Beliefs in national continuity are related to essentialist thinking and to perceptions of the nation as a family

Metodi Siromahov,Michael Buhrmester,Ryan Mckay

doi:10.1111/nana.12640

Metodi Siromahov, Michael Buhrmester + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1111/nana.12640

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Abstract

AbstractNational narratives serve to foster a sense of collective continuity—the perception that the nation has preserved its traits, values and goals across many generations. The present study explores some of the correlates of such perceptions of collective continuity (PCC). We predicted that people who see their nation as more continuous would tend to think about social groups in more strongly essentialist terms and to feel personally attached to other group members (a phenomenon known as identity fusion). An international sample of 307 respondents (predominantly from the United States and India) completed measures of PCC, social essentialism, identity fusion and national identification. Both hypotheses were supported at the level of the level of the full sample, suggesting that perceived national continuity is related to a general cognitive predisposition for essentialist thinking and also to one's sense of personal attachment to the nation. However, exploratory analyses by nationality revealed that the results could not be replicated with the Indian participants, potentially as a result of cultural factors. Identity fusion was also more strongly correlated to cultural/essentialist continuity than to historical continuity. Interpretations and directions for future research are discussed.

Highlights

Nationalism as a political project is based on the idea that national self-determination is the only legitimate ground for political sovereignty
Several factors contributing to increased perceptions of collective continuity (PCC) have been proposed, including the endorsement of national narratives (Smeekes, McKeown, & Psaltis, 2017), the need to manage the existential anxiety stemming from death awareness (Sani, Herrera, & Bowe, 2009; Usborne & de la Sablonnière, 2014) and the need for a temporally stable social identity (Smeekes & Verkuyten, 2015). In addition to these putative correlates of PCC, we propose that beliefs in collective continuity are underpinned by social essentialism—a general proneness to seeing social groups as ontologically real “natural kinds” (Gelman, 2003; Haslam, 2017; Haslam, Rothschild, & Ernst, 2000; Medin & Ortony, 1989)
Scholars of nationalism have noted that feelings of national identity and pride are often predicated on certain beliefs about the underlying reality of nations: that they form organic groups or natural kinds and that their existence stretches back in time across multiple generations

Summary

Introduction

Nationalism as a political project is based on the idea that national self-determination is the only legitimate ground for political sovereignty. As many theorists of nationalism (e.g., Billig, 1995; Gellner, 1983; Smith, 1986) have noted, this political claim is itself often predicated on certain ontological assumptions, naive realist beliefs about nations being somehow natural or objectively real. One could divide these ontological beliefs in two broad categories: beliefs in the underlying objective reality of the nation and in its transgenerational continuity. In the social psychological literature, this type of naive realist belief in the naturalness of nations is referred to as “essentialism.”

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