Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

I Am Not A Hero: Heroic Action Divorces The Hero From The Political Community, Ari Kohen, Brian Riches, Andre Sólo

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Most people who perform a heroic act will, afterward, deny that their actions were heroic and claim that anyone would have done the same, even though that is demonstrably false (and, often, others were present who failed to act heroically at all). The literature on the psychology of heroism has never investigated why this is. This theoretical paper proposes an answer and seeks to provoke exploration of a previously unexplored topic. We note that people who undertake heroic action face a unique conflict: they embody their community’s highest values, while simultaneously breaking norms to stand apart from that community. We …

Donald Trump’S Contribution To The Study Of Politics And The Life Sciences, John Hibbing

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

If the life sciences are to have much to say about politics, there needs to be a universal element to political orientations. In this essay, I argue that the recent prominence of nativist, law-and-order, populist politicians reveals the nature of this universal element. All social units have to address bedrock dilemmas about how to deal with norm violators and how welcoming to be to outsiders as well as to proponents of new lifestyles. Might differences on these core dilemmas be the universal element of political life? Using the followers of one of the most prominent examples of a nativist political …

Differentiating Between Urban Flood Risk As A Unitary Problem And As A Strand In A Braided Problem Set: Implications For Administrative Coordination, Sarah Michaels

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Flood protection is a leading priority for urban water sustainability. Making cities more resilient to flooding has become urgent as the climate changes and as cities increasingly become the loci of human population and resources. Reducing the risk of future flooding in cities often necessitates different jurisdictions working together. They may do so because they confront a shared problem. This was the case in the City of Lincoln, Nebraska, USA, when partnering agencies shared a single focus on reducing flood risk from Beal Slough to the Nebraska State Penitentiary. In contrast, entities may band together to confront braided problems, intertwined …

Wealth And Risk Heterogeneity Effects In Community-Based Wildlife Management: Experimental Evidence, Stefan Carpenter, Ursula W. Kreitmair

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

1. Community-based conservation is a widely adopted wildlife governance approach, but questions remain about the conditions under which this form of wildlife governance achieves success. Particularly, participating communities are often marked by considerable wealth and risk heterogeneities that are driven by differences in livestock or agricultural holdings and varying exposure to wildlife depredation of those holdings.

2. The effect of these types of heterogeneity on successful conservation collective action is understudied, particularly in the case of risk heterogeneity. This lacuna limits policymakers' ability to effectively match the design of community-based programs to their particular settings.

3. Using established behavioural experimental …

Investigating Perceptions Of Out-Groups In Sport And United States Politics, Cody T. Havard, Elizabeth Theiss-Morse

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

The current study investigated how fans and supporters of sport teams and political parties in the United States viewed relevant out-groups and out-group members. Specifically, perceptions of rival sport teams and political parties were compared to determine how fans and supporters differed in their views and likely behaviors toward out-groups. Findings showed that sport fans reported more positive attitudes toward their favorite teams and more negative attitudes of the rival team than in politics. However, political supporters reported more negative perceptions and likely behaviors toward the out-group than fans of sport. Additional analysis revealed that the common in-group influenced perceptions. …

Elections And Post Traumatic Stress: Evidence From The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, Timothy Fraser, Costas Panagopoulos, Kevin Smith

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

The 2020 U.S. presidential election saw rising political tensions among ordinary voters and political elites, with fears of election violence culminating in the January 6th riot. We hypothesized that the 2020 election might have been traumatic for some voters, producing measurable symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We also hypothesized that negative sentiment towards the opposing party correlates with PTSD. We measured PTSD with a modified PCL-5, a validated PTSD screener, for 573 individuals from a nationally representative YouGov sample. We modeled the association between affective polarization and PTSD, controlling for political, demographic, and psychological traits. We estimate that 12.5% …

