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Why Do Liberals Drink Lattes?
Abstract and Figures
Popular accounts of “lifestyle politics” and “culture wars” suggest that political and ideological divisions extend also to leisure activities, consumption, aesthetic taste, and personal morality. Drawing on a total of 22,572 pairwise correlations from the General Social Survey (1972–2010), the authors provide comprehensive empirical support for the anecdotal accounts. Moreover, most ideological differences in lifestyle cannot be explained by demographic covariates alone. The authors propose a surprisingly simple solution to the puzzle of lifestyle politics. Computational experiments show how the self-reinforcing dynamics of homophily and influence dramatically amplify even very small elective affinities between lifestyle and ideology, producing a stereotypical world of “latte liberals” and “bird-hunting conservatives” much like the one in which we live.
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... If a wedge is a cultural object that resonates with extant articulations of the partisan other, the audience for its mobilization will tend to be a partisan faction. In a societal context like the US, characterized by two highly sorted, highly affective partisan mega-identities (Baldassarri and Gelman 2008;DellaPosta 2020;DellaPosta et al. 2015;Iyengar et al. 2012;Finkel, et al. 2020), in which individuals increasingly select media sources that conform to their partisan identities (Berry and Sobieraj 2013;Bolin and Hamilton 2018;Wilson et al. 2020), the relative attention to topics across those sources can provide indirect insight into their partisan resonance. In lieu of public opinion data on the Delta Smelt, data from the Stanford Cable TV News Analyzer (Stanford University Computer Graphics Laboratory 2022) provide a useful image of the national partisan resonance of the Delta Smelt, given that Fox News targets a strongly conservative audience, whereas MSNBC and CNN's audiences trend liberal (Greiko 2020). ...
... The strategic mobilization of wedges may contribute to the "broadening alignment across a wider range of issues than were previously aligned" (DellaPosta 2020, p. 514). Further, by forging new linkages between cultural objects and partisanship, political divisions increasingly coincide, not only with policy and social issues, but with mundane aesthetic sensibilities and lifestyle aspects (DellaPosta et al. 2015;Hiaeshutter-Rice et al. 2023). In this sense, the Delta Smelt controversy may have made California water politics, and especially attitudes about it outside California, more reliably partisan by forging new links between that issue area and a preexisting set of right-wing partisan signifiers. ...
Drawing on a multi-method analysis of the controversy surrounding the Delta Smelt, an endangered fish emblematic of California’s so-called “water wars,” this article develops the concepts of division entrepreneurs as strategic actors who articulate partisan selves in relation to partisan others, and wedges as divisive cultural objects. Despite the appearance of a conflict about the distribution of water, the dynamics of the Delta Smelt controversy cannot be explained hydrologically. Instead, conservative division entrepreneurs opportunistically imbued the species with partisan significance, thus mobilizing it as a wedge. The Delta Smelt’s particular qualities, including its status as an uncharismatic microfauna, afforded divisive action. Forging new connections among literatures on the construction of social problems, political polarization, and pragmatist cultural sociology, this article proposes a framework for understanding how strategic actors use objects to shape political senses of “us” and “them.”
... A key mechanism for opinion formation that has been considered in ABMs is homophily, meaning the tendency to group with others who share traits, features or opinions close to our own (DeGroot, 1974). For example, homophily has been shown to amplify affinities between lifestyle and ideology (DellaPosta et al., 2015). Further, it can explain the formation of social groups and their size distribution (Korbel et al., 2023) or explain the emergence of social structures (Pham et al., 2022). ...
Opinion formation within society follows complex dynamics. Towards its understanding, axiomatic theory can complement data analysis. To this end, we propose an axiomatic model of opinion formation that aims to capture the interaction of individual conviction with social influence in a minimalist fashion. Despite only representing that (1) agents have an initial conviction with respect to a topic and are (2) influenced by their neighbours, the model shows the emergence of opinion clusters from an initially unstructured state. Here, we show that increasing individual self-reliance makes agents more likely to align their socially influenced opinion with their inner conviction which concomitantly leads to increased polarisation. The opinion drift observed with increasing self-reliance may be a plausible analogue of polarisation trends in the real-world. Modelling the basic traits of striving for individual versus group identity, we find a trade-off between individual fulfilment and societal cohesion. This finding from fundamental assumptions can serve as a building block to explain opinion polarisation.
