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What are political self-concepts, testing different forms of political expression on social media.

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Social Media Expression and the Political Self

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Daniel S Lane, Slgi S Lee, Fan Liang, Dam Hee Kim, Liwei Shen, Brian E Weeks, Nojin Kwak, Social Media Expression and the Political Self, Journal of Communication , Volume 69, Issue 1, February 2019, Pages 49–72, https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqy064

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Expression has the power to shape how we see ourselves. In this paper, we argue that the dynamics of political expression on social media can influence not only political behavior, but also citizens’ more fundamental political self-concepts. Specifically, political expression on social media can entail a public commitment to a political self-presentation, which may lead individuals to perceive themselves as politically active, interested, efficacious, and knowledgeable. Analyzing panel survey data from the 2016 U.S. election, we find that political expression on social media increases users’ motivations to present themselves as politically active on social media. Political self-presentation motivations are, in turn, positively associated with strengthened dimensions of political self-concepts (i.e., political interest, political self-efficacy, and perceived participation). Findings emphasize the role of expression in shaping political self-concepts, and further hint that this relationship may depend on whether the expressive behavior constitutes a clear, public commitment to a political self-presentation.

Recent work in political communication has emphasized the ways in which political expression on social media can foster deeper engagement in democratic life ( Boulianne, 2015 ; Vaccari et al., 2015 ). Yet, there is increasing acknowledgement that social media may play a more dynamic role in shaping how individuals come to see themselves as political actors. Social media are not simply vehicles for political news, campaign advertisements, or collective action, but are also important social environments in which people engage in the messy process of sorting out how they “fit” into the world of politics ( Thorson, 2014 ). We offer a basic theoretical model for understanding how the dynamics of political expression on social media can influence not only political behavior, but also citizens’ more fundamental political self-concepts.

Past research has conceptualized political expression as a range of behaviors that allow people to communicate political ideas, opinions, and preferences to others ( Cho, Ahmed, Keum, Choi, & Lee, 2016 ; Vaccari et al., 2015 ). Apart from the inherent democratic value of articulating one’s political voice (see Allen & Light, 2015 ) and evidence that political expression can facilitate other forms of participation ( Boulianne, 2015 ), expression may also influence the set of attitudes and beliefs expressers have about themselves: often termed “self-concepts” ( Markus & Wurf, 1987 ; Pingree, 2007 ; Valkenburg, 2017 ). Certain dimensions of self-concepts related to politics (e.g., political interest, political self-efficacy) have long been considered important prerequisites for political engagement ( Abramson & Aldrich, 1982 ; Prior, 2010 ). However, it is unclear precisely how political expression might influence these key dimensions of political self-concepts, from a social-psychological perspective.

One possibility, suggested by the “expression effects” literature, is that political expression can involve a process of self-presentation, which might motivate the expresser to shift their political self-concept ( Pingree, 2007 ). Expression can constitute a commitment to a specific public image, which can lead individuals to think about themselves in ways that are consistent with that image ( Schienker, Dlugolecki, & Doherty, 1994 ). Such self-presentational dynamics are likely to be enhanced in online environments, where users are typically part of stable social networks that provide social feedback ( Ellison, Vitak, Gray, & Lampe, 2014 ). Accordingly, studies of political communication on social media have often used theories of self-presentation to explain the relationships they observe between political expression on social media and political participation (e.g., Gil de Zúñiga, Molyneux, & Zheng, 2014 ; Lane, Kim, Lee, Weeks, & Kwak, 2017 ). Yet, few empirical studies have examined the relationship between political expression and political self-concepts, or explicitly tested the self-presentational mechanism that might facilitate such a relationship.

The present study examined this possibility, using panel survey data collected during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. We tested whether political expression on social media increase respondents’ motivation to present themselves as politically active on social media. Further, we examined whether such political self-presentation motivations are associated with an increase in individuals’ perception of themselves as politically active, interested, efficacious, and knowledgeable (see Figure 1 ). In doing so, we make several contributions to previous research.

Theoretical model. SM = social media; W = wave.

First, we build upon the growing literature that examines the effects of expression on political participation (see Boulianne, 2015 ) by assessing dimensions of political self-concepts as dependent variables. In doing so, we demonstrate that social media are environments that can shape citizens’ more fundamental orientations toward politics. Second, we use panel data to explicitly test the self-presentational mechanisms theorized to be at work in previous models of political expression on social media (e.g., Gil de Zúñiga et al., 2014 ). Consistent with a large body of experimental work in social psychology (see Markus & Wurf, 1987 ), our results provide evidence for the important role of self-presentation in expression effects. Third, we differentiate between types of expression on social media, in terms of their level of public commitment to an online, political self-presentation. While a wide range of expressive actions indirectly strengthened participants’ political self-concepts, those that entailed minimal or ambiguous commitment (i.e., liking political content) did not. Broadly, we show that social media may serve as important social contexts for shaping Americans’ political selves.

The term self-concept has been used by psychologists to describe “self-schemas or generalizations of the self derived from past social experiences” ( Markus & Wurf, 1987 , p. 301). Given the prominent role politics plays in social life, researchers have identified political self-knowledge as an important dimension of the self ( Marsh, Ulrich, Oliver, Olaf, & Jürgen, 2006 ). Therefore, political self-concepts may be considered a collection of perceptions about one’s role, competence, and engagement in politics. While some researchers have used the term political self-concept in relation to partisan identity (e.g., Knobloch-Westerwick & Meng, 2011 ), others have adopted it to capture more fundamental aspects of the way people think about themselves in relation to politics ( Boozer & Forte, 2007 ; Krampen, 2000 ). Put another way, a political self-concept captures the extent to which a person thinks of themselves as a “political person.” In this study, we examine how political expression on social media influences four dimensions of political self-concepts, identified by previous research: (a) political interest, (b) political self-efficacy, (c) perceived political participation, and (d) perceived political knowledge.

Political interest

Political interest has long been considered an essential measure of individuals’ orientation toward politics ( Prior, 2010 ). Not only is political interest positively associated with voting ( Powell, 1986 ), political discussion ( Pan, Shen, Paek, & Sun, 2006 ), and political sophistication ( Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996 ), but it is often considered a prerequisite for the development of a more coherent political identity. Becoming interested in politics is considered a key stage of political identity development ( Porter, 2013 ). Broadly, political interest can be understood as capturing an overall tendency to view politics as personally salient.

Political self-efficacy

Political self-efficacy reflects citizens’ perceived capacity to influence the political system ( Abramson & Aldrich, 1982 ). Theorists argue that a sense of political self-efficacy provides the psychological basis for political engagement, as the perception of competence is required to incentivize individuals to take an active role in politics ( Bandura, 1982 ; Niemi, Craig, & Mattei, 1991 ). Self-efficacy, therefore, is another important dimension of political self-concepts that reflects people’s beliefs about their ability to play an active role in the political process.

Perceived political knowledge

Perceived political knowledge is defined as the degree to which individuals think of themselves as politically informed ( Hollander, 1995 ). Although perceived knowledge is only moderately related to actual knowledge, research from social psychology suggests that the “feeling of knowing” about a specific topic may motivate individuals to devote more cognitive resources to that topic ( Koriat, 2000 ). Perceived knowledge has also been shown to predict willingness to engage in political discussion ( Kim & Han, 2005 ). Overall, the perception that one is politically knowledgeable indicates a certain degree of confidence, required for engagement in the political realm.

Perceived political participation

Similarly, perceived political participation is the degree to which individuals view themselves as actively engaged in voluntary activities that aim to affect politics ( van Deth, 2016 ) or influence elections or lawmaking ( Verba & Nie, 1972 ). To a certain extent, this perception captures whether individuals view themselves as “doing their part,” and may ultimately motivate them to engage in politics in the future. Research on moral self-image supports this contention, suggesting that those who view themselves as moral actors are psychologically motivated to commit pro-social acts ( Stets & Carter, 2011 ). Perceived participation is the dimension of political self-concept that reflects the degree to which individuals feel that they actually do play an active role in politics.

Expression and political self-concepts

Taken together, these dimensions of political self-concepts capture important ways in which people think about themselves as political actors. We argue that political expression on social media, and the self-presentational dynamics that result, can lead to changes in political self-concepts. This claim may seem counter-intuitive, as researchers often think of political self-concepts as antecedents of political communication, rather than attitudes that might themselves be changed by communication processes. Political interest, for example, has been considered a key prerequisite for political participation ( Prior, 2010 ). Yet, potential changes in political self-concepts are important to examine, for two reasons.

First, theories from both psychology and sociology suggest that we form our self-concepts based on our observations of our experiences within social environments ( Bem, 1972 ; Gecas & Schwalbe, 1983 ). In adopting this logic, we are not arguing that political self-concepts do not influence political behavior—indeed, we have cited evidence that they do—rather, we are arguing that our political actions have social meaning that can lead us to change how we think about ourselves. Our study focuses on this second possibility, given that it has received less relative attention in the literature on politics and social media.

Second, some researchers have argued that fundamental dimensions of political self-concepts are stable and resistant to change. For example, Prior (2010) found that the levels of political interest remain relatively stable after adolescence. This perspective suggests that political behavior on social media is unlikely to alter the basic political self-concepts people form in their youth. However, self-concept research offers a more nuanced perspective. Markus and Nurius (1986 , p. 957) argued that, although self-concepts have sometimes been studied as “fairly uniform, monolithic structure(s), consistent over time,” they are better conceptualized as dynamic, socially contingent, and evolving. The authors advocated for the importance of working self-concepts, defined as “the set of self-conceptions that are presently active in thought and memory … a continually active, shifting array of available self-knowledge” (Markus & Nurius, 1986 , p. 957). In this sense, it is quite likely that individuals’ working political self-concepts are constantly changing, based on their experiences of the world. We argue that, during the course of an election, even temporary shifts in political self-concepts might have meaningful individual and electoral effects.

With these two reasons in mind, we propose a theoretical model in which political expression on social media strengthens key dimensions of political self-concepts indirectly, by increasing the importance individuals place on presenting themselves as politically active on social media (see Figure 1 ). Each path in our model is explained in greater depth below.

Political self-concepts and “the looking-glass self”

One way individuals construct their self-concepts is by observing others’ reactions to their behavior ( Bem, 1972 ). Sociologists have often used the metaphor of “the looking-glass self” to describe the process through which our perception of how others evaluate us informs our own self-image ( Gecas & Schwalbe, 1983 ). Put another way, we use expression to elicit social feedback from others, which helps us develop our self-concepts ( Markus & Wurf, 1987 ).

The role of self-expression in the formation of self-concepts has often been overlooked in communication research, where the emphasis tends to be on the effects of message reception ( Pingree, 2007 ). There is growing acknowledgement that equally powerful effects can occur for the senders of messages ( Valkenburg, 2017 ), who may be psychologically influenced while anticipating expression, either during the composition of a message or after its release into the social environment ( Pingree, 2007 ). Effects in this final category, so-called “message release” effects, often rely on psychological theories of how individuals are cognitively or affectively influenced by the public image that their expression creates ( Leary & Kowalski, 1990 ; Schienker et al., 1994 ). Drawing upon this work, we argue that: (a) political expression on social media is likely to increase individuals’ motivation to present themselves as politically active on social media, and (b) this self-presentation motivation, in turn, can activate or strengthen individuals’ political self-concepts (see Figure 1 ).

Political expression and self-presentation motivations

The first path in our model predicts that political expression on social media is likely to increase individuals’ motivation to engage in political self-presentation (see Figure 1 ). This contention is implicit in public commitment research, which argues that public expression can lead individuals to “publicly and irrevocably claim” a specific identity ( Schienker et al., 1994 , p. 21). Once a public commitment is made to a specific self-presentation, individuals are likely to become motivated to remain consistent with that self-presentation ( Leary & Kowalski, 1990 ). Cialdini and Goldstein (2004) argue that this consistency motivation originates from a desire to maintain or enhance one’s self-esteem. In other words, when individuals know that their political expression is observable to others, they are likely to become motivated to “keep up appearances,” for fear of damaging their public image. Research emphasizes that the publicness of expression in online spaces can increase self-presentation motivations ( Gonzales & Hancock, 2008 ). Political communication research has similarly observed that the publicness of expression on social media motivates individuals to monitor and manage their political self-presentation ( Thorson, 2013 ).

In the context of our model, social media political self-presentation motivations assess the extent to which presenting one’s self as politically active on social media is a valued social goal (see Figure 1 ). Such motivations are likely to be influenced both by individual psychological factors (e.g., extroversion or narcissism) and social and behavioral factors. Among the numerous factors shaping political self-presentation motivations, we focus on political expression on social media, given its theoretical potential to signal public commitment. We therefore hypothesize the following:

H1: An increase in social media political expression (Wave 1; W1) will be associated with an increase in social media political self-presentation motivations (Wave 2; W2).

It is important to note that the above prediction does not deny a reverse causal path; political self-presentation motivations can, in turn, promote future political expression. Indeed, there is reason to suspect that self-presentation motivations and expressive behavior are mutually reinforcing. As Papacharissi (2010 , p. 304) wrote, “the process of self-presentation becomes an ever-evolving cycle through which individual identity is presented, compared, adjusted, or defended against a constellation of social, cultural, economic, or political realities.” In examining the relationship predicted in H1, our goal is to test the portion of this likely cyclical process that has important implications for political self-concept development on social media.

