/motivated skepticism, and/or selective perception (Bartels, 2002; Lodge and Tabor, 2000; Kunda, 1990). These strategies should all increase the likelihood that the in-party candidate will be rated as superior to the out-party candidate. Because strong partisans’ interconnection of self and party is greater than weaker partisans’ and independents’, their attempt to maintain a positive party identity in the face of party identity threat should be greater than weaker partisans or independents. Finally, as salient symbols of political parties, party candidates should be protected or derogated as well as the party itself. Given the motivational implications of party identities, I would expect the evaluations of party candidates to polarize as electoral competition threatens the positive value of a party (controlling for the standard alternative explanations of political sophistication and ideological perceptions and proximity).

Hypothesis 2.3.7. Increased party identity threat should lead to more biased evaluation polarization, especially for strong partisans.

42 It is important to note that party identity threat results from threatening inter- party competition, not just inter-party competition. It could be argued that a rise in inter-party competition simply increases the salience and accessibility of party identities which then leads to more biased evaluation polarization. I attempt to refute this alternative explanation by showing threat-produced biased evaluation polarization is often asymmetrical within an election. That is, even though the level of inter-party competition may be constant for a set of people during an election, the threat of the inter-party competition may be asymmetric. For example, facing loss while in a position of power should be more threatening than being faced with loss while already out of power. Therefore, while theories of identity salience and accessibility would predict a constant level of evaluation polarization, the party identity linkage theory’s predictions regarding party identity threat suggests evaluation polarization will be more heterogenous. I expect to find strong partisans whose identities should be more threatened by the inter-party competition to have candidate evaluations that are even more polarized than those whose party identities are not threatened. These six specific hypothesis are considered in the following dissertation. Chapter 3 examines the traditional measurement of party identity strength and tests the expectation that strong partisans’ psychological relationship with their political party is more personal and central to their self-concept than the weak partisans’ and independents’ party relationships. The role of identity strength in biasing evaluations of parties and candidates is taken up in at the close of chapter 3 and is further developed in chapter 4. Through three experiments, chapter 5 examines the emotional consequences of party identity threat and the moderating effect of party identity strength. Finally, chapter 6 considers the prediction made by the party identity linkage theory that party identity threat and party identity strength interact to produce more biased candidate evaluation polarization.

43 2.4 Alternative Explanations

To strengthen my claim that party identity strength biases and polarizes candidate evaluations, I must first account for other possible causes of evaluation polarization. Although the degree of divergence in opinions at one point of time may be greater for strong partisans than for weaker partisans because strong partisans are more ideologically extreme and thus more proximate to candidates, considering the dynamic change in opinion polarization (rate of change of evaluations) may help uncover whether strong partisans are more biased than weaker partisans. For two individuals who differ only along the dimension of identity strength,5 models of unbiased Bayesian learning (Gerber and Green, 1998, 1999; Zechman, 1979) would predict that both the strong and weak identifiers’ candidate evaluations should change at the same rate in response to new information about the candidate. Strength of identity linkage should have no additional influence on how opinions change over time. However, according to the identity linkage theory, strong partisans are motivated to protect the positive value of their social identity by bolstering the in-party candidate and derogating the out-party candidate above and beyond that which would be predicted by preference alone. Thus, the rate of opinion change is predicted to be greater for strong identifiers than weaker identifers when party identification with the candidate increases over a period of time. While different rates of polarization between strong and weak partisans may indicate a degree of bias in strong partisans’ evaluations, theoretical models have shown that heterogenous rates of opinion change across groups is not sufficient evidence of biased change (Bullock, 2009). Therefore, when possible, I attempt to account for alternative causes of evaluation polarization to see if their inclusion in my models

5 This assumes prior candidate evaluations are the same across the two individuals and that party identity strength does not serve as an informative signal of the candidate or incoming information.

44 rule out the effect of party identity strength. First, candidates evaluations should polarize as citizens learn how candidates align with their personal preferences. In line with the enlightened preference hypothesis proposed by Gelman and King(1993), I would expect individuals with more extreme ideologies to polarize their evaluations of candidates at a greater rate than more moderate individuals as they learn about the candidate’s issue positions. In- dividuals with extreme ideologies should prefer the ideologically closer candidate more than moderate individuals because the distance between extreme individuals and the alternative candidate should be greater than the distance between moderates and the alternative candidate. Furthermore, evaluations of candidates should become more polarized when individuals perceive candidates as more ideologically polarized. Thus, perceptions of self, party, and candidate ideological placement may be at least one of the components of evaluation formation. Second, research has shown that strong attitudes have more influence over how new information is incorporated and are more resistant to persuasion (Fazio et al., 1986; Petty and Krosnick, 1995). Individuals with stronger attitudes regarding specific issues have also been found to engage in motivated skepticism and develop more polarized attitudes regarding the issue (Taber and Lodge, 2006). While attitude strength is arguably multidimensional, one way to measure it is pre-existing attitude extremity. This leads to the prediction that individuals with evaluations that are already more polarized and strong, should be more likely to polarize their evaluations. Third, an individual’s awareness of politics and ability to process information about the candidates may also influence how opinions of candidates change over time. In a study of individual’s position on the Vietnam war (whether for or against), Zaller (1992) found that the policy positions of more politically aware citizens polarized more than less aware citizens because they were more able to process and follow

45 changes in elite positions. Therefore, individuals who are more interested, informed, and educated should be more able to pick up on elite cues and polarize evaluations of candidates in an election. Fiorina and Abrams(2008) argue that the polarization of evaluations and ap- proval ratings are mainly driven by candidate-level rather than individual-level characteristics. That is, peoples’ preferences over candidates look so polarized merely because the candidates themselves are polarized options. Given the relative stability of elite ideological positions, especially of elected politicians in Congress (Poole and Rosenthal, 2007), it is unlikely that any change in the polarization of candidate evaluations would originate from changes in the candidates’ ideology. Therefore, if the polarization of evaluations results only from the process of learning which candidate fits best with one’s one policy preferences, evaluations should polarize to a steady level of polarization during a campaign and remain constant. In contrast, the identity linkage theory would predict the evaluations (especially of strong partisans) should polarize during the campaign above and beyond that which would explained by learning and that depolarization (rather than stability) should actually occur when individuals no longer have a close identification connection with a candidate. Thus, evaluations should depolarize when a candidate’s connection with a party is reduced and the candidate no longer stands as a clear symbol of the political party. While the polarization of a winning candidate’s evaluations should remain constant or increase after the election, when a presidential candidate loses an election or completes his term in office his evaluations should depolarize and the rate of depolarization should be greater for strong partisans. In an examination of evaluations of winning presidential candidates, Burden and Hillygus(2009) find winning candidates’ evaluations do continue to polarize after the election. First, those people who were previously uncertain about the candidate

46 appear to learn about the president and form opinions during his time in office. Second, individuals who had already established opinions of the president appear to incorporate information in a biased manner and exhibit more polarized evaluations of the president. While Burden and Hillygus find the post-election polarization is is at least partly attributable to citizen learning as more aware partisans are more likely to polarize, they also find strong partisans are also more likely to polarize.6 The identity linkage theory expands upon Burden and Hillygus(2009) findings by suggesting evaluation polarization of both winning and losing candidates can, in part, be explained by a temporary increase in party identity linkage between some citizens and the candidate. Thus, I would expect that while evaluations of the winning candidate continue to polarize after the election as found by Burden and Hillygus, those of the losing candidates should decline and that the effect of party identity should remain a significant predictor of this temporary polarization even when accounting for citizen learning.

2.5 Contributions to Existing Research

While a substantial amount of research has been conducted in political science regarding motivated reasoning (Cassino and Lebo, 2007; Fischle, 2000; Lavine and Sullivan, 2000; Lodge and Tabor, 2000; Redlawsk, 2002; Slouthuus and de Vreese, 2010; Taber and Lodge, 2006), the party identity linkage theory contributes to the existing research in several ways. First, by focusing on the biases of candidate evaluations, this dissertation helps expand the application of motivated reasoning research in political science which primarily examines motivated information processing as it relates to an individual’s issues stances (e.g., Slouthuus and de Vreese, 2010; Taber

6 While party identity strength and awareness are both considered in Burden and Hillygus’s analysis, they are not included in the same model or rigorously compared as competing explanations of polarization.

47 and Lodge, 2006). Second, the party identity linkage theory provides greater theoretical understanding regarding why strong partisans can be considered as a unique a subgroup with a high potential for being biased and emotionally charged in response to politics. Third, the theory leads to novel predictions of temporary biased evaluation candidate polarization– political figures are predicted to be highly polarizing conditional on their party status, or the level and salience of their association with a political party. Finally, the party identity linkage speaks to other possible heterogenous patterns in evaluation polarization. Specifically, evaluation polarization is predicted to arise in response to inter-party competition that threatens the positive value of party identities, especially for strong partisans. As well as contributing to the existing body of motivated reasoning research, the assumption of the personal nature of politics for strong partisans has several big picture implications. For example, if strong partisans are more likely to be emotional and biased in their response to politics, we might expect public political discourse to become more polarized and emotionally charged during times when more people identify strongly with parties. Figure 2.2 presents the basic breakdown of the Amer- ican public according to the 7-point Michigan party identification measure. Looking specifically at the relative percentage of strong partisans shown in the upper panel, there appears to be a slight U curve in the percentage of people self-identifying as strong partisans since the 1950s. While the percentage of people reporting themselves as strong partisans clearly declined from 1952 to 1976, the numbers appear to have rebounded to degree since the 1970s. In an examination of affective evaluations of parties, Hetherington(2001) finds a corresponding resurgence in partisan attitudes. Although Hetherington argues the polarization of party affect is driven by increased clarity of party positions at the elite level, the party identity linkage theory would present party identity strength

48 iue2.2 Figure Source: ANESCDF Percentage Percentage Percentage Percentage

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1964 1964 1964 1964

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1988 1988 1988 1988 49 1992 1992 1992 1992

1996 1996 1996 1996

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2008 2008 2008 2008 WkRep WkDem StgRep StgDem IndRep IndDem IndPure as a additional variable that independently contributes to evaluation polarization. While increased clarity of party stances should produce greater party evaluation polarization through a process of Bayesian learning, learning is not necessarily the only source of evaluation polarization. More distinctive and clearly deﬁned parties could also polarize party evaluations by increasing the number of people who strongly identify with a party. And with the increase in strongly linked partisans motivated reasoning should also be more likely to occur and amplify evaluation polarization. While speculative at this point, these long-term patterns serve to illustrate how the party identity linkage theory can contribute to existing debates of polarization and public opinion change.

50 3

Who are Strongly Linked Partisans?

The measurement and conceptualization of party identity, and as an extension–party identity strength, has been subjected to considerable scrutiny since Campbell et al. first defined partisan identification as “an affective attachment to an important group object in the environment” (Campbell et al., 1960, p. 143). Since its original conceptualization, a general consensus has been reached that party identification is an enduring predisposition that tends to be relatively stable (Achen, 1992; Blais et al., 2001; Green et al., 2002). However, the continuing debate over how to best measure strength of party identity, or even more broadly, how to measure a social identity, reveals the complexity inherent in the construct of identity (Blais et al., 2001; Ashmore et al., 2004). The goal of this chapter is to better understand what identity strength, as measured by the traditional 7-point Michigan party identification questions, conceptu- ally represents. If the traditional measure does indicate a psychological inclusion of party in a person’s self-concept, we would expect strong identifiers to see themselves as more personally linked to a certain party than weak partisans and independents.

51 Even if strong partisans appear to be relatively similar to either weak partisans or partisan independents on ideological dimensions, they are expected to be more psychologically linked to political parties. Additionally, strong partisans’ evaluations of the two major political parties should be more polarized than weak and independent partisans’ evaluations because the inclusion of party in self is expected to enhance their motivation to protect the positivity of the party in their mind. The chapter is structured accordingly: First, I review several of the key measurement and conceptual debates surrounding party identiﬁcation. Given the existing literature, I argue strong partisans should be considered as a unique subgroup. Sec- ond, I examine the traditional 7-point measure relative to other alternative measures of party identity to establish whether strong partisans are distinctive in their psychological linkage with a political party. Finally, I look at static party and candidate evaluations and show that strong partisans’ basic party attitudes are more polarized than weak partisans’ and independents’ party attitudes as predicted by the party identity linkage theory.

3.1 Measuring Party Identiﬁcation

The traditional 7-point measure of partisan identification that dominates political science research is based on three branching questions that combine both self-definition and strength of identification with either party. The traditional 7-point measure, also known as the Michigan measure of party identification, is created from a branching question in which respondents are asked “Generally speaking, do you usually think of yourself as a Democrat, a Republican, an Independent, or what?” and then given the follow-up question, “Would you call yourself a strong Democrat/Republican or a not very strong Democrat/Republican” if the respondent self-defines as partisan. If “Independent” or “Other” is selected in the first question, the respondent is asked

52 “Do you think of yourself as closer to the Republican Party or to the Democratic Party?” From these questions, the seven categories of strong Democrat, weak (not very strong) Democrat, independent Democrat, pure independent, independent Republi- can, weak (not very strong) Republican, and strong Republican are created. People who self-categorize as “Other” in the first branching question and then fail to respond the follow up “feel closer” question are excluded from the 7-point measure. While independents who report feeling closer to one of the two major political parties are often referred to as “leaners” in the party identification literature, I try to avoid this terminology and instead describe them as partisan independents. This terminology decision is made so more emphasis is placed on the primary cognitive and emotional aspect of identification rather than the secondary partisan behaviors referenced by the “leaner” term. The traditional 7-point party identification measure derived from these three branching questions has served to increase understanding of political behaviors and attitudes (Niemi and Weisberg, 1993a), but the comparability of the categories produced by the traditional 7-point measure is seriously undermined by the wording of the questions used to create the measure. The first branching question allows us to separate strong from weaker partisans, but we cannot clearly rank the partisan strength of people who identify as independent but then report that they think of themselves as closer to one of the parties. Therefore, a key point of debate regarding the measurement of party identification involves these individuals who behave like strong partisans but categorize themselves as independents (Keith et al., 1992; Magleby et al., 2011). Furthermore, some scholars consider the traditional 7-point party identification measure as a possibly tripartite, multidimensional measure that includes, and at times confounds, concepts of partisan direction, strength, and inde-

53 pendence (Weisberg, 1980; Weisberg and Greene, 2003). I take the stance that self-categorization is not a necessary condition for party identification. From this framework, people who identify as independents but acknowledge feeling closer to one party can still technically identify with a political party. However, I argue that because strong partisans’ identities incorporate both self-categorization and a declaration of a strong identification, strong partisans’ identities should be stronger than the identities of independent partisans who lack the self-categorization component. So while strong partisans’ identities are expected to be stronger than both weak and independent partisans, independent and weak partisans’ level of identity strength cannot be directly compared. Thus, weak and independent partisans are simply classified in this dissertation as “not strong” partisans. Central to my theory is the idea that this weaker form of identification will not produce a motivated and biased response to politics. The necessary merging of self and party that produces such motivated and biased responses should only be seen, or at least seen more, for individuals who verbally associate themselves with a party through self-categorization and declare a strong allegiance. In contrast to continuing controversies that focus on the separation of partisan independents from pure independents, this chapter focuses primarily on people who not only self-categorize as partisan, but those who report strongly identifying with a party. I argue strong identifiers, as determined by the traditional seven-point party identification measure, are a unique subgroup of individuals that have greater potential for biased and motivated reasoning in response to politics. Strong partisans are theorized to be distinctive in terms of their self-association with political parties, and consequential motivational structure. Drawing on social identity theories, specifically those that conceptualize social identities as an inclusion of a social group in the self-concept (Smith and Henry, 1996; Tropp and Wright, 2001) or a fusing of

54 self and group in the mind (Swann et al., 2009), I show strong partisans are more likely than other partisan categories to see a political party as linked to themselves.

