Better explicating the strengths and shortcomings of these models will help refine projections and improve transparency in the years ahead.
Image credit: Witsawat.S.
Edited by Margaret Levi, Stanford University, Sanford, CA, and approved December 22, 2020 (received for review September 14, 2020)
Significance
The political influence of a group is typically explained in terms of its size, geographic concentration, or the wealth and power of the group’s members. This article introduces another dimension, the penumbra, defined as the set of individuals in the population who are personally familiar with someone in that group. Distinct from the concept of an individual’s social network, penumbra refers to the circle of close contacts and acquaintances of a given social group. Using original panel data, the article provides a systematic study of various groups’ penumbras, focusing on politically relevant characteristics of the penumbras (e.g., size, geographic concentration, sociodemographics). Furthermore, we show the connection between changes in penumbra membership and public attitudes on policies related to the group.
Abstract
To explain the political clout of different social groups, traditional accounts typically focus on the group’s size, resources, or commonality and intensity of its members’ interests. We contend that a group’s penumbra—the set of individuals who are personally familiar with people in that group—is another important explanatory factor that merits systematic analysis. To this end, we designed a panel study that allows us to learn about the characteristics of the penumbras of politically relevant groups such as gay people, the unemployed, or recent immigrants. Our study reveals major and systematic differences in the penumbras of various social groups, even ones of similar size. Moreover, we find evidence that entering a group’s penumbra is associated with a change in attitude on group-related policy questions. Taken together, our findings suggest that penumbras are pertinent for understanding variation in the political standing of different groups in society.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: gelman{at}stat.columbia.edu.
Author contributions: A.G. and Y.M. designed research, performed research, analyzed data, and wrote the paper.
The authors declare no competing interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
This article contains supporting information online at https://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.2019375118/-/DCSupplemental.
Data Availability.
Anonymized (Stata, SPSS, and R files) data have been deposited in the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/kjeh2/).
Published under the PNAS license.
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Social penumbras predict political attitudes
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- Political Sciences
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