... Further, the strength of influence in real-world settings may be biased toward similar others perceived as close and trusting (Centola, 2011;Mark, 2003). In terms of the affinity between politics and lifestyle, for example, this predicts clustering of behaviors into cultural bundles (DellaPosta et al., 2015). However, very similar predictions also follow from different exposure levels between groups and constant influence weights regardless of perceived closeness to others (DiMaggio & Garip, 2011). ...
The digital and computational revolutions have improved the prospects for analyzing the dynamics of large groups of interacting individuals. Digital trace data provide the type of large-scale, time-stamped, and granular information on social interactions that is needed to feasibly conduct research on social influence in non-experimental settings and to distinguish social influence effects from the confounding effects of homophily. This chapter reviews three concrete ways in which machine learning can improve the estimation of social influence effects from observational digital trace data. These computational approaches (a) make high-dimensional information about individuals accessible for analysis, (b) infer latent confounders from the structure of large-scale social networks, and (c) facilitate large-scale annotation of measures that can serve as instruments for causal identification.
... Further, the strength of influence in real-world settings may be biased toward similar others perceived as close and trusting (Centola, 2011;Mark, 2003). In terms of the affinity between politics and lifestyle, for example, this predicts clustering of behaviors into cultural bundles (DellaPosta et al., 2015). However, very similar predictions also follow from different exposure levels between groups and constant influence weights regardless of perceived closeness to others (DiMaggio & Garip, 2011). ...
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... This means that while all five responses are important for characterizing the other clusters, only four responses characterize the grey one. For example, this might represent Democrats (blue) having a strong correlation with "liking latte" and Republicans (red) characterized by "disliking latte" (DellaPosta et al. 2015). Therefore, we might expect independents (grey) then to be characterized by a neutral item-response (e.g. they will usually select: "neither like nor dislike"). ...
Belief network analysis (BNA) refers to a class of methods designed to detect and outline structural organizations of complex attitude systems. BNA can be used to analyze attitude-structures of abstract concepts such as ideologies, worldviews, and norm systems that inform how people perceive and navigate the world. The present manuscript presents a formal specification of the Response-Item Network (or ResIN), a new methodological approach that advances BNA in at least two important ways. First, ResIN allows for the detection of attitude asymmetries between different groups, improving the applicability and validity of BNA in research contexts that focus on intergroup differences and/or relationships. Second, ResIN’s networks include a spatial component that is directly connected to item response theory (IRT). This allows for access to latent space information in which each attitude (i.e. each response option across items in a survey) is positioned in relation to the core dimension(s) of group structure, revealing non-linearities and allowing for a more contextual and holistic interpretation of the attitudes network. To validate the effectiveness of ResIN, we develop a mathematical model and apply ResIN to both simulated and real data. Furthermore, we compare these results to existing methods of BNA and IRT. When used to analyze partisan belief-networks in the US-American political context, ResIN was able to reliably distinguish Democrat and Republican attitudes, even in highly asymmetrical attitude systems. These results demonstrate the utility of ResIN as a powerful tool for the analysis of complex attitude systems and contribute to the advancement of BNA.
... -In specific cases, cyberbullying, harassment, stalking, exposure to inappropriate content, and grooming [49][50][51][52]. -Exposure to misinformation, polarization, curated views of reality, unrealistic beauty standards, lifestyle enclaves, echo chambers, etc. [53][54][55]. ...
Purpose of review
This paper addresses the extensive use of Instagram by youth and explores the potential negative consequences of such use, with a view to provide recommendations for prevention purposes.
Recent findings
Based on an attention economy model, Instagram strategically incorporates design elements rooted in behavioral psychology to maximize user engagement, fostering habit loops and self-presentation. The paper outlines and discusses Instagram’s unique features for aesthetic manipulation of content, provides an overview of reported negative consequences of Instagram use, and identifies factors influencing vulnerability to problematic use, such as social comparison orientation and fear of missing out. Based on these analyses, recommendations for prevention are formulated.
Summary
To develop prevention strategies for problematic Instagram use and implement tailored interventions for individuals at high risk, it is crucial to emphasize identity development, critical thinking, and emotion regulation. Promoting ethical social network design and responsible Instagram use are critical. Users should be made aware of these risks and processes, automatic usage patterns need to be addressed, and self-regulation and life skills enhanced. More applied research on these topics is required and encouraged.
