American Feelings

I used some "Feeling Thermometer" data in a class recently and was struck by an insane result reflected in the recent data. You'll see that below, where I've linked to the original polling agency, 

First, definition: A "Feeling Thermometer" is a commonly used research measure. Here's a reasonable definition from a recent piece of scholarship:

The feeling thermometer, or thermometer scale, is a rating procedure to measure respondents’ feelings about an issue using a scale that corresponds or makes a metaphor to temperatures in the thermometer.

Political scientists often derive these numbers via public opinion polling. Sometimes, respondents are specifically asked to provide a number on a scale (0 to 100 is typical) and the results reflect averages, often broken down by specific demographic information.

For example, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs asks Americans in a regular poll what they think about foreign countries. 

As this data reveals, Americans feel quite warmly about Canadians, but have quite cold feelings about North Korea, Iran, Russia, and China. Likely not coincidentally, these are four states specifically identified as threats to American interests in the Director of National Intelligence's annual (public) assessment report. Question for another day: which way does the causal arrow run?

With those numbers in the 19 to 32 range in mind (and 85 for Canada), take a look at this next polling result, showing how Americans feel about other Americans -- limited by their political party. Americans like other Americans of the same political party just a little less than they like Canadians.

And Americans' feelings about members of the opposing political party are comparable to their feelings about North Korea!

Some recent political science research is particularly interesting about the meaning of such data, suggesting that these positive and negative feelings can have real-world consequences, at least in international politics:

This research note utilizes novel country feeling thermometer data to explore the [Democratic Peace Theory] debate’s micro-foundations: the underlying drivers of international amity and enmity among democratic citizens in the US, UK, France, and Germany.

No wonder some scholars are studying the allegedly growing risk of American civil war.



Visit this blog's homepage.

For 280 character IR and foreign policy talk, follow me on twitter.

Or for basketball, baseball, movies or other stuff, follow this personal twitter account.