Passion of the parties
The Punctuated Origins of Senate Polarization
Adam Bonica
Legislative Studies Quarterly, February 2014, Pages 5–26
Abstract:
This article uses a new dynamic ideal-point estimation method that incorporates smoothing techniques to construct a more detailed account of Senate polarization. The results reveal that the Senate polarized in two distinct phases. Member replacement accounts for nearly all of the increase from the early 1970s through the mid-1990s after which ideological adaptation emerges as the dominant force behind polarization. In addition, I find that a few brief periods of intensified partisanship account for most of the increase in polarization since the mid-1990s, suggesting that these episodes have had significant and lasting effects.
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Long-term effect of September 11 on the political behavior of victims’ families and neighbors
Eitan Hersh
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 24 December 2013, Pages 20959–20963
Abstract:
This article investigates the long-term effect of September 11, 2001 on the political behaviors of victims’ families and neighbors. Relative to comparable individuals, family members and residential neighbors of victims have become — and have stayed — significantly more active in politics in the last 12 years, and they have become more Republican on account of the terrorist attacks. The method used to demonstrate these findings leverages the random nature of the terrorist attack to estimate a causal effect and exploits new techniques to link multiple, individual-level, governmental databases to measure behavioral change without relying on surveys or aggregate analysis.
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Does “humanization” of the preborn explain why conservatives (vs. liberals) oppose abortion?
Cara MacInnis, Mary MacLean & Gordon Hodson
Personality and Individual Differences, March 2014, Pages 77–82
Abstract:
Those on the political right (vs. left) generally oppose abortion, with preborn humanness frequently cited as the reason. We test whether differences in preborn humanness perceptions actually underpin left–right differences in abortion support. We examine two types of right-wing ideology in student and community samples, asking whether perceptions of preborn humanness (a) explain conservative (vs. liberal) opposition to abortion; or (b) exert a greater impact on abortion opposition among conservatives (vs. liberals). Without exception, perceptions of preborn humanness explained very little of right–left differences in abortion support, and the association between preborn humanness perceptions and abortion opposition was no stronger for those on the political right (vs. left). These findings suggest that left–right differences on this critical, election-relevant social attitude are not explained by beliefs about “humanness”, contrary to popular belief.
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Matt Motyl
Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Every four years, partisan Americans threaten to migrate to Canada (or some other country) if their preferred candidate loses the Presidential election. This phenomenon has yet to undergo an empirical test. In the present experiment, 308 Obama voters and 142 Romney voters following the 2012 election responded to one of two writing prompts that led them to think about how the United States was becoming more liberal or conservative. Regardless of the writing prompt condition, Romney voters endorsed migration expressions more than Obama voters. Furthermore, Romney voters, compared to Obama voters, expressed a reduced sense of belonging in the United States. The relationship between voting for Romney and migration expressions was fully mediated by sense of belonging. Together, these findings support the ideological migration hypothesis and suggest that threatening to move to Canada following an undesirable election outcome may be driven by voters’ belonging needs.
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Measuring Partisan Bias in Single-Member District Electoral Systems
Eric McGhee
Legislative Studies Quarterly, February 2014, Pages 55–85
Abstract:
In recent decades, the literature has coalesced around either symmetry or responsiveness as measures of partisan bias in single-member district systems. I argue neither accurately captures the traditional idea of an “efficient” gerrymander, where one party claims more seats without more votes. I suggest a better measure of efficiency and then use this new measure to reconsider a classic study of partisan gerrymandering. Contrary to the original study findings, I show that the effects of party control on bias are small and decay rapidly, suggesting that redistricting is at best a blunt tool for promoting partisan interests.
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Partisan Agenda Control and the Dimensionality of Congress
Keith Dougherty, Michael Lynch & Anthony Madonna
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent studies have questioned the familiar characterization of Congress as unidimensional. We argue that agenda control, orchestrated through the House Rules Committee and other techniques, can make multidimensional congresses appear more unidimensional. We evaluate this argument by examining the relationship between measures of unidimensionality and various measures of party control for the House of Representatives from 1875 to 1997, at both the roll-call level and congress level. Our findings contribute to an expanding literature explaining why a single dimension could explain most of the variance in voting data, even if latent ideology is multidimensional.
