Comments on Mason et al. 2021 "Activating Animus: The Uniquely Social Roots of Trump Support"

The American Political Science Review recently published Mason et al. 2021 "Activating Animus: The Uniquely Social Roots of Trump Support".

Mason et al. 2021 measured "animus" based on respondents' feeling thermometer ratings about groups. Mason et al. 2021 reported results for a linear measure of animus, but seemed to indicate an awareness that a linear measure might not be ideal: "...it may be that positivity toward Trump stems from animus toward Democratic groups more than negativity toward Trump stems from warmth toward Democratic groups, or vice versa" (p. 7).

Mason et al. 2021 addressed this by using a quadratic term for animus. But this retains the problem that estimates for respondents at a high level of animus against a group are influenced by responses from respondents who reported less animus toward the group and from respondents who favored the group.

I think that a better strategy to measure animus is to instead compare negatively toward the groups (i.e., ratings below the midpoint on the thermometer or at a low level) to indifference (i.e., a rating at the midpoint on the thermometer). I'll provide an example below, with another example here.

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The Mason et al. 2021 analysis used thermometer ratings of groups measured in the 2011 wave of a survey to predict outcomes measured years later. For example, one of the regressions used feeling thermometer ratings about Democratic-aligned groups as measured in 2011 to predict favorability toward Trump as measured in 2018, controlling for variables measured in 2011 such as gender, race, education, and partisanship.

That research design might be useful for assessing change net of controls between 2011 and 2018, but it's not useful for understanding animus in 2021, which I think some readers might infer from the "motivating the left" tweet from the first author of Mason et al. 2021, that:

And it's not happening for anyone on the Democratic side. Hating Christians and White people doesn't predict favorability toward any Democratic figures or the Democratic Party. So it isn't "anti-White racism" (whatever that means) motivating the left. It's not "both sides."

The 2019 wave of the survey used in Mason et al. 2021 has feeling thermometer ratings about White Christians, and, sure enough, the mean favorability rating about Hillary Clinton in 2019 differed between respondents who rated White Christians at or near the midpoint and respondents who rated White Christians under or well under the midpoint:

Even if the "motivating the left" tweet is interpreted to refer only to the post-2011 change controlling for partisanship, ideology, and other factors, it's not clear why that restricted analysis would be important for understanding what is motivating the left. It's not like the left started to get motivated only in or after 2011.

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NOTES

1. I think that Mason et al. 2021 used "warmth" at least once discussing results from the linear measure of animus, in which "animus" or "animosity" could have been used, in the passage below from page 4, with emphasis added:

Rather, Trump support is uniquely predicted by animosity toward marginalized groups in the United States, who also happen to fall outside of the Republican Party's rank-and-file membership. For comparison, when we analyze warmth for whites and Christians, we find that it predicts support for Trump, the Republican Party, and other elites at similar levels.

It would be another flaw of a linear measure of animus if an association can be described as having been predicted by animosity or by warmth (e.g., animosity toward Whites and Christians predicts lower levels of support for Trump and other Republicans at similar levels)

2. Stata code. Dataset. R plot: data and code.