3.2 Conceptualizing Party Identiﬁcation

In addition to addressing the measurement issue regarding the comparability of strong, weak, and independent partisans, another major controversy deals with how to more broadly conceptualize party identity. Two basic camps tend to organize the conceptual party identification literature: a socio-psychological paradigm and a rational choice paradigm (Niemi and Weisberg, 1993b). The socio-psychological take on party identity draws from the Michigan model of party identification developed in the seminal work of Campbell et al.(1960), The American Voter, in which party identification is described as an affective attachment to a political party, a mover, and a filter of incoming information. Party identification is described by Campbell et al.(1960) as a lasting core value that is developed early in life through a social- ization process and shapes an individual’s political attitudes and behaviors. From this perspective, partisans are predicted to ignore or interpret information that is inconsistent with their party identity and “the stronger the party bond, the more exaggerated the process of selection and perceptual distortion will be” (Campbell et al., 1960, p. 133). Under the socio-psychological perspective, party identity is an affective construct that is for the most part devoid of substantive or ideological meaning. In contrast, the rational choice approach presents a picture of party identification that is highly informative and rooted in substantive issues and ideological preferences. This paradigm is founded in the work, An Economic Theory of Democracy, by Anthony Downs (1957). Within Down’s model, voters are rational actors who want to vote for candidates that will provide them with legislation that is the most in line with their

55 personal policy preferences. Party identities are adopted to maximize the benefit of a vote while minimizing the cost. As low-cost signals of political parties’ platforms and reputations, party identities allow individuals to participate in the democratic process without having to constantly reassess each candidate and policy. Party identity is similarly seen as an informational tool by Key(1966). Key refers to party identity as a “standing decision” into which campaign events and information are incorporated to produce a vote choice. Party identity is a signal of a party’s expected outcome and is once again an informative cue used by rational voters. Fiorina(1981) advances the rational perspective of party identification and defines it as a “running tally of retrospective evaluations” (p. 89). In this account, party identification is a summation of past experiences and evaluations with the political parties. As the tally accumulates evaluations, party identities become stable and powerful information cues regarding the expected future performance of political parties. Thus, party identity can be modeled under the rational choice perspective as a prior in a Bayesian updating model (Achen, 1992). However, it is important to note that the rational choice model of party identification does not lead to predictions of biased or motivated processing and responses to politics. As noted by Aldrich(1995, p. 167), for all of the conceptualizations of party identity discussed above, “one of the most important characteristics is that in each, citizens view each party as a thing apart from themselves.” And in terms of day-to- day maintenance and contribution to political parties, parties are primarily elite-level organizations with voters merely playing the role of consumer and serving as targets of party activity. This passive role of the public in parties is somewhat softened through party activists who, through the institutional context of the nomination system, play an important role in producing ideologically diverged general election candidates. However, Aldrich(1995) still presents political parties as distinct groups

56 of elites that are clearly separate from the public. Schattschneider(1942, 53) further argues that “whatever else the parties may be, they are not associations of the voters who support the party candidates.” In the U.S. there is very little physical involvement by the public in political parties. Most people have few, if any, interactions with political parties as organizations. Only a modest proportion of citizens actually vote in elections and an even smaller group is involved in partisan activities such as donating, attending rallies, or working on campaigns (Verba and Brady, 1995). Even though the actual organization and activities of political parties suggests they are “groups as objects” that are external to citizens, I argue party identities have the potential to alter whether a party is viewed as a thing apart from the self. Recent conceptualizations of party identity within the socio-psychological paradigm turn to social identity theory to suggest actual physical separation between citizen and party does not necessarily translate to psychological separation (Green et al., 2002; Greene, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2004; Weisberg and Greene, 2003). Similar to a religious or sporting identity, Green et al.(2002) portray party identification as a way people think of themselves in relation to a political party. Party identity is a self-categorization based on stereotypical images of parties and whether or not “one includes oneself among them” (p. 137). While Green et al.(2002) do not incorporate the motivational implications of social identity theory, they do use the self-categorization aspect of the social identity theory to form expectations of party identity stability. Similarly, Greene(1999, 2000, 2002, 2004) has stood as a strong advocate of the social identity approach to party identification. Using the Mael and Tetrick(1992) Identification with a Psychological Group (IDPG) scale as a social identity measure of party identification in a student population, Greene(1999) finds strong partisans’

57 identities are significantly stronger than both weak and independent partisans’ identities. Independent partisans also investigated under the social identity framework are found to have weaker partisan social identities and stronger independent social identities, have partisan attitudes that are founded more in cognition rather than affect, and tend to have more negative attitudes about parties in general (Greene, 2000). In a comparison of the IDPG measure and the traditional party identification measure, Greene(2002, 2004) identifies the shortcomings and ambiguities of the traditional measure and advocates the use of new measures specifically designed to capture party social identity. As mentioned before, this dissertation considers party identity through the the social identity lens. However, unlike Greene(2002), I continue to rely on the traditional party identification measure because of its ubiquity and availability. Instead of advocating the use of different party social identity measures, I use social identity measures to show how a binary measure of identity strength derived from the traditional measure captures an inclusion of self-in-party, or social identity, aspect of party identity. Also, unlike Green et al.(2002), I embrace the self-enhancement motivational implications of social identities. Green et al. remain agnostic about the motivational assumption because they argue it predicts people will abandon or switch party identities in response to reduced party status, contrary to the stability of identity that is empirically observed. As will be discussed in later chapters, while social exit, or the abandonment of an identity, is one possible strategy predicted by social identity theory in response to low group status, it is not the only one (Tajfel and Turner, 1979). Social change and social creativity in which identifiers attempt to change or reframe the status of a group are also viable strategies. Therefore, even when allowing for party identifiers to be motivated to preserve the positivity of their party identities, identity stability can be predicted to exist under the social identity

58 theory (Huddy, 2001). Finally, I choose to consider party identification from the socio-psychological paradigm rather than the rational choice paradigm not because I think party identity has no informational value to voters, but because I am interested in predicting motivated and biased political responses. That is, it is likely that party identities contain both a rational informational component as well as a psychological self-group association component. Past party performance and ideological proximity of a party to an individual should play a large role in the formation of party identities. How- ever, the “minimal group” paradigm reveals the actual linking of oneself with a group leads to in-group biases independent from perceptions of in-group similarity (Billig and Tajfel, 1973; Tajfel, 1978). Thus, party identities as social identities should intro- duce bias into individual’s perceptions and evaluations of party’s and consequently bias the informative nature of party identities, especially for strong partisans. Social identity is defined as a knowledge of a membership in a social group and an emotional significance that is attached to the membership (Tajfel, 1981; Tajfel and Turner, 1979). How does this basic definition of identification align with the traditional 7 point party identity scale first proposed by Campbell et al.(1960)? I propose that only individuals who label themselves as strong partisans actually include a party in their self-concept to a degree that results in transformed motivations regarding the party and can be accurately labeled as party identifiers under the social identity framework. That is, even though individuals may self-categorize as Republican or Democrat, those who define themselves as “not very strong” partisans lack the necessary self-party association and emotional significance in membership that leads to biased inter-group relations. While partisan independents and weak partisans may be classified as partisans according to the Converse definition or as a result of their partisan behavioral tendencies, they may not be classified as identifiers

59 under a social identity or self-inclusion definition. The party identity linkage approach to party identification advocated in this dissertation draws on inclusion models of social identity and provides greater traction in theorizing and generating predictions of who will respond and when people will respond to events with greater emotions and biased responses. Specifically, it results in novel predictions regarding party identity threat. As an affective attachment, party identity is merely a filter; as an inclusion of party-in-self, party identification is a motivator and self-biases enter the equation. I now investigate the traditional measure of party identification to show strong partisans are distinctive in the way they think of themselves in relation to a party and the degree to which they are psychologically linked to a political party.

3.3 Data Sources

This chapter draws on several nationally representative surveys to explore the traditional party identification measure. For all studies, people excluded from the analysis are those who self-categorize as “other” in the first traditional party identity branching question and then refused to answer or provided a “don’t know” response for the subsequent question asking about the party to which they felt closer.1 First, I turn to a nationally representative survey conducted during January 2012 to compare the traditional 7-point party identification measure to pictorial measures of party identification based on “inclusion of other in self” measures (see Aron et al., 2001; Aron and Aron, 1996, 1997; Tropp and Wright, 2001; Swann et al., 2009, 2010). The 2012 study was conducted online through the Survey Science International (SSI) research company.2 A total of 928 participants completed the study.

1 This coding strategy is used in the 2008 ANES. 2 The 2012 study was funded by the Program for Democracy, Institutions, and Political Economy

60 The traditional measure of party identification is also examined using a nationally representative sample with 1,000 participants purchased on the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study.3 The first wave of the Internet survey fielded by the research firm, Polimetrix, Inc., was conducted during October 2010 and the second wave was administered during the two weeks following the election (November 2, 2010). This analysis draws on the common content branching party identification questions asked during the post-election wave as the traditional measure of party identification. This traditional measure is then compared to a set of other variables that have been argued to be related to party identifications: a measure of party closeness, importance of party identity, a reduced version of the Mael and Tetrick (1992) Identification with a Psychological Group (IDPG) scale, social embeddedness in a party, self-placement on a liberal conservative ideological scale, ideological distance between self and party, and party evaluations as measured through party feeling thermometers. Finally, I use party and presidential candidate thermometer ratings from the American National Election Cumulative Data File (ANES-CDF) to show strong partisans’ static affective party and candidate evaluations are more polarized than other partisans’ and independents’ evaluations.4 While this polarization difference between strong and not strong partisans holds even when accounting for ideological distance controls and sophistication, to truly separate affective evaluations from party identification strength, the dynamics of party identity strength and evaluations polarization are taken up in the next chapter.

(DIPE) and its principle investigators are John Aldrich, Mark Dudley, and McKenzie Young who graciously allowed me to include the two pictorial party identity questions in their survey. 3 Freeze, Melanie, COOPERATIVE CONGRESSIONAL ELECTION STUDY, 2010: DKD CON- TENT. [Computer File] Release: no date. Duke University. [producer] http://cces.gov.harvard.edu 4 Party thermometer ratings were measured by the ANES in 1978, 1980, 1982, 1984, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2004, and 2008. Presidential candidate thermometer ratings were measured by the ANES for all presidential elections since 1968.

61 Figure 3.1: The Tropp and Wright(2001) Inclusion of In-Group in the Self Measure

3.4 Who are Strong Partisans?

Are strong partisans’ self-concepts more linked with a party than weak partisans’ and independent partisans’? To capture the level of interconnectedness between a person and a close other, such as a spouse, Aron et al.(1991) constructed a pictorial measure called the Inclusion of Other in Self (IOS) scale. Referencing this measure, Tropp and Wright(2001) created a similar pictorial scale in which a close other was replaced by an in-group of interest. Figure 3.1 presents the inclusion of group-in- self measure used by Tropp and Wright(2001, p. 587). Respondents were asked to circle the pair of circles that they felt best represents their level of identification with the group. Swann et al.(2009) constructed a similar measure to capture what they termed the degree of “identity fusion.” Respondents were asked to select the option that best represents the way they perceived their relationship with the group. Unlike the IOS scale, the fusion scale provides respondents with a response option where the self and group are completely overlapping. Drawing on these pictorial measures, I created two five-point inclusion-in-group scales to measure party identifications as shown in Figure 3.3 for the Democratic Party and Republican Party respectively. Similar to Swann et al.(2009), I allow

62 Figure 3.2: The Swann et al.(2009) Measure of Identity Fusion

Figure 3.3: Inclusion of Self in Democratic and Republican Party Measure respondents to select an option in which the self and party completely overlapped. However, like Tropp and Wright(2001), I represent the self and group with equiv- alently sized circles because my theory suggests strongly identifying with a party causes the party to be included in the self -concept rather than the self being subsumed by the party. This distinction once again hearkens to the fine line separating a personalization from a depersonalization effect of a social identity that leads to the party identity linkage theory’s expectation that the motivational and biasing properties of the self will bleed to groups that are included in the self-concept. Participants were randomly presented with both the Republican and Democratic Party pictorial measures and then respectively asked, “Please select the pair of circles that you feel best represents your own level of identification with the Democratic

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StgRep tification or party attitudes, strong partisans are hypothesized to be significantly different from the respective weak partisans or independent partisans, especially in measures that should capture the psychological linking of self-concept and party- concepts. To easily identify whether or not strong partisans’ responses are distinctive from weaker partisans’, a special set of symbols are used in the following figures to denote the statistical significance (derived from a comparison of means F-test) of the difference between strong partisans’ mean response relative to the mean responses of the respective weak partisans and independent partisans. A hollow diamond indicates strong partisans’ mean responses are statistically different from both weak and independent partisans’ mean responses. A triangle marks shows strong partisans’ mean responses are different only from weak partisans’. A square indicates the difference between means is statistically significant only between strong partisans and independent partisans. Finally, an “X” indicates strong partisans’ means are statistically indistinguishable from the means of both of the weaker partisan groups. In Figure 3.4, we see a clear separation between strong and weak/independent partisans’ perceptions of how they are linked personally to each major political party. While weak and independent partisans on average only report a moderate overlap between self and in-party (M ≈ 3), strong partisans’ responses are closer to the forth response option that indicates a lot of overlap between self and in-party. However, strong partisans are not as clearly distinguished from weak and independent partisans in how disassociated they see themselves relative to the out-party. Although the magnitude of the difference between strong and weaker partisans in regards to how they see themselves in relation to the out-party is smaller compared to how they see themselves in relation to the in-party, the differences are for the most part, still statistically significant. Only independent Republicans’ and strong Republicans’ mean self-Democratic Party inclusion scores are equivalent. However,

65 strong partisans were slightly more likely (at the 90 percent confidence level without controls) to fail to respond to the inclusion question when the party referenced was the out-party. See Table A.1 in appendix for the logistic regression of non-response and party identity strength. This finding of non-response occurring disproportion- ately among strong partisans suggests that strong partisans may disassociate the self from the out-group so much that none of the options were seen as an accurate description. Given how people respond to the party-self pictorial inclusion measure, party identity strength as captured by the traditional 7-point measure appears to be a clear indicator of in-group association and perhaps a weaker indicator of out-group disasso- ciation. While the pictorial measure provides greater evidence that strong partisans are distinct in their perceptions of their personal relationship with their own political party, party identity strength as measured by the traditional and pictorial measures still remains relatively opaque. To provide greater substance to the concept of partisan strength, I turn to a variety of party identity and party-related questions that I was able to ask on the pre-election and post-election waves of the 2010 CCES. These include party identity measures derived from a question regarding the importance of a person’s party identity, a party closeness measure, and responses to a reduced version of the Identification with a Psychological Group (IDPG) scale. In addition to these identity measures, I examine perceptions of self-party ideological similarity through measures of self and party placement on a seven-point liberal/conservative ideology scale, preferential and actual party embeddedness, and party evaluations through party feeling thermometer scores. See the chapter appendix for the complete question and response wording for the items. When asked to rate the importance of their partisan affiliation (Republican, Democrat, or independent), strong partisans, as seen in Figure 3.5, on average re-

66 n ihcreainbtenprycoeesadtaiinlpryidentification party (1988) traditional al. and et closeness Barnes party U.S., between the correlation in In high 1981 a to “closeness.” find 1974 about from asks data consistently incorporating branch- measure analysis each closeness an party closeness, the and in strength option of ing the questions Unlike mixes questions. that branching measure from traditional derived closeness measure party 7-point the a measure, produces identification party measure 7-point the to Similar studies. tive them. to important strong as themselves, identity view party they their how view in to likely party more the are include partisans (2). to important” likely very more “not being the to tion to closer other were all responses while (3) mean important” “somewhat groups’ than more little a as affiliation their ported Identification Party 7-Point by Independent) or Democrat, 3.5 Figure 6 frtepeiemas tnaddvain,adgopfrequencies. group and deviations, standard means, precise the for A.3 Table See h at lsns esr soewdl ple nErpa n compara- and European in applied widely one is measure closeness party The en(egtd motneo atsnIetfiain(Republican, Identification Partisan of Importance (Weighted) Mean :

StgDem Importance of Party Identification 1 2 3 4 Source: 2010CCES;with95%CI ekadId atsnWa npPria Neither IndpPartisan Weak Weak andIndpPartisan Strong partisanissignificantly(95%level)differentfrom: WkDem Traditional 7−ptPIDMeasure

IndDem

67 IndPure Legend

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StgRep 6 oi addi- in So ihagop o eesrl omtett,ivsmn n rietfiainwith identification or in, investment group. similarity to, a of commitment perception a a necessarily capturing not only group, are a they with possible is identi- it party, or a closeness psychological with a fication inclusion measure party to pictorial purport the measures both closeness party While and partisans. independent the from and However, different weak significantly the remains Democrats. both partisans weak strong than of closeness party self-reported Democratic mean the report to average close on Democrats more independent feeling but similar, are question closeness not party are 2010 measures two the the in suggest correlated. asked means perfectly were the they of as arrangement non-linear questions The two CCES. the compares 3.6 Figure questions. Identification Party 3.6 Figure 7 frtepeiemas tnaddvain,adgopfrequencies. group and deviations, standard means, precise the for A.4 Table See en(egtd at lsns oteToMjrPrisb 7-Point by Parties Major Two the to Closeness Party (Weighted) Mean : 7 needn n ekRpbias vrg epne othe to responses average Republicans’ weak and Independent

StgDem Very Close:DemPty(1) to Very Close RepPty(7) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Source: 2010CCES;with95%CI ekadId atsnWa npPria Neither IndpPartisan Weak Weak andIndpPartisan Strong partisanissignificantly(95%level)differentfrom: WkDem Traditional 7−ptPIDMeasure

IndDem

68 IndPure Legend

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StgRep icto DGsaewsfudt emdrtl orltdwt h traditional the with correlated moderately be iden- to party found the was country, scale Midwestern a IDPG metropolitan and tification a sample in population voters student registered a of Using sample identification. party to successfully employee scale 2004) measure the 2002 , to applied 2000, (1999, designed Greene First organization, work 814). a with p. aggregate identification 1992, defined Tetrick, a and with (Mael oneness persons” was of of “feeling scale the (IDPG) capture Group nature Psychology to a the constructed with specifically in Identification explicit The more are relationship. that the from of measures different on statistically partisans as independent emerge and also weak inter- should and partisans party strong the regarding relations, structures party motivational transforms and self the with Identification Party 7-Point by Responses Scale Summary 3.7 Figure fpryiett teghi culyapyhlgclcntutta ik h party the links that construct psychological a actually is strength identity party If Source: 2010CCES;with95%CI Agreement StgDem

en(egtd dnicto ihaPyhlgclGop(IDPG) Group Psychological a with Identiﬁcation (Weighted) Mean : 1 2 3 4 5

