Data_Sheet_1_Identities in flux? National and other changing identities during the COVID-19 pandemic.PDF

Social identities, such as identification with the nation, are regarded as core variables in explanations of political attitudes and behaviors. In these accounts, increases in the importance of an identity such as “Englishness” are often seen to be accompanied by decreases in the importance of other, more inclusive, identities such as “British” or “European.” At the same time, increases in exclusive national identities like “Englishness” present challenges to democratic states because they are associated with preferences such as support for Brexit and intolerance of outgroups. Yet we know comparatively little about the relative importance to individuals of different social identities, the extent of changes in the strength of those social identities with contextual shifts, the interrelationships between different social identities, and the influences on different social identities. In this paper, we address each of these questions using a five-wave online panel study administered over two years of the COVID-19 pandemic in England from 2020 to 2022, in which we asked about the importance of eight identities—Europeanness, Britishness, Englishness, the local area, gender, age, race/ethnicity, and social class. We show that national identity is consistently less important to individuals than the social identities of gender and age, though more important than race/ethnicity and social class. We also show that there were general increases in identification with almost all these groups during COVID. We consider why and discuss the implications for our understanding of increases in the strength of national identity as a challenge to democratic states.

社会认同，诸如对国家的认同，被视为阐释政治态度与行为的核心变量。在这些阐释中，诸如“英国特性”等身份重要性的提升，通常伴随着诸如“英国”或“欧洲”等更具包容性的身份重要性的降低。同时，对如“英国特性”这类排他性国家认同的提升，对民主国家构成了挑战，因为它们与支持脱欧和对异族群体的不容忍等偏好相关联。然而，关于不同社会认同对个体的相对重要性、这些社会认同强度随环境变迁的变化程度、不同社会认同之间的相互关系，以及它们所受影响的了解相对较少。在本文中，我们通过一项在英格兰进行的为期两年的五波在线面板研究来解答这些问题，该研究覆盖了从2020年至2022年的COVID-19大流行期间，我们询问了八种身份的重要性——欧洲认同、英国认同、英国特性、本地区域、性别、年龄、种族/民族以及社会阶层。我们发现，国家认同对个人的重要性始终低于性别和年龄等社会认同，但高于种族/民族和社会阶层。我们还发现，在COVID期间，几乎所有这些群体的认同感普遍有所增强。我们探讨了其中的原因，并讨论了这些发现对我们理解国家认同强度提升对民主国家构成挑战的意义。