American Exceptionalism in the American Mind: Presidential Discourse, National Identity, and U.S. Public Opinion

A post-American world? Assessing the cognitive and attitudinal impacts of challenges to American exceptionalism

“…For most Americans who believe in American exceptionalism, it does not matter whether data can "prove" this idea to be true or not, their belief in it persists regardless. From this perspective then, American exceptionalism is the pervasively held belief that the United States has a unique place within the international community (Restad, 2014;Gilmore, 2015). Embedded in this idea are the notions that the United States is a singular country, one that is superior, and perhaps even favored by God among the countries of the world.…”

“…Previous studies have shown that messages that actively champion or challenge American exceptionalism can activate a number of cognitive reactions. Consistent with social identity theory, we are specifically interested in the differential impacts of these messages on an in-group (Tajfel & Turner, 1986) or ethnocentric (Kinder & Kam, 2009) bias referred to as the "national exceptionalism bias" (Gilmore, 2015). The national exceptionalism bias has two important psychological components.…”

“…In other words, the cognitive pathway to people's ability to champion the idea is laid by the message itself, and previous research has shown these messages to have this direct impact (Gilmore, 2015;Gilmore & Rowling, 2017). On the other hand, messages that explicitly challenge the idea of American exceptionalism should spur citizens to be more likely to resist or doubt the idea.…”

“…Previous research has shown that messages that champion and challenge American exceptionalism can impact citizens' willingness to degrade other countries. Specifically, Gilmore (2015) found that messages that highlight the most explicit forms of American exceptionalism (singular, superior, God-favored) are more likely to spur citizens to also degrade other countries. This happens because the idea that the United States is the world's exceptional country carries the implicit notion that other countries are inferior in that comparison and one notion tends to spur the other related notion.…”

“…First we tested the reliability of the two separate components of the national exceptionalism bias (Gilmore, 2015) …”