Showing papers in "Political Behavior in 2010"

When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions

Abstract: An extensive literature addresses citizen ignorance, but very little research focuses on misperceptions. Can these false or unsubstantiated beliefs about politics be corrected? Previous studies have not tested the efficacy of corrections in a realistic format. We conducted four experiments in which subjects read mock news articles that included either a misleading claim from a politician, or a misleading claim and a correction. Results indicate that corrections frequently fail to reduce misperceptions among the targeted ideological group. We also document several instances of a “backfire effect” in which corrections actually increase misperceptions among the group in question.

Clearer Cues, More Consistent Voters: A Benefit of Elite Polarization

Abstract: Scholars typically argue that elite polarization has only negative consequences for American politics. I challenge this view by demonstrating that elite polarization, by clarifying where the parties stand on the issues of the day, causes ordinary voters to adopt more consistent attitudes. Scholars have made such claims in the past, but because only observational data has been available, demonstrating a cause-and-effect relationship has proven to be difficult. I use original experiments to verify that there is a small but significant causal link between elite polarization and voter consistency. These findings have important normative implications for our understanding of the consequences of elite polarization, the role of political parties in a modern democracy, and the standards scholars use to assess citizen competence and participation.

The Impact of Gender Stereotyped Evaluations on Support for Women Candidates

Abstract: In 2009, women are still dramatically underrepresented in elected office in the United States. Though the reasons for this are complex, public attitudes toward this situation are no doubt of importance. While a number of scholars have demonstrated that women candidates do not suffer at the ballot box because of their sex, we should not assume that this means that voter attitudes about gender are irrelevant to politics. Indeed, individual attitudes towards women’s representation in government and a desire for greater descriptive representation of women may shape attitudes and behaviors in situations when people are faced with a woman candidate. This project provides a more complete understanding of the determinants of the public’s desire (or lack thereof) to see more women in elective office and support them in different circumstances. The primary mechanism proposed to explain these attitudes is gender stereotypes. Gender stereotypes about the abilities and traits of political women and men are clear and well documented and could easily serve to shape an individual’s evaluations about the appropriate level and place for women in office. Drawing on an original survey of 1039 U.S. adults, and evaluating both issue and trait stereotypes, I demonstrate the ways in which sex stereotypes do and do not influence public willingness to support women in various electoral situations.

How Explicit Racial Prejudice Hurt Obama in the 2008 Election

Abstract: Some commentators claim that white Americans put prejudice behind them when evaluating presidential candidates in 2008. Previous research examining whether white racism hurts black candidates has yielded mixed results. Fortunately, the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama provides an opportunity to examine more rigorously whether prejudice disadvantages black candidates. I also make use of an innovation in the measurement of racial stereotypes in the 2008 American National Election Studies survey, which yields higher levels of reporting of racial stereotypes among white respondents. I find that negative stereotypes about blacks significantly eroded white support for Barack Obama. Further, racial stereotypes do not predict support for previous Democratic presidential candidates or current prominent Democrats, indicating that white voters punished Obama for his race rather than his party affiliation. Finally, prejudice had a particularly large impact on the voting decisions of Independents and a substantial impact on Democrats but very little influence on Republicans.

Masculine Republicans and Feminine Democrats: Gender and Americans’ Explicit and Implicit Images of the Political Parties

Abstract: During the past three decades Americans have come to view the parties increasingly in gendered terms of masculinity and femininity. Utilizing three decades of American National Election Studies data and the results of a cognitive reaction-time experiment, this paper demonstrates empirically that these connections between party images and gender stereotypes have been forged at the explicit level of the traits that Americans associate with each party, and also at the implicit level of unconscious cognitive connections between gender and party stereotypes. These connections between the parties and masculinity and femininity have important implications for citizens’ political cognition and for the study of American political behavior.