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Preliminary Support for a Generalized Arousal Model of Political Conservatism
Shona Tritt, Michael Inzlicht & Jordan Peterson
PLoS ONE, December 2013
Abstract:
It is widely held that negative emotions such as threat, anxiety, and disgust represent the core psychological factors that enhance conservative political beliefs. We put forward an alternative hypothesis: that conservatism is fundamentally motivated by arousal, and that, in this context, the effect of negative emotion is due to engaging intensely arousing states. Here we show that study participants agreed more with right but not left-wing political speeches after being exposed to positive as well as negative emotion-inducing film-clips. No such effect emerged for neutral-content videos. A follow-up study replicated and extended this effect. These results are consistent with the idea that emotional arousal, in general, and not negative valence, specifically, may underlie political conservatism.
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We the People: Intergroup Interdependence Breeds Liberalism
Jojanneke van der Toorn, Jaime Napier & John Dovidio
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Whereas much social psychological research has focused on the conditions that lead to political conservatism, the current research suggests that instilling a sense of intergroup interdependence can increase political liberalism and, in turn, foster concern for universal welfare. Using both correlational (Study 1) and experimental (Study 2) methodologies, we find convergent support for the novel hypothesis that perceived interdependence between groups in society increases people’s support for human rights because it increases liberalism. In addition to establishing the hypothesized effect, we empirically distinguished the effect of intergroup interdependence from that of intragroup (or “interpersonal”) interdependence, which was related to conservatism. This research presents a novel demonstration of the effect of intergroup interdependence on political attitudes and fills a gap in the literature on the conditions that lead to liberalism.
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The Policy Consequences of Motivated Information Processing Among the Partisan Elite
Sarah Anderson & Laurel Harbridge
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
An analysis of U.S. budgetary changes shows that, among subaccounts that are cut, Democrats make more large cuts when they control more lawmaking institutions. This surprising finding is consistent with legislators who are subject to motivated reasoning. In an information-rich world, they disproportionately respond to information in line with their bias unless they must make a large accuracy correction. This article tests, for the first time, motivated information processing among legislators. It finds evidence that Democrats engage in motivated information processing and that the effects of it are felt more on social spending and in off-election years.
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Kevin Esterling, Archon Fung & Taeku Lee
Harvard Working Paper, October 2013
Abstract:
This paper evaluates the dynamics of small group persuasion within a large scale randomized deliberative experiment, in particular whether persuasion in this context is driven by the ideological composition of small groups, to which participants were randomly assigned. In these discussions focusing on U.S. fiscal policy, ideological persuasion occurs but does not tend to be polarizing, a result that is inconsistent with the "law'' of group polarization identified in small group research. In addition, the results demonstrate the presence of persuasion that is net of ideological considerations, a residual form of preference change that we label "deliberative persuasion.'' The direction and magnitude of deliberative persuasion are each associated with participants' perceptions of the informativeness of the discussion, but not with the civility or the enjoyableness of the discussion. In addition, informativeness is most closely associated with deliberative persuasion for liberals who come to agree with conservative policies, for conservatives who come to agree with liberal policies, and equally associated for both liberals and conservatives on items that are orthogonal to ideology. The results show that small group dynamics depend heavily on the context in which discussion occurs; that much of the small group experimental work pays little to no attention to this context; and that deliberative institutions are likely to ameliorate many of the pathologies that are often attributed to small group discussion.
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Political Attitudes Bias the Mental Representation of a Presidential Candidate’s Face
Alison Young, Kyle Ratner & Russell Fazio
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using a technique known as reverse correlation image classification, we demonstrate that the physical face of Mitt Romney represented in people’s minds varies as a function of their attitudes toward Mitt Romney. This provides evidence that attitudes bias how we see something as concrete and well-learned as the face of a political candidate during an election. Practically, this implies that citizens may not merely interpret political information about a candidate to fit their opinion, but that they may construct a political world where they literally see candidates differently.