WkDem Republican PartyIDPGScale ekadId atsnWa npPria Neither IndpPartisan Weak Weak andIndpPartisan Traditional 7−ptPIDMeasure

IndDem Strong partisanissignificantly(95%level)differentfrom:

IndPure

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StgRep Legend 69

Agreement StgDem 1 2 3 4 5

WkDem Democratic PartyIDPGScale Traditional 7−ptPIDMeasure

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StgRep ru IP)Ie epne y7PitPryIdentiﬁcation Party 7-Point by Responses Item (IDPG) Group 3.8 Figure eulcnPry en(egtd dnicto ihaPsychological a with Identiﬁcation (Weighted) Mean Party: Republican : Source: 2010CCES;with95%CI Agreement Agreement Agreement Agreement StgDem StgDem StgDem

ekadId atsnWa npPria Neither IndpPartisan Weak Weak andIndpPartisan StgDem 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 Typical Rep.PartyMember Like PersonalCompliment Traditional 7−ptPIDMeasure Traditional 7−ptPIDMeasure Rep. PartyCriticismFeels Traditional 7−ptPIDMeasure Traditional 7−ptPIDMeasure

WkDem Rep. PartyPraiseFeels WkDem WkDem Use ’We’forRep.Party WkDem Strong partisanissignificantly(95%level)differentfrom: Like PersonalInsult

IndDem IndDem IndDem IndDem Not Actlike

IndPure IndPure IndPure IndPure

IndRep IndRep IndRep IndRep

WkRep WkRep WkRep WkRep

StgRep StgRep StgRep StgRep Legend 70

WkDem WkDem Embarrassed byMedia WkDem WkDem Critiques ofRep.Party Rep. PartySucesses Interested inOthers’ Rep. PartyMember IndDem IndDem IndDem IndDem I amaTypical Ownership of

IndPure IndPure IndPure IndPure

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StgRep StgRep StgRep StgRep a ru IP)Ie epne y7PitPryIdentiﬁcation Party 7-Point by Responses Item (IDPG) Group cal 3.9 Figure eortcPry en(egtd dnicto ihaPsychologi- a with Identiﬁcation (Weighted) Mean Party: Democratic : Source: 2010CCES;with95%CI Agreement Agreement Agreement Agreement StgDem StgDem StgDem ekadId atsnWa npPria Neither IndpPartisan Weak Weak andIndpPartisan StgDem 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 Dem. PartyCriticismFeels Like PersonalCompliment Traditional 7−ptPIDMeasure Traditional 7−ptPIDMeasure Traditional 7−ptPIDMeasure Traditional 7−ptPIDMeasure Dem. PartyPraiseFeels WkDem WkDem WkDem Use ’We’forDem.Party WkDem Strong partisanissignificantly(95%level)differentfrom: Dem. PartyMember Like PersonalInsult Not ActlikeTypical IndDem IndDem IndDem IndDem

IndPure IndPure IndPure IndPure

IndRep IndRep IndRep IndRep

WkRep WkRep WkRep WkRep

StgRep StgRep StgRep StgRep Legend 71

Agreement Agreement Agreement Agreement StgDem StgDem StgDem StgDem 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 Traditional 7−ptPIDMeasure Traditional 7−ptPIDMeasure Traditional 7−ptPIDMeasure Traditional 7−ptPIDMeasure Thoughts ofDem.Party Critiques ofDem.Party WkDem WkDem Embarrassed byMedia WkDem WkDem Dem. PartySucesses Interested inOthers’ Dem. PartyMember

IndDem IndDem IndDem IndDem I amaTypical Ownership of

IndPure IndPure IndPure IndPure

IndRep IndRep IndRep IndRep

WkRep WkRep WkRep WkRep

StgRep StgRep StgRep StgRep 7-point measure of partisanship. Here, I consider the IDPG scale in a nationally representative sample. Due to space restrictions on the 2010 CCES survey, only eight of the ten item measures were asked of respondents.8 Respondents provided responses for both a Republican Party IDPG and a Democratic Party IDPG. To prevent order bias, the party scales were randomly presented. The overall party IDPG measure that ranges from 1 to 5 is the participant’s mean response to the eight items (reverse worded items were rescaled prior to taking the average). Higher scores indicate greater identification with the political party. Figure 3.7 presents the overall IDPG mean responses disaggregated by the traditional 7-point party identification measure.9 The scale clearly differentiates strong partisans from weak and independent partisans in the area of in-party identification. Strong partisans appear to identify at a higher level with their respective parties than all other sub-groups. However, strong partisans’ identification with the other party is relatively similar to weak and independent partisans. Strong Republicans identification with the Democratic party is only lower than weak Republicans, not independent Republicans. Figures 3.8 and 3.9 display the item-level IDPG means disaggregated by the traditional party identity measure.10 The separation of strong partisans from both weak and independent partisans with regards to their level of in-party identification is not seen in every single item, but the difference is largely apparent. While the difference between strong and independent partisans appears to be less clear within the Democratic Party, strong partisans do appear to be significantly different from weaker partisans on measures that capture the psychological linkage between the

8 The two items dropped from the scale were shown to have the lowest factor loadings in the analysis of Mael and Tetrick(1992). See the chapter appendix for full scale wording. 9 See Table A.5 for actual means, standard deviations, and group frequencies. 10 See Tables A.6 and A.7 for the precise means, standard deviations, and group frequencies.

72 self and party. This is particularly apparent in the “Use ‘We’ for Party” item. For both the Republican and Democrat Party, strong partisans are more likely to say “we” when talking about their own party. Together, the party-in-self inclusion measure, party closeness, and IDPG scale support the claim that strong partisans are more likely to associate, or link, a party with themselves than weak partisans or independent partisans. Participants in the 2010 CCES were also asked two questions which measured the partisan structure of actual and preferred social interactions. In addition to measuring peoples’ self-perceived party composition of their friend networks, individuals were asked whether they preferred discussing politics with Democrats, Republicans, independents, or no one (they disliked discussing politics). Given the categorical response options, Figures 3.10 and 3.11 present the proportion (rather than means) of each party identification group that chose the respective answer.11 If strong party identities reflect a linkage of party and self, strong partisans should build social networks that are more likely to protect the party and the self. That is, strong partisans should be more likely to surround themselves with like-minded individuals. In Figure 3.10, strong partisans are clearly more likely to report having friends of the same party affiliation than weak partisans or independents. Of the individuals who reported that most of their friends were Democrats, 50 percent were strong Democrats. Similarly, 50 percent of the individuals who reported having a majority of Republican friends self-identify as strong Republicans. Furthermore, the clear separation of the confidence intervals indicates the proportion is statistically different from the other groups. Drawing on the results of Figure 3.10, I argue strong partisans are more likely to have same-party friends in order to preserve the positivity of their party identity. By

11 See Table A.8 and A.9 for the precise row and cell percentages and group frequencies.

73 at dnicto ihnEc epneOption Response Each Within Identiﬁcation Party 3.10 Figure

at ﬃito fMs red:Pooto radw y7-Point by Breakdown Proportion Friends: Most of Aﬃliation Party : Within Response Proportion Source: 2010CCES;with95%CI StgDem 0 .1 .2 .3 .4 .5 .6 .7 .8 .9 1 0 .1 .2 .3 .4 .5 .6 .7 .8 .9 1 WkDem

IndDem Independent Traditional 7−ptPIDMeasure IndPure All Group

IndRep

WkRep

StgRep 74 StgDem

WkDem

IndDem Republican IndPure Democrat

IndRep

WkRep

StgRep surrounding themselves with friends, their party and their party identities, should be less likely to come under attack. However, the party composition of a network may be less of a choice and more of a given circumstance. Rather than strong partisans choosing to have friends of the same party, it may just be that people whose friends share the same party affiliation are more likely to develop strong identification with the party. That is, people whose friend networks are dominated by one party may be more likely to strongly identify with a party. To uncover whether or not the partisan structure of friend networks is preference driven, a second question tapping social partisan preferences provides more evidence that strong partisans want social networks that do not threaten their party identity. To measure the party composition of preferred social networks, Figure 3.11 presents the preferred party affiliation of the other person in a political discussion. Here we see a similar in-party preference among strong partisans that is almost identical to the party composition of friends. Of the people who said they would rather discuss politics with a Democrat, 50 percent were strong Democrats. And 50 percent of people who said they would rather discuss politics with a Republican were strong Republicans. From these more subjective reports, strong partisans’ social networks do appear to be constructed to protect their in-party. This protective nature of strong partisans’ social networks lends further evidence suggesting strong partisans are more personally linked with a party and thus more motivated to protect the party and resulting identity from damage. A consideration of the mean ideological self-placement and distance relative to the major political parties as found in Figure 3.12 reveals some interesting patterns when disaggregated by the traditional 7-point party identification measure.12 The ideological-self placement means in the left panel in Figure 3.12 show strong

12 See Table A.10 for actual means, standard deviations, and group frequencies.

75 rprinBekonb -on at dnicto ihnEc epneOption Response Each Within Identiﬁcation Party 7-Point by Breakdown Proportion 3.11 Figure

rfre at ﬃito fOhrPro nPltclDiscussion: Political In Person Other of Aﬃliation Party Preferred : Within Response Proportion Source: 2010CCES;with95%CI StgDem 0 .1 .2 .3 .4 .5 .6 .7 .8 .9 1 0 .1 .2 .3 .4 .5 .6 .7 .8 .9 1 WkDem

IndDem Democrats Traditional 7−ptPIDMeasure IndPure No One

IndRep

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StgRep 76 StgDem

WkDem

IndDem Independents Republicans IndPure

IndRep

WkRep

StgRep 77 inl7PitPryIdentiﬁcation Party 7-Point tional 3.12 Figure Source: 2010CCES;with 95% CI Ext. Lib(1) to Ext. Consv.(7) StgDem 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

en(egtd efRpre dooyadIelgclDsac rmteToMjrPrisb Tradi- by Parties Major Two the from Distance Ideological and Ideology Self-Reported (Weighted) Mean : WkDem Traditional 7−ptPIDMeasure Self−Reported Ideology IndDem

IndPure

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WkRep ekadId atsnWa npPria Neither IndpPartisan Weak Weak andIndpPartisan StgRep Strong partisanissignificantly(95% level)differentfrom:

Ideological Distance StgDem −6 −5 −4 −3 −2 −1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

WkDem Self−Dem. PtyIdeologyDistance Traditional 7−ptPIDMeasure

IndDem Legend

IndPure

IndRep

WkRep

StgRep

Ideological Distance StgDem −6 −5 −4 −3 −2 −1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

WkDem Self−Rep. PtyIdeologyDistance Traditional 7−ptPIDMeasure

IndDem

IndPure

IndRep

WkRep

StgRep partisans are only clearly more ideologically extreme than weak partisans in every case. The ideological separation between strong partisans and independent partisans is less apparent with no statistically significant mean difference between strong Democrats and independent Democrats. The failure of strong Democrats to differentiate ideologically from independent Democrats seems to occur primarily because strong Democrats are more moderate. While strong Republicans, on average, select the option “conservative,” strong Democrats’ mean response on the liberal side of the scale is weakened by a descriptor of “somewhat.” To really uncover the implications of ideological self-placement for party identification, individual ideological placement relative to the two parties needs to be examined. It may be that party identity strength is in part derived from perceived similarity to a political party. Strong partisans should see themselves as closer to a political party than weak partisans or independents. The mean distance between an individual’s self-placement and party-placement on the 7-point liberal/conservative scale disaggregated by traditional PID is displayed in the middle and right panels in Figure 3.12. From these panels we do not see a consistently clear separation of strong partisans from all other party identity groups. While strong Republicans see themselves as more ideologically distant from the Democratic out-party than both weak and independent partisans, all other cases reveal strong partisans and independent partisans to be extremely similar in their ideological proximity to political parties. Strong Democrats’ distance to the Republican out-party is indistinguishable from independent Democrats,’ and independent partisans see themselves just as ideological similar to their in-party as strong partisans. While the inclusion of party-in-self and identification measures clearly separate strong partisans from independent partisans, the self-party ideological proximity measures suggest these two groups are relatively similar. This finding could sug-

78 gest the partisan behaviors of independent partisans found in past research (e.g., Keith et al., 1992) may arise more from perceptions of in-group similarity rather than in-group social identification. Indeed, Billig and Tajfel(1973) find that similarity and group categorization independently contribute to in-group biases. While feeling similar to a group may lead to behaviors that favor the in-group, identifying with the group should amplify these in-group biases. In this dissertation, I argue party identity as a social identity is not just about feeling similar to an in-group, it is about feeling more at one with an in-group. Consequently, strong partisans should be more biased in their inter-group evaluations than independent partisans, even when they are ideologically similar, because they are also personally linked to a group through their party identities while independents’ relationship to a party is not as personally linked and central to their self-concepts. Finally, to better understand who strong partisans are, I turn to possible products of party identification, specifically party evaluations as measured by feeling thermometer ratings of the two major political parties. Although thermometer ratings have often been used as though they are measures of party identification (Hether- ington, 2001), they better represent evaluative responses to political parties rather than a sense of identification with a party when identification is conceptualized as an enduring and stable sense of belonging to a party, an inclusion of party in self. Green et al.(2002) and Greene(2002) argue feeling thermometer ratings should be thought of as affective and short term party attitudes, defining attitudes as relatively durable positive or negative responses to an object (Petty, 1981), not as measures of a durable party identity.

79 3.5 Strong Partisans’ Party Evaluations

Given the distinction between party identity as a social identity and feeling thermometers as party evaluations, this dissertation examines how party identity strength and party identity threat bias evaluations of party and party objects. I argue that because strong party identities indicate a psychological link between self and party, the positive biases surrounding the self are transferred to the party and should be seen in more polarized affective party evaluations. If strong partisans are distinctive from weak partisans on most identity and ideological self-party distance measures examined above, strong partisans’ evaluations of the two major parties as captured by the absolute difference between party feeling thermometer evaluations should be more polarized than weak partisans’. While independent partisans are more similar to strong partisans in their ideological distance relative to the political parties, their evaluations of the two parties should still be more polarized because they identify to a lesser degree with the party than strong partisans. I consider evaluation polarization rather than just in-party evaluation because the positive value individuals derive from social identities is in- herently comparative in nature. People feel better about themselves (Tesser, 1988) and their groups (Tajfel and Turner, 1979; Turner et al., 1987) when they or their group perform better relative to some other person or group. Therefore, positive in-group bias should be manifest most clearly through a relative measure of affective party evaluation. In this chapter, evaluation polarization is described as static to distinguish it from dynamic evaluation polarization, or actual changes in the level of evaluation polarization over time, that is considered in later chapters. When examining how strongly identifying with a political party influences static candidate evaluation po-

80 larization, a level of endogeneity is present. Establishing the existence of a strong relationship between party identity strength and party evaluation polarization at one point in time does not necessarily help isolate whether party evaluations are a product of party identities. If party evaluation polarization is simply an alternative measure or even a cause of party identity strength (e.g., Fiorina, 1981) rather than a product of party identity strength, strong partisans will still emerge as distinctive from weak partisans in their static level of evaluation polarization. Therefore, an analysis of static party evaluations is only a first step in establishing whether or not party identity strength, as a measure of party-self linkage, leads to biased evaluation polarization. Figure 3.13 displays the 2010 CCES feeling thermometer rating means (disaggregated by the traditional 7-point party identification measure) for both major political parties as well as a measure of party evaluation polarization, the absolute difference between an individual’s rating of each of the two major political parties.13 The left and middle panels display the Democratic and Republican Party mean evaluations respectively. From these figures, we see strong partisans are distinct from both weak and independent partisans with regards to their mean in-party evaluations. Specifi- cally, strong partisans are much warmer in their in-party evaluations than all other groups. However, independent partisans are equivalent to strong partisans in their mean ratings of the out-parties. The greater in-group bias seen among strong partisans translates to greater evaluation polarization for strong partisans than for weak and independent partisans as shown in the right panel in Figure 3.13. Thus strong partisans’ affective party evaluations do appear to be more polarized than weaker partisans and independent partisans as a result of their exaggerated preference for the in-party.