Economic Values, Social Values And Cultural Animal Theory, Kevin Smith

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Baumeister and Bushman (this issue: Psychological Inquiry 2023, vol. 34, no. 1) offer a cultural animal theory of partisan hostility (hereafter CAT) with the specific aim of explaining the root drivers of political conflict. CAT posits that competition for power revolves around oppositional worldviews reflecting preferences attached to the two primary objectives of all successful societies: amassing and distributing resources. Based on this premise CAT seeks not only to help explain the persistence of the themes motivating political conflict, but also to shed light on the underlying causes of growing levels affective polarization widely documented in the United States and …

Black Trust In Us Legislatures, Ernest Dupree Iii, John R. Hibbing

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Trust is a key part of any political system. Given the very different experiences of Black people and White people in the United States, it is likely that the nature and contours of political trust varies widely from one racial group to the other. In this article, we take advantage of a specially commissioned 2018 survey to compare Black and White trust in American legislative institutions (Congress and the state legislatures). Thanks to an oversample, we also are able to zero in on variations across Black respondents, making it possible to identify the variables that push legislative trust up or …

Why Do Trump’S Authoritarian Followers Resist Covid-19 Authorities? Because They Are Not Really Authoritarian Followers, John Hibbing

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

People’s responses to the threat posed by COVID-19 varied widely. In direct contradiction to the popular theory that Trump supporters prefer to submit to powerful people, Trump’s most enthusiastic followers actually were the most vocal in resisting the urgings of authorities to get vaccinated and to wear masks. I explain this anomaly by showing that Trump’s followers are driven less by a desire for authority and more by a desire to be secure from the threats human outsiders pose to society’s historically dominant racial, language, religious, and cultural group. Far from being authoritarians, the followers of leaders such as Donald …

Reconceptualizing Conservation, S. J. Cooke, Sarah Michaels, E. A. Nyboer, L. Schiller, D. B. R. Littlechild, D. E. L. Hanna, C. D. Robichaud, A. Murdoch, D. Roche, P. Soroye, J. C. Vermaire, V. M. Nguyen, University Of Ottawa,, J. F. Provencher, P. A. Smith, G. W. Mitchell, S. Avery-Gomm, C. M. Davy, R. T. Buxton, T. Rytwinski, L. Fahrig, J. R. Bennett, G. Auld

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Early definitions of conservation focused largely on the end goals of protection or restoration of nature, and the various disciplinary domains that contribute to these ends. Conservation science and practice has evolved beyond being focused on just issues of scarcity and biodiversity decline. To better recognize the inherent links between human behaviour and conservation, “success” in conservation is now being defined in terms that include human rights and needs. We also know that who engages in conservation, and how, dictates the likelihood that conservation science will be embraced and applied to yield conservation gains. Here we present ideas for reconceptualizing …

Politics Is Making Us Sick: The Negative Impact Of Political Engagement On Public Health During The Trump Administration, Kevin Smith

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Objectives To quantify the effect of politics on the physical, psychological, and social health of American adults during the four-year span of the Trump administration.

Methods A previously validated politics and health scale was used to compare health markers in nationally representative surveys administered to separate samples in March 2017 (N = 800) and October 2020 (N = 700). Participants in the 2020 survey were re-sampled approximately two weeks after the 2020 election and health markers were compared to their preelection baselines.

Results Large numbers of Americans reported politics takes a significant toll on a range of health markers—everything from …

Backlash Against The #Metoo Movement: How Women’S Voice Causes Men To Feel Victimized, Jaclyn A. Lisnek, Clara L. Wilkins, Megan E. Wilson, Pierce D. Ekstrom

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Three studies examined whether perceived increase in women’s “voice” (i.e., being heard and taken seriously about sexual assault) contributes to perceptions of bias against men. In Study 1, both men and women who perceived women to have a greater voice related to sexual assault, perceived greater victimization of men. This relationship was stronger for relatively conservative participants. In Study 2, relatively conservative (but not relatively liberal) participants who read about #MeToo perceived greater men’s victimization than those in the control condition. Study 3 examined responses to perceiving that men are victimized by #MeToo. For relatively conservative (but not liberal) men, …

