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Building the Pictures in Our Heads: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Partisan Conflict

Overton, Jon
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1766-1927
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1649154778607129

Abstract Details

2022, PHD, Kent State University, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Sociology and Criminology.
Animosity between American partisans has been rising for decades, producing governmental dysfunction, uncertainty, and even political violence. Theory and research on social identity processes imply that as antagonism rises, it may erode a shared sense of what it means to be American. I argue that to minimize the resulting psychological uncertainty, partisans will be drawn to outrage-driven media that castigates political opponents. Specifically, partisans will find vitriolic messages about members of the other political party reassuring, provoking the opposing party to respond with similar messages. That same search for psychological certainty will undermine support for political opponents’ legal rights and encourage partisans to punish their own relatively moderate in-group members that are not sufficiently hostile to the opposition. To test these predictions, I use crowd-sourced survey experiments in fictitious social media environments that expose participants to high or low levels of partisan conflict. Outgroup aggression consistently fails to provoke retaliatory responses, but predictions about how social identity processes themselves would produce extreme responses were supported.
Will Kalkhoff (Advisor)
Susan Fisk (Committee Member)
Ryan Claassen (Committee Member)
Richard Serpe (Committee Member)
Carla Goar (Committee Member)
98 p.
Political Science; Social Psychology; Sociology
Identity; Conflict; Aggression; Partisanship; Polarization; Social Control; Social Media; Public Opinion

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Overton, J. (2022). Building the Pictures in Our Heads: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Partisan Conflict [Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1649154778607129

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Overton, Jon. Building the Pictures in Our Heads: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Partisan Conflict. 2022. Kent State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1649154778607129.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Overton, Jon. "Building the Pictures in Our Heads: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Partisan Conflict." Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University, 2022. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1649154778607129

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

kent1649154778607129
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This open access ETD is published by Kent State University and OhioLINK.