The American South: Explorations on southern attachments and personal values

ABSTRACT

Group membership is central to understanding political behavior and political psychology. However, regional group membership is rarely examined, despite its relevance to political psychology and personal values. To address this, we investigated the relationships among southern identity, southern nationalism, southern pride, and southern constructive patriotism for the U.S. South, as well as the connections between personal values and southern attachments. Results from the structural equation modeling (N = 268) revealed that stronger southern identity predicted more southern nationalism, southern pride, and southern constructive patriotism. Additionally, greater endorsement of conservation values predicted stronger southern identity and southern pride; those favoring self-transcendence values exhibited less southern nationalism and more southern constructive patriotism; and those with higher self-enhancement values expressed more southern nationalism. This study confirms the predictive role of southern identity on other southern attachments and provides support for how different southern attachments are related to but distinctive from each other.

KEYWORDS:

• Social Identity
• Patriotism
• Group Process
• Personal Values
• Attachment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website

Data-availability

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/6spnd

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/6spnd

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yunzhu Ouyang

Yunzhu Ouyang is a doctoral student at University of Alberta. Her research primarily includes group process, female leadership, and the emergence of unexpected leaders who can go against group norms and bring changes to groups.

David E. Rast

David E. Rast III is an Assistant Professor at University of Alberta. His research focuses on the psychological processes of leadership that occur within and between small dynamic groups.

Justin D. Hackett

Justin D. Hackett is an Associate Professor at California University of Pennsylvania. His research interests are in using social science research to address and ameliorate social issues.

Zachary P. Hohman

Zachary P. Hohman is an Associate Professor at Texas Tech University. His research investigates how social groups influence people's self-conception, attitudes, physiology, and biology as they relate to health behaviors.