Bill Clinton, Roy Moore and the Power of Social Identity

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How a partisan lens leads people to different interpretations of the same facts.

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A view of screens in a live feed to the White House briefing room minutes before President Clinton went on the air in August 1998 to acknowledge having had an inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky.CreditStephen Crowley/The New York Times

By

Nov. 17, 2017

It may feel to Americans that an intense state of us-versus-them is something new, but it’s not. People have been using party as a lens to filter information for decades and beyond.

In the 1990s, when President Clinton was facing numerous accusations of sexual misconduct, people’s reactions reflected their partisanship (though, long after the fact, liberals are starting to rue this).

In a CBS News Poll taken in January 1998, 34 percent of Republicans thought Mr. Clinton should be impeached for encouraging Monica Lewinsky, with whom he’d an affair, to protect him by lying under oath, while only 9 percent of Democrats thought this. Similarly, 43 percent of Democrats thought a more reasonable resolution to the matter would be for Mr. Clinton to admit what he had done and apologize (only 23 percent of Republicans thought this was a reasonable outcome).

Democrats today may say their reaction to a similar situation would be different than it was in the 1990s — and Thursday’s revelation about Al Franken may give them a chance to prove it — but the power of social identities leaves room fordoubt. The way in which people respond to such accusations tends to depend on whether the accused is on one’s “team” or not.

For most of us, the groups we identify with shape the way we see ourselves — and others. Are you a Browns fan or a Steelers fan?A New Yorker or an Angelino? Do you root for Texas or Oklahoma?

It’s not just sports and geography that shape our group identities. Historically, battles between social classes, ethnicities and religions have invoked the same in-group favoritism and out-group derogation.

A key to understanding the sway of social identities is separation: the ability to distinguish members of one group from another through a shortcut based on something like team colors, languages or accents, race or geography. The separation makes it easier to create and intensify a sense of shared identity among group members. It helps people in the groups feel connected and to act on behalf of one another, often to strengthen or preserve the group and the pride derived from membership in it.

If people receive information that conflicts with their social identities, they will often reject that information, even if it is accepted or offered by witnesses, experts or institutions unaffiliated with either side.

Political scientists for decades have thought about party identification as simultaneously being a summary of a person’s positions on issues and also an expression of group identity. An easy way to appreciate how partisanship works as a lens through which people see the world is to consider how people react to the objective state of the nation’s economy.

Over the course of 2016, the nation’s economy grew by about 1.6 percent. When the American National Election Study asked people in the fall of 2016 if they thought the economy had gotten better, stayed the same or become worse over the last year, a familiar pattern emerged. Nearly half of self-described strong or weak Democrats (45 percent) thought things had gotten better over the last year. (They were of course evaluating the economy under the presidency of a Democrat.) Nearly half of Republicans took the opposite position, believing that the economy had gotten worse over the last year, while only 11 percent thought things had gotten better.

Or consider the case of Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who refused to stand during the national anthem in the fall of 2016 because of what he said was police brutality toward African-Americans.

In September 2016, the HBO Real Sports/Marist Poll conducted a survey that illustrated the partisan divide: 36 percent of Democrats and 71 percent of Republicans believed that N.F.L. players should be required by the league to stand for the anthem. The controversy became more connected to partisanship when early in the season President Trump drew the nation’s attention to kneeling players, saying owners should fire players who disrespect the flag.

In the wake of these comments, HBO Sports repeated the poll. Views about whether players should be required to stand for the national anthem had polarized further. More Republicans, 82 percent in all, now believed players should be made to stand while only 27 percent of Democrats thought so. The gap between support in the two parties widened by 20 points — from a gap of 35 to a whopping 55-point spread.

Mr. Trump’s involvement in the N.F.L. protests signaled to the few people on both sides who hadn’t already sorted based on political party that it was time to apply their partisan lenses to the problem. He activated the “us” versus “them” framework, one that he repeatedly invoked in his campaign, even in a controversy that was already highly polarized. Helping people recognize that they are a part of an in-group and that people unlike them are in the out-group is part of what gives social identities power.

This is also why reactions to the recent wave of accusations about sexual harassment and assault can differ depending on who is being accused. In some cases, like the accusations against the Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, people’s partisan group-based identities have been activated. But in other cases, like the accusations against those in Hollywood, there’s a different dynamic. While there may be some disdain among the right about Hollywood liberalism, there is no “us versus them” identity to activate — liberals tend not to see Hollywood as part of their identity.

In the case of Mr. Moore, his Alabama supporters and voters have rallied to his defense, saying that he was “innocent until proven guilty” and that the accusations are sponsored by Democrats — the “them” to their “us.” There were some similar expressions of innocence until proven guilty regarding Hollywood celebrities, but in many cases those accused have quickly lost jobs, entered therapy and often expressed regret. Democrats in Congress have so far shown little willingness to defend Mr. Franken, although President Trump has criticized his conduct.

Mr. Franken has apologized, yet he may still face ethics sanctions, and the effect on his political career remains unclear. Mr. Moore may ultimately end up regretful and unemployed, but the way in which people reacted to these accusations illustrates the power of social identity and how it is possible for people to live in the same communities and believe very different things are real.


Lynn Vavreck, a professor of political science at U.C.L.A., is a co-author of the coming “Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America.” Follow her on Twitter: @vavreck.

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