Using Political Psychology To Understand Populism, Intellectual Virtues, And Democratic Backsliding, Ingrid J. Haas

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Political scientists have argued that populism is an ideology that can occur on both the left and right, whereby people begin to see politics as a battle between the people and a powerful elite that fails to represent the people’s interest and are attracted to political candidates who vow to fight corruption. In this chapter, I examine how research in political psychology may help to explain the motivations underlying citizens’ attraction to populist ideologies and political candidates. I argue that the same cognitive processes driving people toward populism are those that undermine the intellectual virtues, which in turn, decreases support …

Agricultural And Food Security Impacts From The 2010 Russia Flash Drought, Eric D. Hunt, Francesco Femia, Caitlin Werrell, Jordan Christian, Jason A. Otkin, Jeff Basara, Martha Anderson, Tyler R. White, Christopher Hain, Robb Randall, Katie Mcgaughey

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

The flash drought and its associated heat wave that affected western Russia in the summer of 2010 had significant cascading agricultural and socioeconomic impacts. Drought indicators sensitive to soil moisture and evapotranspiration (ET) showed that the flash drought began in June 2010, then intensified rapidly and expanded to cover much of western Russia. By early July, almost all of the major wheat producing regions of Russia were experiencing extreme water stress to the winter and spring wheat crops. The timing of the onset of the flash drought was particularly devastating as the period of most rapid intensification overlapped with the …

Do People Really Become More Conservative As They Age?, Johnathan C. Peterson, Kevin Smith, John Hibbing

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Folk wisdom has long held that people become more politically conservative as they grow older, although several empirical studies suggest political attitudes are stable across time. Using data from the Michigan Youth-Parent Socialization Panel Study, we analyze attitudinal change over a major portion of the adult life span.We document changes in party identification, self-reported ideology, and selected issue positions over this time period and place these changes in context by comparing them with contemporaneous national averages. Consistent with previous research but contrary to folk wisdom, our results indicate that political attitudes are remarkably stable over the long term. In contrast …

Ethical Concerns Of Heroism Training, Brian R. Riches, Matt Langdon, Ari Kohen

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Heroism training programs originated in the mid-2000s with the goal to “Train everyday heroes” (Heroic Imagination Project, 2017). Most participants of these programs are students between the ages of 10 and 20. Anecdotal and empirical evidence suggests that these programs may create more courageous and prosocial people (Heiner, 2018; Kohen & Sólo, 2019), however there is very little discussion in the emerging academic field of heroism science about the potential ethical concerns of training minors to be heroes (Beggan, 2019; Franco & Zimbardo, 2016; Franco et al., 2017). With the growth of heroism science scholarship, it would be wise to …

Motivated Viewing: Selective Exposure To Political Images When Reasoning Is Not Involved, Clarisse Warren, Stephen Schneider, Kevin Smith, John Hibbing

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Motivated reasoning is an important element of politics especially in these highly polarized times. People selectively expose themselves to information in a fashion that makes it possible to embrace arguments consistent with their existing biases and ignore arguments inconsistent with those biases. Often overlooked in the research on motivated reasoning and selective exposure to information, however, is that a substantial portion of politics is about affective responses—that which makes people feel good and that which makes people feel bad. In this paper, we introduce a novel indicator of people's tendency to prolong exposure to favored political images or to truncate …

Ideological Asymmetries In Social Psychological Research: Rethinking The Impact Of Political Context On Ideological Epistemology, Ingrid J. Haas

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Ideological asymmetries in social psychological research: rethinking the impact of political context on ideological epistemology.