Self-presentation motivations and political self-concepts

Next, we turn to the possibility that those who are motivated to present themselves as politically active on social media will also have stronger political self-concepts (see Figure 1 ). Research on public commitment suggests that when individuals believe they have publicly committed to a specific idea, attitude, or action, they come to think of themselves in a way that is consistent with their public image ( Kiesler, 1971 ; Schienker et al., 1994 ). As Schienker et al. (1994 , p. 21) argued, “the socialization process continually emphasizes that people must be what they claim to be or risk serious interpersonal repercussions.” As a result, individuals often internalize the self-presentations they value ( Tice, 1992 ).

Theoretically, the more individuals are motivated to appear politically active on social media, the more accessible dimensions of their political self-concept should become. Research finds that the process of contemplating ones’ self-presentation can make specific aspects of the self more accessible in memory ( Bargh, McKenna, & Fitzsimons, 2002 ). If some individuals are constantly monitoring and managing their political self-presentation, their political identity is likely to be top of mind. Markus and Wurf (1987) argued that temporary shifts in which aspects of the self are salient may lead to important changes in self-concepts.

Research in computer-mediated communication has used this logic to explain how self-presentation motivations occurring in public, online spaces can ultimately lead to changes in self-related attitudes ( Carr & Foreman, 2016 ; Gonzales & Hancock, 2008 ; Walther et al., 2011 ). Gonzales and Hancock (2008) used the term “identity-shift” to describe the process through which self-presentation motivations that arise online lead users to shift their self-concepts. They found that individuals who had publicly presented themselves as either introverted or extroverted subsequently came to see themselves as actually possessing that trait. Subsequent work has replicated identity-shift effects, and found that they are amplified when social feedback is provided and when future interaction with an audience is expected ( Carr & Foreman, 2016 ; Walther et al., 2011 ). Given that social media are both rich in social feedback and host stable social networks ( Ellison et al., 2014 ), they present ideal contexts for identity-shift effects.

In sum, the above research suggests that being motivated to engage in political self-presentation on social media should be positively associated with strengthened dimensions of political self-concepts (e.g., Gonzales & Hancock, 2008 ; Valkenburg, 2017 ). We therefore posed the following hypothesis:

H2: Social media political self-presentation motivations (W2) will be positively associated with (a) political interest (W2), (b) political self-efficacy (W2), (c) perceived political participation (W2), and (d) perceived political knowledge (W2).

From political expression to political self-concept

Returning to our broader theoretical model (Figure 1 ), we argue that political expression on social media will indirectly influence individuals’ political self-concepts, by increasing social media political self-presentation motivations. This predicted pathway is consistent with previous political communication theories, in which social interaction plays a key mediating role (e.g., Cho et al., 2009 ; Shah, 2016 ). In addition, our theorizing echoes the wider scholarship that has considered online environments as key contexts for political identity formation ( Cohen & Kahne, 2012 ; Jenkins, Shresthova, Gamber-Thompson, Kligler-Vilenchik, & Zimmerman, 2016 ). Building on this work, our model examined changes in political self-concepts as another important consequence of political expression. In doing so, we explicitly tested whether such effects are mediated by users’ motivation to appear politically active on social media. We hypothesized the following:

H3: Social media political expression (W1) will be positively related to dimensions of political self-concept (W2) indirectly, through the influence of social media political self-presentation motivations (W2).

Our theoretical model contends that acts of political expression on social media will influence political self-concepts precisely because they are publicly observable. Yet, popular social media sites allow users to engage in a wide variety of expressive behaviors, which vary in social observability ( Cho et al., 2016 ; Vaccari et al., 2015 ). One key to better understanding the role of self-presentation in our model is to clarify whether only the expressive behaviors that signal a high level of public commitment (e.g., writing a political opinion post) can influence political self-concepts or if lower-commitment behaviors (e.g., liking or sharing content) can also have such effects. Research shows that different forms of expressive behavior can have different political consequences (e.g., Beam, Hutchens, & Hmielowski, 2016 ), yet empirical studies of social media tend to examine indexes of political expression that average across different types of behaviors. In order to address this lack of clarity, we performed additional tests of our model using both higher- and lower-commitment expressive behaviors performed on the most frequently-used platform in our data (Facebook) as predictors. Facebook is an important context to examine, because it enables a wide range of expressive behaviors that are observable to users’ social networks ( Oeldorf-Hirsch & McGloin, 2017 ) and remains an important site of political influence ( Bond et al., 2012 ). The social observability of political behavior on Facebook can lead individuals to be more aware of their self-presentation and its relationship with other political behaviors, such as political deliberation ( Thorson, 2013 ) and voting ( Haenschen, 2016 ). Therefore, we examined our model using individual expressive behaviors on Facebook by posing the following research question:

RQ1: Will the hypothesized mediated effects vary depending on the type of Facebook political expression behavior examined (W1)?

In order to test our theoretical model, we utilized original data from a two-wave national survey collected in 2016 by the online-survey research company YouGov. Our sample was drawn from YouGov’s existing pool of U.S. adult respondents, who were recruited using online advertising and strategic partnerships with a wide range of websites. Although this sample was non-probabilistic, YouGov employed a matching technique that resulted in a sample that was generally reflective of the population in terms of gender, age, and other demographic characteristics. Two waves of survey data were collected during the 2016 U.S. general election (W1 in late September and W2 in early November). There were 6,213 individuals invited to participate in wave 1 (W1) and were 1,800 valid responses collected, resulting in a response rate of 29%. Respondents who failed a simple attention check question were removed, resulting in 1,434 valid responses to W1. 1 Invitations to participate in W2 were sent to all W1 respondents during the last six days prior to the election. Ultimately, a total of 1,056 respondents completed both waves. Demographically, this sample was comparable to that of the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2015 American Community Survey (ACS) in terms of the median age of individuals over 18 (ACS = 45–54 years, W1 = 51) and median household income (ACS = $53,889, W1 range = $50,000–$75,000). Our sample had a slightly higher percentage of females (ACS = 51.4%, W1 = 56.81%) and a lower median educational attainment for those 25 or older (ACS = some college, W1 = high school diploma). For analysis, we limited the sample to those who reported using social media during both waves ( N = 861).

Social media political expression

To assess engagement in political expression on social media, we asked respondents how frequently they performed a range of behaviors on four social networking sites (Facebook, 5 items; Twitter, 7 items; Snapchat, 1 item; and Instagram, 1 item). Platform-specific behaviors were measured on a six-point scale (1 = never to 6 = every day in the past 30 days). Items included behaviors such as “sharing,” “liking,” “posting your own opinion,” and “tweeting” political content on specific platforms. If a respondent did not use a specific site, they were coded as one for all items related to that site. Items were combined to form four platform-specific indexes (αs = .91–.96). The platform-specific indexes were then combined into an index of social media (SM) political expression (W1 M = 1.41, SD = .56).

Social media political self-presentation motivations

Given a lack of consensus in prior literature regarding the measurement of political self-presentation motivations on social media, we employed original measures, designed to capture two important components of this construct: the degree to which political self-presentation was (a) personally important to the respondent and (b) specific to social media. Using a seven-point scale (1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree), respondents were asked to rate their agreement with the following statements: (a) “it is important to me that other people know that I’m active in politics on social media”; and (b) “it is important to me that other people know that I support a social cause on social media.” These measures were used to form a mean index of SM political self-presentation motivations (W1 M = 2.8, SD = 1.67, r = .81; W2 M = 2.75, SD = 1.7, r = .83). The W2 variable was used as the mediator and the W1 variable controlled for baseline political self-presentation motivations.

Dimensions of political self-concept

Several items captured dimensions of political self-concepts using a seven-point scale (1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree). Political interest was measured by asking respondents to rate their agreement with the statement: “I am interested in politics” (W1 M = 5.02, SD = 1.83; W2 M = 5.01, SD = 1.82). Political self-efficacy was captured by a mean index including two questions: “my vote matters in this presidential election (held on Nov. 8th)” and “I can have a significant impact on how things are going in politics” (W1 M = 4.32, SD = 1.60, r = .51; W2 M = 4.32, SD = 1.55, r = .50). Perceived participation was measured with a single item: “I actively participate in politics” (W1 M = 3.68, SD = 1.83; W2 M = 3.67, SD = 1.79). Finally, perceived knowledge was measured with a single item: “I have a good understanding of important political issues” (W1 M = 5.12, SD = 1.47; W2 M = 5.13, SD = 1.46).

Control variables

To strengthen the test of our model, we controlled for several theoretically-relevant factors. First, it is likely that political self-presentation processes are influenced by individuals’ more global motivations to manage their public image ( Leary & Kowalski, 1990 ). To control for this possibility, respondents used the same seven-point scale to indicate their agreement with three statements: (a) “it is important for me to look good in front of other people,” (b) “I am concerned with embarrassing myself in front of others,” and (c) “I am afraid of isolating myself from others.” Items were combined into a mean index of general self-presentation motivations (W1 M = 4.03, SD = 1.28, α = .63).

Next, we controlled for variables relating to media use. First, we assessed how frequently respondents received political information on four social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram). For Facebook and Twitter, respondents were asked how frequently they got updates from: (a) “a politician or political advocate that I followed” and (b) “a media organization or journalist that I followed.” For Snapchat, respondents were asked how frequently they “viewed Snapchat stories of political candidates.” For Instagram, respondents were asked how frequently they “saw posts from a politician or political advocate that I followed.” If a respondent did not use a specific site, they were coded as one for all items related to that site. Political reception items were measured on the same six-point frequency scale as previous items, and were first combined into four platform-specific indexes ( r s = .38–.77). The platform-specific indexes were then combined to create an overall index of SM political reception (W1 M = 1.48, SD = .71). We also controlled for respondents’ non-political social media use by asking them how often they used social media to stay in touch with family and friends on the same six-point scale (SM relational use; W1 M = 4.36, SD = 1.67). To assess more general media use, participants reported how often in the past seven days they had used a range of news sources, including national nightly news, cable news, local television news, daily newspapers, and online news. Items were measured on a five-point scale (1 = never to 5 = every day) and combined into an index of traditional media use (W1 M = 2.61, SD = .98, α = .69).

We also controlled for previous political attitudes and behavior. Our goal was to examine political self-concepts outside the context of partisan identity. Thus, we first asked respondents to report their partisan affiliation using the following options: strong Democrat, moderate Democrat, Independent, moderate Republican, strong Republican, and other. This variable was then recoded such that 1 indicated weak partisans (Independents/other party affiliation, n = 336), 2 indicated moderate partisans (moderate Republicans/Democrats, n = 271), and 3 indicated strong partisans (strong Republicans/Democrats, n = 254). The recoded variable was labeled strength of partisanship (W1 M = 1.9, SD = .82). Additionally, we controlled for general levels of political participation by asking respondents how frequently, on the same six-point scale, they had engaged in eight types of offline political action, including (a) attending a public hearing, (b) calling or mailing a public official, (c) physically posting political material, (d) attending a candidate event, (e) volunteering for a campaign, (f) signing a petition, (g) donating money to a campaign, and (h) participating in a protest. These measures were combined into a mean index of offline political participation (W1 M = 1.26, SD = .51, α = .83). Finally, we included age ( M = 47.14, SD = 15.94), gender (59% women) and education ( Mdn = high school diploma) as controls.

Analytical strategy

To test our proposed theoretical model, we conducted a series of lagged–dependent variable (DV) regression analyses, using both waves of panel data. This strategy strengthened our test of causal links by controlling for W1 levels of both the mediating variable (SM political self-presentation motivations) and criterion variables (political interest, political self-efficacy, perceived participation, and perceived knowledge). Results from these lagged-DV models assess the impact of social media political expression on the change in outcome variables over time. To test for indirect relationships in our model, we used the R package Mediation, which performs Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) path analysis and a 10,000 simulation non-parametric bootstrapping technique to generate 95% confidence intervals (CIs; Tingley, Yamamoto, Hirose, Keele, & Imai, 2014 ). All analyses controlled for W1 levels of general self-presentation motivations, SM political reception, SM for relational use, traditional media use, strength of partisanship, offline political participation, age, gender, and education. After a primary analysis of our theoretical model, we conducted identical mediation tests using five individual Facebook expressive behaviors as focal predictors. Finally, we tested a series of alternative models to examine the robustness of our theoretical model.

Primary analyses

Descriptive statistics for the independent and mediating variables are summarized in Table S1 and mediation analyses are summarized in Figure S1 (see Supporting Information ). Prior to our primary analysis, we examined the direct relationship between SM political expression (W1) and W2 levels of each dimension of political self-concept (political interest, political self-efficacy, perceived participation, and perceived knowledge). As expected, after including all control variables in the regression models, there were no significant direct relationships found ( p -values > .5; not reported in a table), suggesting that any influence of SM political expression on political self-concepts must occur indirectly.

Summary of Lagged-DV Regression Analyses

Note: Unstandardized coefficients reported, with standard errors in parentheses. DV = dependent variable; SM = social media; W = wave.

# p < .10; * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001, (two-tailed). N = 861.

Next, we examined the extent to which SM political self-presentation motivations were positively associated with dimensions of political self-concepts (H2; see Table 1 ). Looking across models that predicted dimensions of political self-concepts, we observed that SM political self-presentation motivations (W2) positively predicted W2 levels of political interest ( b = .07, SE = .03; p = .01), political self-efficacy ( b = .07, SE = .03; p = .02), and perceived participation ( b = .17, SE = .03, p < .001), supporting H2a, b, and c. However, SM political self-presentation motivation (W2) was not a significant predictor of perceived knowledge (W2 b = .03, SE = .03, p = .24), failing to support H2d. These results suggest that the more respondents felt motivated to present themselves as politically active on social media, the more they viewed themselves as politically interested, efficacious, and active. A similar relationship with perceived political knowledge did not emerge.

