Lee, Seonghui and Kevins, Anthony (2025) How We Think About the Political Stances of Others: Evidence on Projection from Canada, Germany, and the UK. West European Politics. pp. 1-26. DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2025.2548167
Lee, Seonghui and Kevins, Anthony (2025) How We Think About the Political Stances of Others: Evidence on Projection from Canada, Germany, and the UK. West European Politics. pp. 1-26. DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2025.2548167
Lee, Seonghui and Kevins, Anthony (2025) How We Think About the Political Stances of Others: Evidence on Projection from Canada, Germany, and the UK. West European Politics. pp. 1-26. DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2025.2548167
Abstract
What leads people to assume that others are more or less similar to them ideologically? To answer this question, this article uses original data from three multi-party democracies to analyse respondents’ assumptions about the ideological proximity of hypothetical voters. In doing so, it focusses on an underexamined psychological mechanism in political science research–projection onto in-group members–with the aim of extending our understanding of the factors shaping second-order political beliefs. The article empirically assesses the impact of this mechanism, using an original survey experiment fielded in Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom to examine the effect of shared partisanship and overlapping demographic markers on presumed ideological similarity. Results suggest that in all three countries, shared group membership plays an important role in shaping second-order political beliefs, though the effect of socio-demographic similarity is only robust in the absence of a clear partisan affiliation.
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Uncontrolled Keywords: | Second-order beliefs; projection; ideology; partisanship; Social Categorisation Model |
Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Government, Department of |
SWORD Depositor: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Depositing User: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Date Deposited: | 24 Sep 2025 09:26 |
Last Modified: | 24 Sep 2025 15:55 |
URI: | http://repository.essex.ac.uk/id/eprint/41411 |
Available files
Filename: How we think about the political stances of others evidence on projection from Canada Germany and the UK.pdf
Licence: Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0