13 See Table A.11 for actual means, standard deviations, and group frequencies.

81 82 tion 3.13 Figure Source: 2010CCES;with 95% CI Feeling Thermometer Rating StgDem 0 20 40 60 80 100

en(egtd ao at vlain n ttcEauto oaiainb -on at Identiﬁca- Party 7-Point by Polarization Evaluation Static and Evaluations Party Major (Weighted) Mean : WkDem Traditional 7−ptPIDMeasure

IndDem Democratic Party

IndPure

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WkRep ekadId atsnWa npPria Neither IndpPartisan Weak Weak andIndpPartisan StgRep Strong partisanissignificantly(95% level)differentfrom:

Feeling Thermometer Rating StgDem 0 20 40 60 80 100

WkDem Traditional 7−ptPIDMeasure

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Feeling Thermometer Rating StgDem 0 20 40 60 80 100 Party ThermometerAbsoluteDifference

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StgRep While strong partisans’ party thermometer ratings are found to be more polarized than weak partisans’ and independents’ in 2010, I turn to the American National Election Studies Time Series (as merged in the Cumulative Data File) to see if this heterogeneous polarization also exists in other years and to test whether it continues to hold even when controlling for other potential sources of evaluation polarization, such as ideological distance from the parties and political sophistication. In addition to examining party evaluation polarization, I also examine presidential candidate evaluation polarization. Because presidential candidates stand as clear party symbols, their close association with the party should also lead them to be linked to strong partisans through their party identities. Similar to political parties, this party identity link between strong partisans and presidential candidates should also lead to more polarized candidate evaluations even when controlling for other variables. Figure 3.14 presents the mean party evaluation polarization disaggregated by the traditional 7-point party identification measure for fourteen years since 1978.14 The distribution of means in Figure 3.14 is remarkably similar to that found in the 2010 CCES sample displayed in Figure 3.13. For all years, strong partisans’ party evaluations are polarized significantly more than all other party identity groups. While a simple difference of means reveals strong partisans hold more polarized evaluations of political parties in all years, this difference could be produced not because a party is more linked into the self-concept of strong partisans, but because strong partisans feel more similar and ideologically proximate to a party. Alternatively, strong partisans may be more sophisticated and exposed to information about parties and thus more likely to form more extreme evaluations about the parties. Table 3.1 presents a slightly more sophisticated test of whether party identity

14 See Table A.12 for actual means, standard deviations, and group frequencies.

83 ohsiain h ieec neauto oaiainbtensrn n not and strong between polarization evaluation in political difference and distance The in- ideological 2 party-self sophistication. Model for account degrees. to 23 controls about several by troduces partisans’ independent and weak errors than standard polarized robust presents regression year. refer- pooled by key the clustered the models, as both serve In partisans weak a group. and and ence strong parties so political independents major pure two the for indicating of dummy variable one binary with a identified strongly on respondent only base the regressed the presents polarization 1 evaluation Model with model polarization. political evaluation or similarity greater in-party to of leads measure a sophistication, than rather identity social a as strength, 1978-2008 Identification, Party 3.14 Figure 15 h nig eanrbs vnwe h oesaernfrec eaaeyear. separate each for run are models the when even robust remain findings The Mean Party Evaluation Polarization

1978 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Source: CDFANES;with95%CI 1980 en(egtd at ttcEauto oaiainb 7-Point by Polarization Evaluation Static Party (Weighted) Mean :

1982 15 1984 nMdl1 eseta togprias vlain r more are evaluations partisans’ strong that see we 1, Model In 1986

1988

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1996

84 1998

2000

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2008 IndPure IndRep IndDem WkRep WkDem StgRep StgDem nMdl2bcueo h ihlvlo o-epneo h dooia measures. ideological the on non-response of level high the dropped of were because respondents 2 of number Model large in a Therefore, were analysis. scale the ideological in liberal-conservative included 7-point not not the could on who party People a or expected. themselves was place as polarization evaluation ap- to party also Finally, which boost used to strength. is pears identity interest political party of of measure effect a the sophistication, political out but measure wipe evaluations, not polarized have does to this likely again, more once also are differ- parties ideological two more the perceive between and ence extreme ideologically are see still do who We difference individuals difference. the that 19-point but a at controls, significant of statistically and inclusion substantively the remains by diminished is partisans strong 1968-2008 Identification, Party 7-Point by tion 3.15 Figure aigetbihdsrn atsn’pryeautosaetems oaie of polarized most the are evaluations party partisans’ strong established Having Mean Candidate Evaluation Polarization

1968 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Source: CDFANES;with95%CI en(egtd rsdnilCniaeSai vlainPolariza- Evaluation Static Candidate Presidential (Weighted) Mean : 1972

1976

1980

1984

1988 year

1992 85 1996

2000

2004

2008 IndPure IndRep IndDem WkRep WkDem StgRep StgDem all the party identity categories, I turn to presidential candidate evaluations. Presi- dential candidates are often referred to as the party’s standard bearers and serve as very public and unified signals of the party. Because presidential candidates are party objects closely linked to an individual’s conceptualization of political parties, strong partisans should also be personally linked to their party’s presidential candidate and biased in their evaluations of the candidate. Figure 3.15 does reveal strong partisans’ presidential candidate evaluations are significantly more polarized than weak partisans’ and independents’ candidate evaluations and the degree of polarization is very comparable to party evaluation polarization.16 The polarizing potential of being a strong partisan identifier holds even when controlling for alternative sources of evaluation polarization such as ideological extremity and proximity to the candidates and interest in politics. Table 3.2 presents the pooled regressions examining candidate evaluation polarization with robust standard errors clustered around year.17 While not directly comparable, it does appear that the degree of candidate polarization may be smaller in magnitude than that of party polarization.

3.6 Conclusions

In this chapter, I have developed a clearer picture of the psychological underpinnings of party identity strength. Strong partisans emerge from the partisan fray in terms of how much they associate themselves with a political party. In a novel application of pictorial party-inclusion-in-self measure of party identiﬁcation, I show strong partisans are more likely to see a large degree of overlap between themselves and the party they strongly identify with. Strong partisans not only feel closer to their own

16 See Table A.13 for actual means, standard deviations, and group frequencies. 17 When controls are accounted for, 1968 is removed from the analysis because the liberal- conservative ideology measure was not asked in that year. The ﬁndings of the pooled model remain robust in individual year models as well.

86 party, but they also view their party identification as more important than weak partisans and independents, and are more likely to talk about their party using the inclusive term “we.” Even though strong partisans are relatively unique in their psychological relationship with political parties, they are less distinctive with regards to their ideological relationship to a party. Specifically, the perceived self-party ideological distance of strong partisans and independent partisans is statistically equivalent. Despite the ideological similarity between independent partisans, strong partisans, and the respective in-parties, I argue strong partisans should be more motivated to protect the positivity of a party than weak partisans or independents because of their tighter psychological link with a party. Through an examination of the descriptive statistics of individual’s partisan networks, I find support for this expectation as strong partisans are more protective of their party identities. In addition to having friend networks that are dominated by the in-party, strong partisans are also more likely to report that they prefer to discuss politics with people who share their party affiliation. The in-party bias of strong partisans’ social interactions provides more evidence that they are more motivated to avoid party identity threat and protect and fortify the positivity of their party identity. Finally, I show strong partisans’ static party and presidential candidate affective evaluations as measured across several decades are more polarized than weak partisans and independents, even when controlling for alternative sources of evacu- ation polarization such as ideology and political interest. Having established strong partisans’ evaluations of parties are more polarized than other groups’ and that presidential candidate evaluations are polarized in a manner that is very similar to party evaluations, I now attempt to show more conclusively that this evaluation polariza-

87 tion is ampliﬁed above and beyond normal levels due to party identity linkage. To do this, the next chapter considers the dynamics of evaluation polarization. Speciﬁcally, I see how candidate evaluation polarization levels change over time in response to changes in the strength of association between the political candidate and political party.

88 Table 3.1: Party Static Evaluation Polarization and Party Identity Strength, 1978- 2008

Model 1 Model 2 Strong Partisan 23.164∗∗ 19.097∗∗ (0.653) (0.447) Pure Independent −15.875∗∗ −11.372∗∗ (0.638) (0.654) 4-pt Self Ideological Extremity −0.948+ (0.526) Ideological Distance between Parties 0.003 (0.366) SelfExtremity*PartyDistance 1.744∗∗ (0.168) Political Interest 0.801∗ (0.346) Education −0.546∗∗ (0.141) Male −1.296∗∗ (0.374) Black 5.390∗∗ (0.939) Age −0.000 (0.015) Constant 22.339∗∗ 15.167∗∗ (0.917) (1.510) N 26146 13345 Adj.R-Square 0.243 0.328 Source: CDF ANES Notes: Standard errors clustered by year. Robust Standard errors in parentheses. +p<0.10, *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001.

89 Table 3.2: Presidential Candidate Static Evaluation Polarization and Party Identity Strength, 1968-2008

Model 1 Model 2 Strong Partisan 15.730∗∗ 12.775∗∗ (1.185) (0.601) Pure Independent −8.904∗∗ −6.161∗∗ (0.779) (0.850) 4-pt Self Ideological Extremity −1.807∗∗ (0.297) Ideological Distance between Candidates 1.634∗∗ (0.368) SelfExtremity*CandDistance 1.761∗∗ (0.090) Political Interest 2.041∗∗ (0.626) Education −0.544+ (0.265) Male −1.883∗ (0.719) Black −1.042 (1.570) Age −0.011 (0.028) Constant 31.367∗∗ 20.672∗∗ (1.201) (2.023) N 21745 9274 Adj.R-Square 0.096 0.235 Source: CDF ANES Notes: Standard errors clustered by year. Robust Standard errors in parentheses. +p<0.10, *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001.

90 4

Party Identity Strength and Evaluation Polarization

During the 1972 election, as he was walking to his seat at an exhibition football game, Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern recalled that,

“...we had to cross a walk above a section where people were seated. As soon as they saw me, they started to boo. There was a certain amount of applause, too, probably more applause than booing. But the booing wasn’t the good-natured kind. It had a mean, ugly tone. I looked down and I saw hatred, real contempt, on the faces. They were shaking their ﬁsts and shouting ‘Get outta here, ya sonofabitch!’ ”(McGinniss, 1973).

The boos and applause recorded in this account clearly illustrate the evaluation polarization of the public that is often reported to occur during presidential elections. Is a deeply divided and biased public actually a reality? This chapter seeks to address the who and when questions of candidate evaluation polarization produced by biased, motivated reasoning. That is, are some citizens more likely to polarize

91 their evaluations in a biased manner, and if evaluation polarization is found to exist, is it more likely to occur under certain conditions? While Campbell et al.(1960, 133) contend that party identification biases public opinion by “rais[ing] a perceptual screen through which the individual tends to see what is favorable to his partisan orientation,” I propose this perceptual screen and the resulting biases are conditional on strength of identification. The identity linkage theory developed in chapter 2 proposes candidate evaluations become polarized above and beyond that which would be predicted on the basis of ideological preferences for individuals who strongly identify with a political party. Specifically, strong partisans’ evaluations of political actors should become more polarized during times when the candidate is closely connected to a political party. These general hypotheses as developed in chapter 2 are restated below.

Hypothesis 2.3.3: Who? Strong partisans’ static level and rate of polarization in response to a changed party status of a political ﬁgure is predicted to be greater than weaker partisans’.

Hypothesis 2.3.4: When? Candidate evaluations are predicted to be polarized above and beyond normal polarization levels only as long as individuals identify with the candidate because he or she is a salient party symbol. Thus, biased evaluation polarization should be temporary when party status is temporary.

In this chapter, I conduct two separate tests of the identity linkage model’s biased evaluation polarization hypothesis and ﬁnd that strong party identities do independently bias evaluations and contribute to evaluation polarization. First, I draw on pooled survey data to examine the polarization of feeling thermometer ratings gathered over multiple years for six political ﬁgures: Ronald Reagan, Robert Dole, John

92 McCain, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, and Walter Mondale. I find clear evidence that when the party identity link between an individual and candidate is strengthened, candidate thermometer ratings are more likely to be polarized. Strong partisans’ evaluations of a candidate are even more polarized than weaker partisans’ in years when the candidate is nominated or elected president or vice president. Furthermore, the change in a candidate’s party status primarily increases the polarization of strong partisans’ evaluations. Second, I turn to panel data gathered in the 2008 election to test the identity linkage theory predictions. I find that even when controlling for other possible causes of opinion change, strong partisans’ candidate evaluations polarize more than weaker partisans’ after the candidates’ party status increase when they become the formal party nominees. I further demonstrate that the polarization of evaluations is induced by the candidates’ party status, not just their ideological positions. Specifically, pre- election polarization is found to subside after the election in response to the losing candidate’s decline in party status and the decay of identity linkage with strong partisans.

4.1 Pooled Analysis of Political Figure Evaluation Polarization

4.1.1 Data

The American National Election Studies (ANES) first included a battery of feeling thermometer questions for political figures in the 1968 times series study. Since that time, political figure feeling thermometer ratings have been consistently measured in the ANES times series. While the political figure thermometer batteries have always measured ratings of presidential candidates, they also have measured ratings of other political actors. For a few of these political figures, thermometer questions were asked in multiple years which enables the examination of how their evaluations have

93 evolved over time. In this section, I consider the feeling thermometer evaluations of six political figures, three Democrats and three Republicans. The Republican political figures are Ronald Reagan, Robert Dole, and John McCain. The Democratic political figures are George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, and Walter Mondale. These six political figures were specifically selected because their names were included in multiple years’ political figure feeling thermometer question batteries. Furthermore, for all of the figures, thermometer ratings were measured both in years when they held prestigious party positions as well as in years where the political figures played less prominent roles in the political arena. High party status years are defined as those in which the political figure served as the nominated candidate or elected president or vice president. Although party status varies across the years available for each political figure, the distribution of high party status and low party status years differs across the figures. For example, while Carter has thermometer ratings asked only during high and after high status years, McCain has data only available before and during high party status years, and finally, four figures (Reagan, Dole, McGovern, and Mondale) have thermometer ratings from before, during, and after their ascension to a prestigious and salient role in their party.1 Feeling thermometer evaluations can be conceptualized as global measures of candidate evaluation and have been shown to be explained by both beliefs and emotions regarding the candidate (Ottati et al., 1992). The main strengths of the feeling thermometer measure is found in its wide availability and repetition in nationally representative surveys since the late 1960’s. The feeling thermometer is structured to

1 The following are the years for which thermometer ratings are available for each political figure. Years where the political figure was a presidential candidate or elected president are presented in bold font. Vice Presidential candidacies or offices are indicated by italicized font. Reagan: 1968, 1970, 1976, 1978, 1980, 1982, 1984, 1986, 1988, 1990, 2004. Dole: 1976, 1984, 1986, 1988, 1994, 1996. McCain: 1998, 2000, 2004, 2008. McGovern: 1970, 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984. Carter: 1976, 1978, 1980, 1982, 1984, 1988. Mondale: 1974, 1976, 1978, 1980, 1982, 1984.

94 mimic that of a temperature thermometer. Respondents are asked to indicate on a 0 to 100 degree temperature scale how warm or cold they feel toward a set of political ﬁgures. After a brief explanation that separates the 101-point scale into three general categories2, the respondents are shown a card with a visual of the thermometer scale with nine points labeled vertically.3 In an attempt to cull out individuals who don’t know enough about the political ﬁgure to give a meaningful response, respondents are told that if they come to a person they don’t know to tell the interviewer who will just move to the next.

4.1.2 Descriptive Statistics

To explore the aggregate trends in political figure evaluations, weighted means of each candidate’s thermometer ratings disaggregated by year and respondent’s placement on the 7-point party identification scale were calculated. These means are graphically displayed in Figure 4.1 with a separate panel for each political figure.4 Thick solid blue lines and solid circles indicate thermometer ratings made by strong Democrats, thick solid red lines with hollow circles represent strong Repub- lican’s evaluations. Thin blue lines and blue diamonds represent evaluations made by weak Democrats while thin red lines and hollow diamonds are those of weak Re- publicans. Partisan independents are signified by dashed lines and square symbols

2 Respondents were told (with some variation across the years) that ratings between 50 degrees and 100 degrees mean they feel favorable toward the person. Ratings between 0 degrees and 100 degrees mean they don’t feel favorable toward the person and they don’t care too much for that person. Ratings at the 50 degree mark mean they don’t feel particularly warm or cold toward the person. 3 0 degrees: Very cold or unfavorable feeling, 15 degrees: Quite cold or unfavorable feeling, 30 degrees: Fairly cold or unfavorable feeling, 40 degrees: A bit more cold or unfavorable feeling, 50 degrees: No feeling at all, 60 degrees: A bit more warm or favorable than cold feeling, 70 degrees: Fairly warm or favorable feeling, 85 degrees: Quite warm or favorable feeling, 100 degrees: Very warm or favorable feeling. 4 See Tables B.1, B.2, B.3, B.4, B.5, and B.6 in the chapter appendix for the precise means, standard deviations, and sample sizes.

95 96 ain oiia iue n Year and Figure, Political cation, 4.1 Figure Source: ANESTS Notes: Solidverticallinesindicate presidentialcandidatenomination.Dottedvertical linesindicatevicepresidentialcandidacy.