Given the significant relationships reported above, we conducted a formal test of mediation to determine whether there were indirect, positive relationships between political expression on social media and dimensions of political self-concepts through SM political self-presentation motivations (H3). Mediation tests were conducted using SM political expression (W1) as the focal predictor, SM political self-presentation motivations (W2) as the mediator, and each dimension of political self-concepts as an outcome variable. Significant, indirect relationships were found for political interest (W2, PE [point estimate] = .043, 95% CI .005–.089), political self-efficacy (W2, PE = .043, 95% CI .005–.091), and perceived participation (W2, PE = .107, 95% CI .049–.177; no CIs cross zero). No significant, indirect relationship was found for perceived knowledge ( PE = .019, 95% CI -.018–.059; CI crosses zero). These findings partially support H3 and suggest that political expression on social media can indirectly influence individuals’ political interest, self-efficacy, and perceived participation, but not their perceived knowledge.

Facebook-specific analyses

Next, we examined whether the indirect relationship reported above varied when individual expressive behaviors on Facebook were examined (RQ1). To do so, we assessed the frequency of five Facebook expressive behaviors that entail varying levels of public commitment (measured on the same six-point frequency scale as previous items). The first two items captured higher-commitment expressive behaviors, which required more detailed articulation of political views: (a) posting your own political opinion or experiences (FB posted opinion; W1; M = 2.02, SD = 1.52) and (b) commenting on a news story or political post (FB commented; W1; M = 2.31, SD = 1.63). The remaining items captured lower-commitment behaviors, including (a) sharing a link to a news story or website (FB shared link; W1; M = 2.21, SD = 1.6), (b) sharing a political photo, video or meme (FB shared visual; W1; M = 2.13, SD = 1.57), 3), and (c) clicking “like” on political content (FB liked content; W1; M = 3.06, SD = 1.82).

Indirect Relationships for Facebook-Specific Mediation Models

Note. All control variables are included. Significant indirect relationships are highlighted in gray (CIs do not cross zero). CI = 95% confidence intervals; FB = Facebook; W = wave. N = 781.

Robustness checks

To examine the robustness of our model, we conducted post hoc analyses that address two alternative causal pathways. First, we tested the possibility that those who are motivated to present themselves as political on social media are more likely to express themselves politically, which in turn strengthens their political self-concept. This pathway effectively swaps the order of the predictor and mediator in our model and implies that an alternative (un-examined) mechanism facilitates the effect of political expression on political self-concepts. To test this possibility, we conducted mediation models predicting the four dimensions of political self-concepts using SM political self-presentation motivations (W1) as the focal predictor and SM political expression as the mediator (W2). Results (not included in a table) show that SM political self-presentation motivations (W1) significantly predicted an increase in SM political expression (W2; b = .02, SE = .01; p < .001), but that there were no significant relationships between SM political expression (W2) and any of the W2 political self-concept variables ( p -values > .05), except for perceived participation ( b = .33. SE = .14; p = .01). No indirect relationships were found between SM political self-presentation motivations (W1) and any political self-concept variables via this pathway. This suggests that political expression on social media and SM political self-presentation motivations are likely mutually influencing, but that political expression on social media does not directly strengthen dimensions of political self-concepts.

The second possibility is that any politically-expressive behavior—not just those behaviors specific to social media—motivates individuals to engage in political self-presentation on social media. In other words, it may be that people who generally engage in political expression also feel that it is important to present their political selves online. To examine this possibility, we tested our model again, but replaced SM political expression with a variable that captured expression outside of social media: offline political discussion (W1). 2 Results (not reported in a table) showed that offline political discussion (W1) was not a significant predictor of SM political self-presentation motivations (W2; b = -.09 [SE = .05]; p = .09). There were no significant indirect relationships between offline political discussions (W1) and political self-concept variables. This suggests that the self-presentational process in our model is likely specific to social media.

Social media offer important social contexts, in which we come to understand our political selves. While previous research has emphasized online political expression as a gateway to political participation (e.g., Boulianne, 2015 ), our findings offer evidence that the expressive affordances of social media can also serve to strengthen individuals’ political self-concepts. We provide empirical support for the self-presentational mechanism theorized by previous researchers to facilitate such effects ( Gil de Zúñiga et al., 2014 ; Pingree, 2007 ) and demonstrate that not all acts of political expression are created equal. In doing so, we contribute several important insights to the growing literature on political expression and social media.

First, we found that the more respondents engaged in political expression, the more motivated they became to present themselves as politically active on social media. Consistent with public commitment theory ( Schienker et al., 1994 ), those who posted their political opinions or shared political news may have created a politically-active public image on social media, which they then became motivated to maintain. Again, this finding may appear counter-intuitive, given that motivation is often conceptualized as preceding communicative behavior. While people’s motivations obviously do influence how frequently they express themselves, our findings—along with the social psychology literature we have reviewed—suggest that the social consequences of expressive behavior can also influence motivations. Our results offer evidence that engagement in political expression on social media can enhance the political self-presentation motivations of the expresser. Notably, this relationship was significant while controlling for a range of relevant factors, including global self-presentation motivations.

We also found that many—but not all—varieties of expression on social media can increase political self-presentation motivations. Our analysis of Facebook-specific expression showed that expressive behaviors that were higher–public commitment (e.g., posting an original opinion) or lower–public commitment (e.g., sharing a link) similarly increased political self-presentation motivations on social media. In contrast, liking content did not have the same effect. This suggests that expression that entails either weak or ambiguous public commitment may not be sufficient to trigger self-presentation motivations. Ultimately, this supports the theory that political expression influences political self-presentation motivations because it constitutes a public commitment to a political self-presentation on social media. Relatedly, we only found effects when examining expression on social media, and not offline forms of political talk. This further suggests that the features and affordances of social media (e.g., social observability, persistence of content) may create environments where self-presentational processes are particularly powerful ( Papacharissi, 2010 ). Our findings echo work by Theocharis and van Deth (2017) demonstrating that seemingly low-cost acts of “digitally networked participation” have important effects on how citizens think about politics. Our study builds upon such efforts, highlighting the need to more carefully theorize and analyze forms of online political expression, based on their level of public commitment.

Our results also demonstrate that those who are motivated to engage in political self-presentation on social media have stronger political self-concepts. This suggests that self-presentational processes on social media may contribute to higher political interest, a stronger sense of one’s political efficacy, and an increased perception that one is an active participant in the political process. These findings extend experimental work on the relationship between self-presentation and self-concept change (e.g., Gonzales & Hancock, 2008 ; Schienker et al., 1994 ) into the political realm. As we have argued, these relationships may be due to the chronic accessibility of politically self-relevant attitudes among those who are motivated to engage in political self-presentation ( Bargh et al., 2002 ), which may lead to positive changes in their working political self-concepts ( Markus & Wurf, 1987 ). A notable exception to this pattern of positive relationships was perceived knowledge. We speculate that active political self-presentation on social media is not enough to build confidence in one’s political knowledge; however, more work is needed to clarify this finding.

In sum, our results offer evidence that political expression on social media may play an important role in the development of political self-concepts. Our finding that expression is not directly related to self-concept change highlights the crucial, mediating role of political self-presentation motivations in this process ( Gonzales & Hancock, 2008 ). It is important to qualify our conclusions by noting that we are unable to assess the longer-term stability of changes in political self-concepts with our data. As we have noted, the most plausible interpretation of our findings is that, by engaging in political expression on social media, respondents in our study experienced shifts in their working self-concepts. We have argued that, in the context of an election, such short-term changes could matter a great deal. If citizens’ working political self-concepts are sufficiently strengthened through expression, they may attend more carefully to the news, engage more deeply in campaigns, and be more likely to vote. Ultimately, future work is needed to examine the durability of the political self-concept changes we observed.

While our findings make a substantive contribution to the study of political expression on social media, we note several limitations worthy of consideration. First, as with all survey data, our measures are based on self-reports and may be subsequently biased. This is of particular importance when assessing behavioral outcomes, such as political expression or media use (see Araujo, Wonneberger, Neijens, & de Vreese, 2017 ). While we have no reason to believe self-report biases have systematically influenced our findings, future studies in this area should combine behavioral trace data with self-reports of political attitudes. Second, it is important to note that our study examined a particularly contentious election in a single national context. While we argue that our findings have important implications for contemporary American political life, additional work is needed to determine whether the effects we find are generalizable across different election cycles and national contexts. Given the heterogeneity in patterns of social media use, it is also important that future studies of this phenomenon consider how differences in platform features and user behaviors moderate the effects we observed. Third, future research should improve measurement of our mediating variable: social media political self-presentation motivations. The validity of our model can be improved by assessing not only respondents’ perception that political self-presentation on social media is important, but also how often they engage in behaviors specifically motivated to manage their political self-presentation. Relatedly, work that clarifies the broader causes and consequences of political self-presentation motivations can help contextualize our findings. Finally, our use of panel data strengthens some of the causal claims we make in our analysis. Nonetheless, more experimental work is needed to support our contention that political expression on social media is a causal contributor to users’ political self-concepts. Well-controlled experimental designs could offer stronger convergent evidence.

In some sense, the optimistic picture of political expression on social media offered by our findings stands in stark contrast to the popular narrative of social media during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. While social media served as sites for foreign interference and partisan warfare during the election ( McCarthy, 2017 ), our results demonstrate that they may have also helped strengthen citizens’ political self-concepts. This optimistic finding presents a paradox. In order to benefit from the pathways in our model, citizens must be willing to engage in political expression in the first place. In this sense, social media may be best conceived of as catalytic environments for developing political self-concepts, where some minimum interest or desire to engage in political expression is needed to trigger a positive feedback loop, in which self-presentation and self-concept are mutually reinforcing (see Walther et al. 2011 ). Leary and Kowalski (1990) suggested that the selves we present to the world, while sometimes aspirational, typically stem from attributes of our existing identities. Gollwitzer (1986) similarly argued that one reason why we publicly perform certain “aspirational” identities (e.g., “lawyer, mother, pious person,” p. 145), is out of a preexisting desire to develop and possess those identities.

This suggests two potential consequences for the theoretical model we examined. The first is that, given the social risk entailed in political expression on social media ( Thorson, 2013 ), only those with some minimum, initial political self-concept will benefit from the self-presentational effects we observed. This implies a “rich-get-richer” cycle of political communication, which other scholars have warned is likely to reproduce or exacerbate existing political inequalities ( Thorson, Xu, & Edgerly, 2017 ). The second possibility is that, if social media environments are designed to lower barriers to political expression, pathways to political engagement may become more accessible to those with weak or non-existent political selves. If individuals can be encouraged or incentivized to engage in easy acts of political expression (e.g., content sharing), they may be able to benefit from a mutually-reinforcing process of political self-presentation and political self-concept development. This possibility is supported by studies of participatory culture that have found that young people are achieving new forms of expressive participation in digital spaces (e.g., fan forums) that engage them in politics (see Jenkins et al., 2016 ). Similarly, work on third spaces suggests that non-political corners of the digital eco-system may present low-cost opportunities to engage in the world of politics ( Wright, 2012 ). Future research should attempt to empirically examine whether or not different social media can serve as contexts for political self-concept development.

Ultimately, our study has broader implications for communication research. By adopting a “self-effects” perspective ( Valkenburg, 2017 ), researchers can better acknowledge the roles social media play in shaping individuals’ basic understandings of themselves. As many have argued, social media are some of the most important “looking-glasses” through which we now see ourselves ( Papacharissi, 2010 ). In the domain of politics and beyond, much of how we behave and what we believe is likely to be influenced by the image of ourselves we see reflected back to us in the pages and feeds of social media.

Results do not differ with participants who failed the attention check included in the sample.

Offline political discussions (W1) was measured by creating a mean index of four items (measured on same six-point scale) assessing the frequency of offline political conversation with: (a) “friends and family,” (b) “someone I don’t know very well,” (c) “people who share my political views,” and (d) “people who don’t share my political views” ( M = 3.06, SD = 1.27, α = .85).

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6.1 Political Socialization: The Ways People Become Political

Learning outcomes.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Define political socialization.
• Describe the main influences on a person’s political socialization.
• Analyze the ways social media has affected political socialization.
• Discuss the factors that determine which influences will have the greatest impact on a person’s political socialization.

Do you consider yourself to have a political identity? Do you belong to or identify with a political party? Do you have a political ideology, such as conservative, libertarian, liberal, or populist? Are you apolitical (indifferent to politics), or are you deeply engaged in political action? Whatever your answers are, there is a chance—but a rather small one—that you deliberately and thoughtfully made these choices at a single moment by analytically comparing the various alternatives. It’s more likely that your choices gradually emerged over time through a complex combination of environmental and social influences interacting with your own personal biological and psychological makeup.

It is not entirely clear how Greta Thunberg became a climate change activist, for example, although her father Svante was named after his grandfather, a Nobel Prize–winning scientist who identified the link between increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and higher global temperatures. 5 She grew up in Sweden, a country with a strong ethic of environmentalism (by some measures, it is ranked as the most environmentally friendly country in the world). 6 She reports learning about climate change by age eight and credits the American student activists who protested gun laws after the Parkland, Florida, school shootings with inspiring her to act. 7

The gradual process of developing values and beliefs, of people becoming who they are as adults, is socialization , and the slow development of who a person becomes as a political being is political socialization . 8 Through political socialization, people develop their political ideology in the broadest sense. This includes not only their values and attitudes regarding the role of citizens and the government, but also regarding issues such as social justice or climate change. Socialization also influences whether a person is likely to have any interest in politics at all.

