Centrifugal
The Authentic Appeal of the Lying Demagogue: Proclaiming the Deeper Truth about Political Illegitimacy
Oliver Hahl, Minjae Kim & Ezra Zuckerman Sivan
American Sociological Review, February 2018, Pages 1-33
Abstract:
We develop and test a theory to address a puzzling pattern that has been discussed widely since the 2016 U.S. presidential election and reproduced here in a post-election survey: how can a constituency of voters find a candidate “authentically appealing” (i.e., view him positively as authentic) even though he is a “lying demagogue” (someone who deliberately tells lies and appeals to non-normative private prejudices)? Key to the theory are two points: (1) “common-knowledge” lies may be understood as flagrant violations of the norm of truth-telling; and (2) when a political system is suffering from a “crisis of legitimacy” (Lipset 1959) with respect to at least one political constituency, members of that constituency will be motivated to see a flagrant violator of established norms as an authentic champion of its interests. Two online vignette experiments on a simulated college election support our theory. These results demonstrate that mere partisanship is insufficient to explain sharp differences in how lying demagoguery is perceived, and that several oft-discussed factors — information access, culture, language, and gender — are not necessary for explaining such differences. Rather, for the lying demagogue to have authentic appeal, it is sufficient that one side of a social divide regards the political system as flawed or illegitimate.
Trump Trumps Baldwin? How Trump’s Tweets Transform SNL into Trump’s Strategic Advantage
Amy Becker
Journal of Political Marketing, forthcoming
Abstract:
What happens when a politician responds through social media to critical humor, as in the case of Donald Trump’s hostile reactions toward Alec Baldwin’s appearances on Saturday Night Live (SNL)? Analysis of experimental data collected in December 2016 (N = 325) shows that viewing Trump’s Twitter response accusing SNL of media bias inoculates viewers against Baldwin’s anti-Trump satire that is present in the original skit. Moreover, viewing the SNL skit and an article detailing Trump’s continued Twitter engagement with the show over the course of the fall 2016 season encourages viewers to connect the anti-Trump SNL humor with Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine, resulting in significantly lower favorability ratings for the Democratic opposition. The implications of the findings and their influence on strategic political communication are discussed.
Past-Focused Temporal Communication Overcomes Conservatives’ Resistance to Liberal Political Ideas
Joris Lammers & Matt Baldwin
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Nine studies and a meta-analysis test the role of past-focused temporal communication in reducing conservatives’ disagreement with liberal political ideas. We propose that conservatives are more prone to warm, affectionate, and nostalgic feelings for past society. Therefore, they are more likely to support political ideas — including those expressing liberal values — that can be linked to a desirable past state (past focus), rather than a desirable future state (future focus) of society. Study 1 supports our prediction that political conservatives are more nostalgic for the past than liberals. Building on this association, we demonstrate that communicating liberal ideas with a past focus increases conservatives’ support for leniency in criminal justice (Studies 2a and 2b), gun control (Study 3), immigration (Study 4), social diversity (Study 5), and social justice (Study 6). Communicating messages with a past focus reduced political disagreement (compared with a future focus) between liberals and conservatives by between 30 and 100% across studies. Studies 5 and 6 identify the mediating role of state and trait nostalgia, respectively. Study 7 shows that the temporal communication effect only occurs under peripheral (and not central) information processing. Study 8 shows that the effect is asymmetric; a future focus did not increase liberals’ support for conservative ideas. A mixed-effects meta-analysis across all studies confirms that appealing to conservatives’ nostalgia with a past-focused temporal focus increases support for liberal political messages (Study 9). A large portion of the political disagreement between conservatives and liberals appears to be disagreement over style, and not content of political issues.
Education is Related to Greater Ideological Prejudice
P.J. Henry & Jaime Napier
Public Opinion Quarterly, Winter 2017, Pages 930–942
Abstract:
Decades of research have shown that education reduces individuals’ prejudices toward people who belong to different groups, but this research has focused predominantly on prejudice toward ethnic/racial groups, immigrant groups, and general nonconformists. However, it is not clear whether education reduces other prejudices against groups along different dimensions, including ideological identification. An analysis of American National Election Studies data from 1964 to 2012 shows that education is related to decreases in interethnic/interracial prejudice, but also to increases in ideological (liberal vs. conservative) prejudice. This finding could not be explained simply by the greater polarization of the American electorate in the past twenty years. The results require rethinking how and why education is associated with reduced prejudice for certain groups but not others.
