Preaching to the choir
Michela Menegatti & Monica Rubini
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Three studies examined the production of political messages and their persuasive impact on recipients as a function of speaker-audience similarity. The first two studies found support for the hypothesis that political leaders (Study 1) and party activists (Study 2) formulate more abstract messages when the audience is politically similar to them than when the audience is dissimilar or heterogeneous. The third study examined the persuasive impact of message abstractness versus concreteness. We predicted and found that abstract messages are more effective in convincing an audience whose political positions are similar to the speaker's and concrete messages are more effective in convincing an audience whose political positions differ from the speaker's or are heterogeneous. Implications of these findings for the relation between language and social cognition are discussed.
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Writing Autobiographical Narratives Increases Political Conservatism
Joris Lammers & Travis Proulx
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Two experiments show that writing chronological autobiographical narratives increases political conservatism, defined as an ideology of resistance to social change. When writing chronological autobiographical narratives, we hypothesized that people would re-experience the events of their life in a way that portrays the current situation as the result of past personal actions and choices. This awareness should evoke a general sense that the current situation is not the result of chaos and randomness, but that the way things are is the way things should be. This sense of order makes people feel that the status quo should be maintained and causes a corresponding shift towards resisting social change. Experiment 1 shows that only writing chronological autobiographical narratives increase political conservatism. Experiment 2 shows that only writing autobiographical narratives increase political conservatism. Together, these experiments demonstrate that the experience of writing chronological autobiographies systematically affects political thinking.
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The Polarizing Effect of a Partisan Workplace
David Jones
PS: Political Science & Politics, January 2013, Pages 67-73
Abstract:
The workplace provides an exceptional outlet for citizens to encounter different viewpoints and discuss politics with people with whom they may disagree. In Washington, DC, however, many people work in partisan environments where like-minded coworkers rarely encounter alternate points of view. Group polarization theory suggests that these environments push individuals to the partisan and ideological extremes. This study tests this hypothesis by comparing opinion change among interns who worked in a partisan workplace with that of interns who were employed in less-partisan environments. The results suggest that partisan workplace environments foster opinion polarization, especially among Republicans.
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The New Deal Realignment in Real Time
Helmut Norpoth, Andrew Sidman & Clara Suong
Presidential Studies Quarterly, March 2013, Pages 146-166
Abstract:
Right after the 1936 election the Gallup Poll began probing party identification. From then on until 1952, when the National Election Studies entered the field, nearly 200 surveys produced measurements of partisanship in the American electorate. We exploit this largely unexplored data set to examine the partisan transformation commonly called the New Deal Realignment in real time. It turns out that it was not until the late 1940s that the Democratic Party secured an enduring hold on the American electorate. The New Deal and the Depression had less to do with this change than did World War II and the postwar prosperity. The lead cohort of the Democratic surge in party identification was the generation that came of age during the 1940s, not the 1930s. The findings suggest that a historic crisis or a new policy program may not be enough to realign partisanship in the electorate but that it takes the success of the ascendant party in mastering historic crises.
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Biased assimilation, homophily, and the dynamics of polarization
Pranav Dandekar, Ashish Goel & David Lee
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study the issue of polarization in society through a model of opinion formation. We say an opinion formation process is polarizing if it results in increased divergence of opinions. Empirical studies have shown that homophily, i.e., greater interaction between like-minded individuals, results in polarization. However, we show that DeGroot's well-known model of opinion formation based on repeated averaging can never be polarizing, even if individuals are arbitrarily homophilous. We generalize DeGroot's model to account for a phenomenon well known in social psychology as biased assimilation: When presented with mixed or inconclusive evidence on a complex issue, individuals draw undue support for their initial position, thereby arriving at a more extreme opinion. We show that in a simple model of homophilous networks, our biased opinion formation process results in polarization if individuals are sufficiently biased. In other words, homophily alone, without biased assimilation, is not sufficient to polarize society. Quite interestingly, biased assimilation also provides a framework to analyze the polarizing effect of Internet-based recommender systems that show us personalized content.
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The Politicization of Knowledge Claims: The "Laffer Curve" in the U.S. Congress
Elizabeth Popp Berman & Laura Milanes-Reyes
Qualitative Sociology, March 2013, Pages 53-79
Abstract:
Political debates over knowledge claims often become emotionally charged, with two sides not only disputing what is true but seeing those on the other side as deluded or worse. By looking at use of the term "Laffer curve" in the U.S. Congress from 1977 to 2010, we draw attention to two ways such debates over knowledge claims can evolve. The Laffer curve is a simple schematic representation of the relationship between tax rates and government revenue that was influential in U.S. tax policy in the late 1970s. Early on, Republicans and Democrats faced off over the Laffer curve as a cognitive symbol to be debated with argument, evidence, and reference to experts. Over time, Republicans continued to treat the Laffer curve as a cognitive symbol, but for Democrats it became a polluted expressive symbol that could be dismissed without debate. Democrats also articulated the Laffer curve as part of an ironic narrative about the failure of the Reagan administration, which ended the possibility of serious deliberation. We suggest that the dynamics seen here may also be present around other politicized knowledge claims, such as the claim that human activity is causing climate change.