Political socialization is neither premeditated nor preordained, although there is a growing body of evidence that indicates that there are genetic links to political predispositions. 9 As an infant, you did not choose who you would become as an adult. As you grew, you were subject to a wide variety of forces that shaped your personality. Some of these forces were present in your physical environment, such as your home (Was there lead paint on the walls?), your neighborhood (Was it safe?), 10 and your school (Was it a place you looked forward to going to?). 11 As your physical environment shapes your learning, it also influences your views and attitudes, even if you are unaware of these influences.

The line from your social and physical environment to your political personality may be indirect. If you grew up in a heavily policed neighborhood, attended a deteriorating school, and lacked safe drinking water, your attitudes about government are likely to differ from an otherwise identical individual who lived in a comfortable home with safe drinking water and attended a well-resourced school in an affluent neighborhood. Humans are complicated, and it would be unwise to conclude that all those growing up in privilege are identically socialized or that those raised lacking such privilege all have the same political personalities. Your social and physical environments do not determine your political personality, but they can have an important influence.

The Role of the Family

The family is usually considered the most important influence on both a person’s overall socialization and their political socialization . Families profoundly affect people’s views about religion, work, and education. 12 People gradually develop these preferences, attitudes, and behaviors as they grow from infants to adolescents to adults. The impact families have on people’s lives does not vanish when they become adults. It is likely to persist over their lifetimes. The influence need not always flow from the parents to the child. Greta Thunberg ’s activism led her parents to reconsider their own environmental attitudes, and research suggests that children often affect their parents’ views on the environment. 13

Your family is likely to exert a substantial influence on your political views. 14 In some political settings in which a child’s identity is defined by religion, ethnicity, and place, their political views may seem almost predetermined. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, for example, the three main groups tend to be divided by ethnicity and religion, which largely define their political affiliations. Ethnic Bosniaks tend to be Muslim, Croats tend to be Roman Catholic, and Serbs are mainly Orthodox Christians. These differing ethnic and religious groups largely determine individuals’ political affiliations: there is little political intermingling across ethnic and religious lines. 15

In most places around the world, if parents raise their children in a particular religious faith, those children are more likely than not to adopt that faith as they become adults (or, if the children are raised in no faith, they are less likely to have religious connections as adults). 16 The same is true for almost any other important facet of life: social attitudes, beliefs about the role of the family, and yes, political beliefs. This is not to say that beliefs are automatically transmitted: young people have agency and may accept, reject, or simply question what their parents believe. 17

THE CHANGING POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

The changing family.

Families play a key role in political socialization, and family structure is evolving in different ways around the world. One fundamental change is family size; fertility rates have dropped in virtually every country in the past century.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) provides an extreme example. When the PRC was established in 1949, the government encouraged families to have children to create additional workers, and by the 1960s the typical Chinese family had six children. At that point political leaders became worried about rapid population growth, and so in 1980 they instituted a one-child policy strictly enforced through a combination of benefits and often-harsh penalties. The policy dramatically slowed population growth, and it substantially increased both the age of and the percentage of males in the population. Under this policy, a cultural preference for male children led to sex-selective abortions and female infanticide. Believing that they had gone too far, the Chinese government lifted the one-child policy in 2016. 18

What It Was Like to Grow Up under China’s One-Child Policy

In this TED talk, Chinese filmmaker Nanfu Wang describes her experiences as a child growing up under China’s one-child policy and as an adult making a documentary about people’s experiences under the policy.

Family structure involves not only how many children are in a family, but where they live when they effectively become adults. As of 2016, a higher percentage (52 percent) of 18-to-29-year-olds in the United States were living with their parents than at any time since 1900. 19 Among wealthy countries, the percentage of 15-to-29 year-olds living with their parents varied from about 80 percent in Italy to 30 percent in Canada. 20

Given what we already know about how family members can influence each other’s political attitudes and beliefs, it will be interesting to see how these changing family structures and living conditions impact political socialization .

Your parents’ political leanings and your broader family environment affect your political views. For example, who is expected to take responsibility for caring for parents as they age varies from country to country. In China, caring for one’s parents is a sacred duty; in Norway, it is more often seen as an obligation of the government. Germans and Italians are more than twice as likely as Americans to say that the government, rather than the family, has the main responsibility for caring for the elderly. 21

Note that these statements, like other generalizations, are not true for every person in every circumstance everywhere. Some children of devout worshippers become atheists, some people raised as capitalists become communists, and some of the children of political, social, and cultural liberals become ardent conservatives.

When making these generalizations, this chapter uses words like “generally” or “tend” to suggest that the statements are accurate for the bulk of the group or characteristic being discussed. For example, in the United States, about 7 out of 10 teenagers have political ideologies and partisan affiliations similar to their parents: liberal teens tend to have liberal parents, and conservative youth generally have conservative parents. Still, about one-third of US teenagers adopt different political ideologies from those they were raised with. 22

Bernie Sanders Says His Childhood Shaped His Political Views

In a 60 Minutes interview, Senator Bernie Sanders describes how his childhood experiences helped shape his political views.

The identities of a young person’s parent(s) affect that person’s political socialization . If parental engagement in politics is high and party identification is strong, children are more likely to adopt those attitudes and behaviors than if parental political engagement is low and their partisanship indifferent. 23 Family structure—whether a child is living with two parents or a single parent, and whether parents are married, divorced, or cohabitating, for example—raises complex issues for political socialization that are not well understood. 24 Moreover, the impact of the family on socialization is not limited to children. Family dynamics also impact the political socialization of adults. 25

Your living situation growing up largely determines what influences you will encounter as you mature. Your school can influence your political socialization, as different schools have differing teaching philosophies, student bodies, and political activities. Likewise, your place of worship may have a profound influence on who you become. When you are young, your parents or guardians probably choose your school and religion; however, as people grow older, many of them spend less time with their parents or guardians and more time with their peers, including friends at school, work, community, and play. You may change your language, clothing, and interests to fit in with those in your group. And as you grow older, you are increasingly able to make your own decisions.

It is less clear whether your peers will have a lasting impact on your political socialization. Like many things when you are growing up, your choice of peers is not entirely in your control. Most children don't pick where they live and where they attend primary school, and those two factors play a big part in determining the pool of people from which individuals can choose friends. In short, your parents’ life circumstances and choices shape who your peers are likely to be. Still, context is important. Before the advent of social media, parental decisions would almost entirely determine your pool of peers. Now, given internet access, young people can find their peer groups virtually anywhere.

Increasingly, young people rely on social media to learn about the world and connect with others. Political scientists are still trying to decipher what this means for political socialization. In the past, a young person’s peers tended to be local: other members of the clan, the village, or the church. Today, a young person’s peers can be almost anywhere in the world, assuming they understand the same language, and thus young people (and adults) can more easily choose their peers based on common interests and beliefs than they could in the past. To the extent that young people, and indeed all individuals, can choose their social networks rather than being placed in them by virtue of their location, it is more likely that peer networks will reinforce existing beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors rather than change them. The ability of individuals to choose their social networks leads to “echo chambers,” which Chapter 12: The Media will examine further.

Other Affiliations

Your family and peers greatly influence your political opinions, attitudes, values, and behaviors, but there are other important influences. How much these other influences affect a person’s political socialization depends, in part, on how important they are to the person’s identity and daily life.

What Does Being Indigenous Mean?

In this clip, Indigenous people in Canada explain what it means to them to be Indigenous.

Consider ethnicity. The dominant ethnic group within a country—the White British within the United Kingdom, for example—may not perceive their ethnicity as having much of an influence on their political socialization, but its impact is likely to be profound. Members of ethnic majorities may be more likely to assume that politics and government should favor their interests as a matter of course because they may (naively) believe that what is good for them is good for everyone. Ethnic minorities, in contrast, may be socialized to feel the sting of discrimination and to view the government as no friend. One’s ethnic identity is likely to be more salient if that identity signifies one as an outsider. 26

If you were raised in a devout family, that family’s religion may have an important influence on your political socialization. 27 In the United States, for example, those individuals identifying as evangelicals are much more likely than the rest of the population to favor socially conservative public policies such as prohibiting same sex marriage or curtailing abortion rights, and they are much more likely to support the Republican Party. At the opposite end of the spectrum, those raised as atheists are more likely to believe that governmental policy should not be based on religious principles. 28

Gender roles and gender identification can influence an individual’s political socialization. Socialization into “traditional” gender roles may discourage women from developing interest or participating in politics, while in countries with women in leadership positions, young women may be socialized to become more politically aware and active. 29 The impact of gender identification and sexual orientation on political socialization is not well understood, but it seems likely that the greater the importance a person places on these attributes and the more intense the formative experiences they have regarding these attributes, the greater the influence these attributes will have on that person’s political socialization. 30

Even though young people spend a lot of time in school, the impact of schooling on political socialization appears to be modest. Why? The schools children attend often reflect the choices and environment of their parents, so they have little independent influence on socialization. For example, if you come from a religious home and your family has the means to do so, your parents might choose to send you to religious school; this reinforces the influence of the family’s religion on socialization. More broadly, the schools young people attend are likely to reflect the conditions and values that already exist in their environment.

People are socialized as individuals, and they are socialized in groups, including their family, peers, and others in their social environments. As people are socialized, they become part of larger groupings of individuals with common characteristics. The next sections discuss these larger groupings.

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The Political Self

Identity Resources for Radical Democracy

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The theoretical tradition of symbolic interactionism is often criticized by more macro-oriented sociologists for its failure to consider and develop issues of power that go beyond the dynamics of interpersonal relations. During the decades of the 1960’s and 70’s critics such as ( 1970 ) and ( 1973 ) chastised symbolic interactionists and microoriented sociologists such as Goffman, as irrelevant, and naive when it came to the larger and more central concerns of sociology. The publication of ( 1980 ) Symbolic Interactionism: A Social Structural Version , can be read at least in part as a response to these criticisms. By merging key elements of role theory with a symbolic interactionist theory of self, Stryker was able to construct a conceptual framework more open to mainstream (i.e. macro) sociological concerns. While his theory does not explicitly focus on social forces of domination and control, ( 1980: 151 ) does stress that “there is nothing inherent in symbolic interactionism that necessitates either naivete with reference to, or denial of the facts of differentially distributed power.”

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Callero, P.L. (2003). The Political Self. In: Burke, P.J., Owens, T.J., Serpe, R.T., Thoits, P.A. (eds) Advances in Identity Theory and Research. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9188-1_5

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Lying in Politics: Hannah Arendt on Deception, Self-Deception, and the Psychology of Defactualization

By maria popova.

“The possibilities that exist between two people, or among a group of people,” Adrienne Rich wrote in her beautiful 1975 speech on lying and what truth really means , “are a kind of alchemy. They are the most interesting thing in life. The liar is someone who keeps losing sight of these possibilities.” Nowhere is this liar’s loss of perspective more damaging to public life, human possibility, and our collective progress than in politics, where complex social, cultural, economic, and psychological forces conspire to make the assault on truth traumatic on a towering scale.

Those forces are what Hannah Arendt (October 14, 1906–December 4, 1975), one of the most incisive thinkers of the past century, explores in a superb 1971 essay titled “Lying in Politics,” written shortly after the release of the Pentagon Papers and later included in Crises of the Republic ( public library ) — a collection of Arendt’s timelessly insightful and increasingly timely essays on politics, violence, civil disobedience, and the pillars of a sane and stable society.

Out of the particular treachery the Pentagon Papers revealed, Arendt wrests a poignant meditation on the betrayal we feel at every revelation that our political leaders — those we have elected to be our civil servants — have deceived and disappointed us. With the release of the Pentagon Papers, Arendt argues, “the famous credibility gap … suddenly opened up into an abyss” — an abyss rife with the harrowing hollowness of every political disappointment that ever was and ever will be. In a quest to illuminate the various “aspects of deception, self-deception, image-making, ideologizing, and defactualization,” she writes:

Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings. Whoever reflects on these matters can only be surprised by how little attention has been paid, in our tradition of philosophical and political thought, to their significance, on the one hand for the nature of action and, on the other, for the nature of our ability to deny in thought and word whatever happens to be the case. This active, aggressive capability is clearly different from our passive susceptibility to falling prey to error, illusion, the distortions of memory, and to whatever else can be blamed on the failings of our sensual and mental apparatus.

A defender of the contradictory complexity of the human experience and its necessary nuance, Arendt reminds us that the human tendency toward deception isn’t so easily filed into a moral binary. Two millennia after Cicero argued that the human capacities for envy and compassion have a common root , Arendt argues that our moral flaws and our imaginative flair spring from the same source:

A characteristic of human action is that it always begins something new, and this does not mean that it is ever permitted to start ab ovo , to create ex nihilo . In order to make room for one’s own action, something that was there before must be removed or destroyed, and things as they were before are changed. Such change would be impossible if we could not mentally remove ourselves from where we physically are located and imagine that things might as well be different from what they actually are. In other words, the deliberate denial of factual truth — the ability to lie — and the capacity to change facts — the ability to act — are interconnected; they owe their existence to the same source: imagination. It is by no means a matter of course that we can say , “The sun shines,” when it actually is raining (the consequence of certain brain injuries is the loss of this capacity); rather, it indicates that while we are well equipped for the world, sensually as well as mentally, we are not fitted or embedded into it as one of its inalienable parts. We are free to change the world and to start something new in it. Without the mental freedom to deny or affirm existence, to say “yes” or “no” — not just to statements or propositions in order to express agreement or disagreement, but to things as they are given, beyond agreement or disagreement, to our organs of perception and cognition — no action would be possible; and action is of course the very stuff politics are made of. Hence, when we talk about lying … let us remember that the lie did not creep into politics by some accident of human sinfulness. Moral outrage, for this reason alone, is not likely to make it disappear.

