Chapter 3

C ognition , Social
I dentity, Emotions, and
A ttitudes in Political
Psychology

This chapter explores how individuals make sense of others and them­
selves in the context of political issues, choices, and conflict. How do
people understand the political world? How do they interpret information
and make decisions? How organized are their thoughts? How do emotions
affect thoughts and actions in politics? This chapter reflects the thinking
and feeling portions of the Political Being’s mind: cognition, emotion, social
identity, and attitudes and beliefs. We examine a number of ideas about
how people process political information, the psychological techniques and
mechanisms used to understand others and the environment in which they
live, the importance of the groups to which people belong, and how people
regard those groups to which they do not belong. In addition, we explore the
importance of emotion in politics, as well as in political attitudes. Various
concepts are introduced, including cognition, cognitive categories and
schemas, social identity, images, affect and emotion, and attitudes. These
concepts are tied to different kinds of political behavior in this chapter and
are detailed in the chapters that follow.
Once again, the depiction of the Political Being highlights the concepts
covered here, and does so in a way that layers them. Attitudes and cognitive
processes are at the top of consciousness. These are things we are well aware
of, and they are important in information processing and everyday decision­
making. Values and social identities are deeper. We have to think harder to
figure out how they affect our behavior. Emotions saturate the mind and
influence the entire process of deciding how to act politically. In addition,
more detail is provided on the us and them portions of the Political Beings
environment.
We proceed with building blocks. First, we examine the thinking part
of the Political Being. We begin with the topic of information processing
and the limits people have in their abilities to process information. In doing
so, we introduce two theoretical areas that provide insights into the patterns

DOI: 10.4324/9780429244643-3
 Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions 49

jud causes of patterns in human information processing: attribution theory

d consistency theories. Next, we turn to the question of how people make
sense of the world in which they live, through a process called cognitive cat-
ization. In examining cognitive categorization, we discuss how people
organize and simplify the complex social and political world in which they
live and we introduce the related notion of a stereotype. Next, we pro­
ceed to social identity theory, which provides us with information about
how people see the groups to which they belong and those to which they
do not belong—in-groups and out-groups. We then introduce a model of
categories of other political actors—the political equivalent of out-groups—
called image theory.
From here, we turn to the emotional part of the Political Being and look
at emotions in politics. This is a relatively new area of political psychological
research, but it is very important because of the power of emotions in pol­
itically motivated violence and other patterns of behavior. After discussing
emotions, we discuss attitudes, which combine emotion and thinking about
politics. Our goal in this chapter is to introduce a wide range of central pol­
itical psychological concepts regarding thinking and feeling about politics
and the behavioral predispositions that result from these processes. These
concepts are used throughout the rest of the book as we look at different
kinds of political behavior.
Let us begin with some puzzles. First, people need to understand the
world around them, and particularly the people in that world, so they can
understand and know what to expect. Perceivers need to explain and pre­
dict the behavior of others. To do this, they need to process incoming infor­
mation from their environments and evaluate it. People like to think that
they are good at processing information. We assume that we recognize and
evaluate important information and that we store it in memory quite accur­
ately; however, this is not always correct. Consider the following example.
In the criminal justice system, eyewitness testimony is commonly
accepted as both notoriously inaccurate and as having a strong impact on
juries. As Loftus explains:

Before a witness can recall a complex incident, the incident must

be accurately perceived at the outset; it must be stored in memory.
Before it can be stored, it must be within a witness’s perceptual range,
which means that it must be loud enough and close enough so that
the ordinary senses pick it up. If visual details are to be perceived, the
situation must be reasonably well illuminated. Before some informa­
tion can be recalled, a witness must have paid attention to it. But even
though an event is bright enough, loud enough, and close enough,
^ d even though attention is being paid, we can still find significant
errors in a witness’s recollection of the event, and it is common for
two witnesses to the same event to recall it very differently.
(Loftus, 1979, p. 22)

Second, people tend to see what they expect to see. They fit incoming infor-
¡¡“ tion irito the ideas or beliefs they already hold to be true, and typically
noT ^° n0t recoSn' ze they are doing this. Discrepant information is often
noticed or rejected as incorrect. This is known as the m isinform ation
dJkiffh-r "
m.
50 Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions

effect, which occurs when someone incorporates misinformation into their

mem ory of the event after receiving misleading information about it (Loftus
1979, 2001). Consider some examples from the battlefields of World War II;

Common also are cases of outright refusal to believe reports that

contradict a firm belief ... When Hermann Goring was informed
that an Allied fighter has been shot down over Aachen, thus proving
that the Allies had produced a long-range fighter that could protect
bombers over Germany, he told the pilot who had commanded the
German planes in the engagement: “I’m an experienced fighter pilot
myself. I know what is possible. But I know what isn’t t o o ... I officially
assert that American fighter planes did not reach A achen... I herewith
give you an official order that they weren’t there.” Similarly, when the
secretary of the navy was told of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,
he said, “My God, this can’t be true. This [message] must mean the
Philippines.” It is not without significance that the common reaction is
not that the report is incorrect, but that it must be incorrect.
(Jervis, 1976, pp. 144-145)

These examples illustrate several important topics with which we begin this
chapter. The eyewitness testimony example shows important instances in
which people do not process or remember information very well. People are
sometimes imperfect information processors, and of course this will affect
their processing, evaluation, and retention of political information - just
like any other kind of information. Second, people do not process infor­
mation on a tabula rasa. They have certain psychological mechanisms that
facilitate the processing of information.
In psychology, the concept of cognition is central to understanding
how people process information and understand the world around them.
Cognition is “a collective term for the psychological processes involved in the
acquisition, organization, and the use of knowledge” (Bullock & Stallybrass,
1977, p. 109). The knowledge is organized in our minds in a cognitive system.
For example, our knowledge of birds might be organized as follows: birds
have wings, feathers, and beaks: they use their wings to fly; they eat insects or
seeds and are eaten by people. The terms beliefs or attitudes are often used to
describe these components of the cognitive system. Beliefs are associations
people create between an object and its attributes (Eagly & Chaiken, 1998).
We believe that birds have wings and that Democrats are liberal. Cognitive
processes refer to what happens in the mind while people move from obser­
vation of a stimulus to a response to that stimulus. Cognitive processes
include everything from perception, memory, attention, and problem­
solving to information processing, language, thinking, and imagery. Let us
turn first to cognitive processes involved with the acquisition of information
from the environment and its evaluation.

INFORMATION PROCESSING
People are bombarded with vast amounts of information all the time. They
cannot attend to all of it, and the mind has developed techniques for deciding
 Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions 51

what information is important and relevant, and what information can be

red. Several theories in psychology address patterns of information pro­
cessing and provide explanations for different propensities in attending to
and interpreting information. One theoretical perspective in psychology
that focuses on how people judge and evaluate others is attribution theory.
One of the earliest attribution theorists was Heider (1958), along with Jones
and Davis (1965), Kelley (1967), and Weiner (1986). Attribution theorists
also have a number of insights into information processing. They argue that
people process information as though they are “naive scientists”—that is,
they search for causes in the behavior of others, just as scientists search
for the cause of a disease. However, people often do not properly employ
the scientific method, and tend to make errors in this quest for the cause of
others’ behavior. Attribution theorists argue that individuals use heuristics,
which are mental shortcuts, in processing information about others. Among
the most important heuristics is the availability heuristic, wherein people
predict the likelihood of something based on the ease with which they
can think of instances or examples of it (Tversky & Kahneman, 1982)—for
example, estimating the distribution of A’s in a political science class based
on how many people you can think of who got A’s in the class last year.
Imaginability is another aspect of the availability heuristic. It is the ten­
dency to retrieve plausible information without any regard for actual prob­
abilities. As a result, individuals construct a series of possible behaviors
based on their ability to imagine their occurrence. More specifically:

Imaginability plays an important role in the evaluation of probabil­

ities in real life situations. The risk involved in an adventurous exped­
ition, for example, is evaluated by imagining contingencies with which
the expedition is not equipped to cope. If many such difficulties are
vividly portrayed, the expedition can be made to appear exceedingly
dangerous, although the ease with which disasters are imagined need
not reflect their likelihood. Conversely, the risk involved in an under­
taking may be grossly underestimated if some possible dangers are
either difficult to conceive of, or simply do not come to mind.
(Tversky & Kahneman, 1982, pp. 12-13)

Biases can also occur due to the availability of instances. Thus, “when the size
of a class is judged by the availability of its instances, a class whose instances
are easily retrieved will appear more numerous than a class of equal fre­
quency whose instances are less retrievable” (Tversky & Kahneman, 1982,
P. 11):

This bias is demonstrated by an experiment that used lists of male

sod female personalities. Individuals were asked whether a list of
well-known personalities contained more men than women and they
responded positively if the men were better known than the women
Were (and vice versa).
(Tversky & Kahneman, 1982, p. 11)

happened even though there were equal numbers of men and women,
eased familiarity made the male names more available, resulting in the
52 Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions

bias. Salience is also influential. If you have just finished watching a news
program about a local house fire, you will believe your chances of your 0Wn
house catching fire to be greater.
The representativeness heuristic is another common example
This is a probability judgment. A person may, for example, evaluate the
characteristics of another person and estimate the likelihood that person
belongs to a particular occupation (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). For example, med­
ical professionals are commonly seen with stethoscopes. If you see someone
with a stethoscope, you will assume it is probable that the person is a med­
ical professional.
Another consequence of the representative heuristic is misrepresenta­
tions of chance. A manifestation of this is the gambler’s fallacy. This is
illustrated by the game of roulette where, after a long run of one color—say,
black—red is believed to now be due. Thus, “chance is commonly viewed
as a self-correcting process in which a deviation in one direction induces a
deviation in the opposite direction to restore the equilibrium” (Tversky &
Kahneman, 1982, p. 7). If you have ever gambled, even if you only play the
slots, you have probably experienced the gambler’s fallacy: You don’t leave
the machine while losing because losing has to be followed by winning.
Finally, another outcome of the representative heuristic is the “law of small
numbers”, wherein individuals believe small samples randomly drawn
from a population are representative of the populations from which they
are drawn (Tversky & Kahneman, 1982). For example, you meet an inter­
national student from a particular country and view him or her as represen­
tative of a larger population. The danger of holding on to such perceptions
is that they can skew our perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes.
Anchoring and adjustment involve how individuals make estimates.
Specifically, they refer to when individuals make estimates by starting from
an initial value that is adjusted to yield the final answer:

