It's a...It's a Tea Partaay

One piece of recent news that was particularly appalling to me personally was the story of “tea parties” popping up all across the U.S. on April 15th, affectionately referred to by most as tax day. These gatherings are modeled after the famed Boston Tea Party of 1773 during which Massachusetts colonials rebelled against oppressive British taxes by hurling crates of tea off of a British ship and into Boston harbor. Modern demonstrators also feel overtaxed and although they are stopping short of destroying British imports, they are making an impact and garnering a lot of media attention for their opposition of higher taxes and the expansion of government. My only question is have any of the attendees actually had their taxes raised, tax cuts for the wealthy are still in effect, but that is neither here nor there and so I digress, this is a social psychology blog after all…
Social Psychologists define attitudes as global evaluations toward some object or issue (e.g. you like or dislike something, you are in favor of or opposed to some position) (Eagly and Chaiken, 1998). Two functions of attitudes are the value-expressive function and the ego defensive function. With the value-expressive function, attitudes allow us to express cherished beliefs, usually in groups, in which our sense of belonging is increased. With the ego-defensive function, attitudes enable us to maintain cherished beliefs thereby protecting us from information that threatens our worldview.
The attitudes held by tea party attendees, disliking big government for example, serve both the value-expressive and the ego-defensive functions. Through the tea parties, fiscal conservatives express their cherished beliefs and bond over them. Everybody belongs and is one big happy (delusional…sorry there is goes again) family. With this sense of belonging, the beliefs and attitudes are reinforced and entrenched among the attendees. Thus, in turn, as the attitudes and beliefs are reinforced among the group they are protected from competing worldviews because they can continue to dismiss them as inferior as support for their own worldview grows and likeminded people are physically present and echoing the same sentiments. The tax day tea parties are a great example of the functions of attitudes.