Brexit, Trump, and the Polarizing Effect of Disillusionment
Paul Maher, Eric Igou & Wijnand van Tilburg
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigate experiences of disillusionment as a source of political polarization. Disillusioning experiences motivate a search for meaning, and we propose that people respond by seeking reassurance in political ideologies, reflected in political polarization. We first tested this hypothesis in the context of two major political events: the European Union (EU) membership referendum in the United Kingdom and the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In Study 1, disillusionment stemming from the EU referendum outcome led “remain” supporters to express more extreme political views. In Study 2, we measured political stance and disillusionment before and after the U.S. presidential election. Political polarization occurred among Clinton supporters, and this was mediated by increased disillusionment levels. In Study 3, we manipulated disillusionment and found that disillusioned participants expressed stronger support for diverging forms of political activism. Consistent with our approach, this effect was mediated by epistemic motivations. Implications regarding the effect of political polarization in society are discussed.
Finding the Loch Ness Monster: Left-Wing Authoritarianism in the United States
Lucian Gideon Conway et al.
Political Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although past research suggests authoritarianism may be a uniquely right-wing phenomenon, the present two studies tested the hypothesis that authoritarianism exists in both right-wing and left-wing contexts in essentially equal degrees. Across two studies, university (n = 475) and Mechanical Turk (n = 298) participants completed either the RWA (right-wing authoritarianism) scale or a newly developed (and parallel) LWA (left-wing authoritarianism) scale. Participants further completed measurements of ideology and three domain-specific scales: prejudice, dogmatism, and attitude strength. Findings from both studies lend support to an authoritarianism symmetry hypothesis: Significant positive correlations emerged between LWA and measurements of liberalism, prejudice, dogmatism, and attitude strength. These results largely paralleled those correlating RWA with identical conservative-focused measurements, and an overall effect-size measurement showed LWA was similarly related to those constructs (compared to RWA) in both Study 1 and Study 2. Taken together, these studies provide evidence that LWA may be a viable construct in ordinary U.S. samples.
In pursuit of power: Competition for majority status and Senate partisanship
Jeremy Gelman
Party Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
During the 20th century, Congress experienced two main shifts in partisan conflict. Early decades were marked by a substantial decrease in party divisiveness, reaching a nadir by mid-century. Beginning in the 1970s, partisanship has increased to the point that Congress is viewed as “hyper-partisan.” Political scientists have thoroughly examined this more recent shift; however, few studies consider why party divisiveness has fluctuated during the past century and over time more generally. Lee’s recent work contends a main factor that drives legislative partisanship is the majority party’s prospects for retaining control of its chamber. Using data on every Senate roll call vote since 1915 and a novel measure of party competition, I test an extension of Lee’s argument and examine whether partisan voting is associated with insecure majority status. My results indicate that voting coalitions in the Senate become more partisan as the majority’s probability of remaining in power decreases.
How Are We Apart? Continuity and Change in the Structure of Ideological Disagreement in the American Public, 1980–2012
Barum Park
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
Even after two decades of intense research, social scientists are still in disagreement over whether the American public is polarized. Starting from the premise that disagreement is multifaceted, this paper attempts to clarify how and which aspects of ideological disagreement have changed over the past few decades. Three major structural features of ideological disagreement that have been discussed under the umbrella term “polarization” are identified from the literature — polarization, partisan sorting, and dimensional alignment — and redefined into analytically distinct and non-overlapping concepts. Two different scaling methods are applied to the American National Election Studies from 1980 to 2012 in order to examine changes in how citizens organize their attitudes regarding concrete political and social issues (operational ideology) and their self-identifications with the ideological labels “liberal” and “conservative” (symbolic ideology). Results show at best mixed evidence of growing polarization. Partisan sorting has increased over time on both symbolic and operational ideology. However, it is mainly the symbolic side on which disagreement across partisan lines is most pronounced. Finally, contrary to the popular notion of a culture war dividing the United States, the public has become less polarized on moral issues, and the moral dimension of citizens’ operational ideology has become dealigned from the economic and civil rights dimension over the past decade.