Since history is a form of collective memory woven of truth-by-consensus, it is hardly surprising that our collective memory should be so imperfect and fallible given how error-prone our individual memory is . Arendt captures this elegantly:

The deliberate falsehood deals with contingent facts; that is, with matters that carry no inherent truth within themselves, no necessity to be as they are. Factual truths are never compellingly true. The historian knows how vulnerable is the whole texture of facts in which we spend our daily life; it is always in danger of being perforated by single lies or torn to shreds by the organized lying of groups, nations, or classes, or denied and distorted, often carefully covered up by reams of falsehoods or simply allowed to fall into oblivion. Facts need testimony to be remembered and trustworthy witnesses to be established in order to find a secure dwelling place in the domain of human affairs. From this, it follows that no factual statement can ever be beyond doubt.

In a sentiment that calls to mind Maria Konnikova’s fascinating inquiry into the psychology of why cons work on even the most rational of us , Arendt adds:

It is this fragility that makes deception so very easy up to a point, and so tempting. It never comes into a conflict with reason, because things could indeed have been as the liar maintains they were. Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason, than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear. He has prepared his story for public consumption with a careful eye to making it credible, whereas reality has the disconcerting habit of confronting us with the unexpected, for which we were not prepared. Under normal circumstances the liar is defeated by reality, for which there is no substitute; no matter how large the tissue of falsehood that an experienced liar has to offer, it will never be large enough, even if he enlists the help of computers, to cover the immensity of factuality. The liar, who may get away with any number of single falsehoods, will find it impossible to get away with lying on principle.

Arendt considers one particularly pernicious breed of liars — “public-relations managers in government who learned their trade from the inventiveness of Madison Avenue.” In a sentiment arguably itself defeated by reality — a reality in which someone like Donald Trump sells enough of the public on enough falsehoods to get gobsmackingly close to the presidency — she writes:

The only limitation to what the public-relations man does comes when he discovers that the same people who perhaps can be “manipulated” to buy a certain kind of soap cannot be manipulated — though, of course, they can be forced by terror — to “buy” opinions and political views. Therefore the psychological premise of human manipulability has become one of the chief wares that are sold on the market of common and learned opinion.

In what is possibly the finest parenthetical paragraph ever written, and one of particularly cautionary splendor today, Arendt adds:

(Oddly enough, the only person likely to be an ideal victim of complete manipulation is the President of the United States. Because of the immensity of his job, he must surround himself with advisers … who “exercise their power chiefly by filtering the information that reaches the President and by interpreting the outside world for him.” The President, one is tempted to argue, allegedly the most powerful man of the most powerful country, is the only person in this country whose range of choices can be predetermined. This, of course, can happen only if the executive branch has cut itself off from contact with the legislative powers of Congress; it is the logical outcome in our system of government when the Senate is being deprived of, or is reluctant to exercise, its powers to participate and advise in the conduct of foreign affairs. One of the Senate’s functions, as we now know, is to shield the decision-making process against the transient moods and trends of society at large — in this case, the antics of our consumer society and the public-relations managers who cater to it.)

Arendt turns to the role of falsehood, be it deliberate or docile, in the craftsmanship of what we call history:

Unlike the natural scientist, who deals with matters that, whatever their origin, are not man-made or man-enacted, and that therefore can be observed, understood, and eventually even changed only through the most meticulous loyalty to factual, given reality, the historian, as well as the politician, deals with human affairs that owe their existence to man’s capacity for action, and that means to man’s relative freedom from things as they are. Men who act, to the extent that they feel themselves to be the masters of their own futures, will forever be tempted to make themselves masters of the past, too. Insofar as they have the appetite for action and are also in love with theories, they will hardly have the natural scientist’s patience to wait until theories and hypothetical explanations are verified or denied by facts. Instead, they will be tempted to fit their reality — which, after all, was man-made to begin with and thus could have been otherwise — into their theory, thereby mentally getting rid of its disconcerting contingency.

This squeezing of reality into theory, Arendt admonishes, is also a centerpiece of the political system, where the inherent complexity of reality is flattened into artificial oversimplification:

Much of the modern arsenal of political theory — the game theories and systems analyses, the scenarios written for imagined “audiences,” and the careful enumeration of, usually, three “options” — A, B, C — whereby A and C represent the opposite extremes and B the “logical” middle-of-the-road “solution” of the problem — has its source in this deep-seated aversion. The fallacy of such thinking begins with forcing the choices into mutually exclusive dilemmas; reality never presents us with anything so neat as premises for logical conclusions. The kind of thinking that presents both A and C as undesirable, therefore settles on B, hardly serves any other purpose than to divert the mind and blunt the judgment for the multitude of real possibilities.

But even more worrisome, Arendt cautions, is the way in which such flattening of reality blunts the judgment of government itself — nowhere more aggressively than in the overclassification of documents, which makes information available only to a handful of people in power and, paradoxically, not available to the representatives who most need that information in order to make decisions in the interest of the public who elected them. Arendt writes:

Not only are the people and their elected representatives denied access to what they must know to form an opinion and make decisions, but also the actors themselves, who receive top clearance to learn all the relevant facts, remain blissfully unaware of them. And this is so not because some invisible hand deliberately leads them astray, but because they work under circumstances, and with habits of mind, that allow them neither time nor inclination to go hunting for pertinent facts in mountains of documents, 99½ per cent of which should not be classified and most of which are irrelevant for all practical purposes. […] If the mysteries of government have so befogged the minds of the actors themselves that they no longer know or remember the truth behind their concealments and their lies, the whole operation of deception, no matter how well organized its “marathon information campaigns,” in Dean Rusk’s words, and how sophisticated its Madison Avenue gimmickry, will run aground or become counterproductive, that is, confuse people without convincing them. For the trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide. In this sense, truth, even if it does not prevail in public, possesses an ineradicable primacy over all falsehoods.

She extrapolates the broader human vulnerability to falsehood:

The deceivers started with self-deception. […] The self-deceived deceiver loses all contact with not only his audience, but also the real world, which still will catch up with him, because he can remove his mind from it but not his body.

Crises of the Republic is a spectacular and spectacularly timely read in its totality. Complement it with Arendt on the crucial difference between truth and meaning , the power of outsiderdom , our impulse for self-display , what free will really means , and her beautiful love letters , then revisit Walt Whitman on how literature bolsters democracy and Carl Sagan on why science is a tool of political harmony .

— Published June 15, 2016 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/06/15/lying-in-politics-hannah-arendt/ —

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A Brief History of the Political Essay

From swift to woolf, david bromwich considers an evolving genre.

The political essay has never been a clearly defined genre. David Hume may have legitimated it in 1758 when he classified under a collective rubric his own Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary. “Political,” however, should have come last in order, since Hume took a speculative and detached view of politics, and seems to have been incapable of feeling passion for a political cause. We commonly associate political thought with full-scale treatises by philosophers of a different sort, whose understanding of politics was central to their account of human nature. Hobbes’s Leviathan , Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws , Rousseau’s Social Contract , Mill’s Representative Government , and, closer to our time, Rawls’s Theory of Justice , all satisfy that expectation. What, then, is a political essay? By the late 18th century, the periodical writings of Steele, Swift, Goldsmith, and Johnson had broadened the scope of the English essay for serious purposes. The field of politics, as much as culture, appeared to their successors well suited to arguments on society and government.

A public act of praise, dissent, or original description may take on permanent value when it implicates concerns beyond the present moment. Where the issue is momentous, the commitment stirred by passion, and the writing strong enough, an essay may sink deep roots in the language of politics. An essay is an attempt , as the word implies—a trial of sense and persuasion, which any citizen may hazard in a society where people are free to speak their minds. A more restrictive idea of political argument—one that would confer special legitimacy on an elite caste of managers, consultants, and symbolic analysts—presumes an environment in which state papers justify decisions arrived at from a region above politics. By contrast, the absence of formal constraints or a settled audience for the essay means that the daily experience of the writer counts as evidence. A season of crisis tempts people to think politically; in the process, they sometimes discover reasons to back their convictions.

The experience of civic freedom and its discontents may lead the essayist to think beyond politics. In 1940, Virginia Woolf recalled the sound of German bombers circling overhead the night before; the insect-like irritant, with its promise of aggression, frightened her into thought: “It is a queer experience, lying in the dark and listening to the zoom of a hornet which may at any moment sting you to death.” The ugly noise, for Woolf, signaled the prerogative of the fighting half of the species: Englishwomen “must lie weaponless tonight.” Yet Englishmen would be called upon to destroy the menace; and she was not sorry for their help. The mood of the writer is poised between gratitude and a bewildered frustration. Woolf ’s essay, “Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid,” declines to exhibit the patriotic sentiment by which most reporters in her position would have felt drawn. At the same time, its personal emphasis keeps the author honest through the awareness of her own dependency.

Begin with an incident— I could have been killed last night —and you may end with speculations on human nature. Start with a national policy that you deplore, and it may take you back to the question, “Who are my neighbors?” In 1846, Henry David Thoreau was arrested for having refused to pay a poll tax; he made a lesson of his resistance two years later, when he saw the greed and dishonesty of the Mexican War: “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.” But to Thoreau’s surprise, the window of the prison had opened onto the life of the town he lived in, with its everyday errands and duties, its compromises and arrangements, and for him that glimpse was a revelation:

They were the voices of old burghers that I heard in the streets. I was an involuntary spectator and auditor of whatever was done and said in the kitchen of the adjacent village inn,—a wholly new and rare experience to me. It was a closer view of my native town. I was fairly inside of it. I had never seen its institutions before. This is one of its peculiar institutions; for it is a shire town. I began to comprehend what its inhabitants were about.

Slavery, at that time, was nicknamed “the peculiar institution,” and by calling the prison itself a peculiar institution, and maybe having in mind the adjacent inn as well, Thoreau prods his reader to think about the constraints that are a tacit condition of social life.

The risk of political writing may lure the citizen to write—a fact Hazlitt seems to acknowledge in his essay “On the Regal Character,” where his second sentence wonders if the essay will expose him to prosecution: “In writing a criticism, we hope we shall not be accused of intending a libel.” (His friend Leigh Hunt had recently served two years in prison for “seditious libel” of the Prince Regent—having characterized him as a dandy notorious for his ostentation and obesity.) The writer’s consciousness of provocative intent may indeed be inseparable from the wish to persuade; though the tone of commitment will vary with the zeal and composition of the audience, whether that means a political party, a movement, a vanguard of the enlightened, or “the people” at large.

Edmund Burke, for example, writes to the sheriffs of Bristol (and through them to the city’s electors) in order to warn against the suspension of habeas corpus by the British war ministry in 1777. The sudden introduction of the repressive act, he tells the electors, has imperiled their liberty even if they are for the moment individually exempt. In response to the charge that the Americans fighting for independence are an unrepresentative minority, he warns: “ General rebellions and revolts of an whole people never were encouraged , now or at any time. They are always provoked. ” So too, Mahatma Gandhi addresses his movement of resistance against British rule, as well as others who can be attracted to the cause, when he explains why nonviolent protest requires courage of a higher degree than the warrior’s: “Non-violence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment.” In both cases, the writer treats the immediate injustice as an occasion for broader strictures on the nature of justice. There are certain duties that governors owe to the governed, and duties hardly less compulsory that the people owe to themselves.

Apparently diverse topics connect the essays in Writing Politics ; but, taken loosely to illustrate a historical continuity, they show the changing face of oppression and violence, and the invention of new paths for improving justice. Arbitrary power is the enemy throughout—power that, by the nature of its asserted scope and authority, makes itself the judge of its own cause. King George III, whose reign spanned sixty years beginning in 1760, from the first was thought to have overextended monarchical power and prerogative, and by doing so to have reversed an understanding of parliamentary sovereignty that was tacitly recognized by his predecessors. Writing against the king, “Junius” (the pen name of Philip Francis) traced the monarch’s errors to a poor education; and he gave an edge of deliberate effrontery to the attack on arbitrary power by addressing the king as you. “It is the misfortune of your life, and originally the cause of every reproach and distress, which has attended your government, that you should never have been acquainted with the language of truth, until you heard it in the complaints of your people.”

A similar frankness, without the ad hominem spur, can be felt in Burke’s attack on the monarchical distrust of liberty at home as well as abroad: “If any ask me what a free Government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so; and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter.” Writing in the same key from America, Thomas Paine, in his seventh number of The Crisis , gave a new description to the British attempt to preserve the unity of the empire by force of arms. He called it a war of conquest; and by addressing his warning directly “to the people of England,” he reminded the king’s subjects that war is always a social evil, for it sponsors a violence that does not terminate in itself. War enlarges every opportunity of vainglory—a malady familiar to monarchies.

The coming of democracy marks a turning point in modern discussions of sovereignty and the necessary protections of liberty. Confronted by the American annexation of parts of Mexico, in 1846–48, Thoreau saw to his disgust that a war of conquest could also be a popular war, the will of the people directed to the oppression of persons. It follows that the state apparatus built by democracy is at best an equivocal ally of individual rights. Yet as Emerson would recognize in his lecture “The Fugitive Slave Law,” and Frederick Douglass would confirm in “The Mission of the War,” the massed power of the state is likewise the only vehicle powerful enough to destroy a system of oppression as inveterate as American slavery had become by the 1850s.

