Between Michigan and Rochester: Identity-based thinking is cognitively primary

Abstract

This article synthesizes a large body of research in the social and cognitive sciences to develop a distinctly cognitive understanding of political identity. Building on dual-process and computational theories of mind, the article defends three claims about the mental and behavioral implications of identity in political domains: (1) identity-based thinking is people’s default (often fast, automatic, and cognitively inaccessible) way of mentally representing politics and of drawing inferences based on those representations; (2) people are not limited to identity-based thinking and can sometimes learn to override it via slow, volitional, and conscious reasoning; and (3) the cognitive complexity of identity-based thinking is in-between the levels of mental sophistication that the Michigan and Rochester Schools in political science posit. This account of political identity illuminates, inter alia, why even low-information voters can quickly identify their political allies and opponents, why even high-information politicians can misperceive their constituents, why affective polarization has been increasing in the United States in recent decades, and why many normative theories of justice advise people to override identity-based thinking.