Selective Exposure to Misinformation: Evidence from the consumption of fake news during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign
Andrew Guess, Brendan Nyhan & Jason Reifler
Princeton Working Paper, December 2017
Abstract:
Though some warnings about online “echo chambers” have been hyperbolic, tendencies toward selective exposure to politically congenial content are likely to extend to misinformation and to be exacerbated by social media platforms. We test this prediction using data on the factually dubious articles known as “fake news.” Using unique data combining survey responses with individual-level web traffic histories, we estimate that approximately 1 in 4 Americans visited a fake news website from October 7-November 14, 2016. Trump supporters visited the most fake news websites, which were overwhelmingly pro-Trump. However, fake news consumption was heavily concentrated among a small group — almost 6 in 10 visits to fake news websites came from the 10% of people with the most conservative online information diets. We also find that Facebook was a key vector of exposure to fake news and that fact-checks of fake news almost never reached its consumers.
The Elusive Backfire Effect: Mass Attitudes' Steadfast Factual Adherence
Thomas Wood & Ethan Porter
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Can citizens heed factual information, even when such information challenges their partisan and ideological attachments? The “backfire effect,” described by Nyhan and Reifler (2010), says no: rather than simply ignoring factual information, presenting respondents with facts can compound their ignorance. In their study, conservatives presented with factual information about the absence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq became more convinced that such weapons had been found. The present paper presents results from five experiments in which we enrolled more than 10,100 subjects and tested 52 issues of potential backfire. Across all experiments, we found no corrections capable of triggering backfire, despite testing precisely the kinds of polarized issues where backfire should be expected. Evidence of factual backfire is far more tenuous than prior research suggests. By and large, citizens heed factual information, even when such information challenges their ideological commitments.
“Do Something about Life Line”: The Kennedy Administration's Campaign to Silence the Radio Right
Paul Matzko
Presidential Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
President John F. Kennedy launched the most successful censorship campaign of the past half century. Its target was the Radio Right, an informal network of conservative broadcasters who reached millions of listeners across the country by the early 1960s. With Kennedy's encouragement, the Internal Revenue Service audited conservative broadcasters to impair their ability to raise money while the Federal Communications Commission discouraged radio stations from airing their programs. The success of the counter–Radio Right campaign contradicts postrevisionist interpretations of Kennedy as a president who grew toward greatness while in office.
Psychology, Political Ideology, and Humor Appreciation: Why Is Satire So Liberal?
Dannagal Young et al.
Psychology of Popular Media Culture, forthcoming
Abstract:
This project explores how appreciation for, and comprehension of, ironic and exaggerated satire is related to political ideology. Drawing upon literature from communication, political psychology, and humor research, we explain how the psychological profiles of conservatives may render them less motivated to process and appreciate certain forms of humor compared to liberals. We test these propositions with an experiment that employs a two condition within-subjects experiment on a national sample (N = 305) to assess appreciation and comprehension of ironic and exaggerated humor among liberals and conservatives. Mediating effects of psychological traits are tested. Findings suggest that conservatives are less appreciative of both irony and exaggeration than liberals. In both cases, the effect is explained in part by lower sense of humor and need for cognition found among conservative participants. Results are explored in terms of the implications for political discourse, political polarization, and democratic practices.
