Motivated Reasoning in Identity Politics: Group Status as a Moderator of Political Motivations

Abstract

Western democracies are increasingly defined by identity politics, where politics appeals to both political and other social identities. Consequently, political information processing should depend not just on political identity, but also on other identities, such as gender, race, or sexuality. For any given issue, we argue that the extent to which reasoning is motivated by one’s political identity depends on citizens’ group status in other relevant identities, that is, that political identity more strongly motivates high-status group members than low-status group members for issues of identity politics. A survey experiment (N = 1012) concerning a gender quota policy shows that political identity motivates men more strongly than women, leading to political polarization between left-wing and right-wing men, but not women. This suggests that political motivated reasoning should be addressed differently in situations of identity politics, and urges the consideration of group status as a conditional factor of motivated reasoning.

The Obama creed in retrospect: Communicative frames and representations from an Afrocentric perspective

“…The extant literature on framing denotes a concept that is useful for analysing how issues or personalities are constructed (Boyer, et al, 2022; Heilman, 2022; Sikanku et al, 2023), meaning-making (Sclafani, 2015), the discursive portrayals (Colvin et al, 2020, pp. 84–98; Wineinger & Nugent, 2020, pp.…”

Social mobility or social change? How different groups react to identity-related news

“…Party cues exacerbate defensive reasoning, causing issue polarization (Taber and Lodge, 2006; Slothuus and De Vreese, 2010; Boudreau and Mackenzie, 2014). Similarly, gender groups polarize when gender identity is primed instead (Boyer et al, 2022; Han and Federico, 2018) and negative depictions of religious outgroups promote support for policies that harm them (Saleem et al, 2017).…”

“…Such appeals can affect the selection of news (Appiah et al, 2013) and affect motivated reasoning (Bolsen et al, 2014; Boyer et al, 2022). They influence minorities’ views of themselves (Ramasubramanian et al, 2017) and of the majority (Saleem and Ramasubramanian, 2019; Schmuck et al, 2017), or strengthen anti-immigrant attitudes (Brader et al, 2008; Matthes and Schmuck, 2017; Seate and Mastro, 2016).…”

Aroused Argumentation: How the News Exacerbates Motivated Reasoning

“…Sometimes called identity-defensive cognition , the identity-as-motivation hypothesis is supported by the findings that party identification drives persuasion more strongly than ideology (Cohen 2003), and that citizens show more support for a policy if their party explicitly supports it (Slothuus and De Vreese 2010), or when an opposing party rejects it (Bolsen et al 2014). In addition, this motivation also applies to non-partisan social identities such as race (Feldman and Huddy 2018; Shoda et al 2014), gender (Boyer et al 2020), religion (Landrum et al 2017), and cultural identities (Kahan et al 2007, 2008). Citizens are motivated to evaluate identity-threatening arguments as weaker than identity-bolstering arguments, which causes more identity-defensive policy attitudes and more negative attitudes toward outgroups.…”