The initial value, or starting point, may be suggested by the formula­

tion of the problem, or it may be the result of partial computation. In
either case, adjustments are typically insufficient. Different starting
points yield different estimates, which are biased toward the initial
values.
(Tversky & Kahneman, 1982, p. 14)

In interpreting and evaluating information regarding the cause of behavior

of other people, one of the most important aspects of perceptions of caus­
ality is whether it is attributed to internal states (personality) or to external
forces (situation). People are more likely to attribute others’ behavior to
their general dispositions (personality traits or attitudes) than to the situ­
ation they are in. This is known as the fundamental attribution error
(Ross, 1977). A study by Jones and Harris (1967) provided a clear illustration
of the fundamental attribution error. Participants in the study were asked to
read essays about a controversial topic—Cuba under the rule of Fidel Castro.
Participants were either told the essay writer had freely chosen to take a pro-
Castro or anti-Castro position, or that the essay writer was assigned a par­
ticular essay position. Even when the essay writer was assigned the position,
participants overestimated the role of internal dispositions (the writer’s true
 Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions 53

position on Castro) and underestimated the role of the situation (lack of

u • o about which position to take) when asked to explain the position
choice
taken in the essay.
The fundamental attribution error is the most recognized, but there are
others For example, the positivity effect is the tendency to attribute posi­
tive behaviors to dispositional factors and negative behaviors to situational
factors with individuals we like (Pious, 1993). When dealing with individ­
uals we dislike, we tend to do the opposite—that is, attribute behavior to
dispositional rather than situational factors (Pious, 1993). This is the nega­
tivity effect. There are numerous other biases identified in the literature.
For example, the self-serving bias is when individuals are more likely to
take responsibility for successes than failures (Pious, 1993). The egocen­
tric bias is the tendency of individuals to accept more responsibility for
joint outcomes than others attribute to them (Pious, 1993). The confirm­
ation bias is seen when individuals tend to favor information that confirms
already-existing beliefs. The hindsight bias is commonly described as “I
knew it all along.” Another bias is referred to as childish games. This occurs
when individuals communicate something to another person that is familiar
and meaningful to them, but not to the person communicated with (Pronin,
Puccio, & Ross, 2002).
Another set of theories that contributes to our understanding of informa­
tion processing comes under the general category of consistency theories.
One of the earliest consistency theories was Heider’s (1946, 1958) balance
theory, which posits that people try to keep the components of the cogni­
tive system in balance. He described balance as "a harmonious state, one
in which the entities comprising the situation and the feelings about them
fit together without stress” (Heider, 1958, p. 180). In other words, people
want to see their environment, the people in it, and their feelings about it
as a coherent, consistent picture. For example, if you consider yourself a
responsible and serious student, you would not neglect your studies and go
out partying with your friends the night before an exam. If you did, the cog­
nitive system representing your knowledge about yourself would be out of
balance, and you would try to change it. Partying, rather than studying the
night before an exam, is not consistent with your self-perception that you are
a serious student. A friend of one of the authors presents another example.
She is a lifelong liberal Democrat from an eastern city, who advised a polit­
ician on his state’s education policy. That politician was a Republican. She
liked him, found him charming, and was proud that his policies improved
education in his state. She would like to vote for him, and she is appalled at
herself. How can she, a lifelong liberal Democrat, consider voting for a con­
servative Republican? That behavior would not be balanced, because it is
inconsistent with her political beliefs. To achieve balance, she would either
have to vote Democratic, change her ideology and join the Republican Party,
°r consider this single Republican vote an anomaly.
A related type of consistency pattern is described in dissonance theory,
*h*ch addresses the inconsistencies between people’s attitudes and
naviors (Festinger, 1957). Dissonance refers to an aversive state that
^sults when our behavior is inconsistent with our attitudes. Dissonance
tes psychological tension, which people feel motivated to avoid through
uve attention to information. Once dissonance is experienced, people
Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions

are motivated to relieve it. For example, suppose you ate a big piece of choc­
olate cake while you were on a diet. There are at least three ways that people
can reduce dissonance: they can change their behavior (in this case that is
not possible, because you already ate the cake); they can engage in cognitive
strategies, such as trivialization (e.g., “It’s not really that bad if I ate a big
piece of chocolate cake”) or distortions of information (e.g., "Chocolate cake
has lots of nutritional value”); or they can change their attitude (e.g., “I really
don’t need to be dieting anyway”). Typically, people reduce dissonance by
changing their attitude.
People can live with inconsistency and imbalance, but they would prefer
not to. When inconsistency is extreme, it can be psychologically painful—
for example, when your significant other and best friend cannot abide one
another. Individuals can avoid inconsistency through information pro­
cessing, and they can reestablish consistency in their cognitive system by
changing whatever is easiest to change. If our friend’s attachment to the
Democratic Party is weaker than her liking for the Republican politician,
she will change parties. If not, she will either vote Democrat or consider
the situation an anomaly (incidentally, she voted for the Democrat, which
is an illustration of the power of political socialization, which we discuss in
Chapter 6).
Vertzberger notes that the drive for consistency occurs on three levels;
within attitudes between affect and cognition (thinking and feeling the same
way); across attitudes; and throughout what he calls the “cognitive entirety”
(1990, p. 137)—attitudes, beliefs, and values. The drive for consistency affects
information processing in a number of ways. First, it produces selective per­
ception, which includes “selective exposure (seeking consistent information
not already present), selective attention (looking at consistent information
once it is there), and selective interpretation (translating ambiguous
information to be consistent)” (Fiske & Taylor, 1991, p. 469). Inconsistent
information can be ignored, or distorted so it appears consistent with
attitudes or cognitive categories. Inconsistent behaviors can be
compartmentalized so people refuse to recognize their own actions as ser­
ious. The process of balancing and avoiding inconsistency can also lead to
bolstering, which involves selective exposure to information, as people
search for information supporting their decisions and avoid information
critical of them. Bolstering also occurs when people denigrate the alterna­
tive not chosen and amplify the attractive aspects of the decisions they did
make. Bolstering occurred in the Kennedy administration, before the Bay of
Pigs invasion, when decision-makers convinced themselves that American
involvement would remain secret by avoiding arguments to the contrary.
This incident is discussed (in Chapter 4) in the context of groupthink, a group
decision-making error involving faulty information processing. President
Johnson’s decision in 1965 to use air power in Vietnam shows evidence of
bolstering as well, in his belief the air campaign would not have to last long
and that the war would end quickly (George, 1980).
The drive for consistency in information processing has a number
of important political consequences. Accepting only information that
conforms with expectations can lead people to miss important informa­
tion—for example, about a candidate’s stand on a political issue if that pos­
ition is inconsistent with their party’s or with the candidate’s other issue
 Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions 55

• • s Interpreting information so it conforms to expectations, rather

l ^ t o s o m e other possibility, can lead to spiraling conflicts between coun-
or political groups. Distorting information in a search for consistency
meS oduce a failure to recognize the need for value trade-offs in politics.
The avoidance o f value trade-offs occurs when people mistakenly believe
that a policy that “contributes to one value ... also contributes to several
other values, even though there is no reason why the world should be
constructed in such a neat and helpful manner" (Jervis, 1976, p. 128). An
example comes from the Vietnam War:

Officials who favored bombing North Vietnam felt that this would: (1)
decrease American casualties, (2) drastically increase the cost of the
war to the North; (3) increase the chance of the North’s entering nego­
tiations, without increasing the danger of Soviet or Chinese interven­
tion. Those who opposed bombing disagreed on all points.
(Jervis, 1976, p. 134)

These patterns are tendencies, not absolutes. They occur often, but not
always. People may be aware of, but ignore, inconsistent information if it
is unimportant to them. They may be forced by situational conditions to
attend and respond to inconsistent information.

CATEGORIZATION
So far, we have noted that people organize and simplify their environment;
they process information about that environment, based on the way they
understand it, and they search for causes in the behavior of others. People
retain the most useful knowledge about an environment, then use it to filter
subsequent information. We expect the environment to be consistent and
that what we know about it will be repeated. We accept as true informa­
tion that conforms to our preexisting knowledge, and reject as untrue, or
irrelevant, information that does not conform. Consequently, the cognitive
system helps us filter incoming information. If, for example, your cognitive
system of politicians includes the belief that all politicians are dishonest, if
you have evidence both confirming and disconfirming that politician Smith
took a bribe, then you will believe the confirming evidence. But cognitive
systems are more than a set of bits of knowledge. They are organized to
enable people to move through their worlds without thinking too much and
yet manage their environments effectively. Cognitive systems help people
understand their world. Knowledge about the environment in which people
live is organized, simplified, and used to make sense of complex social and
physical realities. If we did not organize and simplify the environment, then
we would not be able to process all the information available to us and could
never make decisions. The world is too complex for our brains to handle. As
Allport wrote in 1954:

The human mind must think with the aid of categories... Once formed,
categories are the basis for normal prejudgment. We cannot possibly
avoid this process. Orderly living depends upon i t ... What this means
Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions

is that our experience in life tends to form itself into clusters ... and
while we may call on the right cluster at the wrong time, or the wrong
cluster at the right time, still the process in question dominates our
entire mental life. A million events befall us every day. We cannot
handle so many events. If we think of them at all, we type them ...
Bertrand Russell ... has summed up the matter in a phrase, “a mind
perpetually open will be a mind perpetually vacant.”
(Allport, 1954, pp. 19-20)

