Group-difference claims about politics demand controlled comparison of protesters and nonprotesters

Evidence

An appropriate program of inquiry into Lipset’s claim would entail specifying the precise psychological dynamics that ostensibly make Jewish protesters distinctive and comparing Jewish and non-Jewish protesters with comparable nonprotesters in order to determine whether the imputed patterns existed. If they did, one would want to know whether they resulted from particular developmental histories, whether they had predictable consequences for political behavior, and why some Jews protested and some did not. Whether a distinctly Jewish psychology of political protest exists is an empirical question and is part of a broader set of questions that can be asked about how group membership affects personality and political behavior. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1163

Categorization

• DEFINE: Lays out the proper controlled research design for testing any claim that a group’s background explains its members’ politics.
• XREF: connects to: Regime surveys center on discontinuous public collective claim-making between distinct political actors — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 306