Blame game
Framing and Blame Attribution in Populist Rhetoric
Ethan Busby, Joshua Gubler & Kirk Hawkins
Journal of Politics, April 2019, Pages 616-630
Abstract:
The rhetoric of populist politicians is an important part of their appeal; however, little is known about how that rhetoric operates. Drawing on two large experiments conducted with American adults, we show that frames encouraging individuals to consider political problems in dispositional terms prompt populist expressions, while an encouragement to consider these same problems situationally does not. In our second experiment, we connect this framing change to voting intentions and find that subjects exposed to dispositional frames are more likely to express support for Donald Trump and less likely to express support for Hillary Clinton than subjects exposed to situational frames. We find the same pattern when we compare Bernie Sanders with Clinton but not when we compare Trump with Sanders. Importantly, the impact is contingent on preexisting populist attitudes; subjects with lower populist attitudes are more likely to demonstrate an increase in expressed populism and support for populist candidates.
Party hacks and true believers: The effect of party affiliation on political preferences
Eric Gould & Esteban Klor
Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines the effect of party affiliation on an individual's political views. To do this, we exploit the party realignment that occurred in the U.S. due to abortion becoming a more prominent and highly partisan issue over time. We show that abortion was not a highly partisan issue in 1982, but a person's abortion views in 1982 led many to switch parties over time as the two main parties diverged in their stances on this issue. We find that voting for a given political party in 1996, due to the individual's initial views on abortion in 1982, has a substantial effect on a person's political, social, and economic attitudes in 1997. These findings are stronger for highly partisan political issues, and are robust to controlling for a host of personal views and characteristics in 1982 and 1997. As individuals realigned their party affiliation in accordance with their initial abortion views, their other political views followed suit.
Are Biased Media Bad for Democracy?
Stephane Wolton
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article assesses the normative and positive claims regarding the consequences of biased media using a political agency framework that includes a strategic voter, polarized politicians, and news providers. My model predicts that voters are always better informed with unbiased than with biased outlets even when the latter have opposite ideological preferences. However, biased media may improve voter welfare. Contrary to several scholars' fears, partisan news providers are not always bad for democracy. My theoretical findings also have important implications for empirical analyses of the electoral consequences of changes in the media environment. The impact of left‐wing and right‐wing biased outlets depends on the partisan identity of officeholders. Empirical findings may, thus, not be comparable across studies or even over time within a study. Existing empirical works are unlikely to measure the consequences of biased media, as researchers never observe and can rarely approximate the adequate counterfactual: elections with unbiased news outlets.
Is the Confirmation Bias Bubble Larger Online? Pre-Election Confirmation Bias in Selective Exposure to Online Versus Print Political Information
George David Hooke Pearson & Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick
Mass Communication and Society, forthcoming
Abstract:
The Internet era has often been blamed for a predominant engagement with attitude-consistent information among citizens (labeled confirmation bias), which is thought to hurt political deliberation. This study offers the first rigorous evidence suggesting that online news fosters greater confirmation bias than traditional media. A 2x2 within-subjects experiment presented political articles, varying stance (conservative versus liberal) and medium (online versus print); selective exposure was logged or taped. Data were collected during the U.S. 2016 presidential primaries. As expected in the pre-election context, partisans whose party was anticipated to lose the election (conservatives) did not exhibit confirmation bias. Liberals showed confirmation bias, but only online, suggesting print contexts reduce confirmation bias.
President Trump Stress Disorder: Partisanship, Ethnicity, and Expressive Reporting of Mental Distress After the 2016 Election
Masha Krupenkin et al.
SAGE Open, March 2019
Abstract:
In the aftermath of the 2016 election, many Democrats reported significant increases in stress, depression, and anxiety. Were these increases real, or the product of expressive reporting? Using a unique data set of searches by more than 1 million Bing users before and after the election, we examine the changes in mental-health-related searches among Democrats and Republicans. We then compare these changes to shifts in searches among Spanish-speaking Latinos in the United States. We find that while Democrats may report greater increases in post-election mental distress, their mental health search behavior did not change after the election. On the other hand, Spanish-speaking Latinos had clear, significant, and sustained increases in searches for “depression,” “anxiety,” “therapy,” and antidepressant medications. This suggests that for many Democrats, expressing mental distress after the election was a form of partisan cheerleading.
Partisan Alignment, Performance, and Citizen Approval of Political Actors
Daniel Lyons & Susan Miller
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
There is substantial evidence that citizen assessments of political actors and associated institutions are shaped by shared partisanship. However, much of this evidence comes from citizen evaluations of political actors who are policy generalists — officials elected with broad policy jurisdictions (e.g., chief executives and legislators). We suggest that citizen assessments of policy specialists — officials elected with relatively narrow policy jurisdictions (e.g., labor commissioners and education secretaries) — may be shaped to a lesser degree by shared partisan leanings than evaluations of policy generalists. Using a survey experiment, we find evidence that, among out-partisans, favorable performance information has a greater positive effect for specialists than generalists, highlighting one way in which shared partisanship may be less influential for evaluations of specialists. These results may help to provide insight into the diversity of partisanship we see across policy generalists and specialists within the same governments and have potential implications for accountability.
The Politics of Embarrassment: Considerations on How Norm-Transgressions of Political Representatives Shape Nation-Wide Communication of Emotions on Social Media
Frieder Paulus et al.