Affect, Social Pressure and Prosocial Motivation: Field Experimental Evidence of the Mobilizing Effects of Pride, Shame and Publicizing Voting Behavior

Abstract: Citizens generally try to cooperate with social norms, especially when norm compliance is monitored and publicly disclosed. A recent field experimental study demonstrates that civic appeals that tap into social pressure motivate electoral participation appreciably (Gerber et al., Am Polit Sci Rev 102:33–48, 2008). Building on this work, I use field experimental techniques to examine further the socio-psychological mechanisms that underpin this effect. I report the results of three field experiments conducted in the November 2007 elections designed to test whether voters are more effectively mobilized by appeals that engender feelings of pride (for reinforcing or perpetuating social and cultural values or norms) or shame (for violating social and cultural values or norms). Voters in Monticello, Iowa and Holland, Michigan were randomly assigned to receive a mailing that indicated the names of all verified voters in the November 2007 election would be published in the local newspaper (pride treatment). In Ely, Iowa voters were randomly assigned to receive a mailing that indicated the names of all verified nonvoters would be published in the local newspaper (shame treatment). The experimental findings suggest shame may be more effective than pride on average, but this may depend on who the recipients are. Pride motivates compliance with voting norms only amongst high-propensity voters, while shame mobilizes both high- and low-propensity voters.

Explicit Evidence on the Import of Implicit Attitudes: The IAT and Immigration Policy Judgments

Abstract: The implicit association test (IAT) is increasingly used to detect automatic attitudes. Yet a fundamental question remains about this measure: How well can it predict individual judgments? Though studies find that IAT scores shape individual evaluations, these inquiries do not account for an array of well-validated, theoretically relevant variables, thus raising the challenge of omitted variable bias. For scholars using the IAT, the risk here is one of misattributing to implicit attitudes what can be better explained by alternate and rigorous self-reports of explicit constructs. This paper examines the IAT’s performance in the context of U.S. immigration politics. Using a representative web survey of adults, I demonstrate the IAT effectively captures implicit attitude toward Latino immigrants. Critically, I then show these attitudes substantively mold individual preferences for illegal and legal immigration policy, net of political ideology, socio-economic concerns, and well-established measures of intolerance toward immigrants, such as authoritarianism and ethnocentrism. Combined, these results suggest the IAT measures attitudes that are non-redundant and potent predictors of individual political judgments.

Does Economic Inequality Depress Electoral Participation? Testing the Schattschneider Hypothesis

Abstract: Nearly a half-century ago, E.E. Schattschneider wrote that the high abstention and large differences between the rates of electoral participation of richer and poorer citizens found in the United States were caused by high levels of economic inequality. Despite increasing inequality and stagnant or declining voting rates since then, Schattschneider’s hypothesis remains largely untested. This article takes advantage of the variation in inequality across states and over time to remedy this oversight. Using a multilevel analysis that combines aspects of state context with individual survey responses in 144 gubernatorial elections, it finds that citizens of states with greater income inequality are less likely to vote and that income inequality increases income bias in the electorate, lending empirical support to Schattschneider’s argument.

A Genetic Basis for Social Trust

Abstract: A propensity to believe that fellow citizens will not act against our interests in social and economic transactions has been identified as key to the effective functioning of democratic polities. Yet the causes of this type of ‘generalized’ or ‘social’ trust are far from clear. To date, researchers within the social and political sciences have focused almost exclusively on social-developmental and political/institutional features of individuals and societies as the primary causal influences. In this paper we investigate the intriguing possibility that social trust might have a genetic, as well as an environmental basis. We use data collected from samples of monozygotic and dizygotic twins to estimate the additive genetic, shared environmental, and non-shared environmental components of trust. Our results show that the majority of the variance in a multi-item trust scale is accounted for by an additive genetic factor. On the other hand, the environmental influences experienced in common by sibling pairs have no discernable effect; the only environmental influences appear to be those that are unique to the individual. Our findings problematise the widely held view that the development of social trust occurs through a process of familial socialization at an early stage of the life course.

