The Show Must Go On
The Political Consequences of Depression: How Conspiracy Beliefs, Participatory Inclinations, and Depression Affect Support for Political Violence
Matthew Baum et al.
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Depression can affect individuals’ attitudes by enhancing cognitive biases and altering perceptions of control. We investigate the relationship between depressive symptoms and Americans’ attitudes regarding domestic extremist violence. We develop a theory that suggests the association between depression and support for political violence depends on conspiracy beliefs, participatory inclinations, and their combination. We test our theory using a two-wave national survey panel from November 2020 and January 2021. We find that among those who hold conspiracy beliefs and/or have participatory inclinations, depression is positively associated with support for election violence and the January 6 Capitol riots. The participatory inclination dynamic is particularly strong for men. Our findings reveal how the intersection of two concerning features of American society -- poor mental health and conspiratorial beliefs -- strongly relate to another feature: support for political violence. The results also make clear that interventions aimed at addressing depression can potentially have substantial political consequences.
How Cable News Reshaped Local Government
Elliott Ash & Sergio Galletta
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2023, Pages 292-320
Abstract:
This paper shows that partisan cable news broadcasts have a causal effect on the size and composition of budgets in US localities. Using exogenous channel positioning as an instrument for viewership, we show that exposure to the conservative Fox News channel reduces revenues and expenditures. Multiple mechanisms drive these results: Fox News improves election chances for local Republicans, alters politician campaign agendas, and shifts voter policy preferences on fiscal issues. Consistent with the priorities of small-government conservatism, we find evidence that private provision compensates for the reduced public services. The "Fox News effect" extends beyond vote shares to rightward policy shifts.
Migration, Social Ties, and Political Preferences
William Marble & Junghyun Lim
University of Pennsylvania Working Paper, September 2023
Abstract:
Why have economically declining regions turned toward right-wing parties? To explain this puzzling phenomenon, we develop a theory linking internal migration, localized social institutions (e.g., family and friend networks), and voters’ preferences for social insurance. We start with the observation that social ties provide insurance against adverse life events, such as job loss, and highlight two implications. First, those with strong social networks prefer lower spending on social insurance, because they have access to informal insurance that acts as a substitute for public programs. Second, social ties discourage people from moving, even when better economic opportunities are available in other regions. Combining these mechanisms, we argue that the effect of economic shocks on a region’s politics depends on the strength of social ties. Regions with dense social ties have muted migratory responses to negative shocks relative to regions with weaker ties. Further, those who remain in declining regions are more conservative than those who migrate -- resulting in an electorate with lower demand for social insurance. Macro-level analysis of American election results, import shocks, and migration data provide empirical support for the theory’s predictions. An original survey corroborates the micro-level mechanisms. The results have important implications for understanding right-wing populist support in economically declining regions in the U.S. and other post-industrial countries.
Empathic Conservatives and Moralizing Liberals: Political Intergroup Empathy Varies by Political Ideology and Is Explained by Moral Judgment
James Casey, Eric Vanman & Fiona Kate Barlow
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Empathy has the potential to bridge political divides. Here, we examine barriers to cross-party empathy and explore when and why these differ for liberals and conservatives. In four studies, U.S. and U.K. participants (total N = 4,737) read hypothetical scenarios and extended less empathy to suffering political opponents than allies or neutral targets. These effects were strongly shown by liberals but were weaker among conservatives, such that conservatives consistently showed more empathy to liberals than liberals showed to conservatives. This asymmetry was partly explained by liberals’ harsher moral judgments of outgroup members (Studies 1–4) and the fact that liberals saw conservatives as more harmful than conservatives saw liberals (Studies 3 and 4). The asymmetry persisted across changes in the U.S. government and was not explained by perceptions of political power (Studies 3 and 4). Implications and future directions are discussed.
Correcting misperceptions of the other political party does not robustly reduce support for undemocratic practices or partisan violence
James Druckman
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 12 September 2023
Abstract:
A growing consensus suggests that a cause of support for undemocratic practices and partisan violence is that partisans misperceive the other side. That is, they vastly exaggerate the extent to which members of the other party support undemocratic practices and violence. When these misperceptions are corrected, citizens’ own beliefs moderate. I present results from an experiment that show that misperception corrections do not have an effect in the presence of competing information (i.e., that challenges the validity of the correction or offers a conflicting narrative). Basic corrections do not constitute a robust way to counter democratic backsliding stemming from citizens’ misperceptions. The results highlight the need to devise stronger misperception interventions and, more generally, to consider competing information environments when devising any scalable behavioral intervention.
Presidential Cues and the Nationalization of Congressional Rhetoric, 1973–2016
Benjamin Noble
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Presidents occupy a unique role as both the head of the executive branch and a de facto party leader. They nationalize politics and polarize lawmaking. Members of Congress know this, and they leverage the president's symbolic power to heighten political conflict. I argue that lawmakers, particularly those in the nonpresidential party, invoke the president to nationalize legislative debate and polarize constituent opinion. Using the text of House and Senate floor speeches between 1973 and 2016 and a within-member panel design, I find that legislators reference the president more frequently in the out-party and increasingly so as a district's media environment becomes more nationalized. Presidential references are also moderated by constituency partisanship. I support the behavioral implications with a vignette experiment: when a Republican Senator invokes President Biden in a policy speech, Republican respondents increase approval of that Senator and oppose political compromise. This research highlights the institutional consequences of nationalization and negative partisanship.
