The Impact of Group Economic Interests On Political Evaluations

Abstract

In recent work dealing with the impact of economic conditions on political behavior, a key point of controversy has concerned the type of information that people use to evaluate economic performance: Do they base their evaluations on personal economic well-being or the state of the nation's economy? In this debate, information about the economic well-being of social reference groups has generally been ignored. Therefore, in this article we explore the role of group economic interests in performance evaluations. Basically, our findings indicate that (1) group economic interests are perceived to overlap relatively little with personal, and especially national, interests; and (2) group economic interests have a significant independent effect on performance evaluations. Possible explanations for such group influence are discussed.