An Experiment Testing the Relative Effectiveness of Encouraging Voter Participation by Inducing Feelings of Pride or Shame

Abstract: Prior experimental research has demonstrated that voter turnout rises substantially when people receive mailings that indicate whether they voted in previous elections. This effect suggests that voters are sensitive to whether their compliance with the norm of voting is being monitored. The present study extends this line of research by investigating whether disclosure of past participation has a stronger effect on turnout when it calls attention to a past abstention or a past vote. A sample of 369,211 registered voters who voted in just one of two recent elections were randomly assigned to receive no mail, mail that encouraged them to vote, and mail that both encouraged them to vote and indicated their turnout in one previous election. The latter type of mailing randomly reported either the election in which they voted or the one in which they abstained. Results suggest that mailings disclosing past voting behavior had strong effects on voter turnout and that these effects were significantly enhanced when it disclosed an abstention in a recent election.

Is There Backlash to Social Pressure? A Large-scale Field Experiment on Voter Mobilization

Abstract: Using social pressure to mobilize voters has generated impressive increases in turnout (Gerber et al Am Polit Sci Rev 102:33–48, 2008) However, voters may have negative reactions to social pressure treatments that reduce their effectiveness Social psychologists have observed this ‘reactance’ to persuasive pressure about other behavior, but it has been overlooked in voter mobilization Using a large-scale field experiment, we find treatments designed to reduce reactance are just as effective as heavy-handed social pressure treatments in mobilizing voters The success of gentler social pressure treatments should make the use of social pressure more palatable to voter mobilization organizations

Trust in Government Among British Muslims: The Importance of Migration Status

Abstract: This article engages debates about Muslim integration in Western societies by analyzing trust in government among British Muslims. A central finding of the article is that British Muslims are more likely than Christians to have high levels of trust in government. To account for these outcomes, I highlight the importance of general political satisfaction and political efficacy as opposed to the more specifically assimilation and segregation-related variables identified by the literature on minority attitudes. In addition, I posit that Muslims are more likely to have positive political attitudes because they are more likely than Christians to be migrants and migrants are more likely than natives to have optimistic evaluations of British society. I claim that these migration dynamics help account for much of the attitudinal differences between Muslims and Christians.

A Computational Model of the Citizen as Motivated Reasoner: Modeling the Dynamics of the 2000 Presidential Election

Abstract: A computational model of political attitudes and beliefs is developed that incorporates contemporary psychological theory with well-documented findings from electoral behavior. We compare this model, John Q. Public (JQP), to a Bayesian learning model via computer simulations of observed changes in candidate evaluations over the 2000 presidential campaign. In these simulations, JQP reproduces responsiveness, persistence, and polarization of political attitudes, while the Bayesian learning model has difficulty accounting for persistence and polarization. We conclude that “motivated reasoning”—the discounting of information that challenges priors along with the uncritical acceptance of attitude-consistent information—is the reason our model can better account for persistence and polarization in candidate evaluations.

The Enduring Effects of Social Pressure: Tracking Campaign Experiments Over a Series of Elections

Abstract: Recent field experiments have demonstrated the powerful effect of social pressure messages on voter turnout. This research note considers the question of whether these interventions’ effects persist over a series of subsequent elections. Tracking more than one million voters from six experimental studies, we find strong and statistically significant enduring effects one and sometimes two years after the initial communication.

The Role of Media Distrust in Partisan Voting

Abstract: As an institution, the American news media have become highly unpopular in recent decades. Yet, we do not thoroughly understand the consequences of this unpopularity for mass political behavior. While several existing studies find that media trust moderates media effects, they do not examine the consequences of this for voting. This paper explores those consequences by analyzing voting behavior in the 2004 presidential election. It finds, consistent with most theories of persuasion and with studies of media effects in other contexts, that media distrust leads voters to discount campaign news and increasingly rely on their partisan predispositions as cues. This suggests that increasing aggregate levels of media distrust are an important source of greater partisan voting.