Acceptance of political evil—a moral inertia that can corrupt the ablest of lawmakers—goes easily with the comforts of a society at peace where many are satisfied. “Here was the question,” writes Emerson: “Are you for man and for the good of man; or are you for the hurt and harm of man? It was question whether man shall be treated as leather? whether the Negroes shall be as the Indians were in Spanish America, a piece of money?” Emerson wondered at the apostasy of Daniel Webster, How came he there? The answer was that Webster had deluded himself by projecting a possible right from serial compromise with wrong.

Two ways lie open to correct the popular will without a relapse into docile assent and the rule of oligarchy. You may widen the terms of discourse and action by enlarging the community of participants. Alternatively, you may strengthen the opportunities of dissent through acts of exemplary protest—protest in speech, in action, or both. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. remain the commanding instances in this regard. Both led movements that demanded of every adherent that the protest serve as an express image of the society it means to bring about. Nonviolent resistance accordingly involves a public disclosure of the work of conscience—a demonstrated willingness to make oneself an exemplary warrior without war. Because they were practical reformers, Gandhi and King, within the societies they sought to reform, were engaged in what Michael Oakeshott calls “the pursuit of intimations.” They did not start from a model of the good society generated from outside. They built on existing practices of toleration, friendship, neighborly care, and respect for the dignity of strangers.

Nonviolent resistance, as a tactic of persuasion, aims to arouse an audience of the uncommitted by its show of discipline and civic responsibility. Well, but why not simply resist? Why show respect for the laws of a government you mean to change radically? Nonviolence, for Gandhi and King, was never merely a tactic, and there were moral as well as rhetorical reasons for their ethic of communal self-respect and self-command. Gandhi looked on the British empire as a commonwealth that had proved its ability to reform. King spoke with the authority of a native American, claiming the rights due to all Americans, and he evoked the ideals his countrymen often said they wished to live by. The stories the nation loved to tell of itself took pride in emancipation much more than pride in conquest and domination. “So,” wrote King from the Birmingham City Jail, “I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court because it is morally right, and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances because they are morally wrong.”

A subtler enemy of liberty than outright prejudice and violent oppression is the psychological push toward conformity. This internalized docility inhabits and may be said to dictate the costume of manners in a democracy. Because the rule of mass opinion serves as a practical substitute for the absolute authority that is no longer available, it exerts an enormous and hidden pressure. This dangerous “omnipotence of the majority,” as Tocqueville called it, knows no power greater than itself; it resembles an absolute monarch in possessing neither the equipment nor the motive to render a judgment against itself. Toleration thus becomes a political value that requires as vigilant a defense as liberty. Minorities are marked not only by race, religion, and habits of association, but also by opinion.

“It is easy to see,” writes Walter Bagehot in “The Metaphysical Basis of Toleration,” “that very many believers would persecute sceptics” if they were given the means, “and that very many sceptics would persecute believers.” Bagehot has in mind religious belief, in particular, but the same intolerance operates when it is a question of penalizing a word, a gesture, a wrongly sympathetic or unsympathetic show of feeling by which a fellow citizen might claim to be offended. The more divided the society, the more it will crave implicit assurances of unity; the more unified it is, the more it wants an even greater show of unity—an unmistakable signal of membership and belonging that can be read as proof of collective solidarity. The “guilty fear of criticism,” Mary McCarthy remarked of the domestic fear of Communism in the 1950s, “the sense of being surrounded by an unappreciative world,” brought to American life a regimen of tests, codes, and loyalty oaths that were calculated to confirm rather than subdue the anxiety.

Proscribed and persecuted groups naturally seek a fortified community of their own, which should be proof against insult; and by 1870 or so, the sure method of creating such a community was to found a new nation. George Eliot took this remedy to be prudent and inevitable, in her sympathetic early account of the Zionist quest for a Jewish state, yet her unsparing portrait of English anti-Semitism seems to recognize the nation-remedy as a carrier of the same exclusion it hopes to abolish. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to a widened sense of community is the apparently intuitive—but in fact regularly inculcated—intellectual habit by which we divide people into racial, religious, and ethnic identities. The idea of an international confederation for peace was tried twice, without success, in the 20th century, with the League of Nations and the United Nations; but some such goal, first formulated in the political writings of Kant, has found memorable popular expression again and again.

W. E. B. Du Bois’s essay “Of the Ruling of Men” affords a prospect of international liberty that seems to the author simply the next necessary advance of common sense in the cause of humanity. Du Bois noticed in 1920 how late the expansion of rights had arrived at the rights of women. Always, the last hiding places of arbitrary power are the trusted arenas of privilege a society has come to accept as customary, and to which it has accorded the spurious honor of supposing it part of the natural order: men over women; the strong nations over the weak; corporate heads over employees. The pattern had come under scrutiny already in Harriet Taylor Mill’s “Enfranchisement of Women,” and its application to the hierarchies of ownership and labor would be affirmed in William Morris’s lecture “Useful Work Versus Useless Toil.” The commercial and manufacturing class, wrote Morris, “ force the genuine workers to provide for them”; no better (only more recondite in their procedures) are “the parasites” whose function is to defend the cause of property, “sometimes, as in the case of lawyers, undisguisedly so.” The socialists Morris and Du Bois regard the ultimate aim of a democratic world as the replacement of useless by useful work. With that change must also come the invention of a shared experience of leisure that is neither wasteful nor thoughtless.

A necessary bulwark of personal freedom is property, and in the commercial democracies for the past three centuries a usual means of agreement for the defense of property has been the contract. In challenging the sacredness of contract, in certain cases of conflict with a common good, T. H. Green moved the idea of “freedom of contract” from the domain of nature to that of social arrangements that are settled by convention and therefore subject to revision. The freedom of contract must be susceptible of modification when it fails to meet a standard of public well-being. The right of a factory owner, for example, to employ child labor if the child agrees, should not be protected. “No contract,” Green argues, “is valid in which human persons, willingly or unwillingly, are dealt with as commodities”; for when we speak of freedom, “we mean a positive power or capacity of doing or enjoying something worth doing or enjoying.” And again:

When we measure the progress of a society by its growth in freedom, we measure it by the increasing development and exercise on the whole of those powers of contributing to social good with which we believe the members of the society to be endowed; in short, by the greater power on the part of the citizens as a body to make the most and best of themselves.

Legislation in the public interest may still be consistent with the principles of free society when it parts from a leading maxim of contractual individualism.

The very idea of a social contract has usually been taken to imply an obligation to die for the state. Though Hobbes and Locke offered reservations on this point, the classical theorists agree that the state yields the prospect of “commodious living” without which human life would be unsocial and greatly impoverished; and there are times when the state can survive only through the sacrifice of citizens. May there also be a duty of self-sacrifice against a state whose whole direction and momentum has bent it toward injustice? Hannah Arendt, in “Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship,” asked that question regarding the conduct of state officials as well as ordinary people under the encroaching tyranny of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Citizens then, Arendt observes, had live options of political conduct besides passive obedience and open revolt. Conscientious opposition could show itself in public indications of nonsupport . This is a fact that the pervasiveness of conformism and careerism in mass societies makes harder to see than it should be.

Jonathan Swift, a writer as temperamentally diverse from Arendt as possible, shows in “A Modest Proposal” how the human creature goes about rationalizing any act or any policy, however atrocious. Our propensity to make-normal, to approve whatever renders life more orderly, can lead by the lightest of expedient steps to a plan for marketing the babies of the Irish poor as flesh suitable for eating. It is, after all—so Swift’s fictional narrator argues—a plausible design to alleviate poverty and distress among a large sector of the population, and to eliminate the filth and crowding that disgusts persons of a more elevated sort. The justification is purely utilitarian, and the proposer cites the most disinterested of motives: he has no financial or personal stake in the design. Civility has often been praised as a necessity of political argument, but Swift’s proposal is at once civil and, in itself, atrocious.

An absorbing concern of Arendt’s, as of several of the other essay writers gathered here, was the difficulty of thinking. We measure, we compute, we calculate, we weigh advantages and disadvantages—that much is only sensible, only logical—but we give reasons that are often blind to our motives, we rationalize and we normalize in order to justify ourselves. It is supremely difficult to use the equipment we learn from parents and teachers, which instructs us how to deal fairly with persons, and apply it to the relationship between persons and society, and between the manners of society and the laws of a nation. The 21st century has saddled persons of all nations with a catastrophic possibility, the destruction of a planetary environment for organized human life; and in facing the predicament directly, and formulating answers to the question it poses, the political thinkers of the past may help us chiefly by intimations. The idea of a good or tolerable society now encompasses relations between people at the widest imaginable distance apart. It must also cover a new relation of stewardship between humankind and nature.

Having made the present selection with the abovementioned topics in view—the republican defense against arbitrary power; the progress of liberty; the coming of mass-suffrage democracy and its peculiar dangers; justifications for political dissent and disobedience; war, as chosen for the purpose of domination or as necessary to destroy a greater evil; the responsibilities of the citizen; the political meaning of work and the conditions of work—an anthology of writings all in English seemed warranted by the subject matter. For in the past three centuries, these issues have been discussed most searchingly by political critics and theorists in Britain and the United States.

The span covers the Glorious Revolution and its achievement of parliamentary sovereignty; the American Revolution, and the civil war that has rightly been called the second American revolution; the expansion of the franchise under the two great reform bills in England and the 15th amendment to the US constitution; the two world wars and the Holocaust; and the mass movements of nonviolent resistance that brought national independence to India and broadened the terms of citizenship of black Americans. The sequence gives adequate evidence of thinkers engaged in a single conversation. Many of these authors were reading the essayists who came before them; and in many cases (Burke and Paine, Lincoln and Douglass, Churchill and Orwell), they were reading each other.

Writing Politics contains no example of the half-political, half-commercial genre of “leadership” writing. Certain other principles that guided the editor will be obvious at a glance, but may as well be stated. Only complete essays are included, no extracts. This has meant excluding great writers—Hobbes, Locke, Wollstonecraft, and John Stuart Mill, among others—whose definitive political writing came in the shape of full-length books. There are likewise no chapters of books; no party manifestos or statements of creed; nothing that was first published posthumously. All of these essays were written at the time noted, were meant for an audience of the time, and were published with an eye to their immediate effect. This is so even in cases (as with Morris and Du Bois) where the author had in view the reformation of a whole way of thinking. Some lectures have been included—the printed lecture was an indispensable medium for political ideas in the 19th century—but there are no party speeches delivered by an official to advance a cause of the moment.

Two exceptions to the principles may prove the rule. Abraham Lincoln’s letter to James C. Conkling was a public letter, written to defend the Emancipation Proclamation, in which, a few months earlier, President Lincoln had declared the freedom of all slaves in the rebelling states; he now extended the order to cover black soldiers who fought for the Union: “If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive—even the promise of freedom. And the promise being made, must be kept.” Lincoln was risking his presidency when he published this extraordinary appeal and admonition, and his view was shared by Frederick Douglass in “The Mission of the War”: “No war but an Abolition war, no peace but an Abolition peace.” The other exception is “The Roots of Honour,” John Ruskin’s attack on the mercenary morality of 19th-century capitalism . He called the chapter “Essay I” in Unto This Last , and his nomenclature seemed a fair excuse for reprinting an ineradicable prophecy.

__________________________________

From Writing Politics , edited by David Bromwich. Copyright © 2020 by David Bromwich; courtesy of NYRB Classics.

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7.1: What is Political Identity?

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• Page ID 135856

• Dino Bozonelos, Julia Wendt, Charlotte Lee, Jessica Scarffe, Masahiro Omae, Josh Franco, Byran Martin, & Stefan Veldhuis
• Victor Valley College, Berkeley City College, Allan Hancock College, San Diego City College, Cuyamaca College, Houston Community College, and Long Beach City College via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative (OERI)

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Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Define Political Identity
• Describe how Identity Politics is Different from Political Identity
• Explain how Political Identity is important in the study of comparative politics

Introduction

What does it mean to think of yourself as 'American' or 'Peruvian'? What makes someone identify as 'conservative' or 'progressive'? How does one’s gender, ethnic, religious, or class identity influence their political identity? How does politics influence our sense of our gender, ethnic, religious and class identity? These questions are complex, intertwined and important. Our sense of self [our identity] influences our politics and politics influences our sense of self [our identity].

What Are the Components of Political Identity?

As defined in Chapter Six, political identity is how a person or group of persons think of themselves in relation to the politics and government of a country. Everything that makes up our sense of self are components of our political identity. This includes our ethnicity, religion, gender, class, ideology, nationality and even our age and generation.

Why Is Political Identity Important in Studying Comparative Politics?

Understanding how individuals and groups see their own identity as it relates to politics and the state [government] is critical to the analysis of the political culture and political system of any country. In the United States, for example, there is a tendency to think of White evangelicals as likely to affiliate with the Republican Party and for Persons of Color to be more likely to affiliate with the Democratic Party. People with different political identities might also have different ideas of what it means to be 'patriotic' or even 'American'. Identity can be the driving force behind a social or political movement. Identity also can be the goal of a social or political movement in terms of gaining acceptance or redefining traditional identities (Bernstein, 2005).

What Is Identity Politics?

What is "identity politics" and how is that different from "political identity".

The term identity politics refers to the “tendency for people of a particular religion, race, social background, etc., to form exclusive political alliances, moving away from traditional broad-based party politics” (Lexico, n.d.). While identity politics can provide a sense of belonging and purpose for a group of people, it also can lead to division and a sense of 'us' versus 'them'. If the sense of belonging and membership in one group outweighs the sense of belonging and membership in a broader group, it can become more difficult for a society to address issues facing all people in the country.

