Group-Centrism in American Public Opinion

George Washington University, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

How do Americans' attitudes toward social groups affect their attitudes about political issues? Scholars have long known that issues can have a "group-centric" basis. That is, people when people think of an issue, they think of the group that issue would seem to most involve. Still two important questions remain. What specific kinds of group-centric attitudes are relevant to the formation of policy attitudes? Under what conditions do group-centric attitudes predict policy attitudes? Via a 2012 survey, the investigator will assess attitudes toward two social groups -African-Americans and Muslims- using a variety of measures. Scholarly literature uses many such measures but does not always consider which of them is more predictive of attitudes and why. The survey will also contain a set of experiments that investigate three types of conditions that may determine whether issues become group-centric in the public's mind: who sponsors the policy, whether the policy directly targets a group, and whether the policy is framed as implicating a group. By testing for the individual and joint effects of these conditions, the investigator can better determine how and why group-centrism affects political attitudes. The project will have several important implications. Questions about the impact of attitudes toward social groups, such as stereotypes and prejudice, occur within political science, psychology, sociology, and economics, among others. The impact of attitudes is also of interest to educators, advocacy groups, political leaders, and others who seek to mitigate such effects. Prejudice toward Muslims has been a particular concern; one that still lacks thorough empirical assessment. The findings should therefore interest scholars across several subfields as well as policymakers.