Mean Therm:Reagan Mean Therm: McGovern

1968 0 20 40 60 80 100 1968 0 20 40 60 80 100

1972 1972 oaiaino oiia iueEautos enFeigTemmtrRtnsb -on at Identiﬁ- Party 7-Point by Ratings Thermometer Feeling Mean Evaluations: Figure Political of Polarization :

1976 1976

1980 1980

1984 1984 McGOVERN REAGAN

Year 1988 Year 1988

1992 1992

1996 1996

2000 2000

2004 2004

2008 2008

Mean Therm: Dole Mean Therm: Carter

1968 0 20 40 60 80 100 1968 0 20 40 60 80 100

1972 1972

1976 1976

1980 1980

1984 1984 CARTER DOLE

Year 1988 Year 1988

1992 1992

1996 1996

2000 2000

2004 2004

2008 2008

Mean Therm: McCain Mean Therm: Mondale

1968 0 20 40 60 80 100 1968 0 20 40 60 80 100

1972 1972

1976 1976

1980 1980 ALL IndPure IndRep IndDem WkRep WkDem StgRep StgDem 1984 1984 MONDALE MCCAIN

Year 1988 Year 1988

1992 1992

1996 1996

2000 2000

2004 2004

2008 2008 with the blue lines and solid squares corresponding to independents who feel closer to the Democratic Party and red lines and hollow squares corresponding to mean thermometer ratings of respondents who identify as independent but feel closer to the Republican Party. The average thermometer ratings of pure independents are displayed with dotted lines and small “x” symbols. Finally, the overall mean thermometer rating of a political figure in a year is shown by a light gray line and a plus symbol. For each political figure, a vertical gray line is displayed on the figure for years where the political figure participated in the general election as a presidential candidate. Dotted vertical lines reveal years where the political figure ran as the vice presidential candidate in the general presidential election. Polarization in Figure 4.1 can be visually approximated as distance from the overall mean evaluation of a political figure within the respective year. When the disaggregated means of McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Reagan, Dole, and McCain are examined collectively, two clear patterns emerge. First, it is clear to see that political figure evaluations are not stable over time. Instead, mean thermometer ratings appear to be more polarized and extreme in years indicated by the vertical lines where party status of the political figures should be higher. That is, evaluations clearly polarize in years where the figure ran as president, and to a lesser degree in years where they ran as vice presidential candidates. Second, while strong partisans’ evaluations are consistently more extreme than weaker partisans’ evaluations in most years, strong partisans’ evaluations often appear to be more sensitive to changes in a political figure’s party status. When each political figure’s party status over the available years is qualitatively considered, a clear correlation between a political figure’s party status and evaluation polarization in Figure 4.1 emerges. As a U.S. House representative (1957-1961)

97 and senator (1963-1981) from South Dakota, McGovern was not a stranger to the Democratic Party before 1972 when he ran as the Democratic Party presidential candidate. In 1968, he even entered the Democratic Party nomination race at the last minute following the assassination of Bobby Kennedy to carry Kennedy’s (but not Eugene McCarthy’s) torch for the anti-Vietnam war faction of the Democratic Party. While McGovern’s 1968 nomination bid was unsuccessful, the chaotic proceedings of the Democratic National Convention lead to McGovern’s appointment as chairman of the Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection. From this position, McGovern and his committee made substantial changes to the party nomination and convention rules that transferred power from established party elites to mass partisans. However, I would argue that political ﬁgures are merged with individuals’ party identities only when they obtain the nationally salient and prestigious position such as that of presidential or vice presidential candidate. As expected, the mean thermometer ratings of McGovern disaggregated by party identiﬁcation are dramatically polarized more in 1972 when he was a presidential nominee than in 1970 when his connection with the party was less salient. Furthermore, the polarization of McGovern’s evaluations appears to be temporary and restricted to his high party status period in 1972. Following the 1972 election which was decided against McGovern by a landslide vote, McGovern was distanced from the Democratic party as a result of his loss. In 1976, his desire to run again for president was immediately squashed by party elites (Marano, 2003, 17) and in 1980 he became even more disconnected from the Democratic Party when he lost his senate seat during the “Reagan Revolution.” In 1984 McGovern ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. Although McGovern was one of the contenders in the 1984 Democratic nomination race, he was not a front-runner and ran primarily to push the campaign issue agenda further to the left. Throughout the post-1972

98 period as McGovern’s party status diminished, mean evaluations shown in Figure 4.1 also appear to have depolarized. The only other political ﬁgure for whom thermometer ratings are available before, during, and after running as a party’s nominated presidential candidate is Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan began to establish a party reputation at the national level as a result of his involvement in the 1964 Barry Goldwater campaign and the 1966 California gubernatorial race. The enthusiastic national reception of the “Time for Choosing” speech given by Reagan on behalf of Goldwater during the 1964 campaign contributed to Reagan becoming the de facto heir of Goldwater and symbolic head of the conservative wing of the Republican Party. When combined with his landslide win of the 1966 gubernatorial race and “genius for communicating on television,” many Republicans saw him as either a dark horse candidate in the 1968 Republican nomination race, or at least a natural successor to Richard Nixon who was expected to win the nomination (Weaver, 1967). Although Reagan formally declared a “non- candidacy” role in the 1968 Republican Party nomination season, he clearly tested the waters with multiple visits to key states such as Iowa and New Hampshire and more conservative states in the South (Wicker, 1968b). And while Reagan did not formally campaign in the 1968 primaries, supporters independently spent a substantial amount of money airing advertisements in favor of Reagan and Reagan’s name was included on the ballot in the 1968 Republican National Convention (Wicker, 1968a). In 1970, Reagan was easily re-elected governor of California. And by 1975, Reagan decided to contest the incumbent president, Gerald Ford, in the Republican party’s nomination race. Although Ford would be running as an incumbent president, his candidacy was plagued by weakness. First, Ford, as an appointee by Nixon following the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew in 1973, had never before run as part

99 of a presidential campaign. Second, Ford was unfortunately somewhat connected to the very unpopular Richard Nixon as his vice presidential candidate. In light of these factors, Reagan entered the race, ran neck to neck with Ford in primaries and conventions across the country, and only narrowly lost the Republican Party’s nomination. Finally, in 1980, Reagan once again sought the Republican Party’s nomination, but this time was the favored candidate and won the nomination by a large margin. As seen in Figure 4.1, while Reagan’s thermometer ratings do appear to polarize slightly before his winning the Republican Party’s nomination in 1980, evaluations look to be more polarized in 1980 and other years where Reagan held the office of president. Not until 1990 when Reagan was no longer president, do evaluations become less polarized. Once again, these data suggest presidential status seems to be at least correlated with the polarization of evaluations. For Jimmy Carter, thermometer ratings are only available during and after presidential election years, but there does appear to be more polarization in presidential years than in years where Carter was not serving as the active president. However, the depolarization of the political figures, Carter and Reagan, who actually served as president, does appear to be less dramatic than McGovern who only ran as a presidential candidate. Nonetheless, for all of these cases, the patterns of depolarization do seem to correspond to a decline in political figure party status. If party status is the key to linking a political figure to an individual’s party identification, vice-presidential candidacies should also produce a polarization of evaluations. Of the political figures included in this analysis, both Robert Dole and Walter Mondale ran for vice president for the respective Republican and Democratic party in the 1976 election. And for both of these political figures, evaluations do appear to become more polarized in response to their vice presidential candidacies.

100 In addition to his unsuccessful forays as the Republican party vice-presidential candidate in 1976 and presidential candidate in 1996, Bob Dole held other party leadership positions. As he served as a representative from Kansas in the U.S. House from January 1961 to January 1963 and a senator from Kansas from January 1969 to June 1996, Robert Dole also held the party positions of Chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1971 to 1973, Senate Minority Leader from January 1987 to January 1995, and Senate Majority Leader from January 1985 to January 1987 and then again from January 1995 to June 1996. Dole also participated in the 1980 and 1988 Republican presidential nomination campaigns, but due to very poor standing dropped out before the national convention in both years. However, for the most part Dole’s prestigious party positions in the Congress do not appear to correspond with greater polarization of his thermometer ratings. This leads to the tenuous qualiﬁcation that only a few party positions are likely to be prestigious and salient enough to actually link a political ﬁgure with a party identity for all partisans across the country. It is important to note, though, that evaluations of Dole clearly polarized in 1994, two years before his actual nomination as the Republican Party president. While beyond the scope of this analysis, the 1994 polarization of Dole’s evaluations may have occurred because during the 1994 congressional elections, the Republican Party, and Dole as the Senate minority leader of the party, played a clear and organized role. Thus, the polarization potential of high party status might be dependent on a high saliency of the individual’s role in the position as well. While Dole’s evaluations depolarized after the Republican loss in 1976, Mondale’s appear to remain somewhat more polarized as his link to the party was maintained while he served as vice president. However, for both of these candidates, evaluations in years where they ran as presidential candidates (1984 for Mondale and 1996 for

101 Dole) do seem to be more polarized than those in the vice presidential status years. Finally, the influence of strength of party identity on individual’s evaluations is very clearly illustrated in the thermometer ratings of John McCain. For most of his political career, John McCain could be argued to be the anti-thesis of polarization. A self-declared “maverick,” McCain is well known for his bi-partisan co-sponsoring of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act in 2002 (commonly referred to as the McCain- Feingold Act) which most Republicans thought would harm their party and at times specifically voted against the party-line.5 In the 110th Congress that spanned 2007- 2008, McCain’s DW-NOMINATE score of 0.412 was much lower (moderate) than the mean Republican senator score of 0.592. Additionally, John McCain, for the most part, did not have a particularly strong connection to the Republican party before he became the party nominee in 2008. McCain did run in the 2000 Republican presidential nomination race, but he appealed mostly to independent voters against the “establishment” party candidate, George W. Bush. Therefore this bid for the 2000 nomination did not develop any greater connection between John McCain and the Republican Party (Berke, 1999). Because of McCain’s relative separation from the Republican Party and moderate ideology, any dramatic changes in the polarization of McCain evaluations over time cannot be attributed to him being an extreme, partisan, or polarizing option. Although McCain by himself is not a polarizing object, I argue that by simply being connected to the Republican Party as the Republican nominee for president, he was linked to individuals through their partisan identities and was transformed into a figure to be protected by in-party members and battled by out-party members. In Figure 4.1, very little polarization in McCain evaluations is apparent in the years where he had no formal connection to the Republican Party. But with the

5 For example, McCain supported a tax on tobacco in 1998 which most Republicans strongly opposed.

102 Table 4.1: McCain’s First Dimension DW-NOMINATE Scores; 105 - 110 Congress

Year Congress 1stDim SE 1997-1998 105 0.366 0.026 1999-2000 106 0.376 0.032 2001-2002 107 0.385 0.038 2003-2004 108 0.394 0.044 2005-2006 109 0.403 0.051 2007-2008 110 0.412 0.057 2009-2010 111 0.421 0.064 Source: Poole and Rosenthal’s Voteview database. Notes: Nominate scores range from -1 (most liberal) to 1 (most conservative). nomination of McCain as the Republican Party presidential candidate in 2008, evaluations of McCain become clearly polarized along partisan lines with strong partisans displaying a greater change in mean evaluation scores than weak partisans. It is possible that there was more partisan polarization over McCain in 2008 compared to 2004 and 2000 if McCain became more conservative during the 2008 presidential campaign season. However, DW-Nominate scores for McCain do not appear to fluctuate dramatically from 1998 to 2008 as seen in Table 4.1. Another year-level factor that might drive evaluation polarization trends could be the change in salience of McCain over the time period examined. It may be that evaluations of McCain were more neutral before 2008 merely because people did not know who he was, and they automatically rate unknown figures at the neutral 50-point on the feeling thermometer. Despite his giving a speech at the 1988 Republican Party National Convention, John McCain was not very well known nationally when the ANES first asked respondents to rate him on the feeling thermometer in 1998. While only 3 percent of the sample failed to rate the Republican Party on the feeling

103 thermometer in 1998, the 1998 McCain thermometer question had a extremely large non-response rate of 70 percent. In 2000, John McCain gained greater national recognition on account of his bid for the Republican nomination in the 2000 presidential elections. Furthermore, McCain was able to attract a good amount of media attention with his unexpected win of the New Hampshire primary and role as target of particularly negative push-polling in South Carolina. His ascension to the national spotlight corresponds with a notable reduction in the non-response for the McCain thermometer question in the 2000 and 2004 ANES surveys. Compared the the 70 percent non-response in 1998, only around 22 percent failed to fill out the McCain thermometer rating in 2000 and 2004. Despite the rise in McCain’s name recognition and his run for the Republican Party’s nomination in 2000, only a minimal amount of partisan divergence is seen in mean evaluations of McCain displayed in Figure 4.1. The lack of polarization in 2000 suggests that increased salience and name-recognition of person might not be a strong contributor to evaluation polarization.6 Overall, the dynamics of these six political figures’ evaluations when disaggregated by party identity and year reveal strong partisans as a group do appear to become more polarized in their evaluations. This evaluation polarization is especially seen in years when the political figures were nominated or elected president or vice president compared to other years when the figures maintained a more distant relationship with the respective party. Yet, to strengthen the claim of the identity linkage theory that this polarization is a product of bias rather than learning, a more in-depth analysis that accounts for causes of political evaluation polarization other than identity strength needs to be conducted.

6 Of course, John McCain’s public image became much more generally known in 2008, so the comparison of 2000’s partisan evaluation divergence is not directly comparable to 2008 on levels of public recognition of the person.

104 4.1.3 Model

As seen in Figure 4.1, the differences in the number and range of years available for each political figure in addition to differences in overall polarization levels and trends between the figures serves as motivation for a model that addresses the political figure level structure of the data. I estimate the interactive influence of political figure party status and respondent party identity strength on evaluation polarization through a multilevel model that allows the intercept and coefficients to randomly vary for each political figure. The use of a multilevel, or hierarchical, model provides a generalized estimate of how increased party identity linkage with a political figure influences evaluation polarization without ignoring the clustered nature of the data. Thus while distinct regressions conducted for each political figure may produce precise estimates of how that figure’s changed party status influences his evaluations, the results are restricted to the particular candidate, and this no-pooling analysis potentially overfits the data within each candidate.7 Alternatively, testing the model on a completely pooled dataset ignores variation between candidates and potentially leads to incorrect standard errors and increases the chance of finding significant effects where there are none (inflated Type I error) (Steenbergen and Jones, 2002; Gelman and Hill, 2007). The basic model examined at the individual level interacts respondents’ party identity strength with a temporal indicator of political figure party status controlling for other individual level factors that may also influence evaluation polarization such as respondent ideology extremity, party affiliation, political interest, age, gender, race, and level of education. The multilevel model allows the intercept and all of the coefficients to randomly vary for each political figure around an underlying common value as is shown in the following notation.8

7 See Table B.7 and Figure B.1 for the unpooled estimates. Figure B.2 presents the marginal eﬀects calculated for each group in the interaction. 8 While the notation and the model conducted in this paper uses a random eﬀects covariance

105 2 yij ∼ N(β0j + β1jx1ij + β2jx2ij + ... + β10jx12ij, σy), for i = 1, ..., n

      2 β0j µ0 σ0 0 0 0            2   β1j   µ1   0 σ 0 0       1    ∼ N   ,   , for j = 1, ..6  ...   ...   0 0 ... 0              2 β12j µ12 0 0 0 σ12

The dependent variable of political figure evaluation polarization is operationalized as a measure of how extreme an individual’s thermometer rating of the political figure is relative to the mean rating of the figure in a respective year. That is, polarization is the absolute value of an individuals’ standardized thermometer rating of a political candidate.

|xitj − µtj| pitj = sdtj

Where xitj is individual i’s thermometer rating of candidate j in year t, µtj is the weighted mean thermometer rating for candidate j in year t, and sdtj is the weighted standard deviation for candidate j in year t. The central concept of strength of party identity linkage is modeled as an interaction between a measure of a respondent’s party identity strength and a year level measure that captures the salience and status of the political figure within a political party (party status). The across-year variation in identity linkage (political figure’s party status) is captured with a dummy variable that equals one for years when the political figure was either the nominee for or actual holder of the presidency or vice structure based on the identity matrix where parameters are assumed to have zero covariance, the more general model does allow for potential covariance between parameters.

106 presidency. The between person variation in identity linkage is captured through a dummy variable that equals one if an individual self-identified as either a strong Republican or a strong Democrat and zero otherwise. While some debate exists regarding the comparability of the identity strength of independents who feel closer to one party (“leaner independents”) and partisans who describe themselves as “weak” (Weis- berg, 1980; Greene, 2000), weak and leaner independents have shown to appear very similar on many dimensions (Keith et al., 1986, 1992). While weak and leaner independents may not be completely comparable groups, strong partisans should have stronger identities than all other identification levels. Furthermore because of the similarity of independent partisans and weak partisans’ mean evaluation levels seen in the descriptive statistics in Figure 4.1, I chose to use a binary measure of party identity strength for this model rather than the four point measure to aid the ease of interpretation of the interactions within the model. Figure 4.2 displays the means of the positive standardized (within year and candidate) thermometer scores for the entire population as well as for the weak and strong partisan sub-populations. These descriptive statistics suggest that strong partisan’s evaluations of political figures tend to be more extreme and more dynamic than weaker partisans.9 While my theory proposes that individuals who are linked more with candidates as a result of party identities should bias their evaluations of that candidate and the opposing candidate in order to maintain positive party identities, it is important to recognize that evaluation polarization can also result from learning more about how each particular candidate fits best with individual preferences. To address alternative

9 Note that this operationalization of polarization compared to the mean evaluations presented in Figure 4.1 causes McGovern’s 1972 polarization to appear to continue in 1976 and causes vice presidential candidacies to appear more polarized.

