Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-r5zm4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-30T16:21:49.121Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Does Perceiving Discrimination Influence Partisanship among U.S. Immigrant Minorities? Evidence from Five Experiments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2019

Daniel J. Hopkins
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Ronald O. Perelman Center for Political Science and Economics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA19104, USA, e-mail: danhop@sas.upenn.edu, Twitter: @dhopkins1776
Cheryl R. Kaiser
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA98195, USA, e-mail: ckaiser@uw.edu, Twitter: @cherylrkaiser
Efrén O. Pérez
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles, CA90095, USA, e-mail: perezeo@ucla.edu
Sara Hagá
Affiliation:
Faculdade de Psicologia, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal, e-mail: sara.haga@fp.ul.pt
Corin Ramos
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Texas, El Paso, TX79902, USA, e-mails: cramos10@utep.edu and mzarate@utep.edu
Michael Zárate
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Texas, El Paso, TX79902, USA, e-mails: cramos10@utep.edu and mzarate@utep.edu

Abstract

Perceived discrimination (PD) is reliably and strongly associated with partisan identity (PID) among US immigrant minorities such as Latinos and Asian Americans. Yet whether PD causes PID remains unclear, since it is possible that partisanship influences perceptions of discrimination or that other factors drive the observed association. Here, we assess the causal influence of group-level PD on PID using five experiments with Latino and Asian American adults. These experiments varied in important ways: they took place inside and outside the lab, occurred prior to and during Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, and tested different manifestations of PD and partisan attitudes (total n = 2,528). These efforts point to a simple but unexpected conclusion: our experiments and operationalizations do not support the claim that group-targeted PD directly causes PID. These results have important implications for understanding partisanship among immigrants and their co-ethnics and the political incorporation of Latinos and Asian Americans.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© The Experimental Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Russell Sage Foundation (Award 87-14-05 to Hopkins, Kaiser, and Pérez). This research was reviewed and approved by institutional review boards at Georgetown University (2014–1003), the University of Pennsylvania (823994), the University of Washington (48286), and Vanderbilt University (151979). We thank August Gebhard-Koenigstein, Daniel Maldonado, and Thomas Munson for excellent research assistance and Matt Baretto, David Broockman, Neil Malhotra, Tanika Raychaudhuri, and Nicholas Valentino for insightful comments. This research was previously presented at the Spring 2016 Meeting of the Identity Politics Research Group (Columbia University, May 26), the 2016 Comparative Approaches to Immigration, Ethnicity, and Integration conference (Yale University, June 15), and the 2018 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election 2016 Survey conference. There are no conflicts of interest to report. The data, code, and any additional materials required to replicate all analyses in this article are available at the Journal of Experimental Political Science Dataverse within the Harvard Dataverse Network, at: doi:10.1017/XPS.2019.14.”

