Egotropic and Sociotropic Evaluations: What Two Routine Survey Questions Reveal About How Citizens Understand “Society”

Election surveys routinely ask citizens to evaluate their personal conditions and those of society. These items often show that perceptions of society’s trajectory predict citizens’ political decisions better than evaluations of their own. Who people think of when making such evaluations, however, is unknown. In this paper, we randomly assigned a nationally representative sample of US citizens (N = 2,000) to evaluate their own or society’s conditions in open-text questions, or to specify what personal or societal issues they voted on. Combining inductive description and confirmatory tests pertaining to prevailing discussions, we show that the distinction between so-called egotropic and sociotropic voting is informative beyond prediction, such that it illustrates how citizens understand society’s social structure and their place therein. We discuss avenues for future theorizing and practical implications in an era where the meaning of “society” is debated and the personal realm is politicized.