What Explains Educational Polarization Among White Voters?
William Marble
University of Pennsylvania Working Paper, September 2023
Abstract:
Over the past 40 years of American politics, college-educated white voters have defected from the Republican Party, while the white working class has become a reliable source of Republican support. I study the issue basis of this realignment. To do so, I generate over-time estimates of public opinion on four broad issue domains from 1984 to 2020 and develop a theoretical framework to understand how issue attitudes translate into electoral coalitions. Using this framework, I find that both economic and cultural issues have contributed to the observed realignment. College-educated white voters have become increasingly liberal on economic issues since the mid-2000s; college-educated voters now express more liberal views than working class voters on every issue domain. Over the same time period, cultural issues have become more important for the voting decisions of the working class. The increasing weight placed on non-economic issues means that the conservative cultural attitudes of white working class voters translate to Republican support at a higher rate than in the past. Together, these findings suggest a nuanced role for economic and cultural issues in structuring political coalitions. Educational realignment has deep roots across issue domains, suggesting that the new coalitions are likely to be stable into the foreseeable future.
Changing stereotypes of partisans in the Trump Era
Ethan Busby, Adam Howat & Daniel Myers
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming
Abstract:
Stereotypes of the two parties play an important role in political cognition, and a range of recent studies have examined the content and effects of partisan stereotypes. However, little work has studied change in partisan stereotypes over time. We address this question by comparing data on stereotypes of partisans collected before and after the Trump presidency, a time when we might expect individuals' images of the two parties to undergo significant change. Using a structural topic model, we compare responses to open-ended questions asking respondents to list words describing members of the two parties from 2016 and 2021. We find that partisan stereotypes in the 2021 sample are less group- and issue-based and focused more on personal traits. These results suggest that, during the Trump era, members of the mass public came to see the parties in more personalized, character-focused terms, potentially contributing to affective polarization.
Partisan schadenfreude and candidate cruelty
Steven Webster, Adam Glynn & Matthew Motta
Political Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We establish the prevalence of partisan schadenfreude -- that is, taking “joy in the suffering” of partisan others. Analyzing attitudes on health care, taxation, climate change, and the coronavirus pandemic, we find that a sizable portion of the American mass public engages in partisan schadenfreude and that these attitudes are most expressed by those who are ideologically extreme. Additionally, we find that a sizable portion of the American public is more likely than not to vote for candidates who promise to pass policies that “disproportionately harm” supporters of the opposing political party, and we demonstrate experimental evidence of demand/preference for candidates who promise cruelty among those who exhibit high amounts of schadenfreude. In sum, our results suggest that partisan schadenfreude is widespread and has disturbing implications for American political behavior.
Assessing the Structure of Policy Preferences: A Hard Test of the Low Dimensionality Hypothesis
Christopher Hare, Ben Highton & Bradford Jones
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper analyzes belief systems in a novel way, modeling relational patterns of policy disagreements using nonmetric multidimensional scaling. Because of its flexible assumptions, the approach enables us to conduct a notably harder test of the “low dimensionality” hypothesis than is found in previous work. The results support the proposition that a basic space (consisting of a small number of interwoven issue domains) anchors the policy dimension of public opinion. Among our findings, we show that voters -- especially those meeting a minimum threshold of political sophistication -- neither lack meaningful attitudes nor hold distinct preferences across a wide range of issues. Rather, their policy attitudes are organized alongside relevant core values and affective evaluations in a common, low-dimensional cognitive space. A unidimensional approximation of these belief structures often exhausts the explanatory power of vote choice models.
Affective polarization and the destabilization of core political values
Trent Ollerenshaw
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming
Abstract:
Analyses of US panel surveys from 1992 to 1996 have found extremity in political values was associated with increased affective polarization, but that affective polarization was not associated with changes in value extremity during this period (Enders and Lupton, 2021). This note reevaluates the relationships between political value extremity and affective polarization using a 2016–2020 panel survey. Replicating Enders and Lupton's analytical procedures as closely as possible with this more recent sample, I find value extremity is sometimes associated with increased affective polarization. In contrast to Enders and Lupton (2021), however, affective polarization is strongly associated with increased value extremity between 2016 and 2020. These findings suggest that the relationships between political values and affective polarization may have changed since the 1990s, and that values are now influenced by Americans' evaluations of salient political objects, such as parties, presidential candidates, and ideological groups.
You’re red, I’m blue, so I don’t like you: The political dissimilarity-disliking effect
Kathryn Bruchmann et al.
Politics, Groups, and Identities, forthcoming
Abstract:
Decades of research suggest that people like politically similar others more than dissimilar others, yet few studies use a control group in their design, making it unclear whether similarity drives liking or, consistent with negative partisanship and affective polarization, dissimilarity drives disliking. Two studies tested a political similarity-liking effect in the current polarized political climate by examining whether sharing real news articles suggesting endorsement of political parties or politicians (Study 1; N = 452) or sharing events supporting partisan issues or parties (Study 2; N = 713) on Facebook would influence people’s initial impressions of a Facebook profile-owner. Participants did not report liking political ingroup members more than a neutral control. Instead, participants disliked political outgroup members more; this pattern was mediated by both positive and negative emotional responses to the profiles shared. These results suggest not a partisan similarity-liking effect, but rather a dissimilarity-disliking effect consistent with negative partisanship that may stem from the emotional reactions associated with the current political landscape.