People form and use cognitive categories that aid them in their need to pro­
cess information efficiently. There is no set recipe by which categories are
formed. Categories, the attributes or characteristics associated with them,
and the beliefs about them are formed through experience. Rosch and Lloyd
(1978) argue that two principles are involved in category formation. First,
categories must provide the perceiver with a large amount of information
with as little mental effort as possible. People need categories that enable
them to discern and understand the world around them, but that also allow
them to reduce small and irrelevant differences among people and objects.
Second, people need categories suited to their own social and physical real­
ities. If you live in a high-crime, heavily populated urban area, you will need
different social categories to understand and deal with people than if you
live in a rural area with almost no crime and few people.
One way of looking at this is to think of the way people organize and
simplify their environment as creating a mental model of the environment
that emphasizes only the most important points. People form categories
of the most important elements of the environment. For example, in the
natural world we think of categories such as dogs, cats, horses, and birds.
As we said before, the category of birds is filled with important informa­
tion about what a bird is and how it behaves. The same is true of the cat­
egories of dog, cat, and so on. O f course, some birds are not good fits with
the common characteristics associated with birds. Penguins do not fly, but
they swim and have scrawny wings that they use like flippers. They do not
fit the bird category very well in our minds. The same is true of the human
world. We categorize people into groups, such as racial groups (Caucasian,
Black, Asian), ethnic groups (Latino or Hispanic, Italian-American), nation­
ality groups (American, German, Chinese), and religious groups (Christian,
Muslim, Jewish). In other words, we organize the social world in terms of
social categories. We all make assumptions about other people, ourselves,
and the situations we are in. Sometimes we are very wrong, but often our
expectations are functional. The first step in perceiving another person is
to classify the person or situation as fitting a familiar category. Once you
recognize someone as filling a particular role (e.g., a police officer or a pro­
fessor) on the basis of particular attributes (uniform, gun, billy club; glasses,
briefcase, lecture notes), then you can apply your knowledge about the role
to guide the subsequent interaction with that person.
Once a person or situation is classified into a category, people apply
organized generic knowledge, in the form of a category or schema, to process
information about the person or situation and to make decisions about it or
them. The terms cognitive category and schem a are often used interchange­
ably. Psychologists define schema as “a cognitive structure that represents
 Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions

wledge about a concept or type of stimulus, including its attributes and

^ re latio n s among those attributes" (Fiske & Taylor, 1991, p. 8).
S te re o ty p e s are a particular type of social cognitive category. The psycho-
logical roots of stereotypes, the reasons for their occurrence, and the impact
have on the behavior of those using them and those viewed through
diem are widely studied in psychology and political science (see Fiske, 1998
for a review). Stereotypes are beliefs about the attributes of people in par­
ticular groups or social categories, and should be a very familiar concept.
Everyone has stereotypes or at least knows about the stereotypes of others.
Consider, for example, the well-known stereotype of Jewish people, called
the anti-Semitic stereotype, which assumes a particular group is an over­
achieving minority, superior in wealth and talent. It is also assumed that they
are able to construct complex conspiracies to increase their material wealth
and influence. Finally, they are seen as standoffish, cliquish, and considering
themselves superior to everyone else (Hunter, 1991). Other people who
are seen through the same stereotype are the Indians and Pakistanis in
East Africa, the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, the Armenians in the
Middle East, and the Ibos in Nigeria. Other stereotypes familiar to most
readers denigrate people who are considered inferior. Most Americans are
familiar with American racism, which is a result of holding negative stereo­
types of Black people, for example. Stereotypes are not limited to person­
ality trait descriptions (e.g., “Germans are conscientious and hardworking”),
but can include any personal attribute—physical, affective, visual, or behav­
ioral—seen as characteristic of that group (e.g., “Germans are fair, tall, and
rigid”). Stereotyping, like all social categorization, is a mental short-cut
that enables people to know quite a bit about a person or group of persons,
whether that knowledge is accurate or not. It occurs quickly and without
conscious thought (Fiske, 1998). We discuss social stereotypes in more
detail in Chapters 8, 9, and 10.
Discrimination is not an inevitable consequence of stereotyping. Research
(e.g., Devine & Elliot, 1995) suggests that even though people possess know­
ledge of stereotypes, they are not necessarily prejudiced. Only those high in
prejudice tend to accept stereotypes about a group of people. A person can
have knowledge of stereotypes and not discriminate. For the moment, we
will define stereotypes as social categories, and accept that when people are
evaluated through a stereotype, they often suffer from discrimination. They
are assumed to have the characteristics of a stereotype whether they do or
not. Those who hold the stereotype and behave toward that group in a dis­
criminatory fashion are said to be prejudiced.
Once information about a person is noticed, it is classified nominally in
terms of what it is about, or which category or attitude it is relevant to. If
you n°hce a person who is tall, blond, blue-eyed, and speaks with an accent,
you may classify that person in the category “German.” The availability
heuristic is important in this stage, because information is more likely to be
classified in readily accessible categories. Hence you may be more likely to
nse the German social category if you are in a town with a high percentage
° f German immigrants. Once this judgment is made, the information is
evaluated in terms of its fit into the category. If, for example, you walk into
a classroom and the professor looks like he is 15 years old, and is wearing
°rts, a ripped t-shirt, and no shoes, that information about him is not
58 Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions

typical of what you expect to see when interacting with a professor. It affects
how you regard this particular person in his role as professor: you may think
he is not very qualified because he looks young and dresses like a teenager
Moreover, when this kind of social judgment is made, it is also influenced
by assimilation and contrast effects. The prototypical example of a social
category serves as an anchor or central reference point for incoming infor­
mation. Information is compared with that anchor and, when it is different
from expectations, the contrast effect makes it seem more so. For example,
most people would expect a priest to be honest. Learning that a priest did
something objectively moderately dishonest will be interpreted as extremely
dishonest because complete honesty is expected. The assimilation effect
produces the opposite perception. Information similar to what is expected
can be perceived as even more similar than it objectively is (Eiser & Stroebe,
1972; Herr, 1986; Manis, Nelson, & Shedler, 1988). The category in which
a person, group, or country is placed has yet another effect on informa­
tion and information processing. Missing information can be supplied by
the category or image itself. If you do not know whether a person has a par­
ticular characteristic because you do not have the information, then you can
guess based on the social category in which the person is placed (Taylor &
Crocker, 1981).
We also categorize the political world. Some scholars argue that we
organize the international environment in terms of types of states, such
as the enemy or the ally. These cognitive categories are called images, and
images function very much like stereotypes. Image theory is a political psy­
chological approach that draws connections between policy-makers’ images
of other countries and their resulting behavior (Blanton, 1996; Cottam, 1977,
1986,1994; Herrmann, 1985a, 1985b, 1988,1991; Herrmann, Voss, Schooler,
& Ciarrochi, 1997; Holsti, 1962; Schafer, 1997; Shimko, 1991). Images con­
tain information about a country’s capabilities, culture, intentions, kinds
of decision-making groups (lots of people involved in decision-making or
only a few), and perceptions of threat or opportunity. Capabilities include
economic characteristics, military strength, domestic political stability, and
effective policy-making and implementation. Cultural attributes consist of
judgments of cultural sophistication. When assessing a country, decision­
makers judge whether its capabilities and culture are equal, inferior, or
superior to those of their own country. Another appraisal is whether the
country or group has threatening or defensive (good) intentions, or presents
an opportunity to achieve an important goal. Lessons of history that policy­
makers associate with a particular type of state are also included in each
image. In other words, leaders use historical incidents to explain a conflict
and to make predictions about the outcome of a conflict.
Policy-makers also draw upon a variety of policy options, which are
measures they see as appropriate in dealing with a country. Some policy
options include military threat, economic sanctions or incentives, and diplo­
matic protests. The model also proposes certain tactics that are deemed rele­
vant to each image. For example, when decision-makers hold the so-called
colonial or client image of another country, they consider that country and
its people to be inferior in terms of culture and capabilities. They also assume
the people are incompetent and childlike, and ruled by a small elite, who are
generally not a threat and are often corrupt. This image produces coercive
 Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions 59

d uncompromising behavioral tendencies (you do not negotiate with

children—you tell them what to do). When an enemy image is held,
that country is seen as equal in capability and culture, and threatening in
intentions. The enemy is ruled by a small elite, but one that can cleverly strat-
edze policies that will attempt to hurt the perceiver’s country. The tactics
used in responding to such a state are global in focus, competitive, and
uncompromising, because you cannot trust such a country to keep its word.
The ally is perceived as equal in terms of its capability and culture, but
also as very similar to your own group in values. The intentions of an ally
are believed to be good. Barbarians are superior in capability and inferior
in culture. They are also aggressive in intentions, which makes them very
frightening. An imperialist country is perceived to be superior in culture
and capability, but its intentions can be either harmful or benevolent. Either
way, imperialists are a dominating people, and resisting them would be
very difficult. The rogue is inferior in capability and culture, but is also very
harmful in intentions. This is the bad seed, the irresponsible child, who can
and should be punished until they reform their ways. Lastly, there is the
degenerate image. A degenerate may be powerful and culturally advanced,
but also undisciplined and lacking the will to follow through on expressed
goals and plans of action.
The ways policy-makers distinguish among these types of images are
a matter of their perceptions of the country’s capabilities, culture, threat,
response alternatives, and event scripts. The images are summarized in
Table 3.1.
Although this particular example demonstrates images of other coun­
tries used by policy-makers in foreign affairs, images are used to organize
and guide responses to people’s action in any political domain. In fact,
Jackson (2001) gathered impressive data concerning the images used by
police officers of the communities in their districts and the patterns of
response to crime associated with those images. We return to the discussion
of images later, after introducing some additional psychological concepts.
Chapters 8, 9, and 10 also contain many examples of how images affect pol­
itical behavior.

SOCIAL IDENTITY
We classify ourselves and others into groups. The groups to which we belong
are called in-groups, and those to which we do not belong are out-groups.
Conflict among political groups is, of course, a central issue in political
psychology. Group conflict and behavior are examined in detail in Chapter
4. Here we consider groups as social categories and as part of the general
cognitive organization of the social and political world. Much of the work
on the social psychology of intergroup relations has focused on intergroup
conflict and discrimination. The seminal research using this approach is
°und in Tajfel's (1970) work on intergroup conflict, in which the author
speculated that something about group membership alone might stimulate
conflict with other relevant groups. He postulated that individuals are likely
act m a discriminatory manner whenever they are in a situation in which
Ultergroup categorization is made salient and relevant.
60 Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions
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In other words, whenever individuals find themselves in a situation

