Partisanship and political discussion

Abstract

The question of how individuals affect each other politically has drawn considerable interest in the social sciences for some time. Unfortunately, little in the way of a theoretical formulation of the social interaction process has been developed. Using party identification as an attitude subject to social influence, this paper evaluates the general hypothesis that individual party identification is affected by the party identification of a politically significant other, as well as specific hypotheses about the conditions that facilitate this process. Using data collected specifically for this task in South Bend, Indiana, the analyses indicate that individual partisanship responds to discussant partisanship, and that this effect is enhanced in situations of homogeneous political content, frequent discussion, and where the partisanship of the discussant is known.