Battle lines
Does the Presidency Moderate the President?
Barry Edwards
Presidential Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
A claim so often made about the presidency that it approaches conventional wisdom is that the president sees, and therefore decides, issues differently than members of Congress do. This thesis emerged in the late 1700s in debates over ratification and has been consistently asserted by legal scholars, political scientists, and, most passionately, by U.S. presidents. I test this thesis by examining the legislative behavior of 23 men who have represented both a narrow constituency in Congress and the entire country as president. My results indicate that the presidency effectively moderated the legislative behavior of legislators who became president for roughly one and a half centuries; however, the modern presidency not only fails to moderate presidents, the presidency now appears to amplify the partisan bent of those who occupy the office.
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Blue and Red Voices: Effects of Political Ideology on Consumers’ Complaining and Disputing Behavior
Kiju Jung et al.
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Political ideology plays a pivotal role in shaping individuals’ attitudes, opinions, and behaviors. However, apart from a handful of studies, little is known about how consumers’ political ideology affects their marketplace behavior. The authors used three large consumer complaint databases from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and Federal Communication Committee in conjunction with a county-level indicator of political ideology (the 2012 US presidential election results) to demonstrate that conservative consumers are not only less likely than liberal consumers to report complaints but also less likely to dispute complaint resolutions. A survey also sheds light on the relationship between political ideology and complaint/dispute behavior. Due to stronger motivations to engage in “system justification,” conservative (as opposed to liberal) consumers are less likely to complain or dispute. The present research offers a useful means of identifying those consumers most and least likely to complain and dispute, given that political ideology is more observable than most psychological factors and more stable than most situational factors. Furthermore, this research and its theoretical framework open opportunities for future research examining the influence of political ideology on other marketplace behaviors.
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Extreme Protest Tactics Reduce Popular Support for Social Movements
Matthew Feinberg, Robb Willer & Chloe Kovacheff
University of Toronto Working Paper, February 2017
Abstract:
Social movements are critical agents of change that vary greatly in both tactics and popular support. Prior work shows that extreme protest tactics – actions that are highly counter-normative, disruptive, or harmful to others, including inflammatory rhetoric, blocking traffic, and damaging property – are effective for gaining publicity. However, we find across three experiments that extreme protest tactics decreased popular support for a given cause because they reduced feelings of identification with the movement. Though this effect obtained in tests of popular responses to extreme tactics used by animal rights, Black Lives Matter, and anti-Trump protests (Studies 1-3), we found that self-identified political activists were willing to use extreme tactics because they believed them to be effective for recruiting popular support (Studies 4a & 4b). The activist’s dilemma – wherein tactics that raise awareness also tend to reduce popular support – highlights a key challenge faced by social movements struggling to affect progressive change.
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Kaj Thomsson & Alexander Vostroknutov
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
We experimentally explore the way political preferences shape giving behavior. We find no difference in average giving between the Left and the Right in a Dictator game environment. However, we find the reasons for giving to be different. Right-leaning individuals give according to a norm-dependent utility that takes into account the beliefs of the receiver. The behavior of left-leaning individuals is not shaped by such an interaction between norms and beliefs. We conclude that right-wingers choose in accordance with a “small world” view, where giving is shaped by social interaction, while left-wingers appear rigid in their reaction to social context.
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The Perverse Politics of Polarization
Nageeb Ali, Maximilian Mihm & Lucas Siga
Pennsylvania State University Working Paper, January 2017
Abstract:
Many policies, such as trade and immigration, bear important consequences for both the size and distribution of surplus. Oftentimes, people are asked to vote on these policies despite not being all that well-informed about the consequences. This paper studies the extent to which an electorate can aggregate information when voters anticipate that some may benefit from a policy reform at a cost borne by others. We show that information aggregation may fail: with high probability, the outcome chosen when voters are privately informed departs from the outcome when all information is public. We identify a form of "negative correlation'' --- where voters treat good news for others as bad news for themselves --- that is necessary and sufficient for this informational failure. Commitments to post-policy redistribution can mitigate this inefficiency, and lead voters to select better policies. We characterize features of economic environments that may foster or preclude negative correlation. Our results offer an understanding of how information can amplify electoral status quo bias, or generate popular support for ill-advised reforms that are ex post regretted and subsequently reversed.
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The political reference point: How geography shapes political identity
Matthew Feinberg et al.