where clear evidence exists of an “us” and a “them,” they are likely to dis­
criminate against the out-group (them) and in favor of the in-group (us). To
test this idea, Tajfel (1970) designed a series of experiments based on the
minimal group paradigm, in which individuals were arbitrarily assigned to
one of two groups. In one typical experiment, assignment to a group was
based on whether individuals tended to overestimate or underestimate a
series of dots presented on a screen. Individuals participating in the experi­
ment were then assigned to either the overestimator or underestimator
group, presumably on the basis of their estimating tendencies. In reality,
this assignment was purely arbitrary; the tendency to over- or underesti­
mate was in no way related to accuracy. This arbitrary assignment pro­
cedure proved to be important and necessary for several reasons. First, it
ensured there was no personal reason for one group to discriminate against
the other group. An individual presumably had nothing to gain personally
by discriminating against the other group. Second, the procedure ensured
there was no existing hostility between the groups. Prior to categorization,
individuals never thought of themselves as being a member of a group that
tended to underestimate, or that other individuals were members of a group
that tended to overestimate, for example. Further, there was no chance for
the groups to interact with one another, thus eliminating any possibility that
group members would come to like the in-group or dislike the out-group.
Third, such a procedure ensured individuals had no conflicts of interest.
There was nothing inherently valuable about being a member of a group
that underestimated or overestimated.
Following this categorization procedure, individuals were asked to
assign rewards and penalties by allocating small amounts of money to two
anonymous group members (Brewer, 1979; Insko & Schopler, 1987; Turner,
1978, for a review of allocation matrices). To eliminate self-interest as a
possible influence, individuals were told that they should not allocate any
money to themselves. The results of this experiment showed that, even in
this minimal group, the allocation decisions concerning both an in-group
and out-group member led to in-group favoritism and out-group discrim­
ination. Individuals gave more money to members of their own group than
to members of the other group. Thus, even though these individuals were
assigned to a group on the basis of unimportant and seemingly meaning­
less criteria, they still acted in a discriminatory or competitive manner.
Providing an explanation for this effect is what led to Tajfel and Turner’s
(1979,1986) social identity theory.
According to Tajfel (1978), social identity is “that part of an individual’s
self-concept which derives from his [her] knowledge of his [her] member­
ship in a social group (groups) together with the value and emotional sig-
nificance attached to that membership” (p. 63). Tajfel and Turner (1979)
Summarized this theory with three theoretical principles. First, group
jttembers strive to achieve or maintain a sense of positive social identity,
^ o n d , group members base this social identity on favorable comparisons
can be made between in-group and relevant out-group members. The
sodal categories or groups to which individuals belong provide individuals
a social identity by enabling them to compare their in-group with rele-
out-groups. These comparisons are said to contribute to individuals’
Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions

self-esteem because they allow individuals to define the members o;

'f their
group as being better than other groups. In other words, in an aittempr
to gain a positive sense of self, individuals compare their group with other
groups to create a favorable distinction between the groups. Third, gro,
members will attempt to leave their group or join a more positively distinct
group when their social identity is not satisfactory to them.
Tajfel and Turner (1979) imply that intergroup discrimination is a result
of a motivation to evaluate one’s own group more positively than a rele­
vant out-group. By comparing one’s in-group to a relevant out-group,
individuals attempt to differentiate their group from other groups so their
social identity will be enhanced. In addition to the necessary precondition
of social categorization into in-group and out-group, Tajfel and Turner
(1979) maintain that at least three additional variables exist that should
influence intergroup differentiation. First, members of a group must have
internalized their group membership as an aspect of their self-concept. In
other words, if asked a question such as “Who are you?," they must clearly
perceive themselves as a member of the in-group and be likely to describe
themselves as a group member. Second, the social situation must allow for
intergroup comparisons. Group members must be able to make evaluative
group comparisons to perceive their in-group as positively distinct from the
out-group. Third, the out-group must be perceived as a relevant comparison
group. Members of an in-group do not compare their group to any avail­
able out-group. Instead, factors such as similarity, proximity, and situational
salience determine whether an out-group is considered a valid and reliable
comparison group (see Campbell, 1958).
Tajfel (1978) and Tajfel and Turner (1979) also discuss three ways indi­
viduals might react to threatened or actual negative social identity. Social
mobility is the enhancement of positive social identity by advancement to
a group of higher status. If an individual’s social identity is threatened or is
perceived as being negative, the individual will attempt to dissociate himself
or herself from the in-group by joining a group that is higher in status. A
second reaction to threatened or negative social identity is social creativity,
which includes three strategies: (1) comparing the in-group to the out­
group on a different dimension; (2) reevaluating the comparison dimension,
so that previously negative dimensions are perceived as positive; and (3)
comparing one’s in-group to a different or lower status out-group. Finally,
social competition is another reaction to a threatened or negative social
identity. In-group members might directly compete with the out-group to
attain positive distinctiveness or positive social identity, or at least with the
intention of attaining a positive social identity.
In a review of research examining strategies of identity enhancement,
van Knippenberg and Ellemers (1990) concluded that the permeability of
group boundaries appears to play a key role in determining which strategy
is used to enhance social identity. For example, when it is relatively easy for a
group member to move to a higher status group, that member is more likely
to move to the new group than when it is more difficult to change group
membership.
Much of the research on social identity tested the original in-group bias
effect—that is, whether individuals tend to favor their own group over a
relevant out-group—and has shown this to be true (see Brewer, 1979). The
 Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions 63

trary assignment of individuals to groups was repeatedly demonstrated

*iIfesult in preferential reward allocations to in-group members (e.g., Billig
*°Taifel»1973; Taifel & 1974), heightened in-group attractiveness (e.g.,
, , ie & Wilkins, 1971), perceptions of in-group similarity and homogen-
. (e g„ Allen & Wilder, 1979; Linville & Jones, 1980), and assignment of
-Jdtive traits to in-group members (e.g., Howard & Rothbart, 1980). Thus,
individuals are categorized into two distinct groups, there is a ten­
dency for individuals to favor their own group over another relevant group,
[esumably to enhance their social identity. However, some research has
sought to identify ways in which in-groups and out-groups may cooperate
ynth one another or extinguish the tendency to compete.
To add to the body of knowledge on social identity, in particular categor­
ization (Hogg & McGarty, 1990), other research by Turner and colleagues
(Turner, 1985, Turner et al., 1987) focused on the role of the social self-
concept—“the concept of self based on comparison with other people and
relevant to social interaction” (Turner, 1985; Turner et al., 1987, p. 42). Self-
categorization theory explains these processes and argues when the self and
others are categorized into in-groups and out-groups, the self and other
become prototypical group members. The process whereby the self cog­
nitively integrates into the group is known as depersonalization. As Hogg
elaborates:

The core idea is that we categorize ourselves just as we categorize

others, and thus we depersonalize ourselves ... Prototype-based
depersonalization of the self is the process that makes group behavior
possible. It transforms self-conception so that we conceive of our­
selves prototypically (prototypes define and evaluate the attributes of
group membership), and our behavior assimilates or conforms to the
relevant ingroup prototype in terms of attitudes, feelings, and actions.
Self-conception in terms of an ingroup prototype is a representation
and evaluation of the self in collective terms—a representation o f self
in terms of qualities shared with others.
(Hogg, 2004, p. 208)

As Hogg (2000) further explains, a collective self represents the social iden­
tities obtained through belonging to groups. Self-categorization results in
uncertainty reduction, whereby the prototype defines things such as beliefs,
attitudes, and so forth.
Collective or group action is also evident in a fairly recent extension
of social identity theory. More specifically, the Social Identity Model of
Collective Action (SIMCA) explores the motivations of individuals who
^ u g e in collective action (van Zomeren, Postmes, & Spears, 2012). Briefly,
collective action refers to actions taken by group members in pursuit of
soc^ change. The original SIMCA model posits that group identification,
Scoup efficacy beliefs (individual group members’ belief that actions on the
of the group to achieve its goal will be successful), and a perceived sense
“»justice about a group’s disadvantage will motivate group members to
^Mluge in collective action. The more strongly an individual identifies with
»typically disadvantaged) group, the more likely they are to believe that a
Stoup can achieve its goals through collective action. A recent extension of
64 Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions

SIMCA (van Zomeren, Kutlaca, & Turner-Zwinkels, 2018) added a moralit*

motivation to the model, arguing that group identity is typically linked witfc
a motivation to fight for what the group stands for, “integrating who 'we’ ar*
with what ‘we’ (will not) stand for” (p. 124).
More recent research has focused on the role of evolution in in-groim
bias. You may recall from previous chapters that evolutionary psycholog y
contend behavior persistent over time is the sort of behavior that allows m
to survive as a species. If one group in a population thrives, then the gene*
of those in that group survive. What does this have to do with how groups
interact with one another? There is evidence suggesting our tendency to
favor our own groups over others may be motivated by a desire to insure
the continuation of our group, which offers, among other things, survival
and reproductive benefits (e.g., McDonald, Navarrete, & Van Vugt, 2012). In
other words, it is adaptive for humans, and other species as well, to display
in-group favoritism.
Evolutionary psychologists looked more closely at ethnocentrism, which
is the belief that our own ethnic group is superior to all others. The prefer­
ence for our own ethnic group is so widespread that all ethnic groups and
cultures exhibit this preference (e.g., Mullen, Brown, & Smith, 1992). But,
exactly what evolutionary factors can explain why this is, and how ethno­
centrism is displayed, are still uncertain (Sidanius & Kurzba, 2013). For
example, we know group norms dictate that members of a group will behave
in roughly the same manner (Boyd & Richerson, 1985), which is basically
conformity. And the greater the extent to which all members of the group
conform to the group norms, the more likely those behaviors, and the group,
will be to survive. But of course, some groups have stronger norms than
others, and some members of a group are more likely than others to adhere
to the norms. Environmental factors might also play a role. According to
Sidanius and Kurzba (2013), the strength of ethnocentrism might be related
to such factors as the economic uncertainty, population density, and the ten­
dencies of political elites.
There are instances in which people accept a group’s inferior situation
if they believe their position is just and legitimate. These kinds of patterns
were evident historically in the submission to and eventual rejection of
colonial domination. People in territories conquered by colonial powers
such as Britain, France, Germany, and others often accepted that domin­
ation. They perceived the colonial powers through the imperialist image
and saw them as superior in culture and capability. Resisting domination
would bring severe punishment, and they often accepted domination as just
and legitimate. Over time, though, independence movements grew, and
political activists in the colonies argued their subservience to the colonial
power was unfair, unjust, and illegitimate. Once that change in perception
occurred, they began to compare their situations with that of the colonial
power and decided that the colonial country was rich and they were poor—
an unacceptable difference, particularly because the colonial power took the
resources of the colonies and used them for self-enrichment. Subjugated
colonized people were willing to risk everything—even their lives—for inde­
pendence. They did so when they believed independence was a real possi­
bility. In other words, they compared themselves with the other group (the
colonial power), found the comparison to be unacceptably negative, sought
 Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions

^ found an alternative, and engaged in social competition (rebellion) to

achieve it.

