Effects of Humanization and Party Identification on Political Attitudes towards the Major U.S. Political Parties

Presenter Information

Sawyer Johns
Xylie Miller
Sadana Mukundan

Faculty Sponsor

Dr. Elizabeth Brown

Faculty Sponsor College

College of Arts and Sciences

Faculty Sponsor Department

Psychology

Location

SOARS Virtual Conference

Presentation Website

https://unfsoars.domains.unf.edu/2021/posters/the-effects-of-humanization-and-party-identification-on-political-attitudes-towards-the-major-u-s-political-parties/

Keywords

SOARS (Conference) (2021 : University of North Florida) – Archives; SOARS (Conference) (2021 : University of North Florida) – Posters; University of North Florida -- Students -- Research – Posters; University of North Florida. Office of Undergraduate Research; University of North Florida. Graduate School; College students – Research -- Florida – Jacksonville – Posters; University of North Florida – Undergraduates -- Research – Posters; University of North Florida. Department of Psychology -- Research -- Posters

Abstract

Political Polarization has been increasing in the US since the 2000s. Voters support positively perceived political parties and see other parties as outgroups. This might result in dehumanization of the political parties they perceive as “other”. We examined whether party affiliation and party dehumanization influences participants’ willingness to talk to and support Democrat and Republican parties in the U.S. Participants (N= 312) indicated their party affiliation and rated their willingness and hesitancy to talk to and support the Democratic and Republican parties. Furthermore, we assessed how these feelings changed when someone viewed a party as less or more evolved by utilizing the Ascent of Man Scale to measure dehumanization. We found that when major parties were perceived as more human and when participants’ political leanings matched the party they were rating, participants were less hesitant to talk, more willing to talk, and more willing to support the party they rated. Participants viewing the Democratic party as more evolved who also leaned Democrat were less hesitant to talk, more willing to talk, and more willing to support Democrats. However, the same pattern did not emerge for the Republicans. Participants were willing to talk to and support the major political parties depending on their political party affiliation and how human they perceived major political parties. Implications for vote choice will be discussed.

Comments

Audio Presentation Transcript:

For our research, our lab group decided to study the relationship between humanization, party identification, and willingness to talk/support the Democratic and Republican Party.

Previous research has shown that voters support the political party they view positively (Graham et al.), and in turn those not in their party are viewed as outgroups. People viewed as being in outgroups are shown to be perceived as less evolved and less human. This has led to polarization within political parties which has had negative effects on our political system. This has led to issues such as legislative gridlock and mass disengagement.

Thus, the question arose of “how does party affiliation and dehumanization affect participants’ attitudes towards political parties?” More specifically, how does it affect one’s willingness to talk to a party and the participants’ support of a party.

For this study we set up a survey with 312 participants who were all students from a small South Eastern University. Each participant received partial course credit to participate in the study and were allowed to quit at any time. The chart under the section titled participant demographics shows the breakdown of Party affiliation each individual identified as well as the gender. Participants were given a series of Likert scales to measure party affiliation, hesitancy to talk to a political party, willingness to talk to a political party, and their support for a political party. We also assessed how evolved the political parties are perceived to be using an Ascent of Man scale, which you can see in the methods section (Kteily & Bruneau, 2016). Using the scale shown we had participants indicate how evolved they considered the average member of each political group to be.

From this, we concluded that all party members were most willing to talk to members of their affiliated parties (P

Now, participants affiliated with either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party were more likely to support members of their affiliated parties. Democrats were less likely to support Republicans and vice versa (P

To summarize, participants of all parties were less willing to talk and less likely to support people they viewed as less evolved. People who shared the same political party affiliation were more likely to talk to one another and engage in support. Now, these results may show how parties may cut off channels of civil communication and impact future elections and attempts by candidates to represent cross-party interests. Thus, it is a very timely topic to discuss with the introduction of a new administration and political divides being strong among the Democratic party and Republican Party.

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