When political scientists approach the general public with a question of straightforward political nature, they will not necessarily get an answer of straightforward political nature. An example on this is the "Taiwanese identification index," in which context misreadings abound, distorting a fair share of the picture.

Every now and then, a renowned university in Taipei publishes the "Taiwanese identification index." As its methodology of choice, the research team asks in a survey some members of the Taiwanese public whether they identify themselves as being "Chinese" or "Taiwanese."

Then, of the two resulting figures, the former is subtracted from the latter, and the researchers who have thought it all up get very busy sending out press releases.

In those, after the actual survey's outcome, comes the historical comparison: The "Taiwanese identification index" has increased somewhat steadily ever since it has come into being in the early 1990s but at a particularly fast pace after Ma Ying-jeou of the mainland-friendly Kuomintang became the island's leader in 2008, it reads.

And finally, the conclusion is drawn along the following line: Despite the spectacularly warming cross-Straits ties that have much defined Ma's first term from 2008 to 2012, the Taiwanese relate less and less to across the Taiwan Straits.      

Unsurprisingly, the "Taiwanese identification index" has become easy fodder for journalists and academics alike. They go ahead broadcasting that the equation at its base is outright political and shows that Beijing's unification drive has been leading to nowhere.

And there are quite a few academic research papers that confidently employ the index as a key argument to make the point for continued US involvement in the island's affairs and even arms sales.  

But politics aren't math. And it is the islanders' emotions, rather than their political attitudes that make the index rise. The rise of the "Taiwanese identification index" is first and foremost a natural outcome of the Taiwanese public's increased exposure to the mainland.

Arguably everyone who has done a bit of traveling knows this phenomenon: The further away you are from your hometown, the more you identify with it.

In other words: The more you are exposed to something you perceive as alien, for example, a different accent or a different cuisine, the more you identify with something familiar, such as the accent spoken where you are from or your mom's meatballs.

Before the late 1980s, there were virtually no links between Taiwan and the mainland. Back then, no ordinary Taiwanese was exposed directly to anything from across the Taiwan Straits.

The "Taiwanese identification index" was apparently invented in 1992, which was roughly in the era taishang, or Taiwanese businesspeople, began operating on the mainland.

And while the number of these taishang - as Taiwanese active on the mainland are commonly called - reached and easily exceeded the 500,000 mark during the remainder of that decade, the index simultaneously increased rather steadily, too.

Nonetheless, it wasn't until recent years that the index reached a staggering 50 percent. Intriguingly, what supposedly makes apparent a steep rise in Taiwanese identification came hand in hand with a quantum leap for cross-Straits exchanges.

Over 550 weekly flights between the mainland and Taiwan have brought 4 million Taiwanese travelers to the mainland in the first nine months of 2012 and 1.46 million mainlanders to the island in the same period.

Today, close to 1 million Taiwanese are believed to reside most of the year on the mainland, while there are 180,000 mainland white-collar workers staying in Taiwan.  

In addition to 260,000 intermarriages, there are thousands of exchange students, invited artists and so on, and it becomes clear that the Taiwanese of today come across mainlanders on a daily basis, hear their different accents, witness their different habits and eat their different dishes.  

Contrast becomes more perceivable the closer you set object A against object B. It is the emotional reaction to this perceived contrast, not ideology, that makes the Taiwanese tick the "I feel Taiwanese" box.

To put it into a blunt mathematical equation: political relevance of the "Taiwanese identification index" = close to zero.

The author is a Taipei-based freelance journalist. kenslastner@googlemail.com