Skip to main content
eScholarship
Open Access Publications from the University of California

UCLA

UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations bannerUCLA

Political Partisanship and Attitudes in a Social Identity World

Abstract

The dominant theories in the study of political partisanship and policy attitude formation tend to focus on the role of either individual-level processes or large-scale political events. The series of studies that comprise this dissertation project seek to bridge that divide -- highlighting the interaction of individual variation in social identities with external political events -- to explain differences in partisanship and policy attitudes among members of three groups: white Catholics, Latinos, and Jewish Americans. The three studies show that the strength with which a person identifies as a member of each group is consequential to their issue priorities, and subsequently to their partisanship under conditions of partisan differentiation. Taken together, these studies provide a well-supported theoretical framework that connects and builds on research from political science, psychology, and communication studies.

Main Content
For improved accessibility of PDF content, download the file to your device.
Current View