Conclusion

In sum, while I agree with many of the arguments raised by Clark and Winegard (this issue), we should continue to de-bate the degree to which liberals and conservatives are equally motivated by tribalism, especially in the context of contemporary American politics. While there is no doubt that personal political views influence the questions that scientists deem important, I do wonder to what extent the ideological biases recently observed in the field of social psychology generalize to the social sciences as a whole (and …

Ideology And Predictive Processing: Coordination, Bias, And Polarization In Socially Constrained Error Minimization, Nathan E. Wheeler, Suraiya Allidina, Elizabeth U. Long, Stephen P. Schneider, Ingrid J. Haas, William A. Cunningham

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Recent models of cognition suggest that the brain may implement predictive processing, in which top-down expectations constrain incoming sensory data. In this perspective, expectations are updated (error minimization) only if sensory data sufficiently deviate from these expectations (prediction error). Although originally applied to perception, predictive processing is thought to generally characterize cognitive architecture, including the social cognitive processes involved in ideological thinking. Scaling up these simple computational principles to the social sphere outlines a path by which group members may adopt shared ideologies and beliefs to predict behavior and cooperate with each other. Because ideological judgments are of specific interest …

Prioritized Interests: Diverse Lobbying Coalitions And Congressional Committee Agenda Setting, John R. Hibbing

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

For most congressional legislation, committee consideration is the first and most drastic winnowing point. Organized interest groups try to influence this winnowing. Many have suggested such influence arises from organizational resources. I offer an alternative view based on the need of policy-motivated committee agenda setters to assess the viability of bills before granting them consideration. Such needs incentivize agenda setters to favor legislation supported by organizations representing diverse industries, causes, and other interests. Analyzing new data on organizations’ positions on over 4,700 bills introduced between 2005 and 2014, I show that committee consideration favors such “interest diverse” coalitions, not coalitions …

Social Identity And The Use Of Ideological Categorization In Political Evaluation, Ingrid J. Haas, Christopher R. Jones, Russell H. Fazio

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

In this research, we address a longstanding question concerning how individuals evaluate social and political issues. We focus on the role that political self-identification plays when individuals evaluate policy statements. In a laboratory setting, participants completed a task facilitation procedure, in which they made paired sets of judgments about a series of policy statements. Relative to a control task, ideological categorization of policy statements as liberal or conservative influenced the ease of evaluation. On experimental trials that began with ideological categorization, policy evaluations that were consistent with the participant’s own ideology were made more quickly than responses that were ideologically …

Do People Really Become More Conservative As They Age?, Johnathan C. Peterson, Kevin Smith, John Hibbing

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Folk wisdom has long held that people become more politically conservative as they grow older, although several empirical studies suggest political attitudes are stable across time. Using data from the Michigan Youth-Parent So- cialization Panel Study, we analyze attitudinal change over a major portion of the adult life span. We document changes in party identification, self-reported ideology, and selected issue positions over this time period and place these changes in context by comparing them with contemporaneous national averages. Consistent with previous research but con- trary to folk wisdom, our results indicate that political attitudes are remarkably stable over the long …

Friends, Relatives, Sanity, And Health: The Costs Of Politics, Kevin Smith, Matthew V. Hibbing, John R. Hibbing

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Political scientists have long known that political involvement exacts costs but they have typically defined these costs in relatively narrow, largely economic terms. Though anecdotal evidence suggests that the costs of politics may in fact extend beyond economics to frayed personal relationships, compromised emotional stability, and even physical problems, no systematic evidence on these broader costs exists. We construct and validate batteries of survey items that delineate the physical, social, and emotional costs of political engagement and administer these items to a demographically representative sample of U.S. adults. The results suggest that a large number of Americans believe their physical …

Prioritized Interests: Diverse Lobbying Coalitions And Congressional Committee Agenda Setting, John R. Hibbing

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

For most congressional legislation, committee consideration is the first and most drastic winnowing point. Organized interest groups try to influence this winnowing. Many have suggested such influence arises from organizational resources. I offer an alternative view based on the need of policy-motivated committee agenda setters to assess the viability of bills before granting them consideration. Such needs incentivize agenda setters to favor legislation supported by organizations representing diverse industries, causes, and other interests. Analyzing new data on organizations’ positions on over 4,700 bills introduced between 2005 and 2014, I show that committee consideration favors such “interest diverse” coalitions, not coalitions …

Global South Scholars Are Missing From European And Us Journals. What Can Be Done About It, Peace A. Medie, Alice Kang

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Studies have shown that scholars in the global South are under represented in top international peer-reviewed social and medical sciences journals.