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Media and Polarization: Evidence from the Introduction of Broadcast TV in the United States
Filipe Campante & Daniel Hojman
Journal of Public Economics, April 2013, Pages 79-92
Abstract:
This paper sheds light on the links between media and political polarization by looking at the introduction of broadcast TV in the US. We provide causal evidence that broadcast TV decreased the ideological extremism of US representatives. We then show that exposure to radio was associated with decreased polarization. We interpret this result using a simple framework that identifies two channels linking media environment to politicians' incentives to polarize. First, the ideology effect: changes in the media environment may affect the distribution of citizens' ideological views, with politicians moving their positions accordingly. Second, the motivation effect: the media may affect citizens' political motivation, changing the ideological composition of the electorate and thereby impacting elite polarization while mass polarization is unchanged. The evidence on polarization and turnout is consistent with a prevalence of the ideology effect in the case of TV, as both of them decreased. Increased turnout associated with radio exposure is in turn consistent with a role for the motivation effect.
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Opening "Openness to Change": Political Events and the Increased Sensitivity of Young Adults
Elias Dinas
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
The impressionable years thesis asserts that early adulthood is accompanied by increased attitudinal vulnerability. Although there is tentative empirical evidence to support this idea, it remains unclear whether this sensitivity is due to exposure to change-inducing circumstances, typically encountered in early adulthood, or due to the weight attached by young people to new information. I address this question, focusing on a political event - the Watergate - that offers a test of youth's heightened susceptibility, holding exposure constant. The results confirm the impressionable years thesis and shed light on how it is most likely to be manifested empirically.
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Benjamin Highton
The Forum, February 2013, Pages 11-19
Abstract:
This paper analyzes variation in presidential outcomes across the American states from 1972 through 2012. The findings show that differences in cultural policy preferences across the states are more important than economic preferences for explaining state outcomes in 2012. This result fits a long-term trend of the growing importance of cultural issues - absolutely and relative to economic issues - for sorting the states, which has had the effect of rotating the "party cleavage" line that divides the Democratic and Republican parties in presidential elections.
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Alexis Alabastro et al.
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, January 2013, Pages 58-67
Abstract:
Drawing on the social identity theory of leadership and optimal distinctiveness theory, this research examined differences in perceived attitude similarity to in- and outgroup leaders among Liberals and Conservatives before and after the 2008 U.S. presidential election. We predicted Liberals and Conservatives alike would perceive their ingroup leaders (Obama or McCain) to be attitudinally similar to themselves before the election. After the election, however, Conservatives were expected to distance themselves from McCain and to accentuate similarity to Obama. Using a longitudinal design, analysis of American National Election Survey (N = 742) data showed that Liberals and Conservatives viewed themselves to be similar to their respective ingroup leader and dissimilar to the outgroup leader. Consistent with expectations, Conservatives significantly accentuated perceived similarity with Obama following his electoral victory, and significantly distanced themselves from McCain following his loss. Liberals' similarity with either candidate did not change from pre- to postelection. Implications for social identity in inter- and intragroup leadership contexts are discussed.
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James Davis
Social Science Research, May 2013, Pages 571-583
Abstract:
Two generations (1972-1976 and 2006-2008) are compared using 43 replicated attitudes in the NORC General Social Survey. The report describes the generational changes (primarily liberal), weighs the causal impact of rising educational levels (liberal), cohort replacement (liberal) and period effects (mildly conservative). It argues that this long term causal mechanism is slowly eroding.
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Joost van Spanje & Claes de Vreese
Party Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Hate speech prosecution of politicians is a common phenomenon in established democracies. Examples of politicians tried for hate speech include Nick Griffin in Britain and Jean-Marie Le Pen in France. Does hate speech prosecution of politicians affect the electoral support for their party? This is an important question, as the parties involved typically are controversial, often accused of stirring up political cynicism or political violence. The relevant literature has largely ignored this question, however. In this article, we use data from a representative sample of Dutch voters interviewed before and re-interviewed after the unexpected court decision to prosecute MP Geert Wilders. We demonstrate empirically that the decision substantially enhanced his party's appeal. This resulted in an immediate increase in support for the party by one to five percentage points among those who are moderately in favour of the assimilation of ethnic minorities into Dutch culture. In addition, the evidence suggests that the decision contributed to the party's subsequent electoral lift-off. Our findings call for investigations into the electoral effects of legal proceedings against political actors in democratic systems worldwide.