107 o hnesbtniey l te er o l oiia grswr eandi h analysis. the in retained were figures political all for years other All substantively. change not in interest of measure three-point a to with for ability controlled and is awareness information political Political process “moderate/middle conservative/liberal.” “extremely from to ranges road” that the extremity of ideological of measure four-point a all in analysis. asked the consistently in are included that years measures limited finding a of in difficulty but the of for, because controlled fashion are range explanations wide alternative the included, and model series the times of of nature pooled the the of in because Unfortunately, included are model. controls several change, opinion individual-level for explanations Political Strength, Identity Party Year Respondent and by Figure, Ratings Thermometer Feeling ized 4.2 Figure 10 h nlso fcnrl eurdm odo h 98dt o egn oee h eut did results the however Reagan, for data 1968 the drop to me required controls of inclusion The oaiainta a eutfo dooia rfrne sacutdfrwith for accounted is preferences ideological from result may that Polarization Mean Evaluation Polarization Source: PooledANESTimeSeries.95%CIaroundmeans.Polarization=abs(standardizedthermrating) .6 .8 1 1.2 .6 .8 1 1.2 1968

1972 oaiaino oiia iueEautos enPstv Standard- Positive Mean Evaluations: Figure Political of Polarization :

1976

1980

1984 McGovern Reagan 1988

1992

1996

2000

2004

2008 10

togWa ALL Weak Strong 1968 Respondent PIDStrength 1972

1976

1980 108

Year 1984 Carter

1988 Dole

1992

1996

2000

2004

2008

1968

1972

1976

1980

1984 Mondale McCain 1988

1992

1996

2000

2004

2008 campaigns, and a seven point measure of an individual’s level of education. Finally, I account for standard demographics of gender, race, and age. In addition to these factors, I control for actual party affiliation with the acknowledgement that in-party evaluation polarization may differ from out-party evaluation polarization. To control for party affiliation dummies for Democrats11 and pure independents are included in the model so Republicans serve as the reference group. If higher levels of party identity linkage biases and polarizes individuals’ political figure evaluations as predicted by the identity linkage theory, I would expect the interaction of individual-level measures of identity strength with the year-level changed party status of a political figure to be significant even when controlling for unbiased learning factors. First, the difference between strong and weak partisans’ evaluation polarization levels should be greater in years where political figures have high party status than in years where the political figures’ role in the party is less prominent. Second, a political figure’s change in party status should polarize evaluations of strong partisans more than those of weaker partisans. In other words, strong partisans are hypothesized to have evaluations that are more extreme (as indicated by a larger deviation away from that year’s mean rating of a political figure) than weaker partisans in response to political figures’ transformation into a party symbol and new connection to their party identities.12

11 Partisan independents are coded as affiliating with the respective Democratic or Republican Party. 12 In the following models, alternative explanations are accounted for by simply including control variables. However, to ensure the influence of party status is moderated by party identity strength rather than some other factor, a model specification that interacts the controls with the key variable of interest, party status, is needed. See Tables E.1 through E.4 and Figures E.1 through E.4 for these alternative model specifications. Because the results remained robust and similar, this chapter refers to the more parsimonious model form.

109 4.1.4 Results

Consistent with the identity linkage theory predictions, polarization does appear to be amplified when political figures are more linked to an individual’s party identity. Figure 4.3 (which corresponds to Table B.8 in the appendix) presents the results of the random effects model in which respondent party identity strength and political figure party status are allowed to interact and influence evaluation polarization.13 In Figure 4.3, the significant and positive interaction between a respondent’s strength of identity and the political figure’s party status supports the identity linkage theory expectation that evaluations become more polarized as a political figure is more attached to the identity of partisans who identify strongly with a political party. Of the controls included in this model to account for learning-produced evaluation polarization, ideological extremity and campaign interest are found to also significantly increase the likelihood of evaluation polarization. However, while learning may contribute to evaluation polarization, the robust effect of party linkage indicates that polarization is also a function of bias and motivated reasoning. Presented in the right column of Table B.8 (see appendix), the significant estimated variances for all of the random effect parameters other than the interaction term reveal that adjusting for the nested-level error structure is justified. Further- more, a likelihood ratio test (χ2 = 361.73 , p-value = 0.000) comparing the model to an ordinary regression table and a likelihood ratio test (χ2 = 25.26 , p-value = 0.000) comparing the model to one in which just the intercept was allowed to vary show the random effects model in which both the intercept and slopes are allowed

13 For a point of comparison, Table B.7 and Figure B.1 present the estimates of parallel models estimated separately for each candidate. The corresponding marginal effects of party identity strength and party status are shown in Figure B.2. While some differences can be seen across the political figures’ estimates, overall, the separate OLS regression results generally correspond to the grand estimates found in the random effect model.

110 PID Strength p−value <= 0.05 Party Status p−value > 0.05

PIDStg*PartyStatus

Democrat

Pure Indp

Ideological Extremity

Interested in Campaigns

Education

Coefficients (95% CI) Male

Black

Age

Intercept −.1 0 .1 .2 .3 .4 Evaluation Polarization DV = abs. value standardized (within year/figure) therm. ratings

Figure 4.3: Table B.8 Coefficient Plot: Random Effects Model of Party Status, Party Identity Strength, and Political Figure Polarization to vary across political figures is a significant improvement.14 The significance and magnitude of the marginal effect of individual party identity strength when a political figure’s party status is low or the marginal effect of party status when an individual has a weak party identity on polarization can be easily interpreted by looking at the lower term estimates for strong partisan and party status in Figure 4.3. However, the higher term marginal effects’ magnitude and significance

14 Table B.10 in the appendix presents the predicted political figure-level random effects and their corresponding standard errors. Significant random effects indicate that political figure’s coefficient for the respective variable is significantly different from the common model estimate. For example, the the influence of being Democrat, more educated, more interested, and older on evaluation polarization is significantly muted for Carter. The effect of party identity strength, party status, and the interaction of the two on evaluation polarization does not appear to vary significantly across the political figures. Examining the random effects for the intercept, Carter emerges as have the greatest base level of polarization.

111 u nplrzto o ieetvle fidvda at dniysrnt sshown. is strength identity party individual of values different for polarization on tus party a becomes figure manipulation political a symbol. indirect when the occurs to which strength respond identification clearly party partisans of strong party high see a we has Thus, figure political a status. when degree years partisans’ in party greater weaker significantly high and is polarization and partisans’ of low strong between both difference in the partisans years, weaker status than more ( polarize strength partisans identity strong party individual’s Figure an in strength of panel identity left effect The marginal seen. the clearly presents be 4.4 can identification effects, derived of marginal these power are From polarizing effects 4.4. the Figure marginal in displayed of and combinations appendix) all in B.9 Therefore, Table (see seen. easily as not are the B.8 from Table Derived in Polarization: Estimates Evaluation Model Figure Effects Political Random on Status Party Figures’ 4.4 Figure h agnleeto oiia gr’ at sta- party figure’s political a of effect marginal the 4.4, Figure of panel right the In agnlEet fRsodn at dniySrnt n Political and Strength Identity Party Respondent of Effects Marginal : d(Evaluation Polarization)/d(PID Strength) −.05 .05 .15 with 95%CI

.Wietepstv n infiatmria ffcsso that show effects marginal significant and positive the While ). Marginal EffectofPIDStrength Low Party Status High

112

d(Evaluation Polarization)/d(Party Status) −.05 .05 .15 with 95%CI

Marginal EffectofPartyStatus Party IDStrength Weak Strong

party In this graph, the moderating effect of an individual’s party identification strength on the polarizing effect of a political figure’s party status is even more dramatic. The change in a political figure’s party status has no effect on the polarization of weak partisans’ evaluations. However, strong partisans’ evaluations are significantly more polarized in years when a political figure held a presidential or vice-presidential position than in years when the party status was not as significant or salient. Overall, the evidence is consistent with the prediction that identity strength matters when it comes to polarizing evaluations. Strong partisans are more responsive to the changes in political figures’ party status which alter the degree of identity linkage between the partisan and the candidate. When a stronger identity link is established, partisans are more likely to report more extreme evaluations of the candidate as they attempt to preserve the positive value of their social identity through biased in-party bolstering and out-party derogation. This section provides convincing evidence that identity strength moderates the degree of candidate evaluation polarization, but ultimately, the ability to make clear causal inferences from my individual level theory from the pooled cross-sectional data is limited. To really uncover whether strong partisans’ candidate evaluations change more than weaker partisans in response to changes in party identity linkage with political figures, panel data that tracks individual level evaluations over time is necessary. Furthermore, elections as comparative contexts clearly link evaluations of two figures. Thus, a stronger measure of evaluation polarization would be one that captures polarization of an individual’s evaluations of the two major party’s presidential candidates and can account for individual level change in opinions over time. It is this individual level polarization of comparative candidate evaluations that the following section addresses in the context of the 2008 election.

113 4.2 Panel Analysis of Presidential Candidate Evaluation Polarization

With the absence of any actual or symbolic incumbent candidate, the 2008 presidential campaign season was unusual as both parties’ saw presidential candidates transition from a low party status to a high party status with the advent of their nominations. A large number of candidates ran in both the Republican and Democratic Party nomination races.15 As a result of the large number of contending candidates in both parties’ nomination processes, no candidate should have been highly symbolic of either party during January 2008 as primaries and caucuses began to be conducted across the United States. On March 4, John McCain became the presumptive Republican Party nominee by passing the 1,191 delegate threshold needed to secure the nomination. And on the following day, President George W. Bush’s formal endorsement of McCain continued to increase the linkage between McCain and the Republican Party. While the Republican nomination was decided relatively quickly, the battle among Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama was long and extended right up to the last primaries and caucuses held on June 6. However, in the days following June 6, endorsements of the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, were made by prominent Democratic Party leaders, including former vice president Al Gore, to signal his new elevated party status. Thus, in 2008, the identity linkage theory would predict evaluations of Barack Obama and John McCain should become more polarized only after their primary

15 The 2008 nomination candidate list was quite extensive for both parties. In the Republican Party, the candidates were John McCain (Senator, AZ), Mitt Romney (former Governor, MA), Rudy Giuliani (former Mayor, NYC, NY), Mike Huckabee (former Governor, AR), Fred Thompson (former Senator, TN), Ron Paul (Representative, TX), Duncan Hunter (Representative, CA), Tom Tancredo (Representative, CO), Sam Brownback (Senator, KS), and Jim Gilmore (former Governor, VA). The Democratic Party’s slate of nomination candidates included Barack Obama (Senator, IL), Hillary Rodham Clinton (Senator, NY), John Edwards (former Senator, NC), Bill Richardson (Governor, NM), Joe Biden (Senator, DE), Christopher Dodd (Senator, CT), Dennis Kucinich (Representative, OH), Tom Vilsack (former Governor, IA), and Mike Gravel (former Senator, AK).

114 wins transformed them into party symbols and linked them to party identities. Fur- thermore, the change in the presidential candidates’ party status should produce a greater rate of polarization for individuals who strongly identify with a political party. Finally, this polarization is expected to be conditional on the candidate’s party status and evaluations are expected to depolarize, especially for strong partisans, after the election as a result of McCain’s loss and diminished party status. This section draws on the 2008-2009 ANES Panel Study data and ﬁnds party identity strength moderates the dynamics of candidate evaluation polarization even when controlling for alternative explanations.16

4.2.1 Data

The 2008-2009 American National Election Study (ANES) Panel Study is part of a larger panel study composed of twenty-one waves of Internet surveys conducted from January 2008 (Wave 1) to September 2009 (Wave 21). The sample was recruited via telephone and then surveyed via the Internet. Results can be generalized to the national population when the appropriate cumulative panel weights are employed. The ANES was able to place political questions on only ten of the total twenty-one waves.17 Waves secured by the ANES include January 2008 (Wave 1), February 2008 (Wave 2), June 2008 (Wave 6), September 2008 (Wave 9), October 2008 (Wave 10), November 2008 (Wave 11), January 2009 (Wave 13), May 2009 (Wave 17), July 2009 (Wave 19), and August 2009 (Wave 20). For each wave, surveys were completed throughout the month of that wave. For example, the surveys were completed for Wave 9 within the window beginning on September 3 and ending on October 2.

16 The study by Bargsted(2010) is closely related to this analysis as it too examines how opinions change at different rates across a campaign for different partisan identifiers. However, my work expands his analysis as I claim polarization is conditional on identity strength and as my theory makes and tests post-election predictions. 17 The wave number corresponds to month number starting in January 2008.

115 Wave 10’s window began on October 2 and ended November 3. Unlike the ANES time series studies which are constrained by goals of continuity with earlier studies, the 2008-2009 Panel Study, as a distinct study, took the op- portunity to use new measures that incorporate advances in survey research design and wording. As a result, rather than using the traditional feeling thermometer question to measure affective evaluations, like and dislike was measured using a set of branching questions with comprehensive, mutually exclusive, and substantively labeled response options. The respondent was first asked if he or she liked, disliked or neither liked or disliked a specified object. Then the respondent was given a question that asked about the intensity (a great deal, a moderate amount, a little) if he or she reported either liking or disliking the object. Using these branching questions, I derived a seven-point scale of candidate affect that ranged from “dislike a great deal” to “like a great deal” for John McCain and Barack Obama and other selected figures and groups. The like/dislike questions for McCain and Obama were asked in January 2008, February 2008, June 2008, September 2008, October 2008, and May 2009. A standard seven-point summary measure of partisan identification direction and strength is created from three traditionally phrased branching party identification questions that were asked in the January wave of the panel.18

4.2.2 Descriptive Statistics

Figure 4.5 presents the mean like-dislike evaluations of the two 2000 presidential nominees, John McCain and Barack Obama; as well as mean like-dislike evaluations of the Republican and Democratic Party; other participants in the 2008 election,

18 Generally speaking, do you usually think of yourself as a (Democrat/Republican), a (Democrat/Republican), an independent, or what?; Would you call yourself a strong (Demo- crat/Republican) or a not very strong (Democrat/Republican)?; Do you think of yourself closer to the Republican Party or to the Democratic Party?

116 MCCAIN REPUBLICAN PARTY

6 6

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6 6

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BUSH (George H.W.).

5 StgDem

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Jul08 Jul09 IndRep Jan08Mar08May08 Sep08Nov08Jan09Mar09May09 Source: 2008-2009 ANES Panel Study IndPure

Figure 4.5: Mean Political Figure and Party Like/Dislike Evaluations by 7-point Party Identification and Month, January 2008 - May 2009 117 Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden; and the incumbent president, George H.W. Bush.19 The means are weighted and disaggregated by respondent’s seven-point party identification and month.20 While the evaluations and Barack Obama and John McCain are the focus of this section’s analysis, the mean evaluations of the two major political parties and other political figures are included in Figure 4.5 to serve as descriptive reference points. Because a party is constantly linked to individuals via their party identifications, the polarization of party evaluations should be relatively stable. Also, if becoming the presumptive party nominee transforms a candidate into a party symbol and creates a new identity link between the candidate and party identifiers, we should see candidate evaluations polarize to party levels over the course of the campaign. Furthermore, post-election evaluations should depolarize for the losing candidate and remain steady or continue to polarize for the winning candidate who formally becomes the head of his party. Finally, all of these trends should be more exaggerated for strong identifiers. Each of these expected patterns are to some degree seen in the disaggregated means in Figure 4.5. First, the mean party evaluations do appear to be relatively polarized and stable, especially those of the Democratic Party. Second, the general election (September and October) like-dislike rating of both McCain and Obama do appear to be distributed to the same degree as the party evaluations while the evaluations in the nomination period (January and February) are clearly less polarized, especially for McCain. And finally, while Obama evaluations after the election remain polarized despite a constant upward shift across all identity levels, McCain evalu-

19 See Tables B.11, B.12, B.14, and B.13 in the appendix for the corresponding means, standard deviations, and number of observations. 20 Note that the party and presidential candidate evaluations were measured in the same months for all but the pre-election waves of the panel survey. Following the election, candidate like-dislike was measured in May 2009 while party like-dislike was measured in July 2009.

118 ations clearly depolarize in a manner consistent with the identity linkage theory’s hypothesis. While Obama’s evaluations are more polarized than McCain’s evaluations in January 2008, they still exhibit some increased polarization after Obama’s actual win of the nomination during the general election campaign period. Further summary evidence in support of the party identity linkage theory is seen in Joe Biden’s mean evaluation polarization trends. Biden’s evaluations appear to polarize only after his party status increased when he was selected as Obama’s vice- presidential candidate. Biden’s evaluations are actually quite similar to McCain as they are relatively neutral across all identity levels in January and February but then become much more extreme for strong partisans during the general election period. However, while McCain’s evaluations appear to depolarize after the election which I argue is a product of his disconnection from the party, Biden’s win and continued close connection to the Democratic Party corresponds to a stability in the polarization of his evaluations. The relative stability in Hillary Clinton and and George H.W. Bush evaluations provide an important contrast and speculative caveat to the evaluation polarization predictions of the identity linkage theory. That is, it is likely that less crystallized and more initially polarized evaluations are more likely to be biased by changes in identity linkage. While the change is very small, strong Republican evaluations of Clinton do appear to become less extreme as she became less threatening due to her loss of the Democratic Party nomination. However, the depolarization is small and leads to the speculation that changes in identity linkage may be less consequential for political ﬁgures whose evaluations are already polarized. Second, the identity linkage theory would expect to see a depolarization of George H.W. Bush evaluations after Obama’s inauguration as president. While a small visible decline is seen in strong partisan’s evaluations, the depolarization is again very small. This leads to the

119 speculation which cannot be tested in this analysis, but should still be considered, that the depolarization of former presidents’ evaluations may take longer than that of defeated challenger candidates’. Although the patterns seen in the means in Figure 4.5 do appear to support my general hypotheses, I now proceed to a formal analysis that examines individual level changes in evaluation polarization and accounts for other non-biased sources of opinion change that might be driving the candidate evaluation polarization trends.