PLoS ONE, February 2017
Abstract:
It is commonly assumed that how individuals identify on the political spectrum – whether liberal, conservative, or moderate – has a universal meaning when it comes to policy stances and voting behavior. But, does political identity mean the same thing from place to place? Using data collected from across the U.S. we find that even when people share the same political identity, those in “bluer” locations are more likely to support left-leaning policies and vote for Democratic candidates than those in “redder” locations. Because the meaning of political identity is inconsistent across locations, individuals who share the same political identity sometimes espouse opposing policy stances. Meanwhile, those with opposing identities sometimes endorse identical policy stances. Such findings suggest that researchers, campaigners, and pollsters must use caution when extrapolating policy preferences and voting behavior from political identity, and that animosity toward the other end of the political spectrum is sometimes misplaced.
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Political Orientation Predicts Credulity Regarding Putative Hazards
Daniel Fessler, Anne Pisor & Colin Holbrook
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
To benefit from information provided by others, people must be somewhat credulous. However, credulity entails risks. The optimal level of credulity depends on the relative costs of believing misinformation versus failing to attend to accurate information. When information concerns hazards, erroneous incredulity is often more costly than erroneous credulity, as disregarding accurate warnings is more harmful than adopting unnecessary precautions. Because no equivalent asymmetry characterizes information concerning benefits, people should generally be more credulous of hazard information than of benefit information. This adaptive negatively-biased credulity is linked to negativity bias in general, and is more prominent among those who believe the world to be dangerous. Because both threat sensitivity and dangerous-world beliefs differ between conservatives and liberals, we predicted that conservatism would positively correlate with negatively-biased credulity. Two online studies of Americans support this prediction, potentially illuminating the impact of politicians’ alarmist claims on different portions of the electorate.
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Experienced Adversity in Life Is Associated With Polarized and Affirmed Political Attitudes
Daniel Randles et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many studies find that when made to feel uncertain, participants respond by affirming importantly held beliefs. However, while theories argue that these effects should persist over time for highly disruptive experiences, almost no research has been performed outside the lab. We conducted a secondary analysis of data from a national sample of U.S. adults (N = 1,613) who were followed longitudinally for 3 years. Participants reported lifetime and recent adversities experienced annually, as well as their opinions on a number of questions related to intergroup hostility and aggression toward out-groups, similar to those used in many lab studies of uncertainty. We anticipated that those who had experienced adversity would show more extreme support for their position. There was a positive relationship between adversity and the tendency to strongly affirm and polarize their positions. Results suggest that adverse life events may lead to long-lasting changes in one’s tendency to polarize one’s political attitudes.
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Cognitive ability and party affiliation: The role of the formative years of political socialization
Yoav Ganzach
Intelligence, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study the effect of time on the relationship between intelligence and party affiliation in the United States. Our results indicate that time affects this relationship, and that this effect is due to the formative years in which political preferences were developed rather than the time in which the survey was conducted. For people who were born in the 20th century, the later their formative years, the more positive the relationship between intelligence and Democratic, as opposed to Republican, affiliation. The current results shed light on recent conflicting findings about the relationship between intelligence and party affiliation in the US, and suggest that the effect of intelligence on party affiliation changes with time.
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Verbal ability drives the link between intelligence and ideology in two American community samples
Steven Ludeke, Stig Rasmussen & Colin DeYoung
Intelligence, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite meta-analyses highlighting a nontrivial relation between intelligence and ideology, theoretical accounts of the origins of ideological differences often neglect these differences. Two potential contributors to this neglect are that (a) the true magnitude of the association may be understated by studies using imperfect cognitive ability measures, and (b) nuances on the general association between ideology and intelligence are underexplored, limiting our ability to select among several highly divergent accounts of this association. The present study uses two moderately large (Ns = 786 and 338) American community samples to explore two questions: (1) how does the link between ideology and ability differ between self-administered and more conventional ability tests, and (2) is this link common to all aspects of ability, or does it depend primarily on one domain. We found a clear dominant role for verbal rather than non-verbal ability, and support for the proposition that self-administered ability measures understate the intelligence-ideology link.