When social identity threat leads to the selection of identity-reinforcing options: The role of public self-awareness
Katherine White, Madelynn Stackhouse & Jennifer Argo
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, January 2018, Pages 60-73
Abstract:
This research shows that activating public self-awareness leads individuals to increase their association with symbolic representations of their identity. When a social identity was threatened, participants high rather than low in public self-awareness were more likely to select options that reinforced their association with the identity (Studies 1a, 1b, and 2). This response was mediated by the desire to convey a consistent self to others (Study 2). In line with the view that the effects are driven by public self-consistency motives, the effects emerge only among those motivated to convey a consistent public self-image (Study 3) and when product choices can be viewed by others (Study 4). Finally, when identity threat occurred in the presence of an ingroup audience, those high (but not low) in ingroup identification were more likely to select identity-reinforcing options when public self-awareness was heightened (Study 5). The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
Values and Political Predispositions in the Age of Polarization: Examining the Relationship between Partisanship and Ideology in the United States, 1988–2012
Robert Lupton, Steven Smallpage & Adam Enders
British Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The correlation between ideology and partisanship in the mass public has increased in recent decades amid a climate of persistent and growing elite polarization. Given that core values shape subsequent political predispositions, as well as the demonstrated asymmetry of elite polarization, this article hypothesizes that egalitarianism and moral traditionalism moderate the relationship between ideology and partisanship in that the latter relationship will have increased over time only among individuals who maintain conservative value orientations. An analysis of pooled American National Election Studies surveys from 1988 to 2012 supports this hypothesis. The results enhance scholarly understanding of the role of core values in shaping mass belief systems and testify to the asymmetric nature and mass public reception of elite cues among liberals and conservatives.
Functions of Utopia: How Utopian Thinking Motivates Societal Engagement
Julian Fernando et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Images of ideal societies, utopias, are all around us; yet, little is known of how utopian visions affect ordinary people’s engagement with their societies. As goals for society, utopias may elicit processes of collective self-regulation, in which citizens are critical of, or take action to change, the societies they live in. In three studies, we investigated the psychological function of utopian thinking. In Study 1, measured utopianism was correlated with the activation of three utopian functions: change, critique, and compensation. In Study 2, primed utopian thinking consistently enhanced change and criticism intentions. Study 3 also provided evidence that mental contrasting — first imagining a utopian vision and then mentally contrasting the current society to this vision — underlies the facilitative effect of utopian thinking on societal engagement.
Intergroup anxiety and political loss: The buffering effects of believing in the open marketplace of ideas and openness to diverse political discussions
Justin Hackett, Amber Gaffney & Lauren Data
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The polarized divide in current U.S. politics continues to separate citizens and impede political decision-making. Ameliorating this polarization may require addressing intergroup anxiety. The current work examines the buffering effect of endorsing the open marketplace of ideas and openness to engaging in political conversations with people who hold opposing political views on partisans' intergroup anxiety. In Study 1 (N = 319), openness to diverse political discussions negatively predicted postelection intergroup anxiety among Obama supporters in the 2012 U.S. election. Among Romney supporters, endorsement of the open marketplace and openness to diverse political discussions negatively predicted intergroup anxiety. Study 2 (N = 349 Democrats and Republicans), employed an experimental design and produced results consistent with Study 1. For Democrats and Republicans, openness to participating in political discussions characterized by multiple political perspectives was associated with reduced intergroup anxiety. Regardless of the threat of their candidate losing the 2016 election, Republicans (compared to Democrats) expressed reduced intergroup anxiety when endorsing the open marketplace of ideas and being open to engaging in diverse political discussions. Results are discussed in terms of contact theory within the context of the American political system.
It Could Have Been True: How Counterfactual Thoughts Reduce Condemnation of Falsehoods and Increase Political Polarization
Daniel Effron
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
This research demonstrates how counterfactual thoughts can lead people to excuse others for telling falsehoods. When a falsehood aligned with participants’ political preferences, reflecting on how it could have been true led them to judge it as less unethical to tell, which in turn led them to judge a politician who told it as having a more moral character and deserving less punishment. When a falsehood did not align with political preferences, this effect was significantly smaller and less reliable, in part because people doubted the plausibility of the relevant counterfactual thoughts. These results emerged independently in three studies (two preregistered; total N = 2,783) and in meta- and Bayesian analyses, regardless of whether participants considered the same counterfactuals or generated their own. The results reveal how counterfactual thoughts can amplify partisan differences in judgments of alleged dishonesty. I discuss implications for theories of counterfactual thinking and motivated moral reasoning.