What can disability teach us about the psychology of political participation ? Disability highlights issues of personal control and identity, which are important in the disability rights movement and are also linked to political participation in general. This study uses in-depth interviews and written questionnaires to examine these issues among 64 people— both political activists and nonactivists—who have spinal cord injuries (SCI's). It explores the connections among political involvement, locus of control, personal efficacy, experiences of stigma and discrimination, and views of disability. The interviews reveal a wide variety of responses to SCI, some discouraging but others encouraging political involvement. Political participation is discouraged by isolation and decreased resources that contribute to fatalism, as well as by efforts to "normalize" and distance oneself from others with disabilities, or by a focus on self-help following SCI. The political activists—some of whom had such responses in th...

Disability and the Psychology of Political Participation

Empirical inconsistencies in the locus of control and social-political action literature are noted and attributed, in part, to observers' tendency to overlook the potentially crucial role of the personal meanings of the actor's political involvement. Increased attention to these motivational constructs and to the development of techniques for assessing them is encouraged.

Research on Internal-External Control and Social-Political Activism: A Note and Bibliography

https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/downloads/bc386j77g

Direct contact, media use, and voting

This study examines political persuading, trying to influence another during a political campaign, by women between 1964 and 1984. Data for the study are drawn from the American National Election Studies surveys done during each Presidential election campaign in those years. Political persuading by women increased significantly during this period, but still lagged behind men's rates of persuading. This study explores the antecedents of women's political persuading as represented in two constructs, “access” and “competence.” Competence (education, age cohort and news media use) contributed significantly to explaining women's political persuading during this time. Access, opportunities to persuade inferred from parenting, marital, and employment status, had little effect. A path model of competence variables found that news media use contributed significantly to explaining persuading beyond the impacts of education and generation. These findings modify previous explanations of American women's political par...

Sources of access and competence in women's political persuading, 1964–1984

https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/downloads/fx719m772

Authoritarian Preference and Locus of Control in Russia

Summary In predicting the voting behavior of 18- or 19-year-old college students voting for the first time and of older college students who had been eligible to vote in a previous election, Rotter's (6) I-E Scale and Mirel's (3) Political Activity Factor derived from that scale were both shown to be of some value but in an inconsistent fashion. The Political Activity Factor was significantly related to whether female voters, both those voting for the first time and those previously eligible to vote, did, in fact, vote, but was not related to the voting behavior of males. For male first-time voters there was a significant correlation between whether Ss voted and total I-E score. This relation was not significant for older male voters or for female voters, however. Stronger, more consistent predictions were obtained from self-prediction and previous behavior for all Ss, regardless of age or sex. Parental voting behavior was not related to the voting of the student subjects.

M. Eugene Scarboro

Papers

Locus of Control and the Prediction of Voting Behavior in College Students.