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Itai Himelboim, Stephen McCreery & Marc Smith
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, January 2013, Pages 40-60
Abstract:
This study integrates network and content analyses to examine exposure to cross-ideological political views on Twitter. We mapped the Twitter networks of 10 controversial political topics, discovered clusters - subgroups of highly self-connected users - and coded messages and links in them for political orientation. We found that Twitter users are unlikely to be exposed to cross-ideological content from the clusters of users they followed, as these were usually politically homogeneous. Links pointed at grassroots web pages (e.g.: blogs) more frequently than traditional media websites. Liberal messages, however, were more likely to link to traditional media. Last, we found that more specific topics of controversy had both conservative and liberal clusters, while in broader topics, dominant clusters reflected conservative sentiment.
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Motivated Misperception? Party, Education, Partisan News, and Belief in "Death Panels"
Patrick Meirick
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, March 2013, Pages 39-57
Abstract:
This study drew on the literature in motivated reasoning and 2009 Pew survey data to examine the roles of partisanship, education, news exposure, and their interactions in the misperception that health care reform would create "death panels." Radio news exposure encouraged the misperception only among Republicans, while newspaper exposure discouraged it, especially among non-Republicans. But rather than polarize perceptions along partisan lines as predicted, Fox News exposure contributed to misperception mainstreaming. Finally, this study identified a complex role for education in both inhibiting misperceptions (as a main effect) and promoting them (as an interaction with Fox News exposure).
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Red State/Blue State Divisions in the 2012 Presidential Election
Avi Feller, Andrew Gelman & Boris Shor
The Forum, February 2013, Pages 127-131
Abstract:
The so-called "red/blue paradox" is that rich individuals are more likely to vote Republican but rich states are more likely to support the Democrats. Previous research argued that this seeming paradox could be explained by comparing rich and poor voters within each state - the difference in the Republican vote share between rich and poor voters was much larger in low-income, conservative, middle-American states like Mississippi than in high-income, liberal, coastal states like Connecticut. We use exit poll and other survey data to assess whether this was still the case for the 2012 Presidential election. Based on this preliminary analysis, we find that, while the red/blue paradox is still strong, the explanation offered by Gelman et al. no longer appears to hold. We explore several empirical patterns from this election and suggest possible avenues for resolving the questions posed by the new data.
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The Illusion of Argument Justification
Matthew Fisher & Frank Keil
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
Argumentation is an important way to reach a new understanding. Strongly caring about an issue, which is often evident when dealing with controversial issues, has been shown to lead to biases in argumentation. We suggest that people are not well calibrated in assessing their ability to justify a position through argumentation, an effect we call the illusion of argument justification. Furthermore, we find that caring about the issue further clouds this introspection. We first show this illusion by measuring the difference between ratings before and after producing an argument for one's own position. The strength of the illusion is predicted by the strength of care for a given issue (Study 1). The tacit influences of framing and priming do not override the effects of emotional investment in a topic (Study 2). However, explicitly considering counterarguments removes the effect of care when initially assessing the ability to justify a position (Study 3). Finally, we consider our findings in light of other recent research and discuss the potential benefits of group reasoning.
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Trash or treasure: Recycling narratives and reducing political polarization
Donna Lybecker, Mark McBeth & Elizabeth Kusko
Environmental Politics, March/April 2013, Pages 312-332
Abstract:
Recycling is an increasingly important tool in global and national efforts for sustainability. Yet, particularly in the United States, there remains disconnect between those who view recycling as a necessity and those who see it as a waste: many conservatives do not support recycling activities, while many liberals do. However, recycling can be framed in language that draws support from both conservatives and liberals. Data from a survey sample of 429 individuals shows that conservative frames of recycling are supported by both conservatives and liberals, whereas liberal frames are supported only by liberals. Similarly 'duty-based' citizenship frames are supported by both duty-based and engaged citizens, while 'engaged' citizenship frames are supported mainly by engaged citizens. The implications for researchers, educators, administrators, and others involved in recycling are detailed.
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Third-Party Labels Bias Evaluations of Political Platforms and Candidates
Geoffrey Munro et al.
Basic and Applied Social Psychology, March/April 2013, Pages 151-163
Abstract:
The current research investigated the role that partisanship plays in evaluations of third-party political policies and candidate evaluations. Democratic and Republican participants read political party and candidate brochures labeled with their own party or with an ideologically similar third party (Green or Libertarian). All other brochure information was identical. Participants evaluated the policies and candidate more favorably and indicated a greater intention to vote for the candidate when the brochure was labeled with their own party than the third party. Study 2 suggested that these effects were not due to strategic voting and that emotion may be a mediating variable.
