Reframing Polarization: Social Groups and “Culture Wars”

2014 ◽  
Vol 47 (02) ◽  
pp. 432-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher P. Muste
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Social Group ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Culture Wars ◽  
Culture War ◽  
Partisan Polarization ◽  
Values And Beliefs ◽  
Group Members

ABSTRACTRecent analyses of American politics often invoke the term “culture war” depicting sharp and increasing divisions within the American polity. Most of this research defines culture in terms of values and beliefs about social issues and defines polarization in terms of partisan and issue divisions. I evaluate the claim of worsening “culture wars” by using a conceptualization of political culture that focuses on social groups and measuring polarization as both social group members’ attitudes toward their own social in-groups and out-groups, and the effects of group attitudes on partisanship. Analyzing inter-group attitudes from 1964 to 2012 for social group cleavages defined by race, class, age, sex, and religion shows that polarization in attitudes toward social groups is minimal and generally stable, and most group members feel positively toward out-groups. Partisan and issue polarization seen in prior research do not extend to deep or increasing inter-group hostility that could reinforce issue-based and partisan polarization.

Stereotypes and Prejudice

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Marx ◽  
Sei Jin Ko
Keyword(s):  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Social Judgments ◽  
The Face ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Antecedents And Consequences

Stereotypes are widely held generalized beliefs about the behaviors and attributes possessed by individuals from certain social groups (e.g., race/ethnicity, sex, age, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation). They are often unchanging even in the face of contradicting information; however, they are fluid in the sense that stereotypic beliefs do not always come to mind or are expressed unless a situation activates the stereotype. Stereotypes generally serve as an underlying justification for prejudice, which is the accompanying feeling (typically negative) toward individuals from a certain social group (e.g., the elderly, Asians, transgender individuals). Many contemporary social issues are rooted in stereotypes and prejudice; thus research in this area has primarily focused on the antecedents and consequences of stereotype and prejudice as well as the ways to minimize the reliance on stereotypes when making social judgments.

Aziz Nesin's “An Ass the Prime Vezier” as a Mirror of Inequality

2017 ◽  
pp. 43-59
Author(s):  
Hüseynağa Rzayev ◽  
Aygun Hasanova
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Communication Process ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
Group Members

This paper's central concern is to study how and to what extent the language used by the representatives of different social groups in A. Nesin's story is not simply a mere means of communication but a system of existing conventions the nature of which has historically stemmed from the power relations and inequality in the life of the nation. A. Nesin's sensitivity about the highly distinctive styles applied by different characters prove the clearest cases of predictable correlations between features of language and social status of the language society members, which also updates the context, the organization of which depends not only on the character of interaction, but also on such components as who the communicants are, what social group members they represent, the circumstance they are communicating in, the objective of the discussion and other possible reasons which influence this or that model and manner of communication process.

scholarly journals Defining a Particular Social Group Based on Gender

Refuge ◽  
1997 ◽  
pp. 22-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Adjin-Tettey
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Risk Group ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Refugee Status ◽  
Refugee Protection ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Common ◽  
Gender Based

lt is now accepted in refugee jurisprudence that gender-based social groups fall within the meaning of Particular Social Group for purposes of according Convention refugee protection. However, the criteria for identifying gender-based social groups remains to be settled. The tendency has been to identify the at-risk group by the common victimization which confronts group members. This is neither innate nor constant. The author takes the position that the group should simply be identified by the gender of its members-women, although there may be subgroups of women united by other characteristics such as race, nationality or religion. Not aIl group members will automatically be eligible for refugee protection; only women who are genuinely at risk of persecution will be accorded Convention refugee status.

scholarly journals Social Identity Theory and Communication

Communication ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles M. Rowling
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Social Identity Theory ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Group Identity ◽  
Identity Theory ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
The Social ◽  
Group Members

