Red, blue and purple states of mind: Segmenting the political marketplace

Abstract

John Jost (2017 – this issue) provides a thoughtful review of the literature in political psychology that speaks to important distinctions between conservatives and progressives. I use his essay as a point of departure to accomplish three goals: a) further elaborate on the left/right segmentation scheme, identifying other portions of the political market that are less brand loyal and therefore more persuadable; b) offer preliminary suggestions based on consumer psychology perspectives on how voter attitudes and behaviors might be nudged by political candidates and campaigns; and c) identify some areas in which the fields of political and consumer psychology might profitably benefit from cross‐pollination of theories, approaches and evidence.

Asymmetries abound: Ideological differences in emotion, partisanship, motivated reasoning, social network structure, and political trust

“…In a target article I sought to provide an integrative summary of several independent lines of empirical research revealing that liberals and conservatives differ in terms of personality characteristics, cognitive processing styles, motivational concerns, personal values, and neurological structures and physiological functions (Jost, 2017a). I am delighted to learn from Rao (2017), Krishna and Sokolova (2017), and Oyserman and Schwarz (2017) that this work is of genuine interest—as I had hoped—to scholars in consumer psychology. In this reply, I have sought to take seriously my commentators' myriad interests in emotion, partisanship, social identification, motivated reasoning, social network structure, and political trust and to provide additional evidence (including previously unpublished evidence) of left–right symmetries and asymmetries pertaining to each of these phenomena.…”

“…Although I agree with most of what Oyserman and Schwarz (2017) have written, they are mistaken to associate my theoretical perspective with the “essentialist belief” that people are “the same across time and space” (p. 4)—a perspective that, they argue, needs to be “counterbalanced by a consideration of immediate contextual variables influencing motivation, identities and attitudes” (p. 5). Rao (2017) arrived at a similar misreading, so I must not have been clear enough about my theoretical foundations in social psychology. He imagines that it is central to my perspective that “dyed‐in‐the wool‐conservatives and progressives” are very much alike and, above all, “brand loyal.” (An earlier draft suggested that I assumed ideological differences to be “immutable,” which is not at all the case).…”

“…In this way, situation‐specific processes are built into the model of political ideology of social cognition. Thus, I agree that political orientations are, among other things, “situated identities” (Oyserman & Schwarz, 2017) and that “segments are dynamic” and many people “transition from one state to the other because of changes in life‐stage, the environment … and the like” (Rao, 2017, p. 16).…”

“…Rao (2017) is on solid ground when he points out that there are important emotional differences between liberals and conservatives and that I said fairly little about these differences in my target article. I am pleased to have the opportunity to add a bit more now about the connection between ideology and emotion.…”

“…As Krishna and Sokolova (2017) point out, registered Democrats have long outnumbered Republicans in the U.S., and yet Republicans do as well (if not better) than Democrats at election time. This implies that Democrats are more willing to vote for Republicans than vice versa or—as Rao (2017) would say—Democrats are more likely to be “brand switchers” than Republicans. Indeed, this is part of a much broader pattern of asymmetry.…”