Resume bullet point

• Worked with a group to conduct a survey that had 90 people participate for a school project, the goal of this project was to see the public opinion on the rise of new nationalism and movements that are considered nationalistic and if the public knows how to distinguish the definitions between nationalism and patriotism

New Nationalism connection to Political Psychology Themes

The research that my group conducted on the rise of the New Nationalism has connections to the the themes that we explored specifically with themes regarding "The Crowd" and Maslow's hierarchy of needs. First, the New Nationalism has a strong connection to how Le Bon explored the theories of crowds. Nationalism is seen to be a collective idea that have the same goal in mind which is to have this prideful attitude towards ones country or a sense of superiority. Even though "The Crowd saw it with events happening in the 19th century we can see it now with MAGA and many European movements that are nationalistic. Next, Maslow's hierarchy of needs also connects well with research on the New Nationalism. We can see that people have a sense of belonging and safety since they believe in the superiority of their country.

Summary of the New Nationalism Survey

My research was conducted to see how people receive the way Nationalism that is on the rise from movements like "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) "America First" which have been started by President Trump and his platform to put America First on the world stage. My group and I conducted a survey to see the opinion of how people think about these movements. Many of people we surveyed were young first or second generation immigrants and have somewhat mixed feelings about patriotism and nationalism where people see one thing being nationalistic and another to be patriotic.

The survey did prove my hypothesis, I hypothesized that people, especially here in the Bay Area, would see nationalism as a bad thing. In one our graphs we can see that a high number of people did say that nationalism is a threat to society, which I believe is somewhat understandable, in my survey I broke down the history of where nationalism comes from. Leaders like Bonaparte to Hitler could be labeled as nationalistic. I also came to the conclusion that the only reason that people see the MAGA movement as a negative thing and somewhat threatening is because people, especially here in the Bay Area, did not vote for Trump and voted for Clinton, so they have a personal bias on what Trump does, if people were to remove the politics from the MAGA movement I believe they would have answered differently to our questions.

Research Paper write up

David Sibrian

Professor Andrews

PSC 2410

14 November 2019

Nationalism Survey 

Introduction

In the Political Psychology class the group that I was assigned had to create a survey where we had to ask people multiple questions about the effects of nationalism and how it is perceived in society. Many of these questions compared which phrases can be seen as patriotic or if they are seen as nationalistic. The main purpose of the group was see how society sees or have feelings towards nationalism and can if they distinguish what is the difference between being nationalistic and patriotic. I will be presenting how the survey was conducted, the results of the survey, who was the target audience, and the data that came from the survey that the group conducted, and also the background information on Nationalism and Patriotism. The hypothesis that I formed is will people perceive pro-American sentiment as nationalistic or patriotic?

Review of Literature

The sense of Nationalism is more of a modern concept that goes back to essentially the rise of nation states. Prior to the first World Wars nationalism was on the rise especially with the rise of Napoleon’s ascension and his plan to conquer the European continent. Nationalism was also seen in the First and Second World Wars, first with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand which sparked World War I and in World War II the rise of state leaders such as Adolf Hitler of the German Nazi Party and Benito Mussolini leader of the Italian Fascist Party. Currently we see a rise of nationalism today, many Americans see President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” or “American First” movements as nationalistic while some people see the movement as patriotic since they think that it is trying to put the American interest first again. 

The 2016 United States election was one of the most controversial elections the country has had in its recent history since it was the unexpected victory of now President Donald Trump. Since Trump’s election he has been the leading force of movements that are called by mainstream media as nationalistic, movements such as Make America Great Again or also known as MAGA and the America First movement as well. These nationalistic movements have been under serious scrutiny by the mainstream media which usually highlight people who are on the far right. There are other people who would also disagree that these movements are bad, many Americans think being nationalistic or patriotic is a good thing since they are having pride of their country. In this literature review I will be focusing on the rise of movements such as MAGA and America First and also the recent rise of American nationalism since the 2016 election.