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Can Information Decrease Political Polarization? Evidence From the U.S. Taxpayer Receipt
Erik Duhaime & Evan Apfelbaum
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Scholars, politicians, and laypeople alike bemoan the high level of political polarization in the United States, but little is known about how to bring the views of liberals and conservatives closer together. Previous research finds that providing people with information regarding a contentious issue is ineffective for reducing polarization because people process such information in a biased manner. Here, we show that information can reduce political polarization below baseline levels and also that its capacity to do so is sensitive to contextual factors that make one’s relevant preferences salient. Specifically, in a nationally representative sample (Study 1) and a preregistered replication (Study 2), we find that providing a taxpayer receipt — an impartial, objective breakdown of how one’s taxes are spent that is published annually by the White House — reduces polarization regarding taxes, but not when participants are also asked to indicate how they would prefer their taxes be spent.
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Niklas Steffens et al.
Political Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Two studies examine how self-categorization theory can be used to refine our understanding of people's implicit theories about followership and social influence. Results from Study 1 show that perceivers regard followers of a group they themselves identify strongly with (rather than not at all) to be more representative of the prototype of effective followers (displaying enthusiasm, industry, good citizenship) and to be less representative of the antiprototype of effective followers (displaying conformity, incompetence, and insubordination). Results are replicated in a second experiment in which we compare the views of those self-categorizing as either Republican or Democrat responding to followers of the Republican and Democratic Party. Results of Study 2 replicate those of Study 1 and also reveal qualitative differences in the preferred influence strategy for dealing with followers. Specifically, respondents seek to engage in persuasion when trying to change the behavior of ingroup followers, while resorting to coercion when trying to change the behavior of outgroup followers. Our results are the first to provide evidence that perceivers' theories about what followers are like and how they are influenced most effectively are structured by perceivers' identification (and dis-identification) with the particular groups that leaders are championing.
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Analytic Thought Training Promotes Liberalism on Contextualized (But Not Stable) Political Opinions
Onurcan Yilmaz & Adil Saribay
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous research revealed that inducing an intuitive thinking style led people to adopt more conservative social and economic attitudes. No prior study, however, has shown a causal effect of analytic cognitive style (ACS) on political conservatism. It is also not clear whether these cognitive-style manipulations influence stable or contextualized (less stable) political attitudes differentially. The current research investigated the causal effect of ACS on both stable and contextualized political opinions. In Experiment 1, we briefly trained participants to think analytically (or not) and assessed their contextualized and stable political attitudes. Those in the analytic thinking group responded more positively to liberal (but not conservative) arguments on contextualized opinions. However, no significant change occurred in stable opinions. In Experiment 2, we replicated this basic finding with a larger sample. Thus, the results demonstrate that inducing ACS causally influences contextualized liberal attitudes, but not stable ones.
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The Political Economy: Political Attitudes and Economic Behavior
Ellen Key & Kathleen Donovan
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
It has long been recognized that voters bring their political behaviors in line with economic assessments. Recent work, however, suggests that citizens also engage in economic behaviors that align with their confidence — or lack thereof — in the political system. This alignment can happen consciously or, as we suggest, unconsciously, in the same way that positivity carries over to other behaviors on a micro-level. Using monthly time series data from 1978 to 2008, we contribute further evidence of this relationship by demonstrating that political confidence affects consumer behavior at the aggregate level over time. Our analyses employ measures more closely tied to the theoretical concepts of interest while simultaneously accounting for the complex relationships between subjective and objective economic indicators, economic behavior, political attitudes, and the media. Our results suggest that approval of the president not only increases the electorate’s willingness to spend money, but also affects the volatility of this spending. These findings suggest that the economy is influenced by politics beyond elections, and gives the “Chief Economist” another avenue by which they can affect the behavior of the electorate.
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The Correlates of Discord: Identity, Issue Alignment, and Political Hostility in Polarized America
Lori Bougher
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
The American public remains largely moderate on many issues, but incivility and hostility are rife in American politics. In this paper, I argue that the alignment of multiple issue attitudes along the traditional ideological spectrum helps explain the asymmetrical rise in negative political affect. I introduce belief congruence theory as a supplemental theoretical framework to social identity theory. Cross-sectional data reveal a significant association between issue alignment and negative out-party affect that is neither mediated nor moderated by partisan identity. A first-difference approach using two panel studies then addresses potential heterogeneity bias by testing a change-on-change model within individuals. Both panels, which are from different time periods, covering different issues, reveal significant associations between issue alignment and outgroup dislike. In contrast, partisan identity was only significantly associated with ingroup affect. This work suggests that cross-cutting issue preferences could help attenuate political hostility and reiterate the need to reconsider the role of issue-based reasoning in polarized America.