Party, Race, and Neutrality: Investigating the Interdependence of Attitudes toward Social Groups

In their American Sociological Review article, “Party, Race, and Neutrality: Investigating the Interdependence of Attitudes Toward Social Groups,”Jordan Brensinger and Ramina Sotoudeh investigate the structure of Americans’ attitudes in 2016 toward 17 social groups, the broadest set of measures available to date. Using relational class analysis (RCA), they identify three subpopulations — which they call “partisans,” “racials,” and “neutrals” — and the role that interdependence plays in shaping the attitudes of these groups.

Citation

Brensinger, Jordan and Ramina Sotoudeh. 2022. “Party, Race, and Neutrality: Investigating the Interdependence of Attitudes Toward Social Groups.” American Sociological Review 87(6): 1049-1093. Accepted version. Supplement. Replication materials.

Dr. Jordan Brensinger is a sociologist of technology and the economy with the position of Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto.

Abstract

Recent public and scholarly discourse suggests that partisanship informs how people feel about social groups in the United States by organizing those groups into camps of political friends and enemies. More generally, this implies that Americans’ attitudes toward social groups exhibit interdependence, a heretofore underexplored proposition. We develop a conceptual and methodological approach to investigating such interdependence and apply it to attitudes toward 17 social groups, the broadest set of measures available to date. We identify three subpopulations with distinct attitude logics: partisans, who feel warm toward groups commonly associated with their political party and cool toward those linked to the out-party; racials, distinguished by their consistently warmer or cooler feelings toward all racial groups relative to other forms of social group membership; and neutrals, who generally evaluate social groups neither warmly nor coolly. Individuals’ social positions and experiences, particularly the strength of their partisanship, their race, and their experience of racial discrimination, inform how they construe the social space. These findings shed light on contemporary political and social divisions while expanding the toolkit available for the study of attitudes toward social groups.

Jordan Brensinger and Ramina Sotoudeh