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Benjamin Lauderdale
Public Opinion Quarterly, February 2013, Pages 2-23
Abstract:
Recent studies of the U.S. Congress have demonstrated a substantial difference between the level of partisan polarization displayed by legislators' votes and that shown in citizens' survey responses about those votes. Perhaps public polarization would increase if citizens were more attentive to political debates in Congress. Using natural variation in citizens' levels of political information, I show that citizens who are informed about the partisan alignment of issues have a preference distribution similar to that of Congress, even after the sample is reweighted to resemble the entire public in their political, social, and demographic characteristics via matching. In contrast, using a survey experiment, I show that cue and argument treatments only partially reduce the discrepancy between the views expressed by the public and the voting behavior of Congress on the same issues. Both experimental and observational studies have significant limitations for measuring counterfactuals involving public opinion, and so our understanding of the polarization gap remains unfortunately limited.
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Proximity Voting in the 2010 U.S. House Elections
Elizabeth Simas
Electoral Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Utilizing data that allows for the placement of both of the candidates running and voters on the same ideological scale, I model proximity voting in the 2010 House elections. I demonstrate that though the literature predominantly emphasizes partisanship and incumbency, relative distance from the candidates also plays a significant role in the voting decision. Additionally, I show that these proximity effects are conditional upon the type of candidate running and the individual's partisan attachment. In total, these results show that while the rates of partisan voting and incumbent victory are high in House elections, voters do consider ideological proximity and can punish candidates who take positions that are too far out of line.
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Geoffrey Wetherell & Mark Brandt
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite ample research linking conservatism to discrimination and liberalism to tolerance, both groups may discriminate. In two studies, we investigated whether conservatives and liberals support discrimination against value violators, and whether liberals' and conservatives' values distinctly affect discrimination. Results demonstrated that liberals and conservatives supported discrimination against ideologically dissimilar groups, an effect mediated by perceptions of value violations. Liberals were more likely than conservatives to espouse egalitarianism and universalism, which attenuated their discrimination; whereas the conservatives' value of traditionalism predicted more discrimination, and their value of self-reliance predicted less discrimination. This suggests liberals and conservatives are equally likely to discriminate against value violators, but liberal values may ameliorate discrimination more than conservative values.
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When does the left do the right thing? A study of party position change on welfare policies
Gijs Schumacher
Party Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Why did pro-welfare Social Democrats and Christian Democrats cease to support the welfare state in the 1980s and 1990s, and support measures such as tighter welfare programme conditionality rules and lower social security benefits instead? Building on the party position change literature, I argue and empirically demonstrate that parties with an activist-dominated party organization adapt their position to shifts in the party voter position. Parties with a leadership-dominated party organization adapt their position to shifts in the median voter position. Parties in which neither leaders nor activists dictate party policy shift in the opposite direction of the previous policy shift if they are excluded from office. Using a cross-sectional time-series regression analysis of 181 position shifts of European Socialist, Social Democratic and Christian Democratic parties in the period 1977-2003, I find strong evidence that party organization is a crucial mediating variable in explaining when these parties shift to the right or left. Demonstrating that differences in party organizations motivate parties to respond to different incentives, this study has implications for the relationship between party behaviour and welfare state policy-making.
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Secular geographical polarization in the American South: The case of Texas, 1996-2010
Adam Myers
Electoral Studies, March 2013, Pages 48-62
Abstract:
This article uses fine-grained data to demonstrate that, since 1996, the State of Texas has undergone a process of 'secular geographical polarization' - a continuous divergence in the geographical bases of its political parties. It is suggested that this process exemplifies a new era of partisan politics in the American South. Analyses of spatial regression models show that the geographical polarization can be partially explained by a tighter link between demographic characteristics and aggregate voting patterns, but that growth in spatial clustering cannot be attributed entirely to demographics. The possibility that spatially-bounded social contexts are affecting partisan change is thus explored. Finally, the article's findings are considered in light of the growing debate about geographical polarization in the American electorate.
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Mauro Bertolotti et al.
Social Psychology, Spring 2013, Pages 117-128
Abstract:
In two experimental studies (conducted in Britain and Italy), participants read about a politician answering to leadership- versus morality-related allegations using either downward counterfactuals ("things could have been worse, if ...") or upward counterfactuals ("things could have been better, if ..."). Downward messages increased the perception of the politician's leadership, while both downward and upward messages increased morality perception. Political sophistication moderated the effect of message direction, with downward messages increasing perceived morality in low sophisticates and upward messages increasing perceived morality in high sophisticates. In the latter group, the acknowledgment of an intent to take responsibility mediated morality judgment. Results were consistent across different countries, highlighting previously unexplored effects of communication on the perception of the "Big Two" dimensions.