Victor, S. E., Trieu, T. H., & Seymour, N. (2021). LGBTQ+ mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: Testing mechanisms and moderators of risk. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/3famu

Examples of this sort of non-logical behaviour used to represent identity can be found in fiction in:

• Dr. Seuss' The Butter Battle Book (Random House,1984) which is based on
• the war between Lilliput and Blefuscu in Jonathan Swift's 1726 satire Gulliver's Travels, which was based on an argument over the correct end to crack an egg once soft-boiled.

It almost seems related to creating identity politics as bike-shedding because the real issues are so complex that most people can't grasp all the nuances, so it's easier to choose sides based on some completely other heuristic. Changing sides later on causes too much cognitive dissonance, so once on a path, one must stick to it.

Here's a link to the penultimate draft (not for citation): https://www.academia.edu/46814693/The_Signaling_Function_of_Sharing_Fake_Stories

This broad thesis sounds to me like something I've read before, perhaps in George Lakoff about people signaling group membership or perhaps people with respect to their voting tendencies. The question isn't who should I vote for specifically, but who would someone like me (ie. who would my group, my tribe) vote for?

This sort of phenomena is likely easier to see/show in sports fans who will tell blatant untruths or delude themselves about the teams of which they are fans.The team winning at all costs will cause them to put on blinders.

A particular recent example of something like this with relation to what might otherwise be a logical business decision is seen in incoming Amazon CEO Andy Jassy nixing the idea of building in Philadelphia due to his own NFL fandom https://www.phillyvoice.com/amazon-hq2-philly-eagles-giants-rivalry-andy-jassy-jeff-bezos-amazon-unbound/

Why would someone make a potential multi-million dollar decision over their sports preference?

Haslam, S. A., Steffens, N. K., Reicher, S., & Bentley, S. (2020). Identity leadership in a crisis: A 5R framework for learning from responses to COVID-19. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/bhj49

Cruwys, T., Stevens, M., Donaldson, J. L., Cardenas, D., Platow, M. J., Reynolds, K. J., & Fong, P. (2021). Perceived COVID-19 risk is attenuated by ingroup trust: Evidence from three empirical studies. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/94sd3

Federico, Christopher, Agnieszka Golec, and Tomasz Baran. ‘Collective Narcissism, In-Group Satisfaction, and Solidarity in the Face of COVID-19’. Preprint. PsyArXiv, 3 September 2020. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/j6ut3.

Moya, C., Cruz y Celis Peniche, P. D., Kline, M. A., & Smaldino, P. (2020). Dynamics of Behavior Change in the COVID World [Preprint]. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/kxajh

Smith-Keiling, Beverly L., Archana Sharma, Sheritta M. Fagbodun, Harsimranjit K. Chahal, Keyaira Singleton, Hari Gopalakrishnan, Katrina E. Paleologos, et al. “Starting the Conversation: Initial Listening and Identity Approaches to Community Cultural Wellness,.” Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education 21, no. 1 (April 10, 2020). https://doi.org/10.1128/jmbe.v21i1.2073.

Forging those group identities helped set up a strong base for creating different cultures.and also set up future pathways for ideas and theories among these groups.