One way to look at this is to think of the difference between pluralism and hyperpluralism. A pluralist society is a society with many identity groups, with different backgrounds, religions and traditions, but where an overarching identity exists that can include everyone living within the country. A society that is hyperpluralist has not just many groups, but groups whose priorities are so divergent as to make finding compromise and agreement on shared values with others in society unachievable. Identity politics is complicated because people often identify with more than one group. One example is with the case study country in this chapter, Israel. The creation of the state of Israel was done specifically to provide a homeland for the Jewish people after WWII. As such, to identify as Israeli for most people is to identify also as Jewish.Therefore, those who live in Israel but are not Jewish fall into a different group with a different set of allegiances. This division creates a sense of exclusion and separation, making political unity and agreement more difficult.

One of the ways to understand identity politics is to contrast it with earlier efforts to see 'colorblind' policies or as John Rawls described in his book A Theory of Justice , a ' veil of ignorance' . In this hypothetical system, people are asked to make policy decisions without knowing who would be affected. The argument is that people would create fair policies, without respect to class, race, ethnicity, religion, etc. Identity politics, however, focuses the lens on specific identities and their differences. As Cressida Heyes (2020) explains in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , members of specific constituencies “assert or reclaim ways of understanding their distinctiveness that challenge dominant characterizations, with the goal of greater self-determination".

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Guest Essay

The Happiness Gap Between Left and Right Isn’t Closing

By Thomas B. Edsall

Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C., on politics, demographics and inequality.

Why is it that a substantial body of social science research finds that conservatives are happier than liberals?

A partial answer: Those on the right are less likely to be angered or upset by social and economic inequities, believing that the system rewards those who work hard, that hierarchies are part of the natural order of things and that market outcomes are fundamentally fair.

Those on the left stand in opposition to each of these assessments of the social order, prompting frustration and discontent with the world around them.

The happiness gap has been with us for at least 50 years, and most research seeking to explain it has focused on conservatives. More recently, however, psychologists and other social scientists have begun to dig deeper into the underpinnings of liberal discontent — not only unhappiness but also depression and other measures of dissatisfaction.

One of the findings emerging from this research is that the decline in happiness and in a sense of agency is concentrated among those on the left who stress matters of identity, social justice and the oppression of marginalized groups.

There is, in addition, a parallel phenomenon taking place on the right as Donald Trump and his MAGA loyalists angrily complain of oppression by liberals who engage in a relentless vendetta to keep Trump out of the White House.

There is a difference in the way the left and right react to frustration and grievance. Instead of despair, the contemporary right has responded with mounting anger, rejecting democratic institutions and norms.

In a 2021 Vox article, “ Trump and the Republican Revolt Against Democracy ,” Zack Beauchamp described in detail the emergence of destructive and aggressive discontent among conservatives.

Citing a wide range of polling data and academic studies, Beauchamp found:

More than twice as many Republicans (39 percent) as Democrats (17 percent) believed that “if elected leaders won’t protect America, the people must act — even if that means violence.”

Fifty-seven percent of Republicans considered Democrats to be “enemies,” compared with 41 percent of Democrats who viewed Republicans as “enemies.”

Among Republicans, support for “the use of force to defend our way of life,” as well as for the belief that “strong leaders bend rules” and that “sometimes you have to take the law in your own hands,” grows stronger in direct correlation with racial and ethnic hostility.

Trump has repeatedly warned of the potential for political violence. In January he predicted bedlam if the criminal charges filed in federal and state courts against him damaged his presidential campaign:

I think they feel this is the way they’re going to try and win, and that’s not the way it goes. It’ll be bedlam in the country. It’s a very bad thing. It’s a very bad precedent. As we said, it’s the opening of a Pandora’s box.

Before he was indicted in New York, Trump claimed there would be “potential death and destruction” if he was charged.

At an Ohio campaign rally in March, Trump declared, “If I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a blood bath for the whole country.”

In other words, Trump and his allies respond to adversity and what they see as attacks from the left with threats and anger, while a segment of the left often but not always responds to adversity and social inequity with dejection and sorrow.

There are significant consequences for this internalization.

Jamin Halberstadt , a professor of psychology at the University of Otago in New Zealand and a co-author of “ Outgroup Threat and the Emergence of Cohesive Groups : A Cross-Cultural Examination,” argued in his emailed reply to my inquiry that because “a focus on injustice and victimhood is, by definition, disempowering (isn’t that why we talk of ‘survivors’ rather than ‘victims’?), loss of control is not good for self-esteem or happiness.”

But, he pointed out:

this focus, while no doubt a part of the most visible and influential side of progressive ideology, is still just a part. Liberalism is a big construct, and I’m reluctant to reduce it to a focus on social justice issues. Some liberals have this view, but I suspect their influence is outsized because (a) they have the social media megaphone and (b) we are in a climate in which freedom of expression and, in particular, challenges to the worldview you characterize have been curtailed.

Expanding on this line of argument, Halberstadt wrote:

I’m sure some self-described liberals have views that are counterproductive to their own happiness. One sub-ideology associated with liberalism is, as you describe, a sense of victimhood and grievance. But there is more than one way to respond to structural barriers. Within that group of the aggrieved, some probably see systemic problems that cannot be overcome, and that’s naturally demoralizing and depressing. But others see systemic problems as a challenge to overcome.

Taking Halberstadt’s assessment of the effects of grievance and victimhood a step farther, Timothy A. Judge , the chairman of the department of management and human resources at Notre Dame, wrote in a 2009 paper, “ Core Self-Evaluations and Work Success ”:

Core self-evaluations (C.S.E.) is a broad, integrative trait indicated by self-esteem, locus of control, generalized self-efficacy and (low) neuroticism (high emotional stability). Individuals with high levels of C.S.E. perform better on their jobs, are more successful in their careers, are more satisfied with their jobs and lives, report lower levels of stress and conflict, cope more effectively with setbacks and better capitalize on advantages and opportunities.

I asked Judge and other scholars a question: Have liberal pessimists fostered an outlook that spawns unhappiness as its adherents believe they face seemingly insurmountable structural barriers?

Judge replied by email:

I do share the perspective that a focus on status, hierarchies and institutions that reinforce privilege contributes to an external locus of control. And the reason is fairly straightforward. We can only change these things through collective and, often, policy initiatives — which tend to be complex, slow, often conflictual and outside our individual control. On the other hand, if I view “life’s chances” (Virginia Woolf’s term) to be mostly dependent on my own agency, this reflects an internal focus, which will often depend on enacting initiatives largely within my control.

Judge elaborated on his argument:

If our predominant focus in how we view the world is social inequities, status hierarchies, societal unfairness conferred by privilege, then everyone would agree that these things are not easy to fix, which means, in a sense, we must accept some unhappy premises: Life isn’t fair; outcomes are outside my control, often at the hands of bad, powerful actors; social change depends on collective action that may be conflictual; an individual may have limited power to control their own destiny, etc. These are not happy thoughts because they cause me to view the world as inherently unfair, oppressive, conflictual, etc. It may or may not be right, but I would argue that these are in fact viewpoints of how we view the world, and our place in it, that would undermine our happiness.

Last year, George Yancey , a professor of sociology at Baylor University, published “ Identity Politics, Political Ideology, and Well-Being : Is Identity Politics Good for Our Well-Being?”

Yancey argued that recent events “suggest that identity politics may correlate to a decrease in well-being, particularly among young progressives, and offer an explanation tied to internal elements within political progressiveness.”

By focusing on “political progressives, rather than political conservatives,” Yancey wrote, “a nuanced approach to understanding the relationship between political ideology and well-being begins to emerge.”

Identity politics, he continued, focuses “on external institutional forces that one cannot immediately alleviate.” It results in what scholars call the externalization of one’s locus of control, or viewing the inequities of society as a result of powerful if not insurmountable outside forces, including structural racism, patriarchy and capitalism, as opposed to believing that individuals can overcome such obstacles through hard work and collective effort.

As a result, Yancey wrote, “identity politics may be an important mechanism by which progressive political ideology can lead to lower levels of well-being.”

Conversely, Yancey pointed out, “a class-based progressive cognitive emphasis may focus less on the group identity, generating less of a need to rely on emotional narratives and dichotomous thinking and may be less likely to be detrimental to the well-being of a political progressive.”

Yancey tested this theory using data collected in the 2021 Baylor Religion Survey of 1,232 respondents.

“Certain types of political progressive ideology can have contrasting effects on well-being,” Yancey wrote. “It is plausible that identity politics may explain the recent increase well-being gap between conservatives and progressives.”

Oskari Lahtinen , a senior researcher in psychology at the University of Turku in Finland, published a study in March, “ Construction and Validation of a Scale for Assessing Critical Social Justice Attitudes ,” that reinforces Yancey’s argument.

Lahtinen conducted two surveys of a total of 5,878 men and women to determine the share of Finnish citizens who held “critical social justice attitudes” and how those who held such views differed from those who did not.

Critical social justice proponents, on Lahtinen’s scale,

point out varieties of oppression that cause privileged people (e.g., male, white, heterosexual, cisgender) to benefit over marginalized people (e.g., woman, Black, gay, transgender). In critical race theory, some of the core tenets include that (1) white supremacy and racism are omnipresent and colorblind policies are not enough to tackle them, (2) people of color have their own unique standpoint and (3) races are social constructs.

What did Lahtinen find?

The critical social justice propositions encountered

strong rejection from men. Women expressed more than twice as much support for the propositions. In both studies, critical social justice was correlated modestly with depression, anxiety, and (lack of) happiness, but not more so than being on the political left was.

In an email responding to my inquiries about his paper, Lahtinen wrote that one of the key findings in his research was that “there were large differences between genders in critical social justice advocacy: Three out of five women but only one out of seven men expressed support for the critical social justice claims.”

In addition, he pointed out, “there was one variable in the study that closely corresponded to external locus of control: ‘Other people or structures are more responsible for my well-being than I myself am.’”

The correlation between agreement with this statement and unhappiness was among the strongest in the survey:

People on the left endorsed this item (around 2 on a scale of 0 to 4) far more than people on the right (around 0.5). Endorsing the belief was determined by political party preference much more than by gender, for instance.

Such measures as locus of control, self-esteem, a belief in personal agency and optimism all play major roles in daily life.

In a December 2022 paper, “ The Politics of Depression : Diverging Trends in Internalizing Symptoms Among U.S. Adolescents by Political Beliefs,” Catherine Gimbrone , Lisa M. Bates , Seth Prins and Katherine M. Keyes , all at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, noted that “trends in adolescent internalizing symptoms diverged by political beliefs, sex and parental education over time, with female liberal adolescents experiencing the largest increases in depressive symptoms, especially in the context of demographic risk factors, including parental education.”

“These findings,” they added, “indicate a growing mental health disparity between adolescents who identify with certain political beliefs. It is therefore possible that the ideological lenses through which adolescents view the political climate differentially affect their mental well-being.”

Gimbrone and her co-authors based their work on studies of 85,000 teenagers from 2005 to 2018. They found that

while internalizing symptom scores worsened over time for all adolescents, they deteriorated most quickly for female liberal adolescents. Beginning in approximately 2010 and continuing through 2018, female liberal adolescents reported the largest changes in depressive affect, self-esteem, self-derogation and loneliness.

In conclusion, the authors wrote, “socially underprivileged liberals reported the worst internalizing symptom scores over time, likely indicating that the experiences and beliefs that inform a liberal political identity are ultimately less protective against poor mental health than those that inform a conservative political identity.”

From another vantage point, Nick Haslam , a professor of psychology at the University of Melbourne, argued in his 2020 paper “ Harm Inflation: Making Sense of Concept Creep ” that recent years have seen “a rising sensitivity to harm within at least some Western cultures, such that previously innocuous or unremarked phenomena were increasingly identified as harmful and that this rising sensitivity reflected a politically liberal moral agenda.”

As examples, Haslam wrote that the definition of “trauma” has been

progressively broadened to include adverse life events of decreasing severity and those experienced vicariously rather than directly. “Mental disorder” came to include a wider range of conditions, so that new forms of psychopathology were added in each revision of diagnostic manuals and the threshold for diagnosing some existing forms was lowered. “Abuse” extended from physical acts to verbal and emotional slights and incorporated forms of passive neglect in addition to active aggression.

Haslam described this process as concept creep and argued that “some examples of concept creep are surely the work of deliberate actors who might be called expansion entrepreneurs.”

Concept expansion, Haslam wrote, “can be used as a tactic to amplify the perceived seriousness of a movement’s chosen social problem.” In addition, “such expansion can be effective means of enhancing the perceived seriousness of a social problem or threat by increasing the perceived prevalence of both ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators.’”

Haslam cited studies showing that strong “correlates of holding expansive concepts of harm were compassion-related trait values, left-liberal political attitudes and forms of morality associated with both.” Holding expansive concepts of harm was also “associated with affective and cognitive empathy orientation and most strongly of all with endorsement of harm- and fairness-based morality.” Many of these characteristics are associated with the political left.

“The expansion of harm-related concepts has implications for acceptable self-expression and free speech,” Haslam wrote. “Creeping concepts enlarge the range of expressions judged to be unacceptably harmful, thereby increasing calls for speech restrictions. Expansion of the harm-related concepts of hate and hate speech exemplifies this possibility.”

While much of the commentary on the progressive left has been critical, Haslam takes a more ambivalent position: “Sometimes concept creep is presented in an exclusively negative frame,” he wrote, but that fails to address the “positive implications. To that end, we offer three positive consequences of the phenomenon.”

The first is that expansionary definitions of harm “can be useful in drawing attention to harms previously overlooked. Consider the vertical expansion of abuse to include emotional abuse.”