In the 1970s, scholars in social psychology began exploring the process by which individuals attach their own identity to the groups in which they associate. This gave rise to social identity theory, which rests on the notion that, through largely unconscious cognitive processes, individuals who value and closely identify with a particular social group (e.g., familial, ethnic, religious, gender, partisan, national, etc.) will tend to take on characteristics and exhibit behaviors that are consistent with positive attributes associated with that group. Social identity theory also suggests that individuals do more than merely identify with the social groups to which they belong; they also derive comfort, security, and self-esteem from these groups. As a result, group members often engage in favoritism toward their own social group and, at times, denigration of other social groups as a way to protect or enhance their own group identity. Because individuals identify with multiple groups, the concept of salience is also crucial to our understanding of social identity theory. Specifically, individuals will seek to protect or enhance a particular group identity (through words or actions) when they perceive it to be threatened or they sense an opportunity to promote or enhance it. Given the obvious import and relevance of these dynamics to various aspects of society, research on social identity theory has grown exponentially over the past several decades, especially within the social sciences. Scholars in the fields of psychology, sociology, political science, and communication, for example, have increasingly paid attention to and incorporated social identity theory into their study of everything from how politicians communicate to how people vote to how people interact with other cultures. Notably, within the field of communication, the value of social identity theory rests with its ability to explain or predict messaging and response behaviors when a particular group identity is made salient. Thus, social identity theory is a robust theoretical framework that, in recent years, has had broad appeal and application across a number of academic disciplines. With a focus on the intersection of social identity theory and communication research, this article seeks to identify the foundational works within this area of research, recognize the primary journals in which this research can be found, discuss the key concepts and terms associated with this research, and explore how social identity theory has evolved both theoretically and empirically since its inception in the 1970s.

scholarly journals Active and latent social groups and their interactional expertise

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 391-405 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilkka Arminen ◽  
Otto EA Segersven ◽  
Mika Simonen
Keyword(s):  
Social Group ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Social World ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Social Boundaries ◽  
Interactional Expertise ◽  
The Third ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Harry Collins

As a part of their normative theory of expertise, Harry Collins and Robert Evans proposed that interactional expertise forms the third kind of knowledge, located between formal propositional knowledge and embodied skills. Interactional expertise refers to the capability to grasp the conceptual structure of another’s social world, and it is expressed as the ability to speak fluently the language spoken in that social world. According to their theory, it is a key concept of sociology, because it refers to the understanding and coordination of joint actions between members of different social groups. Collins and Evans have further claimed that minority social group members tend to outpace majority social group members in terms of interactional expertise. Drawing on ethnomethodology, we detail the ways in which interactional expertise is displayed and revealed in experiments. This allowed us to specify the underlying reasons for the distribution of interactional expertise between social groups. Our results indicate that the difference between the groups depends on whether a group is either actively maintained or a passive latent category, because interactional expertise provides for not only the crossing of social boundaries but also their maintenance. The minority social group members’ greater interactional expertise or competence is therefore proven to be illusory.

Towards a computational theory of social groups: A finite set of cognitive primitives for representing any and all social groups in the context of conflict

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-62
Author(s):  
David Pietraszewski
Keyword(s):  
Social Group ◽  
Group Representation ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Study Groups ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Computational Theory ◽  
Mistaken Belief ◽  
Finite Set ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of

Abstract We don't yet have adequate theories of what the human mind is representing when it represents a social group. Worse still, many people think we do. This mistaken belief is a consequence of the state of play: Until now, researchers have relied on their own intuitions to link up the concept social group on the one hand, and the results of particular studies or models on the other. While necessary, this reliance on intuition has been purchased at considerable cost. When looked at soberly, existing theories of social groups are either (i) literal, but not remotely adequate (such as models built atop economic games), or (ii) simply metaphorical (typically a subsumption or containment metaphor). Intuition is filling in the gaps of an explicit theory. This paper presents a computational theory of what, literally, a group representation is in the context of conflict: it is the assignment of agents to specific roles within a small number of triadic interaction types. This “mental definition” of a group paves the way for a computational theory of social groups—in that it provides a theory of what exactly the information-processing problem of representing and reasoning about a group is. For psychologists, this paper offers a different way to conceptualize and study groups, and suggests that a non-tautological definition of a social group is possible. For cognitive scientists, this paper provides a computational benchmark against which natural and artificial intelligences can be held.

scholarly journals What Do Partisan Donors Want?