Make America Great Again and the rise of nationalism

The phrase “Make America Great Again” was a campaign slogan that held weight that was known all throughout the 2016 election. It was the forefront of something that was potentially hidden during the Obama administration and seen as something that only the far right was known for. Even the term “nationalism” was not used as much especially defining the President of the United States. Baker (2018) describes for the one of the first times where Trump is proud of being called a nationalist, “You know what I am? I am a nationalist O.K.? I’m a nationalist. Nationalist! Use that word! Use that word!” Trump’s acceptance of nationalism has given rise to other groups that have been seen as extreme or how society views it as supremacy groups. Nationalism did not start with Trump first or with his America first policies. Nationalism has been seen all throughout modern history and was even one of the main reasons why the world went into both World Wars.

The history of nationalism

Nationalism as a concept was been active in history in modern times which led to many of the biggest atrocities in history. Boot (2018) goes into depth about the history of nationalism and how it played a huge role on how Europe, eventually the United States, went into to two major wars recorded in modern history. He highlights specific examples such as “the Serbian Black Hand, which was behind the murder of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand.” Nationalism was also seen in a good light because many of the leaders of independence movements since the 19th century to the movements of the 20th that wanted full independence from the countries they were under. Nationalism, in history, have had both sides, there were people from the bad side that did horrible things in the name of nationalism, but there were leaders who also did good things like give their country independence from foreign powers.

Methods

Our research group overall had the same method to conduct this survey but each individually would implement it in their own way. For example, we essentially focused on people that we knew in our individual lives. Two of my group members focused on people who were either friends or were either coworkers from their occupations. Personally, I also focused on my friends that go to different universities or junior colleges with a couple of friends that also go to Notre Dame as well. One of the major differences that I also did was that I asked people that went to the same church as I did. Many people of church are also college students but I was also able to ask people who did not go to college, or they were immigrants themselves. I also included family members as well, both of my parents are immigrants and I told them to take it independently from each other. The intended population are largely a representation of college students that go to different schools or those who already graduated, schools like UC Davis, San Francisco State University etc. While my other group members did have a higher success rate in being able to conduct the survey with a higher number of people I was not really that lucky with having a lot of people take my survey. 

The survey itself is a pretty much straight forward survey with not that difficult questions and it did not take that long to complete. The survey only consisted of 9 questions which again were pretty straightforward. All of the survey takers were able to complete the questions and all of the surveys were done in a short amount of time. There were a small group of people who did have some difficulty in responding specifically question number 5 mainly because the way that the question was structured which made it somewhat confusing. Most of the questions were personal opinion based as in what would one think of some the phrases that most people would think it to be as nationalistic. 

Results

The results to the survey was also something that was somewhat surprising as well and I do kind of see it as a reflection of how society perceives nationalism and how they perceive nationalistic movements. The results show that the majority of the people who have taken our quiz were first generation hispanic democrats. The second majority are white/caucasian, second generation, and who also identify as Independents for their political association. The first question that was asked was if the survey taker was proud of this country. The results show that 78.66% of people who answered that question is proud of this country, while 21.35% are not proud of this country. The second question asked if both documented and undocumented immigrants are able to be patriotic in which 79.45% chose yes on the question and a small majority of  20.45% say no to the question.  

In another question 38.20% say that the phrase “I love my country” is a patriotic phrase while 31.46% of takers say that it is both nationalistic and patriotic and 30.34% have shared that the phrase is nationalistic. There is also a majority of people who do see nationalism in a negative light as well. 34.83% of takers believe that nationalism is a threat while 31.46% strongly believe that nationalism is a threat. Lastly, 71.91% of people believe that the phrase “Make America Great Again” is nationalistic while 28.09% do not see it as nationalistic. 

The results that was produced by the survey clearly shows a major difference of opinion when it comes to certain topics on the survey. For example there is a different sense of perception to what makes a phrase nationalistic or patriotic. Also what I found surprising about these results is that people find it patriotic or have a approval of this country, when in other surveys people have actually not felt proud to be in this country or have had negative sentiments towards this country. Another surprising thing that I got from the results was that even though the survey takers did not find it nationalistic when they answered that they were proud of being in this country. 