Social Networks and the Affective Impact of Political Disagreement

Abstract: Although few studies have explored the link between emotion and political talk, here I argue that political disagreement depolarizes emotional reactions via information exchanged in social networks. Analyzing data from the ANES 2008–2009 Panel Study, several conclusions are drawn. First, disagreement increases negative emotions and decreases positive emotions toward the in-party candidate, and also increases positive emotions and decreases negative emotions toward the out-party candidate. In other words, disagreement depolarizes emotions toward political candidates. Second, the affective impact of disagreement does not vary with political knowledge. Finally, positive emotions toward the out-party candidate and negative emotions toward the in-party candidate reduce political interest, candidate issue placement accuracy, and political participation. Overall, this study develops important theoretical connections between affect and political talk that have implications for the value of political disagreement.

Introduction to Social Pressure and Voting: New Experimental Evidence

Abstract: For decades, political scientists have puzzled over problems of collective action that arise when large numbers of people are asked to contribute to a public good. When any one person's contribution to the collective cause is negligible and the outcome can be enjoyed even by people who do not contribute, collective action fizzles because no individual has an incentive to sacrifice for a collective cause. This grim analytic framework is often applied to voting, where individuals are asked to expend time and effort, yet have little chance of casting a pivotal vote (Downs 1957). The fact that large numbers of people do in fact vote has led scholars to theorize about the "selective incentives" (Olson 1965) that induce people to participate in elections. One hypothesis is that people derive intrinsic satisfaction from casting their ballots. They either enjoy the act of voting per se or feel good about themselves for advancing a partisan cause or honoring a civic obligation. A second hypothesis, and the focus of this symposium, posits that people receive sidepayments when they contribute to a collective cause. In electoral systems where bribes and other material inducements are rare, incentives are thought to be social in nature: voters are rewarded by the approbation of others, while nonvoters are criticized or shunned. In other words, people are rewarded or punished according to whether they comply with social norms (Cialdini and Trost 1985), such as the expectation that citizens ought to participate in elections. When authors in this volume use the term "social pressure," they have in mind communications that play upon a basic human drive to win praise and avoid chastisement. Social pressure may be exerted by praising those who uphold norms or scorning those who violate them. Social pressure increases with the amount of praise or scorn, which is why social pressure is thought to be amplified when a person's compliance with social norms is disclosed to others. For this reason, social pressure communications typically involve three ingredients: they admonish the

Public Accountability and Political Participation: Effects of a Face-to-Face Feedback Intervention on Voter Turnout of Public Housing Residents

Abstract: Low turnout among the urban poor has implications for democratic representation. The fact that turnout among the economically disadvantaged is especially low in municipal elections means that citizens most in need of services provided at the local level may not be represented in policy decisions that affect their daily lives. This paper reports the results of an experiment that compares the effects of two voter mobilization interventions: traditional canvassing appeals and face-to-face exchanges in which canvassers distribute a feedback intervention consisting of printed records of individual voter histories. In contrast to previous studies, this experiment measures the effectiveness of using social pressure to mobilize turnout among relatively infrequent voters in a low salience election. The campaign was implemented by a credible tenant advocacy organization within the context of a municipal election; the sample consisted of registered voters in two Boston public housing developments. I find that the feedback intervention dramatically increased voter turnout. Turnout among those reached by canvassers with voter histories was approximately 15–18 percentage points higher than turnout in the control group, an effect that is approximately 10 percentage points larger in magnitude than that of standard face-to-face mobilization.

Does Gender Composition Affect Group Decision Outcomes? Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment

Abstract: There are good reasons to expect that greater proportions of women in decision making bodies shape decision making in important ways that are not fully considered in the current literature. In the present study, a conceptual framework is presented that differs significantly from other explanations for gendered group decision making. Data from an original laboratory experiment offers support for the hypothesis that group outcomes will vary based on gender composition due to differing process strategies used by men and women. These data illuminate how gender diversity in decision making bodies is likely to shape policy making, as well as enhance our understanding of how policymaking is itself gendered.