The global South refers to African, Asian, Latin American, and Middle Eastern countries who are also members of the Group of 77. The intergovernmental organisation of mainly developing countries is used to identify countries in the South. The global North includes the Group of 8 and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. Our own analysis of gender and politics journals shows scholars in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East are missing from leading journals …

Coalitions Matter: Citizenship, Women, And Quota Adoption In Africa, Alice Kang, Aili Mari Tripp

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

We provide new theory and evidence of the role of domestic women’s coalitions in the adoption of gender quotas. Previous research has shown the importance of women’s movements to policy change. We show that specific types of mobilization, often multiethnic in character, are a more precise way of describing these influences. Using a new dataset of coalitions in 50 countries in Africa (1989–2014), we first examine where coalitions are likely to emerge. Controlling for factors that correlate with their formation, we find that when domestic women’s organizations form a coalition for quotas, governments are more likely to adopt them and …

The Judicialization Of Peace, Courtney Hillebrecht, Alexandra Huneeus, Sandra Borda

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

As international courts gain in influence, many worry that they will impoverish domestic politics— that they will limit democratic deliberation, undermine domestic institutions, or even thwart crucial political initiatives such as efforts to make peace. Indeed, many states are in the midst of withdrawing, or actively considering withdrawal, from international commitments presided over by international courts. The Article focuses on the currently unfolding Colombian peace process, the first to be negotiated under the watch of not one but two international courts, to show that these concerns misconstrue the way international courts actually work.

Throughout four years of peace talks, many …

Genetic Attributions: Sign Of Intolerance Or Acceptance?, Stephen P. Schneider, Kevin B. Smith, John R. Hibbing

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Many scholars argue that people who attribute human characteristics to genetic causes also tend to hold politically and socially problematic attitudes. More specifically, public acceptance of genetic influences is believed to be associated with intolerance, prejudice, and the legitimation of social inequities and laissez-faire policies. We test these expectations with original data from two nationally representative samples that allow us to identify the American public’s attributional patterns across 18 diverse traits. Key findings are (1) genetic attributions are actually more likely to be made by liberals, not conservatives; (2) genetic attributions are associated with higher, not lower, levels of tolerance …

Who Can Deviate From The Party Line? Political Ideology Moderates Evaluation Of Incongruent Policy Positions In Insula And Anterior Cingulate Cortex, Ingrid J. Haas, Melissa N. Baker, Frank J. Gonzalez

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Political polarization at the elite level is a major concern in many contemporary democracies, which is argued to alienate large swaths of the electorate and prevent meaningful social change from occurring, yet little is known about how individuals respond to political candidates who deviate from the party line and express policy positions incongruent with their party affiliations. This experiment examines the neural underpinnings of such evaluations using functional MRI (fMRI). During fMRI, participants completed an experimental task where they evaluated policy positions attributed to hypothetical political candidates. Each block of trials focused on one candidate (Democrat or Republican), but all …

Women, Rights And Power: Review Of Alice Kang, Bargaining For Women’S Lives: Activism In An Aspiring Muslim Democracy., Jill Vickers

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Alice Kang’s Bargaining for Women’s Lives is an impressive study of the competition between women activists and religious conservatives in Muslim-majority, francophone Niger. In this emerging democracy, Kang focuses on debates about women’s rights at the time when freedom of speech and assembly were being established. She explores how Niger handles women’s issues: who puts them on the national agenda, how they get framed and who decides. In a chapter discussing (unsuccessful) efforts to reform family law, Kang identifies the inability of colonial and post-colonial rulers to create central state structures as the problem since it left traditional Muslim authorities …