Analysis

The analysis reflects what our intended purpose was for conducting this survey which, again, was to see how society sees nationalism and if they can distinguish if some statements are nationalistic or if they patriotic. Question 6 was truly surprising in this aspect of the analysis because it shows that 79.55% of the survey takers believe that you can be patriotic despite your immigration status. This is very different from what society usually thinks on who can be patriotic or nationalistic. It is usually mainstream society that thinks that only documented immigrants or natural born Americans can fit the description of being patriotic or nationalistic. Yet they also see the difference of nationalism and patriotism in how it can also affect them or how it can affect them as a community. Majority of the survey takers think that nationalism is a threat to society which also fits the thinking of mainstream society. 

Conclusion

Many people have different opinions of patriotism and nationalism, these two ways of thinking are not anything new since it has been precedented throughout modern history. The main purpose of our survey was to see how people felt about the new wave of nationalism that has been essentially started ever since President Trump was elected in 2016. There were a number of limitations that came when conducting the survey. First, my work schedule can be very limiting especially when conducting a survey and also be a productive group member. Second, I went to conduct the survey in Redwood City which I believe even there is diversity in the city, I don’t think there is a diversity of thought. Redwood City is predominantly democrat so I do not think there would be any difference to their answers when you ask them if they feel patriotic about their country. Lastly, I think what I could have done better is maybe not only conduct the survey in one spot but maybe in different cities, maybe I could have 10 people from 3 cities nearby take the survey and that could have brought diverse answers.

References 

Baker, Peter. “'Use That Word!': Trump Embraces the 'Nationalist' Label.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 23 Oct. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/us/politics/nationalist-president-trump.html.

Boot, Max. “Opinion | Donald Trump Embraces 'Nationalism' of the Worst Kind.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 6 Apr. 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/10/25/donald-trump-embraces-nationalism-of-the-worst-kind/.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

I knew about the Stanford Prison Experiment previously mainly because there was a movie about it on Netflix but it is really interesting how the experiment turned out and what we can learn from the experiment. First, we can see how people given a sense an authority can easily abuse their power when they are not checked by someone else. In a way we can see that with a list of leaders throughout history that were elected and given a sense of authority, but they end up abusing it which leave the people to be suppressed. I find it interesting how people can easily abuse their power when they are given the "freedom" of their authority.

Gender bias in political elections

Reading the research that is presented on gender bias was really interesting, I knew somewhat before hand that men do tend to have a higher favorability when it comes to elections, especially here in the United States. For example, in one of the journals, Norway has a higher female political participation than the United States because women tend to have the same opportunity as men when it comes to Norwegian elections. The stereotypes started in the 1980s as well where women tended to be viewed as more liberal while the men were seen to have more conservative views on political issues. The lack of women participating in the United States could also be because of how the public perceives stereotypical gender roles as well.

Role of Social Media on Erosion of Scientific Rationalism

The journals that were presented were really an interested reading because it goes into depth how social media has played a huge factor in youth political engagement. The internet basically made communication a more powerful tool which the article expresses. I think that now that you can get your message or point across to so many people, you can essentially build up a political platform without having to go outside and pass out flyers or go to debates. The article expresses that the internet has been a tool that young people tend to use more, so even when they don't want to be content creators they can still have a strong political presence.

Can Nationalism be good?

Nationalism throughout history has been found to be a somewhat of a dangerous ideology, especially because nationalism brought the rise of political movements like Nazism, Fascism and other movements that were violent during the 20th century. Yet, in the economist article it states that it can also be used as a good thing as well. Some people get left behind in the emergence of globalization which creates the social state. Nationalism helps give a group of people an identity or a sense of pride to their nation when they have become interconnected. The article also says that we can have multilateral organizations like the EU or FIFA and yet still have nationalism without having any resentment towards another country.

Looking back, Looking forward thoughts

After re-reading Looking back, Looking forward by Katherine Reynolds, there are a couple of points that I have really interested me and that have been brought up in last class. First what really interested me was the decline of scientific rationalism. I agree with this section when the article brings up that both Liberals and Conservatives challenge scientific evidence when it goes against their current beliefs. I can relate that to the current situation that is currently going on in this political climate. Many people don't want to accept that some of their current beliefs, from either side, can be debunked with scientific evidence. Another thing that really interested me was from the section of measurement and prediction and how Cambridge Analytica used many different types of groups to share certain types of advertisement.

First Blog

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