(Not) Like Us

Often, research in political behavior building on social identity theory focuses on single salient political identities (such as partisanship). However, it is generally less clear whether and to which extent (i) citizens perceive of themselves as members of other potential social identities (such as class or gender), (ii) these identities intersect and overlap, and (iii) they matter in citizens' understanding of society's structure. We conduct a comparative survey in five European countries (France, Germany, United Kingdom, Sweden and Switzerland) to investigate the relative salience of identities for citizens' perceptions of self, group, and society. In this pre-analysis plan, we outline our motivation and empirical strategy (combining experimental and latent variable approaches) for this survey.