a ffect a n d e m o t io n

Oar discussion so far has centered on cognition and politics. But the dis­
cussion of social identity leads easily to another important element in pol­
itical psychology: emotion. People respond emotionally to political issues,
actors and events, and to political principles and ideals they value. When
social categories and stereotypes are discussed, there is a tendency for the
emphasis to be placed on cognitive processes and properties, such as beliefs,
assumptions, and knowledge about different kinds of people, groups, or
countries. But clearly cognitive phenomena, such as stereotypes, informa­
tion processing, and making political decisions—such as who to vote for—
involve affect and emotion too. Analysts tend to focus on cognition versus
affect, depending upon what they are studying and the relative importance
o f each in affecting how people think. Affect and emotions are difficult to
study because of considerable disagreement about what they are and how
to measure them. Political scientists often argue that rational decision­
making is unemotional. Nevertheless, political psychology must make
advances in understanding the impact of affect and emotions on behavior.
Not only is emotion, in the form of prejudice, more closely associated with
behavior than the cognitive component (Fiske, 1998), but we cannot under­
stand mass violence, including genocide, without understanding the role of
emotions. Moreover, emotion can play a positive role in decision-making
(e.g., Baumeister, Vohs, & Tice, 2006). One study found, for example, that
suppressing emotions impairs memory (Richards & Gross, 1999). Thus,
not only is emotion important, but trying to be unemotional can actually
impede important elements in decision-making.
Various scholars have defined affect and emotion differently. Fiske and
Taylor (1991) define affect as “a generic term for a whole range of preferences,
evaluations, moods, and emotions” (p. 410). Neuman, Marcus, Crigler, and
MacKuen (2007) define affect as "the evolved cognitive and physiological
response to the detection of personal significance” (p. 9). Affect can be posi­
tive or negative—that is, evaluations or preferences are either pleasant or
unpleasant. Ottati and Wyer (1993), on the other hand, have a more narrow
definition and consider affect to be a physiological state experienced as
either pleasant or unpleasant, positive or negative. Fiske and Taylor (1991)
regard elTiotion as a “complex assortment of affects, beyond merely good
lings or bad to include delight, serenity, anger, sadness, fear and more”
(p. 411), but Ottati and Wyer (1993) define emotions as affective states more
Precisely labeled as anger, hatred, fear, love, and respect.
ow affect and cognition are interrelated is an issue of debate. As we
ve eady noted, cognition is “a collective term for both the psychological
Processes involved in the acquisition, organization, and the use of know-
(Bullock & Stallybrass, 1977, p. 109). Some argue that affect follows
on. In other words, when a person makes a cognitive appraisal, then
is evoked. The alternative picture is that people feel first, and then
* Cognition (Marcus, Neuman, & MacKuen, 2000; Zajonc, 1980a).
66 Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions

Marcus, Neuman, and MacKuen (2000) also emphasize the role of emotion
in information processing. They argue that emotion plays a dual role • '
which emotion both forms a dispositional system that affects our response* *
to normal, familiar situations, and performs a surveillance role, alerting us
to novel and possibly threatening situations. Information processing in tfo
former is below the conscious level, while in the latter it is in the forefront
of consciousness. Stephan and Stephan (1993) present a network model of
affect and cognition, in which they maintain cognition and affect are a set
of interconnected parallel systems. In other words, people have a cognitive
system (a system of thoughts, ideas, knowledge), and an affective system
(a system of feelings and various emotions). They are separate systems in the
mind, linked by various cognitive and affective nodes. The links can vary in
strength.
Is having a better understanding of the relationship between affect and
cognition important? We suggest it is. As we will see in Chapter 6, the rela­
tionship between affect and cognition with regard to influencing political
tolerance in the United States is an important area of research. Another
important area of inquiry is the role of cognition and emotion in politic­
ally motivated violence, and we examine many cases of such violence in
Chapters 8 -1 3 . When does emotion take over in the process of committing
acts of violence? Are some conflicts dominated by cognitive factors and
others dominated by affect? An interesting study by a clinical psychologist,
Beck (1999), compared domestic violence with group-to-group violence
and to international violence. Beck emphasized the cognitive side of violent
actions, in the sense of exploring what people were thinking before they
attacked someone—their spouse or children—and he noted that getting
people to recognize what they were thinking before they lashed out vio­
lently was difficult; they really do not think they are thinking anything in
particular but, when really pressed, they recognize the self-demeaning
thoughts and hurt feelings that precede the violence. On the flip side, there
is the question of what happens to the thought process when emotions are
essentially turned off—if they are—when people commit atrocities over »
long period of time. We see cases of this in Chapter 9, when we look at
people who have committed torture and genocide.
Affect and emotions clearly influence information processing, decision*
making, and some predispositions for behavior. In a review of studies of,
positive affect, Isen (1993) noted that positive affect and emotions pro­
mote improvements in problem-solving, negotiating, and decision-making.
Positive affect seems to expand people’s abilities to see interrelationship*
and connections among cognitive items. On the other hand, when compared
with neutral affect, positive and negative affect—but particularly positive
affect—reduces people’s ability to perceive variability in other groups (Park -
& Banaji, 2000; Stroessner & Mackie, 1993). Cassino and Lodge (2007) argue,
that positive affect is associated with a greater use of heuristics in infor­
mation processing, while negative affect results in deeper information-pro^,
cessing strategies. %
Predispositions for behavior resulting from particular emotions were also
studied. Anger, for example, was found to be associated with moving against. -
or lashing out at, the perceived source of the anger (Izard, 1977). Contempt,
on the other hand, was described by Izard (1977) as cold and distant, leading
 Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions 67

onalization and dehumanization of others: "It is because of these

‘ rt ristics that contempt can motivate murder and mass destruction of
(p 340). Anxiety leads to intensified attention to the environment
^ h e ig h te n e d perceptions of threat (Cassino & Lodge, 2007).
*£tnod ons and the behaviors they influence are intricately related to the
at jtake in a situation. Political goals naturally vary over time, given
Articular political contexts and values. Even so, people generally assume
^ to u t-g ro u p s hinder in-group goals, and therefore the out-group is auto-
mjtically associated with negative emotions. Out-groups, by definition, are
jjgumed to be different and thus have different goals.
Emotions also vary in intensity, which can increase in response to cer­
tain psychological properties, as well as to the nature and impact of events.
One of those event characteristics is simply how real the event seems to
the person experiencing the emotion (Ortony, Clore, & Collins, 1988).
Second, the closer the emotion-producing situation is in time—that is, its
prtrrimity—the greater the intensity of the emotion. Third, unexpected
events or actions increase intensity. Fourth, physical arousal and the flow of
adrenaline increase the emotional intensity. Fifth, in terms of psychological
properties, leaving aside individual differences, the salience of social identity
groups will increase emotional intensity. The stronger the sense of belonging
to a group, the more important belonging is to members’ self-esteem, the
more salient group membership becomes, and the more intense are the
emotions generated by that membership. Emotional reactions to events
affecting the group may not be observed often, even when one identifies
strongly with that group. As long as things are normal, there may be little
emotion; however, intense relationships produce the potential for strong
emotions, when that relationship, as well as normal forms of behavior in the
context of that relationship, is interrupted (Berscheid, 1987). Thus, one can
expect politically motivated emotions to be intense when important polit­
ical identity groups face threats or unusual opportunities. The intensity of
the emotion may come as a great surprise to outside observers if it was not
witnessed before.
The intensity of affect and emotion is also determined by perceptions of
the other group. Out-groups are reacted to more negatively and with greater
intensity than in-groups. Moreover, extreme stereotyping corresponds with
more extreme affect. Groups perceived to be threatening (e.g., out-groups)
•re seen as more homogeneous and extreme as threat perceptions increase
(Corneille, Yzerbyt, Rogier, & Buidin, 2001). Conversely, more complex
cognitive processes are associated with more moderate reactions (Linville,
Thns. because a group member perceives their group in a more com-
*“®way than the out-group, evaluations of the in-group are typically less
than evaluations of the out-group. However, research (Marques,
Paez, & Hogg, 2001) shows that when an in-group member
™ Positive behavior or is described in positive terms, they are
**»hiated
more favorably than an out-group member who engages in the
avior, or who is described in the same positive terms. But when an
^ member engages in negative behavior, or is described in unfavor-
ttWnibu15' Person *s evaluated more unfavorably than an out-group
1ti ...W^° en®a®es *n similar behavior, or who is described in unfavor-
• This was termed the b lack sheep effect (Marques, Yeerbyt, &
Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions

Leyens, 1988). Group members might derogate a "bad” in-group member so

they can distance themselves from that member, thus restoring their sense
of positive social identity. The purpose of that study was to test the hypoth
esis that the strength of group identification is related to the strength of
derogation of an errant in-group member.
Generally, we would expect positive emotions to be associated with in­
groups and negative emotions to be associated with out-groups. This is an
important principle to keep in mind when looking at emotion and political
behavior. Social psychologists examined the emotions associated with social
groups lower or higher in power and status, under varying circumstances,
which helped with another important pattern regarding emotion and pol­
itics (Smith, 1993; Duckitt, 1994). Intergroup Emotions Theory (IET), the
roots of which are in social identity theory, predict which emotions group
members feel in certain situations (Mackie & Smith, 2015, 2018). In certain
social situations, a person’s group identity will be more salient to them, such
as when they perceive a threat to their group. When this happens, the indi­
vidual engages in group-level appraisals of the situation—much like we do
as individuals. But in group-level appraisals, a group member first assesses
whether the situation is harmful to the group, thus generating either nega­
tive out-group-directed emotions or positive in-group-directed emotions.
Once such appraisals are made, the corresponding behavior follows. For
example, anger tends to lead to aggression or confrontation (e.g., Leonard,
Mackie, & Smith, 2011; Leonard, Moon, Mackie, & Smith, 2011; Mackie
& Smith, 2015). Disgust often leads to attempts to attack the out-group or
efforts to avoid them (e.g., Esses & Dovidio, 2002; Mackie, Smith, & Ray,
2008). Shame and humiliation may lead to feelings of powerlessness and
efforts to withdraw from threats (e.g., Leidner, Sheikh, & Ginges, 2012).
These studies are complex because emotions can be bundled together.
Prejudice, the affective partner of a cognitive stereotype, is a good example
of this. “Hot prejudices” are composed of disgust, resentment, hostility, and
anger. Let us turn to a number of politically relevant emotions first, and then
consider how they may cluster with different political groups.
The list of negative emotions is long, and one in particular—anger—is
often found in political behavior. Anger is a negative emotion whereby
blame for undesirable behavior, and resulting undesirable events, is directed
at another person or group. It occurs when goals are thwarted and attention
is focused on the source of the obstacle to the goal (Stein, Trabasso, & Liwag,
1993). Anger produces a desire to regain control, remove the obstruction
and, if necessary, attack the source of injury (Frijda, 1986; Izard, 1977;
Lazarus, 1991). Whether a person acts on anger depends on the situation,
norms and values, and the characteristics of the offending party. Anger can
also be triggered by a particular schema. When a person has experienced
intense emotions such as anger in a previous situation, the schema of that
situation can trigger anger when a similar situation is identified. If. f®r
example, a person witnessed an act of cruelty and was angered by it, the
same emotion can be triggered by similar situations, or even by thinking
about acts of cruelty in general.
Other emotions are closely related to anger, and are also politically
important, including frustration, resentment, contempt, and disgust-
Disgust involves being repulsed by the actions or characteristics of others-
 Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions 69