The Neglected Power of Elite Opinion Leadership to Produce Antipathy Toward the News Media: Evidence from a Survey Experiment

Abstract: Today, most Americans dislike the news media as an institution. This has led to considerable debate about why people dislike the media and how their public standing could be improved. This paper contributes to this literature by using a survey experiment to test the effect of several different considerations on evaluations of the media. It finds, consistent with the broader literature on political persuasion, that elite partisan opinion leadership can powerfully shape these attitudes. Additionally, it finds that tabloid coverage creates antipathy toward the press regardless of predispositions and that horserace coverage has a negative effect on opinions among politically aware citizens on both sides of the political spectrum. Contrary to some claims in the literature, this study finds no detectable effect of news negativity.

Cross-Cutting Messages and Political Tolerance: An Experiment Using Evangelical Protestants

Abstract: Democratic theorists believe that exposure to rationales for conflicting views augments deliberation and tolerance. Evidence suggests that people are more tolerant of opposing groups after being exposed to alternative points of view, yet it is unclear how source credibility and previous exposure to the source moderates this effect. Using experimental survey data from a sample of evangelical Protestant PAC donors, I manipulate Christian Right activists’ exposure to dissonant messages on immigration reform and capital punishment and vary the source of these messages. I find that when the opposing viewpoints are attributed to a religious leader generally found outside the Christian Right social movement (a mainline Protestant), evangelicals are less tolerant than when attributed to a religious leader sometimes found within the movement (a Catholic). Moreover, I find the amount of contact with the respective religious group moderates source effects. In this way, the study reveals how social networks may moderate the effect of elite discourse on public opinion.

Revisiting the Political Theory of Party Identification

Abstract: Recently, Lewis-Beck et al. (The American Voter Revisited, 2008b) re-created The American Voter using contemporary data. Although these scholars ultimately conclude that voters today behave in ways that are consistent with the account of voting behavior presented in The American Voter, their work nonetheless highlights the importance and value of re-examining past ideas. Given that Lewis-Beck et al. have re-tested the findings of The American Voter, it is both timely and worthwhile to re-examine Fiorina’s (Retrospective voting in American national elections, 1981) political theory of party identification, which is often seen as a critique of the theory of party identification presented in The American Voter, using newly available panel data. In this paper, I re-examine Fiorina’s (Retrospective voting in American national elections, 1981) political theory of party identification using data from the 2000–2002–2004 NES panel study. In addition to applying Fiorina’s approach to party identification to new data, as a more robust test of Fiorina’s theory, I develop a model of party identification where changes in party identification are modeled as a function of the actual changes in retrospective political evaluations. Overall, my findings are broadly consistent with the findings from Fiorina’s original model of party identification; however, my analysis suggests that the distribution of opinions in the electorate and elite signals may be important to changes in party identification.

How Sophistication Affected The 2000 Presidential Vote: Traditional Sophistication Measures Versus Conceptualization

Abstract: The 2000 Presidential vote is modeled using voter sophistication as a source of heterogeneity. Three measures of sophistication are employed: education, knowledge, and the levels of conceptualization. Interacting them with vote predictors shows little meaningful variation. However, removing the assumption of ordinality from the levels of conceptualization uncovers considerable heterogeneity in the importance of the vote predictors in explaining the vote. Thus, different sophistication measures should not be treated as equivalent, nor combined as if they are equivalent. Few of the issue and candidate components are relevant to those with a less sophisticated understanding of politics. The opposite partisan attachments of the two most sophisticated groups suggest that sophistication’s impact on the vote can be confounded by partisanship.

