Partisan Social Identity Scale
Also known as: Partisan Identity Strength Scale, Expressive Partisanship Scale, Huddy-Mason-Aaroe Partisan Identity Measure, Partisan In-Group Identification Scale
The Partisan Social Identity Scale treats party identification as a social identity in the sense of Henri Tajfel rather than as a running tally of policy agreement. Building on Steven Greene's social-identity approach and crystallized in Huddy, Mason, and Aaroe's 2015 study of expressive partisanship, the scale adapts standard group-identification items to ask how central, important, and emotionally engaging a person's party is to their sense of self. Strongly identified partisans are shown to feel action-oriented emotions, anger when their side is threatened and enthusiasm when reassured, and to participate in campaigns more than issue-based measures of partisanship predict.
Key highlights
- Imports validated social-identity measurement into the study of partisanship, with strong internal consistency.
- Predicts emotional reactivity and campaign activity beyond traditional party-ID strength and issue extremity.
- Separates expressive identity from instrumental policy agreement, sharpening theories of polarization.
- Links partisanship to a broad psychological literature on group identity and intergroup behavior.
Intuition
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How it works
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When to use it
Use the Partisan Social Identity Scale when you want to explain the affective and behavioral intensity of partisanship, including affective polarization, campaign participation, and emotional reactions to political events, and you suspect identity rather than policy drives it. It is well suited to studies that need to separate expressive from instrumental partisanship and to experiments manipulating threat or reassurance to the party. It is less appropriate when the research question is genuinely about policy preferences or ideological constraint, when only a single-item party-ID measure is available, or in party systems where the relevant identities are coalitional or fluid rather than stable two-party attachments.
Strengths & limitations
- Imports validated social-identity measurement into the study of partisanship, with strong internal consistency.
- Predicts emotional reactivity and campaign activity beyond traditional party-ID strength and issue extremity.
- Separates expressive identity from instrumental policy agreement, sharpening theories of polarization.
- Links partisanship to a broad psychological literature on group identity and intergroup behavior.
- Developed for stable two-party systems; less clear in multiparty or coalitional contexts.
- Identity-strength and affective-polarization measures can overlap, raising redundancy concerns.
- Self-reported identity importance is subject to social-desirability and context effects.
- Distinguishing identity from issue alignment is statistically delicate when the two are highly correlated.
Common pitfalls
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Applications
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Frequently asked
How is this different from the standard seven-point party-ID measure?
The traditional measure asks which party you identify with and how strongly on a single item that blends direction and intensity. The Partisan Social Identity Scale instead uses several items drawn from social identity theory to capture how central and emotionally important the party is to your self-concept. Huddy, Mason, and Aaroe show that this multi-item identity-strength measure predicts emotional reactivity and campaign activity better than the single-item strength question, because it taps expressive attachment rather than mere directional preference.
What does expressive partisanship mean?
Expressive partisanship is the view that people identify with a party as a social group and act to express and defend that identity, rather than instrumentally to obtain preferred policies. On this account, the emotional heat of politics, anger at the other side, joy at winning, comes from identity stakes. The scale operationalizes the expressive view by measuring identity strength, and experiments show that strong identifiers react emotionally to threats and reassurances about their party's electoral fortunes.
Can the scale separate identity from issue positions?
That separation is a core validation goal. Because identity strength and issue extremity are correlated, the scale's authors test discriminant validity by showing that identity strength predicts expressive outcomes after controlling for issue extremity and ideological self-placement. When the two are very highly correlated in a given sample, careful modeling is needed, but the general finding is that expressive identity contributes independently to emotion and participation.
Sources
- 1.Huddy, L., Mason, L., & Aaroe, L. (2015). Expressive Partisanship: Campaign Involvement, Political Emotion, and Partisan Identity. American Political Science Review, 109(1), 1-17.
- 2.Greene, S. (1999). Understanding Party Identification: A Social Identity Approach. Political Psychology, 20(2), 393-403.
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Cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 23). Partisan Social Identity Scale. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/political-psychology/partisan-social-identity-scale