4.2.3 Models

To test how changes in a candidate’s party status and individual’s strength of party identity influence evaluation polarization, I examine two basic models. The first model estimates the effect of party identity strength as the candidate’s party status increased from the nomination period (January 2008) to the general election period (October 2008). In this model, the dependent variable of comparative dynamic evaluation polarization is operationalized as the January to October change in the absolute difference between an individual’s like-dislike scores of Obama and McCain:

pi = |oi(t+1) − mi(t+1)| − |oi(t) − mi(t)|

Where oi(t+1) is individual i’s like-dislike score of Barack Obama in October 2008

(t+1 ), mi(t+1) is individual i’s like-dislike score of John McCain in October 2008

(t+1 ), oi(t) is individual i’s like-dislike score of Barack Obama in January 2008 (t),

and mi(t) is individual i’s like-dislike score of John McCain in January 2008 (t). When positive, the comparative evaluation polarization measure indicates the aﬀective distance between candidates increased while negative scores indicate depolarization in aﬀective distance. The comparative evaluation polarization measure ranges from -6 to 6.

120 The second model estimates the effect of party identity strength as the McCain’s party status declined during the post-election period from October 2008 to May 2009. In this model, the dependent variables is again a measure of comparative evaluation polarization with t+1 corresponding to evaluations made in May 2009 and t corresponding to evaluations made in October 2008. The independent variable of interest is the strength of an individual’s party identity which is measured through a dummy variable that equals one for individuals who identified as either strong Democrat or strong Republican and zero otherwise. In the pre-election model, I expect this estimate to be positive showing strong partisans’ evaluations polarized at a greater rate than weaker partisans in response to the changed party status of the candidates. And conversely, I expect strength of identity to have a negative effect on polarization following the election when McCain no longer served as a salient party symbol. In addition to identity strength, several other controls are accounted for in both the pre-election and post-election models.21 Strength of prior evaluations is measured as the absolute difference between Obama and McCain’s like/dislike scores reported during the first wave in January of 2008. Motivated reasoning theories would predict that individual’s whose evaluations of the candidates were initially more polarized should be more likely to polarize their evaluations of the candidates over the course of the campaign as they strive for evaluative consistency. Other controls included in the models are predicted to increase comparative evaluation polarization under unbiased learning theories. Several variables seek to capture the individual’s level of political sophistication and ability to receive and process information about the political candidates. Respondent sophistication and awareness

21 When possible, the controls are taken from the ﬁrst (January) or second (February) wave to minimize the likelihood of an endogenous relationship.

121 of politics is measured through a knowledge index,22 media exposure,23 education, and interest in politics. An individual’s ideological extremity24 is controlled under the assumption that more extreme respondents should should increase liking one candidate and decrease liking the other as they learn more about the candidate’s ideological stances during the campaign. Similarly, I am able to account for pre- election polarization that may occur if individuals’ learning leads them to perceive the two candidates as more extreme over the course of the campaign. Change in perceived ideological distance between Obama and McCain is calculated as the absolute difference between an individual’s rating of Obama and McCain on the 7 point liberal/conservative scale in October minus an equivalent score calculated in June.25 Finally, standard demographic variables are included. I control for actual party affiliation with the acknowledgement that in-party evaluation polarization may differ from out-party evaluation polarization. To control for party affiliation, dummies for

22 Political knowledge is an additive index ranging from 0 to 6. One point was added for correct answers obtained from six political knowledge questions. The index was construct from six items asked in the second wave (February 2008): 1) How many times can an individual be elected President of the United States under current laws? 2) For how many years is a United States Senator elected- that is, how many years are there in one full term of office for the U.S. Senator? 3) How many U.S. Senators are there from each state? 4) For how many years is a member of the United States House of Representatives elected–that is, how many years are there in one full term of office for a U.S. House member? 5) According to federal law, if the President of the United States dies, is no longer willing to serve, or is removed from office by Congress, the Vice President would become the President. If the Vice President were unable or unwilling to serve, who would be eligible to become president next? 6) What percentage vote of the House of the Senate is needed to override a Presidential veto? 23 Media Exposure is calculated as the mean of four questions that ask the respondent the number of days he or she watches news (not including sports) on tv, on the radio, on the Internet, or in a printed newspaper. These questions were asked during the first wave in January, 2008. 24 Ideological extremity ranges from 1 “moderate/middle of the road” to 4 “extremely liberal/conservative.” 25 Ideally, I would have preferred to include a measure of change in ideological distance between the two major party candidates that spanned the same January 2008 to October 2008 as the dependent variable. However, individual perceptions of candidate ideologies were first measured in the June wave. However, when I restrict the dependent variable to change in like/dislike polarization from June to October, the effect of party identity strength remains robust while controlling for changed perceptions of candidate ideological extremity.

122 Democrats26 and pure independents are included in the model so Republicans serve as the reference group. In addition to the controls which are accounted for in both the pre-election and post-election models, I examine other factors unique to the pre-election and post- election periods. In the pre-election model, I account for the absolute difference between individual’s party thermometer ratings at January as a potential mediat- ing variable with the expectation that candidate evaluations should approach the party evaluation polarization level when the candidates become party symbols. In the post-election model, I include a measure of affective response to the actual election outcome under the assumption that electoral outcomes may be used to update elections and produce affective depolarization for those unhappy about the election.

4.2.4 Results

The estimated effect of party identity strength on pre-election polarization of comparative evaluations as displayed in and in the coefficient plot seen in the left panel of Figure 4.6 (see Table B.15 in the appendix for corresponding regression estimates) is positive in both the base and full (with controls) models as hypothesized. Of the controls, only initial polarization of candidate evaluations (attitude strength) is statistically significant in a negative direction which suggests higher levels of initial evaluation divergence should result in less polarization over the course of the campaign as expected. It is interesting to note that while individuals whose party evaluations are more diverged are more likely to polarize their evaluations in response to changed candidate party status as was predicted, party evaluation divergence does not completely mediate the effect of identity strength on political figure evaluation polarization. That is, strong partisans’ candidate evaluations polarize above and

26 Partisan independents are coded as aﬃliating with the respective Democratic or Republican Party.

123 Pre-Election StrongPartisan(w1) Party Like Dif.(w1) Democrat(w1) Independent(w1) Candidate Like Dif.(w1) Political Knowledge(w2) Education Media Exposure(w1) p-value <= 0.05 Campaign Interest(w1) p-value > 0.05 Ideology Extremity(w1) Cand. Id. Chg. (w6-w10) Age

Coefficients(95% CI) Male Black Hispanic Intercept -1 -.5 0 .5 1 1.5 2 Jan08 to Oct08 Evaluation Polarization Source: 2008-2009 ANES Panel Study

Post-Election StrongPartisan(w1) Unhappy Obama won (w11) Democrat(w1) Independent(w1) Candidate Like Dif.(w1) Political Knowledge(w2) Education p-value <= 0.05 Media Exposure(w1) p-value > 0.05 Campaign Interest(w1) Ideology Extremity(w1) Age Coefficients(95% CI) Male Black Hispanic Intercept -1 -.5 0 .5 1 1.5 2 Oct08 to May09 Evaluation Depolarization Source: 2008-2009 ANES Panel Study

Figure 4.6: Polarization and Depolarization Before and After the 2008 Election: Coeﬃcient Plots for Table B.15 Model 3 (Pre-Election) and Table B.16 Model 2 (Post-Election) Regression Estimates

124 Pre-Election Post-Election

1.5

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Weak Strong Predicted (95% toOct08 CI) Depolarization Jan09 Weak Strong Party Id Strength Party Id Strength

Figure 4.7: Predicted values of Evaluation Polarization over Party Identity Strength: Calculated from Table B.15 Model 3 (Pre-Election) and Table B.16 Model 2 (Post-Election) beyond party evaluations over the course of the 2008 campaign. The predicted values and corresponding 95 percent confidence intervals for weak and strong party identifiers27 are displayed in the left panel of Figure 4.7. The results show that while weak partisans’ evaluations do not significantly polarize in response to the candidates’ increase in party status over the January to October 2008 period, strong partisans’ evaluations are predicted to polarize almost one entire point (y* = 0.761) which is quite substantively large given the like-dislike scale contains only seven total points. When considering how candidate evaluations changed after the election, the coefficient plot seen in the right panel of Figure 4.6 (see Table B.16 in the appendix for corresponding regression estimates) shows strong partisans’ rate of depolarization (significant negative identity strength estimate) following the election is again

27 Predicted values are derived from Table B.15 Model 2 for a white, non-Hispanic, Republican, male with all other controls set at their mean values.

125 greater than weaker partisans. That is, strong partisans appear to be more sensitive to the changed party status of McCain than weaker partisans. Unhappiness about the election outcomes also produces more depolarization as is expected, but does not mediate the effect of party identity strength. Finally, the only other unbiased learning control that produces a significant amount of depolarization following the election is political knowledge. The post-election predicted values and corresponding 95 percent confidence intervals for strong and high party identifiers28 are displayed in the right panel of Figure 4.7. Again, only strong partisans’ evaluations change substantially after the election. Together, the pre-election and post-election analysis of individual rates of opinion change contribute to the identity linkage theory’s claim that identity strength is a key cause of biased political information processing and attitudes. These results suggest that because biased evaluation polarization is conditional on an existing identification that links candidates and partisans, biased evaluation polarization is a temporary phenomenon that fades when identity links decay.

4.3 Conclusion

When and why does bias influence and distort citizens’ political attitudes and evaluations? I explore this question by considering the implications of party identities as social identities and exploring how variations in identity strength influence the polarization of political figure evaluations. First, I examine pooled cross-sectional data through a random effects model and find strong partisans’ evaluations of political figures are more polarized as figures become symbols of inter-party conflict. Strong partisans’ evaluations of political fig-

28 Predicted derived from Table B.16 Model 2 for a white, non-Hispanic, Republican, male with all other controls set at their mean values.

126 ures are more extreme in years when these politicians become symbolic of a party through a presidential or vice presidential nomination or election. This polarization persists even when controlling for respondent ideological extremity, exposure to politics, education, interest in campaigns, and other variables that might induce evaluation polarization as a result of learning. Second, I analyze panel data gathered during the 2008 campaign. I find that strong partisans’ comparative like-dislike evaluations of the presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, become more polarized over the election campaign period as the candidates became more linked to the political parties even when controlling for respondent sophistication, ideological position, and strength of existing evaluations. I find evidence that this polarization is temporary with strong partisans being more likely than weak partisans to depolarize their comparative evaluations after the 2008 election. While I argue that strength of party identification increases the probability of biased evaluation change, I do not claim party identities are the only source of biased opinion change. For example, Redlawsk(2002) finds in an experimental setting that exposure to incongruent information actually strengthens rather than weakens affect felt toward a candidate for which the individual had a prior positive evaluation. Thus, this research implies that other motivations, such as the need for congruency and consistency in evaluations, may also lead to biased reasoning and bolstered evaluations. However, while Redlawsk(2002) claims such motivated biased reasoning should be a common occurrence among most people, I argue that biased evaluations should be be more likely to occur among certain sub-groups (strong identifiers). Finally, the identity linkage theory leads to other potential research questions. Although this analysis only closely examines the individual level changes in candidate evaluations in the 2008 election, post-election depolarization should also occur

127 in other presidential elections. While past research has found some evidence that presidential candidate evaluations tend to depolarize following an election, the identity theory adds theoretical insight to this trend and predicts that the post-election depolarization should be driven primarily by movement in the losing candidate’s evaluations. Additionally, the insight that party identities as social identities make politics more personal leads to further expectations that strong partisans’ motivated reasoning and evaluation polarization should increase when the party’s status, and the positive value of their social identity, is clearly threatened by inter-party competition. Ultimately, in the study of opinion formation and opinion change it is critical to acknowledge that connections formed between individuals and groups through social identities have the potential to polarize and bias citizens’ responses to the political environment. However, it is also important to note that while these biases which polarize the public do occur, their eﬀect is not pervasive. Instead, biases in candidate evaluations produced by party identities appear to occur mostly among strong party identiﬁers for candidates who hold salient and prestigious party positions. Thus, while strength of partisan identity may contribute to biased processing and responses to politics, it should not be viewed as an insurmountable barrier.

128 5

The Emotional Response to Party Identity Threat

This chapter considers the emotional response of strong partisans to party identity threat through three experimental studies. As complex and temporary expressions of affect that have been found to strongly motivate action (Learner and Keltner, 2000), emotions can signal an individual’s potential for bias that favors a certain party. As discussed by Hypothesis 2.3.5 and 2.3.6 in chapter 2, actual or potential party loss that threatens the positive power status of a political party should be seen as personally threatening for strong partisans who are linked to a party through their identities. This asymmetrical threat to strong partisans is therefore expected to be reflected in their emotional response to the potential or actual party loss. After establishing that strong partisans are more personally emotional when thinking about party identity threat in this chapter, the following chapter 6 tests the final expectation that party identity threat interacts with party identity strength to result in greater biased evaluation polarization. In the following three studies, strong partisans are expected to feel less positive emotion and more negative emotion in response to potential or actual inter-party

129 competition that threatens the positivity of their party identity. However, because of the discrete nature of emotions, not all positive and negative emotions are expected to respond to party identity threat. Threat is expected to depress positive emotions that signal a strong partisan’s well-being, such as happiness and satisfaction, and heighten negative emotions, such as anger, that lead to mobilization and defensive coping strategies. As will be discussed in the following sections, strong partisans are especially expected to experience anger in response to threat in order to cope with the threat. As a mobilizing emotion, anger should help induce partisans to engage in motivated reasoning or other cognitive strategies that should maintain the positive value of their party and ameliorate the threat of potential or actual in-party electoral loss. In the following three studies, partisans are ﬁrst expected to be more emotionally sensitive to an article which threatens the positive value of their party identity when their link with a party is strengthened. Second, predictions of in-party loss should be more threatening and result in more emotional response for strong partisans than predictions of a close electoral competition. Finally, strong partisans should be more emotionally responsive to actual party loss following an election than less linked partisans. Following a brief discussion of how social identity threat and emotions are commonly conceptualized and a review of the existing research regarding emotions and party identity threat, the chapter tests these three speciﬁc hypotheses through three experimental studies.

5.1 Party Identity Threat

To explore the emotional consequences of party identity linkage, this chapter examines the interaction between party identity threat and party identity strength. Party identity threat speciﬁcally refers to possible or actual changes in the relative standing

130 of political parties that threaten the positive value of respective party identities. In contrast, threat, as it is generally conceptualized, tends to be a more encompassing and vague term, clearly linked to the individual, and likely to produce feelings of fear, terror, or anxiety (Jost et al., 2003). Valentino et al.(2011, p. 157) define threat as “any risk of future harm either material or symbolic.” In the experimental setting, threat has been operationalized as job outsourcing or viral outbreaks (Brader and Valentino, 2011); recall of terrifying life threatening experiences, possible economic or political system instability or failure, or threat to personal well-being (Thórisdóttir and Jost, 2011); salience of terrorism (Huddy et al., 2005), immigration by a racial out-group (Brader et al., 2008); and other threatening stimuli including mortality salience (Jost et al., 2003). The concept of party identity threat is distinctive from the more general concept of threat as its key target is the party rather than the individual. Consequently, party threat becomes threatening to the individual conditional on the existence and strength of a party identity that links an individual with the party. Party identity threat, operationalized as the possible or actual electoral loss of a party, should only be threatening to people who identify with the political party. Party identity threat should trigger more emotional responses among strong identifers because the targeted party is more closely associated with the self. The conceptualization of party identity threat in this chapter draws on social identity threat theories as formulated in the social psychology literature. Branscombe et al.(1999) develop a taxonomy of social identity threat in which it is divided into four classes: categorization threat, distinctiveness threat, threat to the value of social identity, and acceptance threat. Branscombe et al.(1999) argue that people, especially high identifiers, will feel threatened when they believe they are being categorized against their will (categorization threat), if the distinctiveness of the group

131 they identify with is prevented or diluted (distinctiveness threat), if the positive value of the group is damaged (value threat), or if an individual feels one’s position within their group is undermined (acceptance threat). Of these four categories of identity threat, this dissertation specifically examines that of value and distinctiveness party identity threat produced by electoral inter-party competition. As shown in the social identity theory literature, individuals value their social identities more when their in-group is superior to and distinctive from the out-group (Tajfel and Turner, 1979; Turner et al., 1987). In the domain of political parties, one dimension of comparison between parties is that of power status. Electoral victory indicates a superiority and distinction between the two parties. In addition to contributing to the distinctiveness between political parties, electoral victory also influences the value of a party by signalling how competent and moral the party is perceived by the public. Branscombe et al.(1999) define value threat as both threat to the group’s competence and threat to the group’s morality. Competence threat is negative information that undermines the performance reputation of a group relative to the other group. In contrast, morality threat is negative information that damages the more general positive or ethical image of a group relative to the other group (e.g., scandal allegations). In the domain of party identities, competence threat is clearly signalled by election outcomes. Election outcomes have been perceived by the public and modeled as consequences of a vengeful electorate rewarding and punishing political parties (Dahl, 1990; Key, 1966). From this perspective, electoral loss suggests a losing party’s actual or expected performance or moral image is worse than the winning party’s. Even separate from the substantive signal of competence or morality, the competitive nature of election may influence the value of a party identity merely through the assignment of “winner” and “loser” labels. Winning elections should increase the positive value

132 of a party identity while losing elections should damage the positive value of a party identity. Consequently, electoral competition that predicts or produces in-party electoral loss should lead the party’s respective partisans to experience more anger and less satisfaction. This emotional response should be especially present and strong for strong partisans, because their more personal connection to a party should increase the degree party threat is personally threatening.

