National Identity, Pride, and Chauvinism—their Origins and Consequences for Globalization Attitudes

Abstract

Theorists of liberal nationalism argue that national identities serve as essential glue binding a nation. However, national identities can create tensions among subgroups of co-nationals and breed suspicion of outsiders. This chapter analyses the psychology of national attachments to better understand the effects of national identity, identifying three types of national attachment: chauvinism, pride, and identity. The chapter then investigates their differing origins and consequences, focusing on their effects on support for globalization, such as attitudes towards protectionism and immigration. The chapter finds that national chauvinism undercuts and pride enhances support for globalization, underscoring the diverse political effects of national attachments.

National identity, a blessing or a curse? The divergent links from national attachment, pride, and chauvinism to social and political trust

“…The results, as can be seen from Table 5, are reassuring. Not only does national attachment fail to dampen out-group trust; in fact, it seems to have a weak yet significantly positive correlation with it, in line with recent findings by Huddy & del Ponte (2019). National pride, in turn, has no significant link to this type of trust in either direction, while national chauvinism, as is to be expected, is strongly and negatively related to out-group trust 8…”

“…The reason for this is that a person could agree with this statement without being a national chauvinist, simply because he might take as his reference point the institutions, say, of less developed and economically wealthy countries. In line with previous research (Huddy & Khatib, 2007; Jeong, 2013; Huddy and del Ponte, 2019), we will treat these three variables as continuous. To make sure our results are robust, however, we have also tested by treating them as categorical (models available on request).…”

“…Contrary to what is sometimes assumed, such negative out-group bias has been shown to be unrelated to positive in-group bias (Brewer, 1999). We also know that national chauvinism tends to be negatively correlated with political participation (Huddy and Khatib, 2007), but positively linked to anti-egalitarianism (Peña and Sidanius, 2002), and anti-immigrant sentiment (Jeong, 2013; Huddy and del Ponte 2019). A recent study suggests this might partly be because people who score high on national chauvinism also score significantly higher on social dominance orientation (SDO); for example, they are more cynical and tend to favor the right of the stronger to dominate the weaker in society.…”

“…National chauvinism is more complicated. Huddy and del Ponte (2019) have recently argued that the political implications of this dimension differ across contexts. This is reflected in their finding that the negative relationship between national chauvinism and support for globalization and immigration is considerably stronger in Western (e.g., Britain, Germany, and Sweden) than in Central or Eastern Europe (e.g., Hungary, Latvia, and Slovakia).…”

Nationalism, Patriotism, and Support for the European Union

“…Nationalism is linked to heightened xenophobia, anti‐immigrant attitudes, anti‐Semitism, the derogation of foreigners, classic racism, and a higher social dominance orientation (Ariely, 2012; Blank & Schmidt, 2003; de Figueiredo & Elkins, 2003; Pehrson, Brown, & Zagefka, 2009; Sidanius et al, 1997; Wagner, Becker, Christ, Pettigrew, & Schmidt, 2012). In contrast, patriotism fosters adherence to national norms and positive attitudes toward immigration (Huddy & Del Ponte, 2019; Osborne, Satherley, Yogeeswaran, Hawi, & Sibley, 2019; Satherley, Yogeeswaran, Osborne, & Sibley, 2019). It is commonly defined as “a deeply felt affective attachment to the nation” (Conover, Feldman, & Knight, 1987, p. 1) or the “degree of love for and pride in one's nation” (Kosterman & Feshbach, 1989, p. 271).…”