ABSTRACT
A currently ascendant kind of theory has it that our political beliefs derive from our partisan political identities. This chapter examines Dan Kahan’s theory of identity-protective cognition and Robin Hanson’s broader writings on political signaling, as well as the theory of social constraint proposed by Andrei Boutyline and Stephen Vaisey. One challenge for these theories is that they leave something unexplained: Where these political groups come from?