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The Politics of the Face-in-the-Crowd
Mark Mills et al.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent work indicates that the more conservative one is, the faster one is to fixate on negative stimuli, whereas the less conservative one is, the faster one is to fixate on positive stimuli. The present series of experiments used the face-in-the-crowd paradigm to examine whether variability in the efficiency with which positive and negative stimuli are detected underlies such speed differences. Participants searched for a discrepant facial expression (happy or angry) amid a varying number of neutral distractors (Experiments 1 and 4). A combination of response time and eye movement analyses indicated that variability in search efficiency explained speed differences for happy expressions, whereas variability in post-selectional processes explained speed differences for angry expressions. These results appear to be emotionally mediated as search performance did not vary with political temperament when displays were inverted (Experiment 2) or when controlled processing was required for successful task performance (Experiment 3). Taken together, the present results suggest political temperament is at least partially instantiated by attentional biases for emotional material.
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The influence of political ideology on trust in science
Aaron McCright et al.
Environmental Research Letters, November 2013
Abstract:
In recent years, some scholars, journalists, and science advocates have promoted broad claims that 'conservatives distrust science' or 'conservatives oppose science'. We argue that such claims may oversimplify in ways that lead to empirical inaccuracies. The Anti-Reflexivity Thesis suggests a more nuanced examination of how political ideology influences views about science. The Anti-Reflexivity Thesis hypothesizes that some sectors of society mobilize to defend the industrial capitalist order from the claims of environmentalists and some environmental scientists that the current economic system causes serious ecological and public health problems. The Anti-Reflexivity Thesis expects that conservatives will report significantly less trust in, and support for, science that identifies environmental and public health impacts of economic production (i.e., impact science) than liberals. It also expects that conservatives will report a similar or greater level of trust in, and support for, science that provides new inventions or innovations for economic production (i.e., production science) than liberals. Analyzing data from a recent survey experiment with 798 adults recruited from the US general public, our results confirm the expectations of the Anti-Reflexivity Thesis. Conservatives report less trust in impact scientists but greater trust in production scientists than their liberal counterparts. We argue that further work that increases the accuracy and depth of our understanding of the relationship between political ideology and views about science is likely crucial for addressing the politicized science-based issues of our age.
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Visual Political Knowledge: A Different Road to Competence?
Markus Prior
Journal of Politics, January 2014, Pages 41-57
Abstract:
Even though visual images and television are ubiquitous in politics, surveys rarely use visuals to assess what people know about politics. I measure visual political knowledge in a series of experiments that ask otherwise identical questions using either relevant visual elements or words only. These experiments were embedded in two representative surveys of U.S. residents conducted in 2003 and 2008. Adding a visual to an otherwise identical knowledge question causes, on average, a small but significant increase in correct answers. Treatment effects are larger for a subset of the population: women, older people, the less educated, and people with a visual cognitive style all perform disproportionately better on visual knowledge questions. Validation shows that visual knowledge is as indicative of civic competence as verbal knowledge. Hence, traditional verbal-only questions miss a significant amount of political knowledge. Several population segments previously deemed ill-informed in fact store some political information visually.
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Support for radical left ideologies in Europe
Mark Visser et al.
European Journal of Political Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article examines support for radical left ideologies in 32 European countries. It thus extends the relatively scant empirical research available in this field. The hypotheses tested are derived mainly from group-interest theory. Data are deployed from the 2002–2010 European Social Surveys (N = 174,868), supplemented by characteristics at the country level. The results show that, also in the new millennium, unemployed people and those with a lower income are more likely to support a radical left ideology. This is only partly explained by their stronger opinion that governments should take measures to reduce income differences. In contrast to expectations, the findings show that greater income inequality within a country is associated with reduced likelihood of an individual supporting a radical left ideology. Furthermore, cross-national differences in the likelihood of supporting the radical left are strongly associated with whether a country has a legacy of an authoritarian regime.
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Nativist but not alienated: A comparative perspective on the radical right vote in Western Europe
Kirill Zhirkov
Party Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the present study I use large-scale survey data to compare radical right voting to other forms of electoral behavior in Western Europe. The chosen method, multilevel multinomial logistic regression, allows, first, distinguishing among voting for several party families as well as abstention and, second, controlling for differences between countries and survey rounds. I find that the radical right electorate is not characterized by social alienation or anti-modern values; these characteristics are more likely to be encountered among people who abstain from elections. Radical right voting is most strongly motivated by political attitudes, namely by negative perception of immigration, political mistrust, opposition to income redistribution, and – rather unexpectedly – political satisfaction. My analysis also shows that radical right parties in different West European countries attract voters with similar ideological orientations which remain relatively stable over time. In the conclusion I discuss the implications of my findings for comparative research on the radical right party family.