2020 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-118
Author(s):  
David Broockman ◽  
Neil Malhotra
Keyword(s):  
American Politics ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Significant Heterogeneity ◽  
Mass Survey ◽  
Independent Dataset ◽  
Economic Issues ◽  
Policy Domain ◽  
Original Survey

Abstract Influential theories indicate concern that campaign donors exert outsized political influence. However, little data have documented what donors actually want from government, and existing research has devoted less attention to donors’ views on individual issues. Findings from an original survey of US donors, including an oversample of the largest donors, and a concurrently fielded mass survey document significant heterogeneity by party and policy domain in how donors’ and citizens’ views diverge. We find that Republican donors are much more conservative than Republican citizens on economic issues, whereas their views are similar on social issues. By contrast, Democratic donors are much more liberal than Democratic citizens on social issues, whereas their views are more similar on economic issues. Both parties’ donors, but especially Democratic donors, are more pro-globalism than their citizen counterparts. We replicate these patterns in an independent dataset. Our findings have important implications for the study of American politics.

Time budgets of group-housed pigs in relation to social aggression and production

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carly I O’Malley ◽  
Juan P Steibel ◽  
Ronald O Bates ◽  
Catherine W Ernst ◽  
Janice M Siegford
Keyword(s):  
Social Group ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Social Aggression ◽  
Growing Pigs ◽  
Least Square ◽  
Time Budgets ◽  
Aggressive Behaviors ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
Production Parameters ◽  
Use Of Resources

Abstract Commercial producers house growing pigs by sex and weight to allow for efficient use of resources and provide pigs the welfare benefits of interacting with their conspecifics and more freedom of movement. However, introduction of unfamiliar pigs can cause increased aggression for 24-48 h as pigs establish social relationships. To address this issue, a better understanding of pig behavior is needed. The objectives of this study were to quantify time budgets of pigs following introduction into a new social group and how these changed over time, and to investigate how social aggression influences overall time budgets and production parameters. A total of 257 grow-finish Yorkshire barrows across 20 pens were introduced into new social groups at 10 wk of age (~23 kg) and observed for aggression and time budgets of behavior at 4 periods: immediately after introduction, 3, 6, and 9 wk later. Pigs were observed for duration of total aggression and initiated aggression (s) for 9 h after introduction and for 4 h at 3, 6, and 9 wk later. Time budgets were created by scan-sampling inactive, movement, ingestion, social, and exploration behaviors every 2 min for 4 h in the afternoon and summarizing proportion of time each behavior was performed by period. Least square means of each behavior were compared across time points. Pigs spent most of their time inactive. In general, the greatest change in pig behavior was observed between introduction and wk 3 (P<0.003), with gradual changes throughout the study period as pigs became more inactive (wk 3 vs. wk 6: P=0.209; wk 6 vs. wk 9: P=0.007) and spent less time on other behaviors. Pigs’ non-aggressive behavior and production parameters were compared to aggression using generalized linear mixed models. The time pigs spent on non-aggressive behaviors were negatively related to aggression (P<0.045) with few exceptions. Initiated aggression after introduction was negatively related to loin muscle area (P=0.003). These results show how finishing pigs spend their time in commercial facilities and indicate that behavior continues to change for up to 9 wk after introduction to a new social group. Efforts to reduce chronic levels of aggression should focus on promoting non-aggressive behaviors, such as exploration and movement, after the initial fighting that occurs immediately after introduction has waned and should be implemented for up at 9 wk after introduction into new social groups.

Copy the In-group: Group Membership Trumps Perceived Reliability, Warmth, and Competence in a Social-Learning Task

2021 ◽  
pp. 095679762110322
Author(s):  
Marcel Montrey ◽  
Thomas R. Shultz
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Learning Strategy ◽  
Group Membership ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Learning Task ◽  
Minimal Group Paradigm ◽  
Learning Game ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution

Surprisingly little is known about how social groups influence social learning. Although several studies have shown that people prefer to copy in-group members, these studies have failed to resolve whether group membership genuinely affects who is copied or whether group membership merely correlates with other known factors, such as similarity and familiarity. Using the minimal-group paradigm, we disentangled these effects in an online social-learning game. In a sample of 540 adults, we found a robust in-group-copying bias that (a) was bolstered by a preference for observing in-group members; (b) overrode perceived reliability, warmth, and competence; (c) grew stronger when social information was scarce; and (d) even caused cultural divergence between intermixed groups. These results suggest that people genuinely employ a copy-the-in-group social-learning strategy, which could help explain how inefficient behaviors spread through social learning and how humans maintain the cultural diversity needed for cumulative cultural evolution.

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