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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

2012

Politics

Political Science Publications

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Political Left Rolls With The Good; The Political Right Confronts The Bad: Physiology And Cognition In Politics, Michael D. Dodd, Amanda Balzer, Carly M. Jacobs, Michael W. Gruszczynski, Kevin B. Smith, John R. Hibbing Mar 2012

The Political Left Rolls With The Good; The Political Right Confronts The Bad: Physiology And Cognition In Politics, Michael D. Dodd, Amanda Balzer, Carly M. Jacobs, Michael W. Gruszczynski, Kevin B. Smith, John R. Hibbing

Political Science Publications

We report evidence that individual-level variation in people's physiological and attentional responses to aversive and appetitive stimuli are correlated with broad political orientations. Specifically, we find that greater orientation to aversive stimuli tends to be associated with right-of-centre and greater orientation to appetitive (pleasing) stimuli with left-of-centre political inclinations. These findings are consistent with recent evidence that political views are connected to physiological predispositions but are unique in incorporating findings on variation in directed attention that make it possible to understand additional aspects of the link between the physiological and the political.


Beyond The “Three Bs”: How American Christians Approach Faith And Politics, Amanda Friesen, Michael W. Wagner Jan 2012

Beyond The “Three Bs”: How American Christians Approach Faith And Politics, Amanda Friesen, Michael W. Wagner

Political Science Publications

While it is well-known that religiosity measures inform modern political alignments and voting behavior, less is known about how people of various religious orthodoxies think about the role of religion in society. To learn more about this veritable “black box” with respect to whether and why people connect their spiritual life to the political world, we conducted several focus groups in randomly selected Christian congregations in a mid-sized Midwestern city. Our analysis offers confirmatory, amplifying, and challenging evidence with respect to the “Three Bs” (believing, behaving, and belonging) perspective on how religion affects politics. Specifically, we show that while contemporary …