the level of interest and degree of distress when one is disgusted is

lower than when one is angry, disgust does not produce as much aggression

nocide (Izard, 1977; Kressel, 19% ). The less human another person or
L
group appears
oud appears to be, the easier it is to kill them en masse.
Guilt, shame, sympathy, pity, envy, and jealousy can also affect polit­
ical behavior. Guilt occurs when people do something they consider mor­
ally unacceptable, and want to atone or make amends to those they hurt
(Lazarus, 1991; Swim & Miller, 1999). Shame, on the other hand, occurs
when a person does something that violates how they see themselves. When
feeling shame, people tend to avoid others who have observed what they did
to produce the shame. Humiliation is another strong emotion; it produces a
desire for revenge (Gilligan, 1997; Lindner, 2006; Weingarten, 2004).
Fear and anxiety—two other emotions important in politics—both occur
when danger is perceived, but they differ in that fear is associated with a
clear and certain threat, and anxiety is associated with uncertainty about the
threat. Typically, when people experience fear they want to avoid or escape
the threat. When they experience anxiety, however, they do not really know
what to do or how to respond, and they tend to worry about what to do and
how to do it (Lazarus, 1991; Marcus, Neuman, & MacKuen, 2000; MacKuen,
Marcus, Neuman, & Keele, 2007).
Some positive emotions are important in politics, such as pride in the
achievements of one’s group or country, or happiness when an opportunity
to achieve an important goal occurs. As mentioned earlier, positive emotions
tend to make people more flexible and more creative in problem-solving.
They are able to see more nuances and have more complex evaluations of
other people when feeling positive emotions. Clearly, these emotions—such
as pride in your country, or joy and happiness when the country does well
m things such as economic development and growth or in international ath­
letic competitions—are associated with politics.
As alluded to earlier, there are a few psychological studies of emotions
associated with groups of varying degrees of power, in different contexts.
Duckitt (1994), for example, looked at emotion and behavior patterns
associated with groups considered malicious, superior, oppressive, inferior,
threatening, and powerful. He found punitiveness, intropunitive abasement,
extraPunitive hostility, hostility, derogation, and superficial tolerance
*«ociated with each, respectively. Smith (1993) also examined perceptions
erent groups (strong or weak, compared with the perceiver’s group
the emotions associated with it), in a study of emotions and stereo-
vPing. Smith found that minorities with low power felt fear regarding high-
r or majority groups; members of high-status groups felt disgust in
___ 0 low~status groups; contempt was felt by any group toward any out-
l _ **’ an8er was felt by members of high-power or majority groups when
^ power or minorities made demands or threats; and jealousy emerged
ng ow-status groups toward high-status groups.
Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions

Im a g e o f o t h e r T h re a t/ S tra te g ic
p o litic a l a c to r o p p o r tu n ity p re fe re n ce

E n e m y im a g e —> T h re a t h ig h C o n ta in m e n t

B a r b a ria n im a g e —» T h r e a t h ig h S e a rc h fo r a llie s,
augm ent
p ow er

Im p e ria l im a g e -> T h r e a t h ig h S u b m it/ rev o lt

w h e n p o s s ib le

R o g u e im a g e T h re a t m oderate/low C ru sh

D e g e n e ra te O p p o r tu n ity high/ —» C h a lle n g e , ta k e

im ag e m o d e ra te risk s

C o lo n ia l im a g e -> O p p o r tu n ity high —> C o n tr o l, e x p lo it

A lly im ag e —» T h rea t/ o p p o rtu n ity -> N e g o tia te

(w ill h e lp in a g r e e m e n ts ,
e ith e r c o n te x t) com m on
s tra te g y

Figure 3.1 Political Images and Strategic Preferences

Mackie, Devos, and Smith (2000) also examined an important issue

regarding the experience of negative emotions resulting from interactions
with an out-group. They argue that either fight (e.g., anger) or flight (e.g„
fear) emotions are possible, depending upon appraisals of the out-group by
and in relation to the in-group. In an interesting study drawing on neurosci­
ence and other fields, Marcus et al. (2000) looked at emotion in the American
electoral context. They argued there are “two systems associated with the
brain’s limbic region, the disposition and the surveillance systems” (p. 9).
From the dispositional system come the emotions of satisfaction and enthu­
siasm, or frustration and depression. The surveillance system determines
feelings of relaxation and calm, or anxiety and unease, depending upon
political conditions. Both cause people to be more or less attentive to the
political arena and their evaluation of candidates and participation in pol­
itics. In looking at emotions and images of other states, Cottam and Cottam
(2001) argue that certain emotions are closely associated with particular
images. Some of these images can be translated to domestic contexts as
well. Following is a review of the images and emotions associated with them.
These patterns received some empirical verification from experimental
studies (Alexander, Brewer, & Herrmann, 1999). The images and strategic
patterns discussed next are summarized in Figure 3.1.

The Diabolical Enemy

The image of an enemy is associated with intensely perceived threat and
very intense affect and emotions. The enemy is perceived as relatively equal
in capability and culture. In its most extreme form, the diabolical enemy is
seen as irrevocably aggressive in motivation, monolithic in decisional struc­
ture, and highly rational in decision-making (to the point of being able to
generate and orchestrate multiple complex conspiracies). Citizens who do
 Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions 71

«hare this image, or who merely have a more complex view of the enemy,
001 often accused of being, at best, dupes of the enemy, and possibly even
*** This is unfortunate, particularly because the ability to view the
^ tener in more complex terms makes it possible to identify a broader
jjnge of policy options, some of which might stave off a crisis or at least
allow for a more complex strategic response.
Some of the emotions associated with the enemy include anger, frustra­
tion, envy, jealousy, fear, distrust, and possibly grudging respect. An enemy’s
auccesses are considered unfair, and when bad things happen and goals are
not met, the enemy is blamed. People tend to be both antagonistic and
reactant in responding to an enemy. People compete with the enemy and
try to prevent the enemy from gaining anything. The approach to conflict
nukes sense in light of the cognitive properties of the image. The enemy is
as powerful and capable as one’s own country, so there is an even chance of
losing if the approach to the conflict is entirely zero sum. Thus the enemy
image makes a strong, aggressive defense the logical choice. If such a defense
should eliminate the threatener altogether, so much the better. However,
a strategy of containment may be the only recognized alternative in most
political contexts, simply because the odds of defeating an enemy are 5 0 -
50 at best. Containing your enemy, preventing them from becoming more
powerful or achieving their desired goals, may be all you can do.
The consequences of stereotypical enemy image can be tragic when the
motivations of the country considered to be an enemy are really misunder­
stood—that is, when the people and leaders are essentially acting toward that
country based upon a stereotype of an enemy. It can produce a self-fulfilling
prophecy. The people and leaders of enemy countries will see themselves as
having been aggressed against and will develop an enemy image (or mirror
image) because each sees the other as an enemy and will adopt the same
tough strategy. The result could be an unnecessary and disastrous security
dilemma that would be extremely difficult to overcome. Security dilemmas
are situations in which the efforts made by one state to defend itself are
simultaneously seen as threatening to its opponents, even if those actions
were not intended to be threatening. They easily lead to spiral conflicts, in
which each side matches and one-ups the actions taken by the other side.
This can produce arms races and other types of aggression that result from
misunderstanding each other’s motives. The enemy stereotype is virtually
non-falsifiable. It can explain any response, including appeasement, on the
Port of the enemy. In Chapters 9 and 10, a number of cases are presented
in which this image is evident. Spiral conflicts and the security dilemma are
discussed in more depth in Chapter 13.

The Barbarian
The barbarian image appears when an intense threat is perceived as eman-
om a Political entity viewed as superior in terms of capability, but as
Grp*]!* cujtura%- Historical examples of this image are found in the ancient
l. . ePiction of the Germanic tribes to the north. The image of the bar-
’ °^an aggressive people who are monolithic in decisional structure,
g, and willing to resort to unspeakable brutality, including genocide,
Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions

and who are determined to take full advantage of their superiority. Emotion*
commonly associated with this image are disgust rather than contempt
(because the barbarian is considered greater in capability, even though cuk
turally inferior), anger, and fear. The latter is a product of the superior cap­
ability of the barbarian. People who do not share this image will be accused
of cowardice and treason.
Because of both cognitive and emotional properties, this image does not
lead to an aggressive defense posture. Fear produced by capability asym­
metries will mean people prefer to avoid direct conflict. A more reasonable
primary course of action for dealing with a barbarian is a search for allies
who can be persuaded that a failure to deal with this threat will seriously
and adversely affect their own national interests. In social identity theoret­
ical terms, perceivers would probably engage in direct competition with this
hated and disgusting opponent in the most violent form of eliminating the
threat altogether, but they cannot because they are too weak. Instead, they
must build coalitions to overcome their weakness and improve their ability
to at least contain the barbarian.
There are some examples of this image in recent international and
domestic political conflicts. International cases include Israeli perceptions
of the Arab world. Although the Arab states are not superior to Israel in
military capability, their large populations and resource advantages lead to
an Israeli expectation they have the potential to become superior. Despite
perceived cultural inferiority, the probability is seen as high that super­
iority in conventional arms is not only attainable but unavoidable. A second
example occurred in the disintegration of Yugoslavia (explored in detail
in Chapter 9), in which the Croatians believed themselves to be culturally
superior to the Serbs, but much weaker in capability (Cottam & Cottam,
2001). In both cases, allies were sought: Israel looked to the United States
and Europe, and the Croatians looked to Slovenia and other European states
for support in their efforts to achieve independence from Yugoslavia.