References

Abrajano, Marisa A. and Alvarez, R. Michael. 2010. New faces, new voices: The Hispanic electorate in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alvarez, R. Michael and Bedolla, Lisa Garcia. 2003. The Foundations of Latino Voter Partisanship: Evidence from the 2000 Election. Journal of Politics 65(1):3149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barreto, Matt A. 2010. Ethnic Cues: The Role of Shared Ethnicity in Latino Political Participation. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Angus, Converse, Phillip E., Miller, Warren E. and Stokes, Donald E.. 1960. The American Voter. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Chong, Dennis and Kim, Dukhong. 2006. The Experiences and Effects of Economic Status among Racial and Ethnic Minorities. American Political Science Review 100(3):335351.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dahl, Robert. 1961. Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Dawson, Michael C. 1994. Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African-American Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Deaux, Kay. 2006. To Be an Immigrant. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Druckman, James N. and Leeper, Thomas J.. 2012. Learning More from Political Communication Experiments: Pretreatment and Its Effects. American Journal of Political Science 56(4):875896.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dyck, Joshua J., Johnson, Gregg B. and Wasson, Jesse T.. 2012. A Blue Tide in the Golden State: Ballot Propositions, Population Change, and Party Identification. American Politics Research 40(3):450475.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goh, Jin X., Hall, Judith A. and Rosenthal, Robert. 2016. Mini Meta-Analysis of Your Own Studies: Some Arguments on Why and a Primer on How. Social and Personality Psychology Compass 10(10):535549.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Donald P., Palmquist, Bradley and Schickler, Eric. 2002. Partisan Hearts and Minds. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Hajnal, Zoltan L. and Lee, Taeku. 2011. Why Americans Don’t Join the Party: Race, Immigration, and the Failure (of Political Parties) to Engage the Electorate. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hopkins, Daniel, Kaiser, Cheryl, Sara, Hagá,Ramos, Corin, Zárate, Michael and Pérez, Efrén. 2019. Replication Data for: Does Perceiving Discrimination Influence Partisanship among U.S. Immigrant Minorities? Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:73/3IxWBy3nae0afXHemUA== [fileUNF]. doi: 10.7910/DVN/NQFPF3.Google Scholar
Hui, Iris and Sears, David O.. 2018. Reexamining the Effect of Racial Propositions on Latinos’ Partisanship in California. Political Behavior 40(1):149174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huo, Yuen J., Binning, Kevin R. and Molina, Ludwin E.. 2010. Testing an Integrative Model of Respect: Implications for Social Engagement and Well-Being. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 36(2):200212.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kaiser, Cheryl R., Major, Brenda and McCoy, Shannon K.. 2004. Expectations about the future and the emotional consequences of perceiving prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 30:173184.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kuo, Alexander., Malhotra, Neil and Mo, Cecilia Hyunjung. 2017. Social Exclusion and Political Identity: The Case of Asian American Partisanship. The Journal of Politics 79(1):1732.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Major, Brenda, Kaiser, Cheryl R., O’Brien, Laurie T. and McCoy, Shannon K.. 2007. Perceived discrimination as worldview threat or worldview confirmation: Implications for self-esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92:10681086.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Margolis, Michele. 2018. From Politics to the Pews: How Partisanship and the Political Environment Shape Religious Identity. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mason, Lilliana. 2018. Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became our Identity. University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michele, Margolis.. 2018. From Politics to the Pews: How Partisanship and the Political Environment Shape Religious Identity. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Masuoka, Natalie. 2006. Together They Become One: Examining the Predictors of Panethnic Group Consciousness among Asian Americans and Latinos. Social Science Quarterly 87(5):9931011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masuoka, Natalie and Junn, Jane. 2013. The Politics of Belonging: Race, Public Opinion, and Immigration. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oskooii, Kassra AR. 2016. How Discrimination Impacts Sociopolitical Behavior: A Multidimensional Perspective. Political Psychology 37(5):613640.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pantoja, Adrian D., Ramirez, Ricardo and Segura, Gary M.. 2001. Citizens by Choice, Voters by Necessity: Patterns in Political Mobilization by Naturalized Latinos. Political Research Quarterly 54(4):729750.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanchez, Gabriel R. 2008. Latino Group Consciousness and Perceptions of Commonality with African Americans. Social Science Quarterly 89(2):428444.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schildkraut, Deborah. 2005. Press One for English: Language Policy, Public Opinion, and American Identity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Schildkraut, Deborah. 2011. Americanism in the Twenty-First Century: Public Opinion in the Age of Immigration. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sears, David O. 1986. College Sophomores in the Laboratory: Influences of a Narrow Data base on Social Psychology’s View of Human Nature. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51(3):515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sears, David O. and Valentino, Nicholas A.. 1997. Politics Matters: Political Events as Catalysts for Preadult Socialization. American Political Science Review 91(1):4565.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sirin, Cigdem V., Villalobos, José D. and Valentino, Nicholas A.. 2016. Group Empathy Theory: The Effect of Group Empathy on US Intergroup Attitudes and Behavior in the Context of Immigration Threats. The Journal of Politics 78(3):893908.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winter, Nicholas G. 2008. Dangerous Frames: How Ideas about Race and Gender Shape Public Opinion. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wong, Janelle, Ramakrishnan, S. Karthick, Lee, Taeku and Junn, Jane. 2011. Asian American Political Participation: Emerging Constituents and Their Political Identities. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar