Why the American Flag Inspires Superiority Not Patriotism

By Lee Drutman, Miller-McCune.com. Posted December 19, 2008.

In Israel, cognitive scientist Ran Hassin studied the association that subliminal flashes of the Israeli flag had on discussions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and found that "subliminal presentation of a national flag can bring about significant changes not only in a citizen's expressed political opinions within an experimental setting but also in their ‘real-life' overt political behavior.” In his experiments, participants -- all Israelis -- who saw the flag flashes answered questions with a more "mainstream Zionist” tilt than those who didn't.

Whether that meant the flag drew viewers to the political center, as Hassin theorized, or that symbols primed people based on their pre-existing associations was a question he left for future research -- such as that of Kemmelmeier and Butz — to answer.

Butz got interested in studying the flag in light of a 2004 Florida law (the Carey Baker Freedom Flag Act) that mandates flags be placed in every public classroom -- kindergarten to college -- in the state. (A similar law also recently passed in Arizona.)

These laws worry Butz. "We don't know a lot about the potential for symbols to influence behavior,” he said. "It's scary to think that there are laws out there on the thinking that flags influence patriotism, and there's no evidence for that.”

Another reason for concern comes from some research that Butz has done on student performance in the presence of the American flag. With a flag in the room, he found, white students perform about 10 percent better on math tests than they do otherwise. But non-white students perform at the same level.

"What we find in studies -- and this is now being replicated -- is that whites are getting a performance boost, and that's disturbing,” Butz said. He speculated that it might have something to do with whites feeling more included in the presence of the flag.

Both Kemmelmeier and Butz stress that the psychology of the American flag is complicated. It can prime a wide range of emotions, depending on the person and the situation. There may also be regional differences. And while the flag is not necessarily the pure symbol of inspired patriotism that some might make it out to be, neither is it necessarily a pure symbol of nationalism and individualistic materialism. A lot depends on the context.  

"It can have a negative impact, but nowadays there is a real opportunity to re-interpret what it means to be an American,” Kemmelmeier said. "The flag is always amorphous, and the meaning is always dependent on how it is used.”

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Lee Drutman is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of California, Berkeley. He has worked as a staff writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Providence Journal. His work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, New York Newsday, and the American Prospect Online.

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