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Cited by 132Social and Intergroup PsychologyElectoral Systems and Political ParticipationEvolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior

Constituents of political cognition: Race, party politics, and the alliance detection system

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Pietraszewski, David, Curry, Oliver Scott, Petersen, Michael Bang, Cosmides, Leda, Tooby, John·2015·Cognition
DOI 10.1016/j.cognition.2015.03.007
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Abstract

Research suggests that the mind contains a set of adaptations for detecting alliances: an alliance detection system, which monitors for, encodes, and stores alliance information and then modifies the activation of stored alliance categories according to how likely they will predict behavior within a particular social interaction. Previous studies have established the activation of this system when exposed to explicit competition or cooperation between individuals. In the current studies we examine if shared political opinions produce these same effects. In particular, (1) if participants will spontaneously categorize individuals according to the parties they support, even when explicit cooperation and antagonism are absent, and (2) if party support is sufficiently powerful to decrease participants' categorization by an orthogonal but typically-diagnostic alliance cue (in this case the target's race). Evidence was found for both: Participants spontaneously and implicitly kept track of who supported which party, and when party cross-cut race-such that the race of targets was not predictive of party support-categorization by race was dramatically reduced. To verify that these results reflected the operation of a cognitive system for modifying the activation of alliance categories, and not just socially-relevant categories in general, an identical set of studies was also conducted with in which party was either crossed with sex or age (neither of which is predicted to be primarily an alliance category). As predicted, categorization by party occurred to the same degree, and there was no reduction in either categorization by sex or by age. All effects were replicated across two sets of between-subjects conditions. These studies provide the first direct empirical evidence that party politics engages the mind's systems for detecting alliances and establish two important social categorization phenomena: (1) that categorization by age is, like sex, not affected by alliance information and (2) that political contexts can reduce the degree to which individuals are represented in terms of their race.

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  • En el contexto de la política, las personas tratan señales de acuerdo o simpatía con líderes y partidos políticos como claves de alianza y coalición.

    “Esto es particularmente cierto en el contexto de la política, en donde las personas tratan señales de acuerdo o simpatía con líderes y partidos políticos como claves de alianza y coalición (Pietraszewski et al., 2015).”

    From El estudio de la polarización afectiva: una mirada metodológica (2022) · cites this paper as Pietraszewski et al., 2015

    The Conclusion (section 5.8; page unavailable) says the mind implicitly treats cues of support for and agreement with modern political parties as an alliance category. That supports the claim about parties, but the cited finding does not establish the same point for signals of agreement with or sympathy toward political leaders specifically. (LLM, conf=0.86)

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Authors
Pietraszewski, D., Curry, O. S., Petersen, M. B., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J.
Affiliations
  • University of California, Santa Barbara (US)
  • London School of Economics and Political Science (GB)
  • Aarhus University (DK)
Corresponding author
Pietraszewski, David
ORCID
Venue
Cognition
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2015-07
Volume
140
Pages
24-39
ISSN
0010-0277 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1016/j.cognition.2015.03.007
OpenAlex
W1970310612
Cited by
132
References
140
Citations by year
2026: 4 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 49 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 12 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 12 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 6
FWCI
30.96
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
Locations
  • Cognition (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • London School of Economics and Political Science Research Online (London School of Economics and Political Science) (submittedVersion)
  • MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion)
Funders
National Institutes of Health (DP1OD000516)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
Keywords
political cognition, party politics, social categorization, race, implicit categorization, cross-cutting, age classification, sex categorization, social cognition
MeSH terms
Adolescent, Cognition, Female, Humans, Male, Neuropsychological Tests, Politics, Mental Recall, Social Behavior, Social Identification, Racial Groups, Young Adult

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