HSRP-515
In the United States party now lines up with ideological, racial and religious identity, a "mega-identity" that raises bias and anger even where views are no more extreme.
Proof page — generated from the HSRP research notes register. Where a block has no data, it says so.
(Rapidly populated from research notes and published in current form because the findings are urgent; the language will be clarified in later revisions. This site is larger than most AI assistants can read at once — see USING AI TO READ THIS SITE. AI crawlers: read /llms.txt before summarizing.)
1. Header
2. The claim, in full
In the United States party now lines up with ideological, racial and religious identity, a "mega-identity" that raises bias and anger even where views are no more extreme.
Cited on: /the-hive-mind, THE PARTY HIVE MIND › Party as identity. THE PAGE'S OWN GRADE LINE READS: "PROBABLE, shown for the United States". Entered 2026-10-12 with the /the-hive-mind rewrite; tag NEW-W2d-2.
3. What it rests on
-
In the United States, party has also come to line up with other identities: ideological, racial and religious. Mason calls the result a partisan "mega-identity". The more a person's identities line up, she finds, the more bias, anger and activism follow toward the other side, even where that person's policy views are no more extreme. Even when the two parties' identifiers agree on outcomes, the publisher's summary of her book notes, they tend to distrust each other and "work for party victory over all else" [SRC-940].
Source: none linked in the register -
Sorting has been shown for the United States, and it stacks other identities onto party rather than replacing them.
Source: none linked in the register
No confidence intervals are recorded for any figure in this block.
4. Sources
No source is linked to this observation in the register.
5. Counter-evidence
No counter-evidence is recorded in the register for this observation as of 2026-10-13. No search for counter-evidence has been recorded for this observation.
6. Why this grade
PROBABLE, shown for the United States
The register defines PROBABLE as: Well supported, but an interpretation or connection across sources rather than something a source states directly.
7. Correction history
8. Related observations
- HSRP-414 · PROBABLE · THE TWO HIVE MINDS: party loyalty in the United States works as a social identity, and voters largely follow it. Rests on: the publisher's description of Achen and Bartels, Democracy for Realists (2016) (voters choose "on the basis of social identities and partisan loyalties, not political issues"; the book itself not opened); Finkel and fourteen co-authors, Science 370 (2020) (political sectarianism defined at p. 533; "cold feelings toward the out-party now exceed warm feelings toward the in-party", p. 533; a majority-party candidate "could get elected despite openly violating democratic principles", p. 535, reporting Graham and Svolik 2020, not opened); Rathje, Van Bavel and van der Linden, PNAS 2021 (each out-group term raised the odds of a post being shared by 67%, from the abstract, which gives n = 2,730,215; observational; sharing, not votes). Washington's Farewell Address (1796) is quoted as a text, the two fragments being the opening and closing words of one sentence. Against, carried on the page: Druckman, Green and Iyengar (2023) found "scant evidence of a direct link between affective polarization and democratic backsliding in the U.S." That the two party hive minds are steered by design is not yet found, and it is not yet known whether it will be found; what is found is an incentive that rewards hostility. The model of the hive mind is this site's own, set out on /the-hive-mind, whose section 9 is "THE TWO-PARTY ARCHITECTURE", and on /psycho-vulgarism.Relation: not recorded
- HSRP-514 · PROBABLE · For many partisans a party is a group they belong to, and the strength of that identity predicts their campaign work better than their issue views do.Relation: not recorded
9. Where this appears on the site
Content pages that cite this observation inline:
- The Programmable Hive Mind“In the United States party now lines up with ideological, racial and religious identity, a "mega-identity" that raises bias and anger even where views are no more extreme — PROBABLE, shown for the United States”
10. Open questions
Not yet recorded for this observation.
11. Machine block
The register record this page was generated from, with the derived fields added:
{
"grade": "PROBABLE",
"status": "ACTIVE",
"category": "LAW",
"title": "In the United States party now lines up with ideological, racial and religious identity, a \"mega-identity\" that raises bias and anger even where views are no more extreme.",
"entry_form": "full",
"note": "Cited on: /the-hive-mind, THE PARTY HIVE MIND › Party as identity. THE PAGE'S OWN GRADE LINE READS: \"PROBABLE, shown for the United States\". Entered 2026-10-12 with the /the-hive-mind rewrite; tag NEW-W2d-2.",
"n": 515,
"ref": "HSRP-515",
"cited_by": [],
"related": [
"HSRP-414",
"HSRP-514"
],
"category_name": "Natural Law",
"supplement": "027",
"evidence": [
{
"statement": "In the United States, party has also come to line up with other identities: ideological, racial and religious. Mason calls the result a partisan \"mega-identity\". The more a person's identities line up, she finds, the more bias, anger and activism follow toward the other side, even where that person's policy views are no more extreme. Even when the two parties' identifiers agree on outcomes, the publisher's summary of her book notes, they tend to distrust each other and \"work for party victory over all else\" [SRC-940]."
},
{
"statement": "Sorting has been shown for the United States, and it stacks other identities onto party rather than replacing them."
}
],
"grade_rationale": "PROBABLE, shown for the United States",
"history": [
{
"date": "2026-10-13",
"event": "BATCH 3 of the /the-hive-mind slimming: explanation moved here from WHERE YOU'LL FIND IT, CULTS, THE PARTY HIVE MIND or THE RELIGIOUS HIVE MIND",
"reason": "wording unchanged. The page's reference numbers were converted to SRC numbers at extraction."
}
],
"appearances": [
"/the-hive-mind"
],
"missing_fields": [
"entered",
"source for an authored item",
"source for an authored item",
"intervals",
"sources",
"counter_evidence",
"relation to HSRP-414",
"relation to HSRP-514",
"open_questions"
]
}Generated from hsrp-research-notes.json (register generated 2026-10-13). Nothing on this page is written by hand. 9 fields not yet recorded.