5.2 Emotions

All forms of affect result in varying degrees of cognitive and physiological reactions (Neuman and MacKuen, 2007, p. 9). However, emotion tends to be distinguished from other forms of affect as it contains a clear cognitive component which leads to specific feelings such as fear, happiness, and anger that cannot be accurately captured by a simple positive and negative categorization (Learner and Keltner, 2000).1 In political science, emotions tend to be examined through either dimensional models (Lang et al., 1993; Marcus, 2003; Thayer, 1989; Russell, 1980; Watson et al., 1999) or discrete (also referred to as cognitive-appraisal) models (Lazarus, 1991; Ortony et al., 1988; Roseman, 1984; Scherer, 1988; Smith and Ellsworth, 1985; Weiner, 1980). Dimensional models seek to extract two or more dimensions using factor analysis or multidimensional scaling to help understand how emotions are related to each other. Existing dimensional models include those that organize emotions along the lines of negativity/positivity (Watson et al., 1999), tension/energy (Thayer, 1989), approach/withdrawal (Lang et al., 1993), and valence/arousal (Russell, 1980). In contrast, the discrete perspective focuses on the cognitive component of emotions and how emotions are distinct from each other. Larsen and Diener(1992) argue

1 Lazarus(1991, p. 57) distinguishes feeling from emotions deﬁning feeling as an awareness of sensory perceptions and bodily sensations while emotions are appraisals of harm or beneﬁt. Here, I speak of feelings as the actual experiencing of emotions.

133 dimensional models cannot be labeled as the “best” or the “basic” model of emotion due to the infinite possible dimensions available and fact that each model does well in explaining different empirical patterns. In addition to the inability to determine a clear winner among the many existing dimensional models of emotions, the general structure of the two-dimensional model contains weaknesses (Marcus, 2003). Specifically, the correlation of emotions portrayed in the two-dimensional model may be unrelated to the emotions’ actual outcomes. Even though two emotions may tend to be experienced at the same time, they do not necessarily produce similar responses. For example, sadness and an- noyance tend to be highly correlated in multi-dimensional models, but these two emotions likely lead to very different cognitive and behavioral responses (Marcus, 2003). If the consequences of emotions are unique, empirical correlations become less informative and less useful. This chapter turns to discrete models of emotions because of their ability to speak to the distinct causes and consequences of emotions.2 Within the discrete model, emotions are viewed as relatively independent conditions that are felt in response to specific situations. One of the main proponents of this model, Roseman(1984), organized emotions on the basic assumption that, “it is the interpretation of events rather than the events per se that determine which emotions will be felt” (p. 14). Thus, emotions are produced by subjective, individual appraisals of an environment. Because emotions themselves are latent traits that cannot be directly observed, research on emotions rely on a set of observed indicators including physiological reactions such as heart rate or facial expressions, expressive or instrumental actions that arguably result from emotions, or self-reported emotional states (Lazarus, 1991,

2 See the chapter appendix for the factor structure of the emotions used for the following studies. Through conﬁrmatory factor analysis, I ﬁnd the emotions relied on in the following three studies can be organized with two (Study 2 and 3) or three (Study 1) factors.

134 p. 43). This dissertation relies on the latter of these observed measures, self-reported feelings. By focusing on what people say their emotional state is, insight is gained into the goals and beliefs underlying their emotional reports that should help speak to the predicted heterogeneity in emotional responses to party identity threat. Lazarus(1991) develops a cognitive-motivational-relational theory of emotions which divides the formation and development of emotions into two basic steps. First, in a primary appraisal, the basic positivity or negativity and intensity of feeling is established as the ego-involvement, or personal relevance, of a situation is evaluated as well as whether or not the situation is congruent with one’s personal goals. Goal congruence leads to positive emotions while negative emotions are produced by goal incongruence. Situations that instigate greater ego-involvement result in more intense emotional experiences. A secondary appraisal involves the assignment of blame or credit, coping potential, and future expectations and leads to the feeling of a specific emotion. Given a particular emotional feeling, individuals engage in a coping strategy which produces more iterations of appraisal and emotions until some emotional equilibrium is established. The cognitive structure used to define and understand emotions leads to a “richly revealing” picture of emotions, their causes, and their consequences (Lazarus, 1991, p. 7). As distinctive and cognitively influenced expressions of affect, emotions serve as valuable information signals. Lazarus(1991) argues particular emotions can speak to the personal-environment relationship, individual motives, the underlying appraisal process, and plausible antecedent actions. For example, past research has established a clear difference in the causes and consequences of anxiety and anger (Clore and Centerbar, 2004; Huddy et al., 2007; Lazarus, 1991; Brader and Valentino, 2011). Anger is distinguished from other negative emotions, especially anxiety, by Lazarus (1991, p. 226) in the secondary appraisal process. In the primary appraisal of an

135 event or circumstance, anger and/or other negative emotions are produced when a person perceives a situation is incongruent with one’s goals or positive ego-identity. Anger, anxiety, and pride are very likely to occur in response to ego-identity threat as they help work to preserve the positivity of one’s self-views. Whether or not anger is felt rather than anxiety is largely determined if the individual is able to attribute the goal-incongruence and ego-identity threat to a specific source. In addition to the requirement that the individual can place blame for the self-esteem assault, anger is felt if an individual consciously or subconsciously feels the best way to deal with the threat is through attack and engagement rather than withdrawal. Given these conditions underlying the expression of negative emotions, especially anger, several expectations regarding the strength of party identity and identity threat can be derived. First, strong partisans should feel more negative and less positive emotions in response to threatening inter-party competition than weak partisans because the threat is actually relevant to their personal goals. Because weak and independent partisans should not be as linked to a party as strong partisans, events that threaten the political parties should not be as personally relevant and as able to elicit emotional responses. Second, strong partisans are should be more likely to feel anger rather than anxiety because of their need to protect the positivity of the party through a fight-like response. As an emotion, anger leads to more fight responses, in this case predicted to be motivated reasoning that bolsters the in-party and derogates the out-party. In contrast, anxiety leads to withdrawal and flight-like responses. Because strong partisans are so tightly linked to a party, a withdrawal response, or weakening of party identification, should be very difficult to do. Thus, anger-produced motivated reasoning is the only viable option for threatened strong partisans. The party identity linkage theory posits strong partisans have fundamentally

136 unique interpretations and appraisal of events that threaten a party as a result of their closer personal relationship with a party. Thus individual emotional responses to party threat can inform us of the person’s relationship and degree of ego-involvement with a party. Speciﬁcally, those whose emotions change more in response to party threat are more likely to be feel personally harmed by party threat. Second, the type of emotions expressed can speak to the coping processes that the party threat is likely to elicit. If threat leads to evaluation polarization among strong partisans as predicted by the party identity theory, we would expect to see emotions of anger that signal motivated and oﬀensive action tendencies.

5.3 Overview of Prior Research on Party Identity Threat

Probably one of the most developed theories in political science that accounts for threat and emotions can be found in Marcus et al.’s (2000) theory of affective intelligence (AI) with a more recent version presented by MacKuen et al.(2010). The affective intelligence theory proposes people rely on emotions to manage the attention they give to politics. Drawing on dual process models from social psychology and the structure of the brain from neuroscience, the affective intelligence theory argues emotions are shaped by two systems: the dispositional system and the surveillance system. The dispositional system is the normal and primary emotional system. Emo- tions such as enthusiasm (and aversion, as introduced in later versions of AI) induce people to respond to political information in a habitual manner. Under this system, emotions lead people to rely on predispositions such as party identification to shape decision processes. In contrast, the surveillance system, through emotions of anxiety, works to disrupt the dispositional system and divert attention. Under novel or threatening (risky) circumstances, the surveillance system produces feelings of anxiety. As a result of the attentional shifts resulting from anxiety, Marcus et al.(2000)

137 argues people will set aside previously learned beliefs and habits and will be more motivated to learn (Marcus et al., 2000, p. 58). In contrast, emotions of enthusiasm engage the dispositional system which leads to greater reliance on habits and predispositions in processing information and responding to events. MacKuen et al.(2010) modify the original affective intelligence theory to place greater emphasis on a new emotional dimension they define as “aversion.” The authors argue whether or not citizens engage in politics with partisan solidarity or more open-minded deliberation is determined in part by the emotions they feel. Specifically, aversion and enthusiasm are predicted to result in reactions predicted by defense of convictions, solidarity with allies and opposition to opponents, and motivated reasoning while anxiety is predicted to lead to consideration of alternative perspectives and compromise. By focusing on emotions as a driver of citizenship type (resolute or reflective), MacKuen et al.(2010) argue there are not fixed partisan and deliberative types of citizens, but that these modes of citizenship are influenced by circumstance-produced emotions. The party identity linkage theory differs from the affective intelligence theory in two areas: how emotions are modeled and the expectation that the expression of emotions is conditional given the strength of an individual’s partisan predisposition. First, the AI theory approaches emotions from dimensional models. While appraisal theories present emotions as cognitively-infused and relatively separate states, the affective intelligence model presents emotions as more automatic expressions of affect that can be organized with one or two dimensions. Marcus et al.(2000) argue emotions can be organized using two dimensions, an enthusiasm dimension and an anxiety dimension. This dimensional expectation largely results from the two systems (surveillance and dispositional) that are theorized to produce emotions. While aversion is mentioned in the appendix of the initial version of AI (Marcus et al.,

138 2000, p.156-165), it was not fully incorporated into the affective intelligence theory until more recent versions of the theory MacKuen et al.(2010). To deal with this third dimension of aversion, and Marcus et al.(2000) and MacKuen et al.(2010) use language that could be argued to appeal more to cognitive-appraisal models of emotion. Aversion is separated from enthusiasm and anxiety on the basis of different antecedents, similar to appraisal theory (Marcus et al., 2000, p.156-165). I argue that in relying on dimensional models, the rich informational nature of emotions regarding their possible causes and consequences that is available in discrete theories is sacrificed. Second, while the affective intelligence theory highlights the motivating role of emotions in information processing and citizen engagement, the party identity linkage theory recognizes emotional responses are, in part, endogenous to pre-existing factors. Specifically, strong partisans’ emotional response, and thus likelihood of being resolute partisans, is argued to be distinctive from that of weak partisans, especially under circumstances that threaten the positive value of their party identity. The affective intelligence theory provides clear expectation regarding the consequences of emotions in information processing, but provides less insight into what produces emotions. Indeed MacKuen et al.(2010) state themselves that emotions do not provide a “complete explanation” of when, why, and how people are resolute or reflective. The party identity linkage theory clearly predicts that strong partisan’s political emotional experiences will be distinctive from other individuals because of their more intimate psychological link with parties. Furthermore, information and events that damage the relative advantage of one party relative to the other party should be even more likely to induce emotions for this critical subgroup. It is through these moderating factors that the party identity theory can contribute to and expand

139 upon the affective intelligence predictions.3 While most political science research examines threat broadly defined, some recent research has begun to consider threat in the domain of party identity. For example, Valentino et al.(2008) examines the role of party identity threat and emotional response on individual information processing. In the study, Democratic participants were threatened through the suggestion that their in-party presidential candidate, John Kerry, was facing possible electoral defeat in a battleground state.4 Only when the individual reported feeling anxious in response to this threat did the breadth of their information search increase. While threat was clearly manipulated as partisans were exposed to negative information about their in-party candidate, the study does not consider the role of party identity strength. Huddy and Mason(2008) attempt to address the potential heterogeneity of individual response to threat by accounting for how an individual’s strength of partisan identity serves to filter negative information regarding their in-party’s electoral performance. In a creative use of partisan blogs, Huddy and Mason examine how group allegiances and loyalties condition emotional response to threat that originates from within and without the group. In two studies, the authors alter the frame of partisan blog entries so that the message presented will originate from either the in-party

3 Ladd and Lenz(2008) critique AI’s use of candidate emotions to predict vote choice. They argue candidate emotions are better thought of as products of candidate evaluations, and thus endogenous to the model. Therefore, another strength of the analyses in this section are their considerations of emotions regarding actual party identity threat–predicted or actual election outcomes–rather than emotion regarding candidates. 4 The exact question wording might have influenced the results as the threat was not framed as Kerry winning or losing, but as Bush or Kerry winning. The question read “Polls show that Bush has established a substantial lead in several battle ground states such as Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Perhaps as a result, Democratic officials are stressing the negative impact of a Republican victory on wages and employment among middle and lower income Americans.” versus “Polls show that Kerry has established a substantial lead in several battle ground states such as Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Perhaps as a result, Democratic officials are stressing the positive impact of a Democratic victory on wages and employment among middle and lower income Americans” (Valentino et al., 2008, 261).

140 or out-party and threaten electoral loss or suggest electoral victory. Drawing on social identity and intergroup emotion theories (Mackie et al., 2000; Smith et al., 2007; Mackie et al., 2009), they argue that readers who are strong partisans will be threatened by and more emotionally responsive to suggestions of electoral loss because elections hold “direct implications for one’s standing and sense of self” (Huddy and Mason, 2008, p. 6). Their research finds that strong partisans do indeed react more positively to reassurance and more negatively to threat than weak partisans. Furthermore, they find that the emotion-type felt differs depending on the power position of the party preceding the 2008 election. That is, Democrats who felt themselves to be in a stronger position felt more anger in response to threat while the weaker partisans (Republicans) experienced anxiety especially when the threatening information was suggested by in-party members. In the following three experimental studies, I investigate the relationship between party identity threat and emotional responses to party identity threat drawing on university student samples as well as a nationally representative sample.

5.4 Study 1

In the first study, the role of party identity strength in shaping emotional responses to party identity threat is examined. The experiment sought to manipulate and strengthen individuals’ level of identification with a party as well as account for their stable, pre-existing level of self-reported party identity strength. When exposed to a negative article which argues their party’s fortunes are sagging and the decay “can be attributed to internal fighting, incompetence, and ethical and moral violations by prominent party members,” participants whose identity links with a party are strengthened by bogus identity test feedback are hypothesized to feel more negative (especially anger) and less positive, or well-being, emotion about the article.

141 5.4.1 Method

Participants. Participants were 77 undergraduates (47 females and 30 males) at Duke University who participated in the study for either course extra credit or mon- etary compensation depending on the subject pool from which they were drawn.5 Participants were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions (high or low party identity strength feedback). The sample contained 25 strong partisans, 39 weak or independent partisans, and 11 independents who felt closer to neither party. Procedure. Participants were first asked to respond to a traditional 7-point party identity question (asked using the three question branching format) to determine which party the following treatment manipulations would reference. The referenced party was randomly determined for people who identified as independent but felt closer to neither party. Following the party identification measure, participants were told they were going to take a special test designed to measure the strength of automatic associations between their self-image and mental image of a political party and then answer some questions about their political attitudes. The association test was was structured using the the self-esteem Implicit Association Test structure (Greenwald and Farnham, 2000; Greenwald et al., 2003) with party descriptive words replacing the positive or negative valanced words (See appendix for words used).6 Following the test that was purported to measure party identity strength, participants in the high party identity strength feedback condition were given bogus test results that suggested they strongly associated themselves with a political party (see Figure C.1 in appendix). People who self-categorized as partisans or as independents who felt closer to one party were given bogus feedback telling them they strongly

5 Participants were undergraduates drawn from the extra credit Duke Political Science Research Pool (PSRP) and the paid Duke Interdisciplinary Initiative in Social Psychology (DIISP). 6 The response time results of this IAT test that claimed to measure the relationship between self/others and the Republican/Democratic Party did not signiﬁcantly predict party identity strength.

142 identified with the respective party. Those in the low identity feedback condition received no test results. After the IAT task, participants read a newspaper article discussing the future electoral viability of a certain political party that was designed to be threatening to the party (see appendix for article). The party derogated in the article corresponded to the party the respondent identified with at the beginning of the survey (randomly determined for pure independents). Immediately after reading the article, participants were asked to report their emotional state while thinking about the article they just read.7 In the remainder of the study, participants completed several different party identification measures, including the Identification with a Psychological Group scale (IDPG),8 a measure of social identity developed by Mael and Tetrick(1992), and other basic control questions.

5.4.2 Results

Receiving fabricated party identity strength test results influenced an individual’s emotional response to threat only when it confirmed the individual’s existing party identity perceptions. The attempt to manipulate strength of party identity through the bogus test results only appeared to work for people who had initially self-reported as strong partisans. Furthermore, the test results specifically worked to intensify the personalization of party identities. Figure 5.1 displays the mean responses (and corresponding 95 percent confidence intervals) for the ten items used to create the Identification with a Psychological Group (IDPG) measure of social identity. By disaggregating the means by respon-

7 Thinking about the article you just read, to what extent do you feel each of the following emotions right now? Don’t spend much time thinking about each word. Just give a quick, gut-level response. (angry, irritated, disgusted, afraid, uneasy guilty, satisﬁed, happy, grateful, respectful, hopeful, proud). Responses ranged from 1(“Not at all”) to 5 (“A great deal”). 8 See appendix for full question wording.

143 144 td 1 Study 5.1 Figure Study 1;with95%CI Party PraiseFeelsLikePersonalCompliment

Agreement Agreement

1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5

Not StrongPartisan Not StrongPartisan Ownership ofPartySuccess Control Control Bogus IDStrengthFeedback Bogus IDStrengthFeedback Treatment Treatment dnicto ihaPyhlgclGopIesb I teghCniinadPryIett Strength, Identity Party and Condition Strength PID by Items Group Psychological a with Identiﬁcation :