Past research observing differences in environmental attitudes across racial and ethnic groups often mischaracterized those differences as deficits, casting environmental concern as a predominately White issue. Our study contributes to current work correcting this account by mapping substantive differences in the structure of climate attitudes across racial and ethnic groups. We use belief network analysis on 14 years of survey data from the Climate Change in the American Mind (CCAM) survey ( n = 20,396), and we find substantive differences in the climate belief networks of White, Black, and Hispanic survey respondents. These differences are not primarily about the strength or weakness of associations between attitudes, as theorized by deficit accounts. Instead, we find different attitudes are most central to these respective belief networks. We argue research on the social construction of race and ethnicity can better measure substantive variation in climate attitudes among Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) respondents by attending to how racialized experiences with climate change may produce aggregated belief networks with different profiles of salient issues and different interpretive frameworks.
The academic agenda for studying social media and politics has been somewhat haphazard. Thanks to rapid technological change, a cascade of policy-relevant crises, and sheer scale, we do not have a coherent framework for deciding what questions to ask. This Element articulates such a framework by taking existing literature from media economics and sociology and applying it reflexively, to both the academic agenda and to the specific case of politics on YouTube: the Supply and Demand Framework. The key mechanism, traced over the past century, is the technology of audience measurement. The YouTube audience comes pre-rationalized in the form of Likes, Views and Comments, and is thus unavoidable for all actors involved. The phenomenon of 'radicalization' is best understood as a consequence of accelerated feedback between audiences and creators, radicalizing each other. I use fifteen years of supply and demand data from YouTube to demonstrate how different types of producers respond more or less to this feedback, which in turn structures the ideological distribution of content consumed on the platform. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
This article focuses on agent-based computational (ABC) modeling of social interaction. It begins with an overview of ABC modeling as a computational implementation of ‘methodological individualism’, the search for the microfoundations of social life in the actions of intentional agents. It then considers how the ABC method differs from an earlier generation of modeling approaches, including game theory, equation-based models of computer simulation (such as system dynamics), and multivariate linear models. It also discusses potential weaknesses of ABC modeling and proposes research strategies to address them. The article suggests that ABC modeling will lead to significant advances in the bottom-up approach to the study of social dynamics.
On the night of the 2000 presidential election, Americans watched on television as polling results divided the nation's map into red and blue states. Since then the color divide has become symbolic of a culture war that thrives on stereotypes--pickup-driving red-state Republicans who vote based on God, guns, and gays; and elitist blue-state Democrats woefully out of touch with heartland values. With wit and prodigious number crunching, Andrew Gelman debunks these and other political myths. This expanded edition includes new data and easy-to-read graphics explaining the 2008 election. Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State is a must-read for anyone seeking to make sense of today's fractured political landscape. © 2008, 2010 by Princeton University Press. All Rights Reserved.
In every generation, Americans have worried about the solidarity of the nation. Since the days of the Mayflower, those already settled here have wondered how newcomers with different cultures, values, and (frequently) skin color would influence America. Would the new groups create polarization and disharmony? Thus far, the United States has a remarkable track record of incorporating new people into American society, but acceptance and assimilation have never meant equality. In Century of Difference, Claude Fischer and Michael Hout provide a compelling-and often surprising-new take on the divisions and commonalities among the American public over the tumultuous course of the twentieth century. Using a hundred years worth of census and opinion poll data, Century of Difference shows how the social, cultural, and economic fault lines in American life shifted in the last century. It demonstrates how distinctions that once loomed large later dissipated, only to be replaced by new ones. Fischer and Hout find that differences among groups by education, age, and income expanded, while those by gender, region, national origin, and, even in some ways, race narrowed. As the twentieth century opened, a person's national origin was of paramount importance, with hostilities running high against Africans, Chinese, and southern and eastern Europeans. Today, diverse ancestries are celebrated with parades. More important than ancestry for today's Americans is their level of schooling. Americans with advanced degrees are increasingly putting distance between themselves and the rest of society-in both a literal and a figurative sense. Differences in educational attainment are tied to expanding inequalities in earnings, job quality, and neighborhoods. Still, there is much that ties all Americans together. Century of Difference knocks down myths about a growing culture war. Using seventy years of survey data, Fischer and Hout show that Americans did not become more fragmented over values in the late-twentieth century, but rather were united over shared ideals of self-reliance, family, and even religion. As public debate has flared up over such matters as immigration restrictions, the role of government in redistributing resources to the poor, and the role of religion in public life, it is important to take stock of the divisions and linkages that have typified the U.S. population over time. Century of Difference lucidly profiles the evolution of American social and cultural differences over the last century, examining the shifting importance of education, marital status, race, ancestry, gender, and other factors on the lives of Americans past and present.