Social Imagery and Subjective Ideological Proximity to the Supreme Court: Evidence From Evangelical Christians

Abstract

Public opinion about the U.S. Supreme Court is heavily influenced by whether people perceive that the Court aligns with them ideologically. However, most Americans do not follow the Court closely enough to make informed inferences about their proximity to the Court. To explain this paradox, we theorize that when Americans perceive that they share a salient identity with the Supreme Court Justices, they attribute their own ideological orientation to the Court. Focusing on evangelical Christians, we find strong evidence for this theory. Survey analysis reveals that when evangelicals perceive that a majority of the Justices are evangelical Christians, they report less ideological distance from the Court, even though this does not affect their objective distance from the Court. To clarify the causal direction of this relationship, we conduct a conjoint experiment—showing that when evangelicals evaluate hypothetical nominees to the Court, they report that evangelical nominees are closer to them ideologically. By showing that the Court’s social imagery influences subjective ideological distance judgments, we help explain both the disconnect between subjective and objective proximity and the continued significance of subjective proximity judgments.