The Policy Basis of Group Sentiments

Though influential models of public opinion hold that group sentiments play an important role in shaping political beliefs, they often assume that group attitudes stem from socialization and are thus exogenous to politics. We challenge this assumption, arguing that group attitudes may themselves be the consequence of political views. Across three survey experiments that each uses a unique social group-issue pair, we consistently demonstrate that attitudes towards groups are influenced by information about the groups’ policy views. These findings persist even when accounting for potential partisan signaling. Altogether, these results show that group sentiments should not be regarded as wholly exogenous to policy concerns and suggest that the use of group-based heuristics can be consistent with instrumental models of public opinion.

尽管颇具影响力的公众舆论模型认为，群体情感在塑造政治信仰方面发挥着关键作用，但这类模型通常假定群体态度源于社会化进程，因此外生于政治领域。本研究对该假设提出质疑，主张群体态度本身亦可成为政治观点的产物。本研究通过三项各采用独特社会群体-议题配对的调查实验，一致证实：群体态度会受到该群体政策立场相关信息的影响。即便在控制潜在党派信号干扰的前提下，上述研究结论依然成立。综合来看，本研究结果表明，群体情感不应被视为完全独立于政策关切之外的外生因素；同时研究显示，基于群体的启发式推理（group-based heuristics）可与工具型公众舆论模型保持内在一致性。