Seeing a Swedish flag, even if it is only shown subtly, can cause people to feel less dislike for their political adversaries. This is shown in an experimental study in which certain participants were exposed to a picture of the Swedish flag before answering questions about national identity.
Although we may not wave the Swedish flag in Sweden or celebrate our national day to any great extent, the flag occurs more often than we might believe. On the maternity ward, the new mother receives sandwiches decorated with a small Swedish pennant and at school leaving celebrations, the yellow and blue of the flag are displayed both on the student cap and on ribbons.
But how are we actually affected by seeing the Swedish flag? Researchers have now attempted to determine this through an experiment. The participants were asked to answer a number of questions about national identity. They all received the same questionnaire, but in some of the surveys, the participants were also exposed to a picture of the Swedish flag. The researchers wanted to see whether the presence of the flag influenced how the participants chose to answer various questions. They were particularly interested in the question: "How would you feel if a close family member married a supporter of …?" followed by one of the parties represented in the Swedish Parliament (the Riksdag).
"We saw that those who had been exposed to a picture of the flag were less inclined to want to distance themselves socially from their political adversaries," says Gina Gustavsson, one of the authors of the study. "Our interpretation is that the flag reminded them of this shared Swedish identity. What's more, this happened even though many of the participants stated later in the study that they had not even noticed the flag."
Larger effect on Swedes than Danes
The study included around 1,200 participants in Sweden and 1,200 in Denmark. The panel participants were recruited via YouGov, a global market research company that surveys opinions on politics, brands and social issues through online panels. Two variants of the flag experiment were conducted: in one, the form contained a picture of the country's flag, and in the other, it showed a small flag on a cake. The responses from the participants who were exposed to the flags were then compared with the responses of the control groups in which respondents were not exposed to a flag at all.
In the Swedish panel, both the flag on the cake and the flag on its own had a moderating effect on how bad the participants thought it would be if a family member married a political opponent. In the Danish panel, the researchers did not see such an unambiguous effect. One explanation for the differences between the countries could be that different norms are linked to the flag and national identity, Gustavsson suggests.
"Being Swedish tends to be linked to a kind of consensus and people prefer to try to compromise. In Denmark, on the other hand, there's a stronger tradition that being Danish means being contrary and differing in opinion. The fact that we see differences could also be due to the Danish flag being much more common in Denmark, that it's quite simply too common to have any effect," Gustavsson says.
Reminder of what we have in common
In the study, the researchers wanted to investigate the effect of the flag on a phenomenon known as 'affective polarisation'. This is a concept that means that people ascribe negative characteristics to their political adversaries.
"Ideological differences between people are not a problem per se. But affective polarisation is more serious. Research shows that it is associated with an increased proclivity to accept political violence and to call election results into question. For example, many people interpret the storming of the US Capitol building as an expression of affective polarisation."
The fact that the Swedish flag in this study seemed capable of moderating participants' aversion towards political opponents indicates that it is possible to increase tolerance.
"Even if it's small and we don't wave it so often, the Swedish flag can apparently be a force for unity. We saw that its presence actually reduced affective polarisation. This shows that polarisation is not necessarily permanent, sometimes we just need to be reminded of what we have in common."