The Imperial Image

This image occurs when the people of a polity perceive a threat from
another polity viewed as superior in terms of both capability and culture—
a fairly commonplace situation during the height of colonialism in the
nineteenth century. The imperial stereotype is now viewed primarily in a
neocolonial variation, reflecting the disappearance of formal colonialism.
People view the imperial power as motivated by the desire to exploit the
resources of the colonized people. The decisional structure of the imperial
power is viewed as less monolithic than in the enemy and barbarian images
because an anti-imperialism element is frequently perceived to be pre­
sent in the imperial power. People assume decisions are made in a subtle
and discreet manner in the imperial power, in the form of an elaborate
web of institutions and individuals. People also believe that even though
their own country has its own institutions and leader, the imperial power
is pulling the strings, often at a very detailed level. The imperial power is
viewed as having the capacity to orchestrate developments of extraordinary
complexity and to do so with great subtlety. The style is often described as
 'if
ting through a hidden hand, which is what gives the imperial power
riority in capability. People who collaborate with the imperial power
^ viewed by those resisting it as profiting hugely from the relationship and
are judged as having betrayed their nation. But the reality is that, historic-
„ many people in colonial and neocolonial countries did collaborate with
the'imperial powers. From a social identity standpoint, this makes sense if
collaborators made comparisons not between themselves and the imperial
power, but between themselves and other groups in the colony dominated
by the imperial power. They may have seen imperial control as just and legit­
imate, and thereby accepted their own inferior status, if they saw their own
circumstances improved in comparison with other groups because of the
imperial power’s presence. Therefore, the image is sometimes associated
with strong perceptions of injustice and illegitimacy, but not by everyone.
The complex of emotions associated with this image is affected by
perceptions of whether or not the relationship is a just or legitimate one.
When the colonial-imperial relationship is seen as legitimate or just,
emotions associated with the image include fear of the imperial power. The
behavioral tendencies that result involve self-protection and avoiding con­
flict with the fear-inducing agent (Duckitt, 1994). In addition, when the rela­
tionship is considered just and legitimate, respect is likely by the subordinate
people for the imperial group, as is benevolent paternalistic affection by the
imperial group for the subordinate group (Duckitt, 1994). The behavioral
preferences would simply be to maintain the relationship as it is currently
conducted, with the imperial group making major decisions and allowing
symbolic concessions to the colonial subject group.
Emotions and action preferences are different on both sides when the
relationship and interaction is considered unjust by the weaker, subor­
dinate group. The extremity of mutual stereotyping increases in such situ­
ations, and the people in the subordinate position start to make demands
for greater equality. They may feel jealousy, anger, and shame that they are
in the inferior position (Smith, 1993). These perceptions and emotions can
push people toward antagonistic and hostile actions against the superior
Rroup, including rebellion, even though they are well aware of the poten­
tial consequences. However, actions as risky as outright rebellion tend to
occur only when social mobility and creativity options are not available and
when real alternatives are perceived to exist. For example, after World War
D. the European colonial powers were so weak that the prospect of actu­
ally achieving independence looked good enough to leaders of independ­
ence movements to push hard for the end of colonialism. This image is also
“nportant in a case study presented in Chapter 10 of relations between the
ted States and Mexico in relation to the war on drugs.

The Rogue Image

^ fugue image is relatively new. During the Cold War, leaders of the
viewed ^ ^ *ma^e a dependent of the enemy, in which a country was
bv Hi aS m^er'or in capability and culture but controlled and supported
the d* enem^ "^lat Ifnage disappeared with the end of the Cold War and
emxse of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, the West saw former allies of
74 Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions

the Soviet Union, along with some other countries (such as North Korea.
Cuba, Iraq, Libya, Serbia, and Iran) as both inferior and
American policy-makers often referred to these as rogue states. For example,
while he was national security adviser, Anthony Lake wrote:

Our policy must face the reality of recalcitrant and outlaw states
that not only choose to remain outside the family [of nations] but
also assault its basic values. There are few “backlash” states: Cuba,
North Korea, Iran, Iraq and Libya. For now they lack the resources
of a superpower, which would enable them to seriously threaten the
democratic order being created around them. Nevertheless, their
behavior is often aggressive and defiant... These backlash states have
some common characteristics. Ruled by cliques that control power
through coercion... these nations exhibit a chronic inability to engage
constructively with the outside world, and they do not function effect­
ively in alliances ... Finally, they share a siege mentality. Accordingly,
they are embarked on ambitious and costly military programs.
Lake (1994, pp. 45-46)

Look at the words Lake used. There are references to a family (bad children),
the weakness of these states, the incompatibility of their values with those
of the rest of the family of nations, their aggressive behavior, decisions made
by a small elite, and the impossibility of dealing with them rationally and
constructively. Responses to this type of state are driven by a sense of super­
iority. They are bad children who must be taught a lesson with force. One
does not negotiate with bad children; one punishes them. There are many
examples. Americans reacted to Saddam Hussein’s resistance to weapons
inspection with a full-force attack. President Bush repeatedly stated that
there would be no negotiations with Saddam Hussein and if he didn’t do
as he was told, he would be punished. When Slobodan MiloSevid resisted
points in the Rambouillet accords that would give North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) forces the right to wander unimpeded throughout
Yugoslavia, negotiations ceased, and Yugoslavia was bombed. When Manuel
Noriega thumbed his nose at U.S. efforts to promote free elections, Panama
was bombed. Often, one individual is assumed to be responsible for the
behavior of the rogue state (e.g., eliminate Noriega, Saddam, or Milosevid
and the problem will be solved overnight).

The Degenerate Image

The degenerate image is associated with the perception of an opportunity
to achieve a goal at the expense of a country seen as relatively equal or even
greater in capability and culture. Even though a degenerate country may be
more powerful than the perceiver’s country, it is also seen as uncertain and
confused in motivation and characterized by a highly differentiated lead-
ership lacking a clear sense of direction and incapable of constructing an
effective strategy. They are believed to be unable to muster the will and deter-
mination to make effective use of their power instruments or to mobilize
effective public support. Fellow citizens who do not share this image are
 Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions 75

as wimps. As in the case of the enemy stereotype, disconfirming evi-

is likely to be interpreted as confirming, and the image is extremely
difficult to falsify.
The emotions associated with the image are disgust, contempt, scorn,
and anger, all of which may ultimately turn to hatred. This combination
leads to a desire to eliminate the offensive group and can lead to a dangerous
underestimation of an adversary’s abilities (Izard, 1977). Contempt and dis-
-ust combine with anger and scorn, and this can lead to dehumanization
and to genocidal violence. Because the motivations of a country seen as a
degenerate are assumed to be harmful, the drive to eliminate the problem
is likely to be strong. The leaders of Germany and Japan before World War
U made statements about, and committed acts toward, Great Britain, the
United States, and France, indicating their degenerate image of those coun­
tries. A more recent example of this stereotypical view was Saddam Hussein
of Iraq in his confrontation with the United States and its allies in 1990.
Saddam Hussein apparently believed to the end that the United States and
its allies would not have the will to engage him on the issue of the invasion
of Kuwait. More typical was the operating worldview of Hitler, Mussolini,
and the Japanese military. They at least did possess formidable war cap­
abilities, and all saw a reality that made plausible the achievement of their
aggressive ends.

The Colonial Image

A second stereotypical image associated with perception of opportunity is
the colonial image, which is the flip side of the imperial image. It occurs
when an opportunity is identified to gain control over another polity or
group perceived as significantly inferior in capability and culture. The
people are perceived as childlike and inferior, and the political elite are typ­
ically perceived to fall into one of two groups: one group is seen as behaving
moderately and responsibly, as is indicated by its willingness to collaborate
with the imperial power; the other group, in contrast, is seen as behaving
in an agitating and irresponsible manner, opposing the imperial purpose,
sometimes to the point of allying with and serving the interests of enemies
of the imperial power. The moderate, responsible section is motivated to
support what is perceived as the civilizing mission of the imperial power.
The agitating group is seen as monolithic in decisional structure and cun­
ningly destructive as it tries to mobilize the most alert elements in a mostly
•political and passive populace. The imperial power capability advantage
rests on the perceived immaturity of the colonial population, as manifested
an inability to effectively recruit, organize, and lead a military force, and
make effective use of advanced weaponry. Those citizens of the imperial
power who do not share this essentially contemptuous view will be regarded
85 v*n8 gone native” and lost perspective.
Members of the imperial power polity tend to regard the colonial popu-
ce with disgust and contempt, but also pity. Behaviors associated with the
from6 *tS emotional baggage include wanting to avoid contamination
bad ,J ^ ntact W*t^1 t^le inferior, or moving forcefully against them to punish
vior. This was the Cold War pattern in U.S. foreign policy. Countries
76 Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions

in this image, who moved in political directions that U.S. policy-makers did
not approve of, were punished, sometimes through the overthrow of their
governments. Examples include the overthrow of the governments in Iran
(1953), Guatemala (1954), and Chile (1973). The fear was that they would
become infected with socialism, and it would spread to other countries. They
were not going to allow this to happen. In less-dangerous contexts, such as
disagreements regarding economic matters, there is little a colonial country -
can do to seriously threaten the imperial power, and policy preferences
are for nonviolent repression in the form of economic sanctions, isolation,
refusal to give trade preferences, and so on. The actions and demands of the
colonial country are still considered illegitimate and inconsistent with the
goals of the perceiver, and responsibility for the conflict is attributed to
the colonial country.
We describe this image in terms of international politics, but the
dynamic repeats itself in any domestic political context in which one group
considers itself vastly superior to, and therefore rightfully in control of,
another group. White resistance to the Civil Rights Movement in the South
of the United States in the 1960s is an example. Black political leaders were
also divided into “moderate” and “irresponsible” classifications. This image
is also evident in the case study of United States-M exico interaction in
Chapter 10.

