Heroes and villains: motivated projection of political identities

Abstract

Most research on political identities studies how individuals react to knowing
others’ political allegiances. However, in most contexts political views and identities are hidden and only inferred, so that projected beliefs and identities may matter as much as actual ones. We argue that individuals engage in motivated political projection: the identities people project onto target individuals are strongly conditional on the valence of that target. We test this theoretical proposition in two original studies. In Study 1, we rely on a unique visual conjoint experiment in Britain and the US that asks participants to assign partisanship and political ideology to heroes and villains from film and fiction. In Study 2, we present British voters with a vignette that manipulates a subject’s valence and solicits (false) recall information related to the subject’s political identity. We find strong support for motivated political projection in both studies, especially among strong identifiers. This is largely driven by negative out-group counter-projection rather than positive in-group projection. As political projection can lead to the solidification of antagonistic political identities can be solidified, our findings concerning political projection are relevant for understanding dynamics in group-based animosity and affective polarization.

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ORCID for Stuart J. Turnbull-Dugarte: orcid.org/0000-0002-9330-3945

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