Frontiers in Communication, March 2019
Abstract:
In this article, we hypothesize, and then demonstrate, that experiences of embarrassment have significantly increased in the United States, due in part, to the current situation in American politics under President Donald Trump. We provide support for our hypothesis by conducting both qualitative and quantitative analyses of Twitter posts in the U.S. obtained from the Crimson Hexagon database. Next, based on literature from social psychology, social neuroscience, and political theory, we propose a two-step process explaining why Trump's behavior has caused people in the U.S. to feel more embarrassment. First, compared to former representatives, Trump violates social norms in a manner that seems intentional, and second, these intentional norm violations specifically threaten the social integrity of in-group members — in this case, U.S. citizens. We discuss how these norm violations relate to the behavior of currently represented citizens and contextualize our rationale in recent changes of political representation and the public sphere. We conclude by proposing that more frequent, nation-wide experiences of embarrassment on behalf of the representative may motivate political actions to prevent further harm to individuals' self-concepts and protect social integrity.
The Complex Relation Between Receptivity to Pseudo-Profound Bullshit and Political Ideology
Artur Nilsson, Arvid Erlandsson & Daniel Västfjäll
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
This research systematically mapped the relationship between political ideology and receptivity to pseudo-profound bullshit—that is, obscure sentences constructed to impress others rather than convey truth. Among Swedish adults (N = 985), bullshit receptivity was (a) robustly positively associated with socially conservative (vs. liberal) self-placement, resistance to change, and particularly binding moral intuitions (loyalty, authority, purity); (b) associated with centrism on preference for equality and even leftism (when controlling for other aspects of ideology) on economic ideology self-placement; and (c) lowest among right-of-center social liberal voters and highest among left-wing green voters. Most of the results held up when we controlled for the perceived profundity of genuine aphorisms, cognitive reflection, numeracy, information processing bias, gender, age, education, religiosity, and spirituality. The results are supportive of theoretical accounts that posit ideological asymmetries in cognitive orientation, while also pointing to the existence of bullshit receptivity among both right- and left-wingers.
Political Legacies: Understanding Their Significance to Contemporary Political Debates
Christian Fong, Neil Malhotra & Yotam Margalit
PS: Political Science & Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Politicians bequeath an important legacy after they leave office: the public’s memories of their time in office. Indeed, the media often discuss legacy concerns as a key motivation of politicians. Yet, there has been little empirical analysis of how politicians’ legacies are interpreted and used by the mass public. Analyzing millions of comments from online discussion forums, we show that citizens frequently mobilize memories of past politicians in their discussions of current events. A randomized survey experiment rationalizes such invocations of past politicians: they bolster the persuasiveness of contemporary arguments — particularly bad ones — but only when made in the context of a policy domain specifically associated with a past politician. Our findings suggest that politicians have a strong interest in cultivating a positive, broad, and enduring legacy because memories of them influence policy debates long after they leave office.
The Influence of Existential Threat and Tolerance Salience on Anti‐Islamic Attitudes in American Politics
Kenneth Vail, Emily Courtney & Jamie Arndt
Political Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Fierce public discussion has centered on anti‐Islamic attitudes and tolerance in America and the West more broadly. The present research explored whether the awareness of mortality (a common theme in politics, e.g., war/terrorism, health care, abortion, and so on) and tolerance salience might influence (1) the endorsement of anti‐Islamic attitudes in American politics and (2) political orientation. Study 1 (n = 79) was conducted in lab and Study 2 (preregistered, n = 396) replicated it online; both obtained the same results. In a neutral‐value‐prime condition, American participants reminded of mortality (vs. control topic) more strongly endorsed a Congressman’s anti‐Islamic statements about Rep. Ellison. However, in a tolerance‐value‐prime condition, participants reminded of mortality maintained their acceptance of Rep. Ellison’s beliefs and practices. Political orientation was not impacted. Implications for terror management theory (TMT), other theories of existential dynamics and motivated conservative political ideology, and both recent and contemporary American politics are discussed.
Beyond “Heartless Conservative” and “Bleeding Heart Liberal” Caricatures: How Religiosity Shapes the Relationship Between Political Orientation and Empathy
Scott Schieman, Alex Bierman & Laura Upenieks
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Is political orientation associated with self‐reported empathy? Popular caricatures frame political orientation in terms of the “heartless conservative” and the “bleeding heart liberal.” Yet, previous research has produced findings that present mixed evidence to support these caricatures. Using data from the 2004 General Social Survey, analyses show that the caricatures of the caring liberal and the cold‐hearted conservative are supported by results for empathy — in which conservatives have lower levels of empathy than liberals — but this pattern holds only when individuals also have low levels of religiosity. In the context of high religiosity, self‐identified conservatives do not have lower empathy than self‐identified liberals, net of a host of sociodemographic characteristics. Our observations demonstrate that patterns in empathy across political orientation are evident only when levels of different forms of religiosity are considered.
The Blue Check of Credibility: Does Account Verification Matter When Evaluating News on Twitter?
Stephanie Edgerly & Emily Vraga
Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, April 2019, Pages 283-287
Abstract:
The increased reliance on social network sites for news and the proliferation of partisan news have refocused scholarly attention on how people judge credibility online. Twitter has faced scrutiny regarding their practices in assigning the “verified” status to Twitter accounts, but little work has investigated whether users apply this cue in making assessments for information quality. Using an experimental design, we test whether the Twitter verification mark contributes to perceptions of information and account credibility among news organizations. We additionally consider how account ambiguity and account congruence with political beliefs condition this relationship. Our results suggest little attention is paid to the verification mark when judging credibility, even when little other information is provided about the account or the content. Instead, account ambiguity and congruence dominate credibility assessments of news organizations. We propose that Twitter may need to revise their verification badges to increase their salience or provide more information to users. Currently, users appear to rely on other cues than the verification label when judging information quality.