National Identity: Are Americans and Canadians the same?

For my senior thesis, I decided to use data to analyze whether there are any differences in what Americans and Canadians think is important to their national identity. Here is a summary of the paper and a quick guide about what the results could mean!

Americans and Canadians are thought to be pretty similar. Theoretically, because they are both immigrant-receiving, Westernized developed nations with similar foundations and similar societal demographic makeups, one can easily believe they would have similar ideologies about what makes them "American" and "Canadian."

However, this assumption fails to take into account a few basic points about each country and its citizens.

The United States is a "melting pot" society, in which immigrants can come together with their own national identity and cultural practices, but are expected to assimilate them into the dominant "American" culture. Additionally, Americans in general are more conservative and more religious than their Canadian counterparts. They are also less educated at the college-level than Canadians.

Canada, on the other hand, is a "cultural mosaic" society. Immigrants are welcome to maintain their own cultural traditions and preserve their heritage without being expected to forgo their practices for Canadian ones. In addition to this, Canada is also considered a "bilingual" nation due to the prevalence of French language and culture in the province of Quebec. Overall, Canadians tend to be more less religious than Americans. They are also more liberal than Americans, which may be a result of their higher levels of college-educated adults.

For additional background context to this study's usage of terms, scholars define two types of characteristics in terms of national identity: "ethnic/exclusive" characteristics and "civic/inclusive" characteristics. Ethnic or exclusive characteristics often include things that are impossible to change or things that would require a great sacrifice to change, such as birthplace, spoken language, religion, etc. Civic or inclusive characteristics are things that are much easier to change or adopt in a country, such as supporting laws and institutions, sharing customs and traditions, or participating in civic life.

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Hypotheses

I've also come up with three hypotheses based on the literature review I wrote for my thesis. The contradictory hypotheses, because of contradicting expectations in the literature, are as follows:

H1: Individual characteristics—specifically, how conservative a person is, identification as a Christian, and whether a person has a college education—rather than a person’s country will best explain which national identity characteristics Americans and Canadians prioritize.

H2: Americans will be more likely than Canadians to believe all characteristics are essential to national identity.

H3: Americans will be more likely to think "exclusive" characteristics of national identity are most important, while Canadians will be more likely to think "inclusive" characteristics of national identity are most important.

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Data

Using data from the Pew Research Center's Spring 2016 Global Survey, I gathered my independent variables, which are shown in this table here:

Unfortunately, there was no "race" or "ethnicity" variable for Canadians to work alongside the "race" variable for Americans. Because of this, I had to exclude race from my analysis entirely, which may or may not have influenced the outcome.

Next, I pulled this question from the dataset and used each of the answers for my national identity characteristics, which are also my dependent variables:

Some people say that the following things are important for being truly American/Canadian. Others say they are not important. How important do you think each of the following is for being American/Canadian?:

(a) to have been born in the United States/Canada

(b) to be able to speak English

(c) to be a Christian

(d) to share American/Canadian customs and traditions

Then, using my independent and dependent variables, I created logistic and multivariate regression models to see the results.

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Results

Hypothesis 1 turned out to be wrong. According to my combined logistic regression model, we can see which characteristics Americans and Canadians think are most important to national identity. Yet, individual characteristics seem to be acting more or less the same way in the United States and Canada and leave much of the difference between the national identities unexplained.

Hypothesis 2 also turned out to be wrong. The hypothesis states that Americans will be more likely than Canadians to believe all characteristics are essential to national identity, but the results of a multivariate logistic regression model for each country show that Americans are more likely to believe three of the four listed characteristics are essential to national identity.

Finally, hypothesis 3 states that Americans are more likely than Canadians to believe that "exclusive" characteristics of national identity are important. The results of a multivariate logistic regression model reveal this is, in fact, correct. Americans are more likely to believe the "exclusive" characteristics in the study are most important to national identity compared to their Canadian counterparts. According to the data and the added variable of "being American," the results show there is something distinct about just "being American" that makes them more likely to believe "exclusive" traits are most important to national identity.

I decided to dive deeper into this, so I computed the predicted probabilities that this outcome was actually true for the average American versus the average Canadian. I set all other values at their mean and computed how likely an American versus a non-American was to believe that each characteristic is important to national identity. As it turns out, there really is something culturally and distinctively different about "being American" that alters our preferences towards "exclusive" or "ethnic" characteristics rather than "inclusive" or "civic" characteristics of national identity.

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What This Means

Unfortunately, my study did not account for race or geographic region in both the United States and Canada. I recommend future studies try to do this as much as possible so we can look at how much of an influence these factors have. But even still, the results of this study reveal some rather intriguing things about American society.

For a society seen as so inclusive, what makes us value exclusive characteristics when it comes to identifying as American? How do these attitudes shape our patterns and perceptions when it comes to things like voting behavior, our views on immigration, or sexism? If it's not individual characteristics, what does cause the difference between what Americans and Canadians think is important to national identity? Is this a product of American Exceptionalism and the inconsistent immigration policies the United States has enforced since its founding?

Let me know what your thoughts are below.