ATTITUDES
The discussion of images and their emotional components tells us some­
thing about the interaction of cognition and emotion. There is a great deal of
research on the cognitive and emotional elements in the individual attitudes
that make up a cognitive system. The concept is defined and thought of in
different ways by different psychologists. A standard definition of attitudes
is that they are an enduring system of positive or negative beliefs (the cog­
nitive component), affective feelings and emotions, and action tenden­
cies regarding attitude objects—that is, the entity being evaluated. Stone
and Schaffner (1988), for example, regard attitudes as “an organized set of
beliefs, persisting over time, which is useful in explaining the individual
response to tendencies” (p. 63). Eagly and Chaiken (1998) define attitudes
as “a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular
entity with some degree of favor or disfavor” (p. 269). Duckitt (1994) reviews
two different ways in which attitudes are conceptualized in psychology. In
one, they are seen to be composed of cognitive, affective, and behavioral
components. However, there were many criticisms of this conceptualization
of attitudes because there was little in the way of specifics as to how these
three components interacted, and whether they were always consistent with
each other. We saw earlier, in our discussion of balance and consistency, that
affect and cognition are not always consistent, and most people know from
personal experience that attitudes and behavior are often inconsistent.
One of the most important controversies in attitude research concerned
the behavioral component in the original conceptualization of attitudes.
Originally, it was assumed that a person’s attitudes determine behavior. A
person who favors a certain politician is likely to vote for that candidate.
 Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions 77

rson who smokes marijuana is likely to support legislation legalizing

^ ^'uana A person who is racially prejudiced is unlikely to send their child
^ h o o l where Blacks and Hispanic Americans, or whoever the person
t jik6j are in the majority. In 1934, however, a major study was done
found interesting results and challenged the notion that there is a direct
ection between attitudes and behavior. This study was conducted by La
Pterre a White professor. He toured the United States with a Chinese couple
during a period when there was a great deal of prejudice against Asian
le ¡n the country. They stopped at 66 hotels and 184 restaurants. Only
once were they turned away by a hotel, and never by a restaurant. Later, a
16^ was sent to the same hotels and restaurants asking whether they would
accept Chinese customers. Ninety-two percent of those who responded
(128) said they would not. The study showed people do not always behave
in accordance with their attitudes. Later studies raised similar concerns
(Deutscher, 1973; Katz & Stotland, 1959; Kuntner, Wilkins, & Yarrow, 1952;
Minard, 1952). This, of course, led to the question of when and under what
circumstances attitudes and behavior are likely to coincide.
Attitudes that are strong, clear, and consistent over time, and directly
and specifically relevant to the behavior under examination, are more likely
to be associated with attitude-behavior consistency (Fazio & Williams,
1986; Fishbein 8c Ajzen, 1980; Krosnick, 1989). Inconsistencies can come
from weak or ambivalent affect. In addition, the affective and cognitive
components of an attitude may be in some conflict, which also reduces
the changes of attitude-behavior consistency. For example, some men and
women may think intellectually gender-based discrimination is wrong,
but they are emotionally upset when men and women do not conform to
gender-related roles. Also, if one is going to study the relationship between
attitudes and behaviors, one needs to look at behaviors directly related to
attitudes to get an accurate picture of the relationship. For example, sev­
eral studies examined the relationship between religious attitudes and reli­
gious behavior by asking subjects whether they believe in God or consider
themselves religious, then noting whether they attended church. Usually,
there was only a weak relationship between the two. The problem is that
going to church is not directly related to belief in God or even to being reli­
gious. Many people who believe in God do not go to church. Other people
go to church for social reasons more than because they believe in God. In
addition, looking at a series of actions over time to get an accurate picture
of the relationship between attitudes and behavior is important (Epstein,
1979; Fiske & Taylor, 1991). This eliminates interference from situational
conditions that affect the attitude-behavior relationship.
This brings us to situational pressures, which can also affect the relation-
p between attitudes and behavior. Whenever a person engages in overt
~™av*or’ they can be influenced both by their attitudes and by the situation.
en situational pressures are very strong, attitudes are not likely to be
strong a determinant of behavior as when situational pressures are reta­
ke y weak. Situational pressure can include social norms (a person may
^ a bigot, but know that others will think poorly of him or her for acting
way) or contextual effects, which heighten the salience of or perspec-
L^e on, a certain attitude (Bentler & Speckart, 1981; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975;
rre> 1934). Individual differences are also important in explaining
78 Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions

inconsistencies between what people think and how they behave

people are high self-monitors, meaning they are very attentive to
norms and the impression they make in social situations. They are lessl
to act consistendy on the basis of their attitudes and instead act as they t
the situation demands (Perloff, 1993; Snyder, 1987).
Given these issues, others offered perspectives on attitudes. Fishbeina
Ajzen (1980) offered a unidimensional approach to attitudes, wherein t
regarded attitudes solely as affect. They separated the cognitive and beh
ioral components and argued these should be observed and measured s
arately. As Duckitt (1994, p. 13) explains:

This approach does not expect a strong relationship between an atti­

tude to an object and specific behaviors to that object. To predict a
specific act, both the attitude to that act and act-specific social norms
need to be considered as well. On the other hand, a generalized atti­
tude toward an object should predict the overall tendency to behave in
a generally favorable or unfavorable way toward that object, as aggre­
gating over a variety of different situations and acts should largely
average out normative and situational influences.

Judd and Krosnick (1989) take a similar approach and define an atti­
tude as “an evaluation of an attitude object that is stored in memory’
(p. 100). Others have limited attitudes to affect and beliefs alone (Levin &
Levin, 1982).
No agreement exists on a universally accepted understanding of what an
attitude is and how its component parts relate to each other, but as we show
in Chapter 6, the attitude concept is widely used in studies of voting behavior,
persuasion, and media effects on political behavior. Unlike the image and
stereotype concepts, the attitude concept can more easily separate cogni­
tion and affect, and for that reason it can be very useful in studying voting
behavior, particularly in a country such as the United States, where people
have political attitudes that are often based on little, and often inaccurate,
cognition. An attitude can be driven mostly by affect. But, as our discus­
sion of images and stereotypes showed, there is considerable knowledge—
although often inaccurate—embodied in them. Alternatively, an attitude
may be primarily cognitive in content, based solely on beliefs without affect
(Eagly & Chaiken, 1998).
Attitude studies were conducted on many issues, one of which, as
mentioned, is the relationship between cognition and affect—particularly
when they are not consistent (i.e., what you think about an object and how
you feel about it are different). Marcus et al. (2000) examined the role played
by affect in the behavior of American citizens in elections and regarding
important issues. They argue that emotions help people to monitor and take
surveillance of politics. Their study included survey results demonstrating
the importance of enthusiasm and anxiety in electoral preferences for the
presidency in the 1980s. For example, enthusiasm for Reagan and lack of
anxiety about the country's circumstances contributed strongly to Reagans
reelection in 1984. They also explained the lack of everyday interest in pol­
itics in America by noting the average citizen uses emotions to act as an
 Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions 79

„jgnn; when the citizen starts to feel anxiety, they then turn to the news to
gnd out more. The emotional system is a watchdog that operates uncon-
jciously. We discuss this research in more detail in Chapter 6.
Another broad issue concerns the consistency among, and structure of,
gttitudes—for example, whether Republicans are consistently conservative
gnd Democrats are consistently liberal on all political issues, and how those
attitudes are linked together. Attitudes can be bipolar, wherein people recog­
nize and understand both sides of an issue, or they can be unipolar, in which
case people see only their preferred position. Eagly and Chaiken (1998) cite
a number of studies suggesting attitudes on controversial issues are likely to
be bipolar (e.g., Pratkanis, 1989; Sherif, Sherif, & Nebergall, 1965). In add­
ition, there is a large body of literature on the complexity of beliefs, which
we introduced in Chapter 2 and will explore in more detail in Chapter 5,
where political leaders are discussed. Many studies concerning how polit­
ical attitudes are formed, and how they change, are examined in Chapter 6.

CONCLUSION
This chapter has introduced readers to many different concepts in cogni­
tive and social psychology, and their application to political psychology. We
began with basic patterns in information processing, and then turned to an
overview of the cognitive system. To this, we added the importance of the
groups to which people belong (in-groups), and their reactions to groups to
which they do not belong (out-groups). We presented a model of out-groups
(image theory), which depicts out-groups in international politics, but can
also be used in domestic political arenas. In subsequent chapters, where we
examine race, ethnicity, nationalism, and political extremists, we explore
some of the groups in politics to which people have powerful attachments,
as well as patterns of behavior toward out-groups. We looked at emotion in
politics. Readers may find that although emotions were not systematically
examined in the patterns of political behavior, they are deeply important,
as discussed in subsequent chapters. Indeed, readers may find themselves
having powerful emotional reactions to some of the cases presented in the
following chapters. Finally, we presented the concept of attitudes, to which
we return when we look at public opinion and voting in Chapter 6. Thus far,
in Chapters 2 and 3, we explored the content of the Political Being’s mind. In
the next chapter, we turn to the Political Being and the outside world, with a
look at groups and group behavior.
80 Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions

Topics, Theories/Explanations, a n d Concepts in C hapter 3

Topics Theories Concepts

Information processing Attribution theory Heuristics: availability,

representativeness
fundamental
attribution error
Balance theory Need for consistency
Dissonance theory Selective exposure,
attention,
interpretation;
avoidance of
value trade-offs;
bolstering
Cognition and Categorization; social Cognitive categories;
cognitive systems identity schemas;
stereotypes;
in-groups and
out-groups
Image theory Enemy, barbarian,
imperial, rogue,
degenerate, colonial
Emotions
Attitudes

Key Terms
affect dissonance
ally im age em otion
anchoring and adjustm ent enem y im age
assimilation effect fundam ental attribution error
attitudes heuristic
attribution theory hindsight bias
availability heuristic im age theory
avoidance of value trade-offs im perialist im age
balance in-group
barbarian im age out-group
beliefs representativeness heuristic
bolstering rogue image
childish games schema
cognition security
cognitive processes social identity
colonial im age Social Identity M odel of Collective
compliance Action (SIMCA)
confirm ation bias spiral conflicts
contrast effect stereotypes
degenerate image
 Cognition, Social Identity, Emotions

Suggestions for Further Reading

Alexander, M. G., Brewer, M. B„ & Herrmann, R. K. (1999). Images and affect:
Afunctional analysis of out-group stereotypes. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 77, 78-93.
Cottam, M. (1994). Images and intervention. Pittsburgh, PA: University of
Pittsburgh Press.
Cottam, M., & Cottam, R. (2001). Nationalism and politics: The political
behavior of nation states. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
Eagly, A. H., & Chalken, S. (1998). Attitude structure and function. In D. T.
Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), The handbook o f social psychology
(4th ed., pp. 269-322). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Fiske, S, & Taylor, S. E. (1991). Social cognition. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Frijda, N. (1986). The emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mackie, D., & Hamilton, D. (Eds.). (1993). Affect, cognition and stereotyping:
Interactive processes in group perception. New York: Academic Press.
Marcus, G., Neuman, W. R„ & MacKuen, M. (2000). Affective intelligence and
politicaljudgment. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Neuman, R. Marcus, G., Crigler, A., & MacKuen, M. (Eds.). (2007). The affect
effect. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
Tajfel, H. (1982). Human groups and social categories. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Westen, D. (2007). The political brain: The role of emotion in deciding the fate of
the nation. New York: Public Affairs.