The Contextual Causes of Issue and Party Voting in American Presidential Elections

Abstract: This paper analyzes the influence of the two most commonly examined causes of presidential vote choice, policy preferences and party identification. The focus is on change across elections in order to assess how the effects of issues and partisanship respond to the larger political context in which voters make their decisions. In contrast to party centric views of politics, I find little direct responsiveness to party issue contrast and substantial influence of candidate issue contrast. Further, I find that leading hypotheses for the “resurgence in partisanship” are not consistent with some important facts suggesting that the explanation remains elusive.

The Dynamics of Critical Realignments: An Analysis Across Time and Space

Abstract: Much of the scholarly interest in critical realignments results from the pivotal role that ordinary citizens play during these periods. By altering their voting behavior, citizens hold political elites accountable and forge non-incremental change in policy outputs. A central question regarding realignments is thus how are citizens changing their behavior to hold elites accountable? Are citizens producing realignments by converting from one party to the opposition? Are previous non-voters becoming mobilized in response to emerging issues or crises? Or are one party’s supporters disproportionately abstaining from voting and altering the partisan balance in the process? This article makes four central contributions to our understanding of these realignment processes, or dynamics. We present a theoretical framework for the analysis of realignment dynamics, based upon the Michigan model of voting and its conception of the normal vote. Where previous dynamics studies have collectively only examined two realignments, we examine the dynamics of all presidential realignments in American electoral history. Where previous studies have often focused on national, sectional, or state levels of analysis, we focus on city- and county-level realignments, a critical advancement for an inherently local-level phenomenon such as critical realignments. Finally, unlike previous studies, we identify the factors that promote particular realignment dynamics. We find that the conversion of active partisans has produced most of the enduring change in voting behavior in the United States, with the relative contribution of different dynamics varying both across time and space. Political factors such as the strength of state and local parties and demographic factors such as changes in the size of local immigrant populations have each favored particular realignment dynamics in American electoral history.

An Alan Keyes Effect? Examining Anti-Black Sentiment Among White Evangelicals

Abstract: Given its historical and contemporary importance, it is noteworthy that the relevant literature generally overlooks the role that religion and its accompanying values play in determining support for black candidates. In addressing this question, we review the historical and theological bases of evangelical attitudes toward blacks. We then present experimental results that examine evangelical attitudes toward blacks. We follow this with results from the 2006 Pennsylvania gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races to bolster the experimental findings. Finally, we discuss our findings and their implications for GOP attempts to recruit black candidates who can appeal to moderate white and black voters without losing support from the GOP’s evangelical base.

Taking Threat Seriously: Prejudice, Principle, and Attitudes Toward Racial Policies

Abstract: Drawing from group theories of race-related attitudes and electoral politics, we develop and test how anxiety influences the relative weight of prejudice as a determinant of individuals’ support for racial policies We hypothesize that prejudice will more strongly influence the racial policy preferences of people who are feeling anxious than it will for people who are not Using an experimental design we manipulate subjects’ levels of threat and find significant treatment effects, as hypothesized We find that individuals’ racial policy attitudes are partially conditional on their affective states: individuals who feel anxious report less support for racial policies than those individuals who do not feel anxious, even when this threat is stimulated by non-racial content More broadly, we conclude that affect is central to a better understanding of individuals’ political attitudes and behaviors

Explaining the Decision to Withdraw from a U.S. Presidential Nomination Campaign

Abstract: We contend that a candidate’s decision to exit from a U.S. presidential nomination campaign is a function of three sets of considerations: the potential for profile elevation, party-related costs, and updated perceptions of competitiveness. We analyze data from eleven post-reform presidential nomination campaigns and find support for all three considerations. Specifically, our results suggest that in addition to candidates’ competitiveness, the decision to withdraw is a function of candidates’ closeness to their party and ability to raise their profile. At the same time, some of our results contradict the conventional wisdom regarding presidential nomination campaigns, as we find no evidence that media coverage or cash on hand directly affect the duration of a nomination candidacy.