Second, “concept creep can prevent harmful practices by modifying social norms.” For example, “changing definitions of bullying that include social exclusion and antagonistic acts expressed horizontally rather than only downward in organizational hierarchies may also entrench norms against the commission of destructive behavior.”

And finally:

The expansion of psychology’s negative concepts can motivate interventions aimed at preventing or reducing the harms associated with the newly categorized behaviors. For instance, the conceptual expansion of addiction to include behavioral addictions (e.g., gambling and internet addictions) has prompted a flurry of research into treatment options, which has found that a range of psychosocial treatments can be successfully used to treat gambling, internet and sexual addictions.

Judge suggested an approach to this line of inquiry that he believed might offer a way for liberalism to regain its footing:

I would like to think that there is a version of modern progressivism that accepts many of the premises of the problem and causes of inequality but does so in a way that also celebrates the power of individualism, of consensus and of common cause. I know this is perhaps naïve. But if we give in to cynicism (that consensus can’t be found), that’s self-reinforcing, isn’t it? I think about the progress on how society now views sexual orientation and the success stories. The change was too slow, painful for many, but was there any other way?

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here's our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

Thomas B. Edsall has been a contributor to the Times Opinion section since 2011. His column on strategic and demographic trends in American politics appears every Wednesday. He previously covered politics for The Washington Post. @ edsall

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May 13, 2024

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Psychological research offers strategies for healthy political discussions among people with opposing views

by American Psychological Association

Civilized political debates may seem increasingly out of reach as democracies across the world face rising polarization, but people still want to discuss issues with people they disagree with—especially those who present themselves as balanced and willing to seek solutions that work for everyone or open to learning new information, according to two studies published by the American Psychological Association.

One study, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General , examines how U.S. politicians and ordinary Americans with opposing political beliefs could share their ideas on divisive issues in a way that improved respect regardless of political party.

While reviewing a video series featuring real-world politicians solving political dilemmas designed to help voters evaluate the thoughtfulness of political candidates, researchers realized that the videos made viewers from the opposing party more open to learning about the politicians' platform. They found this was because the videos made the politicians look balanced and pragmatic, two key characteristics of wise decision-makers.

"It's easy for us to think about members of both parties as being completely biased in favor of their side. But what happens so much of the time is that people talk past each other or show more interest in pointing out the ridiculous things the other side is doing rather than actually finding solutions," said co-author Curtis Puryear, Ph.D., a post-doctoral researcher in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

"Our findings suggest that if you show you care about understanding the other side's concerns, it goes a long way towards fostering respect."

Puryear and co-author Kurt Gray, Ph.D., of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, conducted eight experiments with more than 3,500 participants to test the effectiveness of political messages that relied on balanced pragmatism, an approach to conflict that focuses on showing concern for both sides' interests while prioritizing practical solutions.

In one experiment, 505 Americans from different political parties evaluated a series of posts on the social media platform X by members of the U.S. House of Representatives. From a sample of more than 50,000 posts made by the representatives' official accounts, the researchers selected 120 posts that discussed political issues without criticizing the opposing party and varied in how balanced and pragmatic each post was.

Each participant evaluated 30 posts, rating them based on how balanced and pragmatic each post seemed, the post's overall tone, how divisive the post seemed, how much they respected the politician and how interested they would be in hearing more about the politician's point of view.

The researchers found that posts that combined balance with pragmatism were the most likely to increase participants' respect for a politician and their willingness to engage with them. Posts in which a politician mainly expressed a desire to find effective solutions improved participants' respect regardless of party, but this was not as effective at garnering respect compared with politicians who also presented a balanced view of an issue.

The benefits of balanced pragmatism for fostering respect were even more pronounced for posts discussing highly divisive issues, like immigration and abortion.

"Logical analyses and strong arguments can make us see someone as competent, which is a trait we value in leaders and friends," said Puryear. "But people also want leaders who understand their constituents, who care about their concerns, and have the practical knowledge to find solutions. These are the qualities of balanced and pragmatic leaders."

In another experiment, researchers focused on whether ordinary Americans could also use balanced pragmatism to improve their political conversations. They recruited 211 Democrats in favor of decreasing deportations of undocumented immigrants and 85 Republicans in favor of increasing deportations. The participants were shown four comments written by participants in a previous experiment who argued their position on deportation using either balanced pragmatism or logical reasoning.

Overall, people were just as likely to say they wanted to have a conversation with someone who disagreed with their views on immigration when that person appeared balanced and pragmatic as they were to say they wanted to talk with someone from their own political party.

While it can be difficult for people to present their views on a divisive issue in a way that respects an opposing viewpoint and looks for a common solution, it could help solve the rising political animosity that we are facing, Puryear said.

"Being balanced and pragmatic takes effort," he said. "But it is like building any other habit: Changing how we approach politics takes commitment and practice. We can each take it upon ourselves to do that."

Another study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , found that people could be willing to discuss controversial topics, such as gender-neutral language, with people who had opposing views when both express intellectual humility.

Intellectual humility is the recognition that your knowledge has limits and your beliefs could be wrong. It does not mean that someone who is intellectually humble is insecure or that they don't have informed opinions, only that they are willing to acknowledge that they do not know everything.

"Intellectual humility could be an important aspect when trying to understand how to help people engage in these discussions on divisive issues," said the study's lead author, Larissa Knöchelmann, MSc, a research fellow and advanced Ph.D. student at Philipps-Universität Marburg. "Political discussions are important for a democratic society. When people have conversations, they can learn about new perspectives, reduce misunderstandings and work together."

The researchers conducted four experiments with more than 1,600 participants. In one experiment, they asked 451 Germans about their beliefs regarding the COVID-19 vaccine and whether it should be mandatory, a highly polarized debate in Germany when the experiment was conducted.

They were then asked to imagine an online meeting with a new neighbor whose views on vaccination were either the same as or contrary to theirs. They also saw a statement from their neighbor that indicated whether controversial discussions were "boring" because the neighbor felt they knew enough about the topic already or "exciting" because it was an opportunity to learn more.

The researchers found that intellectually humble participants had warmer feelings and more positive evaluations toward groups of people with different political opinions.

Additionally, intellectual humility shaped whether participants were willing to interact with others or not. While non-humble participants would rather talk with someone who shared their opinion, intellectually humble participants did not discriminate between those having the same or a contrary opinion.

Overall, intellectually humble conversation partners were approached more and avoided less because participants perceived them as more likable and the respective conversation as more calm, comfortable and open.

"Many German citizens have the impression that open political debates and an exchange of opinions are not possible anymore. This is especially the case when it comes to emotionally charged political topics," said Knöchelmann. "Our research now shows that intellectual humility can help to make people more willing to engage with others."

Curtis Puryear et al, Using "Balanced Pragmatism" in Political Discussions Increases Cross-Partisan Respect, PsyArXiv (2021). DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/yhpdt

Journal information: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

Provided by American Psychological Association

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TechBullion

How to write political science essay.

If you are not able to write a comprehensive essay on Political Science, this tool is available for your assistance. Writing a political science essay might seem tough, but with the help of a Political Science Essay Writing service , you can do it well. This guide will help you understand how to write a good political science essay, from understanding the assignment to making your final draft perfect.

Understanding the Assignment

The first step is to understand what your essay needs to be about. Read the essay prompt carefully and make sure you know what is expected. Are you supposed to analyze an event, argue a point of view, or compare different ideas? Knowing this will help you focus your research and writing.

Key Parts of the Assignment

• Clear Topic: Make sure you understand the topic and what it covers.
• Thesis Statement: Write a clear and short statement that shows your main argument.
• Research Requirements: Find out what kind of research you need. Do you need to use original sources, books, articles, or all of these?
• Formatting Rules: Follow the required formatting style (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).

Doing Research

Research is very important for writing a political science essay. You need to find good information from reliable sources to support your thesis. Use a mix of original sources (documents, speeches, etc.) and secondary sources (books, articles, etc.) to give a full view of your topic.

Tips for Good Research

• Start Early: Give yourself plenty of time to find and read your sources.
• Use Academic Databases: Use databases like JSTOR, Google Scholar, and your school’s library.
• Take Good Notes: Keep track of your sources and the information they provide.
• Check Sources Carefully: Make sure each source is reliable and relevant.

Making Your Thesis Statement

Your thesis statement is the main idea of your essay. It should clearly say what your argument is and guide the rest of your essay. A strong thesis statement is specific, can be argued against, and is supported by evidence.

Examples of Thesis Statements

• Weak: “Democracy is important.”
• Strong: “The adoption of democratic principles in post-colonial states has significantly improved governance and reduced corruption.”

Creating an Outline

An outline helps you organize your thoughts and makes sure your essay has a clear flow. Start with your thesis statement and then list your main points, followed by evidence for each point.

Writing the Introduction

The introduction sets up your essay. It should catch the reader’s attention, provide background on your topic, and present your thesis statement.

Elements of a Strong Introduction

• Hook: An interesting fact, quote, or question to engage the reader.
• Background Information: Explain the context and importance of your topic.
• Thesis Statement: Clearly state your main argument.

Developing Body Paragraphs

Each body paragraph should focus on a single main point that supports your thesis. Start with a topic sentence, provide evidence, and explain how the evidence supports your point.

Structuring Body Paragraphs

• Topic Sentence: Introduce the main point of the paragraph.
• Evidence: Present facts, quotes, or data to support your point.
• Analysis: Explain how the evidence supports your thesis.
• Transition: Link to the next paragraph.

Writing a Persuasive Essay

We also write persuasive essays. Persuasive essay writing service aims to convince the reader of a particular point of view. To write a persuasive essay, present strong arguments, backed by solid evidence, and address counterarguments.

Tips for Persuasive Writing

• Know Your Audience: Understand the values and beliefs of your audience.
• Use Strong Evidence: Support your arguments with reliable sources.
• Address Counterarguments: Acknowledge opposing views and refute them.
• Appeal to Emotion: Use emotional appeals to strengthen your argument.

Crafting the Conclusion

The conclusion is your last chance to make an impression on the reader. Summarize your main points, restate your thesis in a new way, and provide a final thought or call to action.

Elements of a Strong Conclusion

• Restate Thesis: Repeat your main argument in a new way.
• Summarize Main Points: Recap the key points of your essay.
• Final Thought: Leave the reader with something to think about.

Editing and Proofreading

After finishing your first draft, it’s time to revise and polish your essay. Editing and proofreading are important steps to make sure your essay is clear, concise, and free of errors.

Tips for Effective Editing

• Take a Break: Step away from your essay for a while before revising.
• Read Aloud: Reading your essay out loud can help you catch errors.
• Get Feedback: Have someone else review your essay.
• Check for Consistency: Ensure your arguments and evidence are consistent throughout the essay.

Final Thoughts

Writing a political science essay can be challenging, but with careful planning, research, and writing, you can produce a strong and well-argued essay. Stay focused on your thesis, support your arguments with solid evidence, and take the time to revise your work. Whether you are writing about political theories, historical events, or current issues, the skills you develop in writing political science essays will serve you well in your academic and professional career.

If you need extra help, our tools and services are here to support you in your writing journey.

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However, the problem with embarking on this essayistic journey in such distinctly Godard-ian fashion - from bold, overlapping on-screen lettering, to jarring cuts that yank sound and image in and out of view - is that Godard himself did it better on numerous occasions. The closest cousin to "It's Not Me" is Godard's "The Image Book" from 2018, which similarly mourned cinema's power to shock and unsettle in an era of media saturation. Godard's solution was to revitalize the moving image by making his scenes and transitions feel jarring and unsettling. Like his 3D experiment "Goodbye to Language" four years prior, "The Image Book" was nauseating to the point of shaking the audience out of its stupor.

"It's Not Me," on the other hand, is a much gentler film. Not only is it easier on the eyes and ears, but its dreamlike stream of consciousness also tends to follow a more linear path. Carax employs old news reels to conjure the specter of Nazism and its influence over European cinema history, as well as popular images from his youth, and he further connects these dots to his own early works in an effort to trace his intentional and accidental inspirations. The result is often thought-provoking, but rarely soul-stirring. Carax broaches intriguing questions of nature, superimposing images of Roman Polanski over footage of his own films, as he points out their similarities while pondering their notable differences. And yet, the answers (or the lack thereof) leave little room for imaginative intrigue or rumination, since the film moves quickly on to its next topic of oblique discussion.

This swift movement from one subject to the next is rationalized through framing footage of Carax himself dozing off and journaling in his sleep, an introduction that contextualizes "It's Not Me" as a work of deep subconscious. The resultant retrospective pulls from the director's own "Mauvais Sang" and "Holy Motors" (among others), with frequent appearances from collaborator Denis Lavant. But as Carax looks back at his career, "It's Not Me" offers little by way of some new or enlightened perspective on his otherwise fascinating filmography. Carax himself is, in many ways, a construct - his professional moniker is an anagram of his legal name, Alex Oscar - but this cinematic deconstruction of himself doesn't go nearly far enough.

It's a remix rather than a re-invention, and while not every film demands a radical re-thinking of cinema, this one in particular does. By including images and audio clips of Godard at various points, Carax only further invites unflattering comparisons to the late French New Wave maestro, a bar he sets and repeatedly fails to clear, both philosophically and aesthetically. Just as often as Carax invokes known filmmakers and cultural icons, so too does he splice in images of war, both historical and contemporary, along with the smirking faces of various political strongmen - Xi, Kim, Trump, Assad, Netanyahu and so on - resulting more in broad platitudes than in specific radical thought. The fatal flaw of "It's Not Me" is that it looks backward rather than forward, embodying films that have already been made, rather than those yet to be dreamed.

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