Social Psychology Commons^™

Foreign Language Exposure, Cultural Threat, And Opposition To Immigration, Benjamin J. Newman, Todd K. Hartman, Charles S. Taber

Todd K. Hartman

In the present article, we extend the notion of cultural threat posed by immigrants beyond its current conceptualization as symbolic, collective-level threats to American culture and identity. Instead, we argue that routine encounters with non-English-speaking immigrants cause many individuals to feel threatened because of real barriers to interpersonal communication and exchange. We draw upon survey and experimental data to demonstrate that local contact with immigrants who speak little to no English, as well as incidental exposure to the Spanish language, heighten feelings of cultural threat, which increases anti-immigrant sentiment and policy preferences.

[Impact Factor: 1.614 (2011); Rank: 12 of 148 …

Η Σύγχρονη Τουρκική Στρατηγική Κουλτούρα Μέσα Από Τις Αραβικές Εξεγέρσεις [Contemporary Turkish Strategic Culture Through The Arab Uprisings], Zenonas Tziarras

Zenonas Tziarras

Το παρόν άρθρο επιζητεί την σύντομη παρουσίαση της τουρκικής στρατηγικής κουλτούρας - ή κουλτούρας ασφάλειας - μέσα από την ανάλυση των αντιδράσεων της Τουρκίας απέναντι στις εξεγέρσεις του αραβικού κόσμου. Για την επίτευξη αυτού του σκοπού ορίζεται αρχικά η έννοια «στρατηγική κουλτούρα» και στη συνέχεια εξετάζονται στοιχεία και παράγοντες που επηρέασαν και επηρεάζουν την τουρκική εξωτερική πολιτική, περιφερειακή πολιτική και στρατηγική συμπεριφορά. Το θεωρητικό και ιστορικό πλαίσιο της τουρκικής στρατηγικής κουλτούρας θα εφαρμοστεί στην περίπτωση της πολιτικής της Τουρκίας απέναντι στις αραβικές εξεγέρσεις σε μια προσπάθεια επεξήγησης των κινήσεων της Άγκυρας και των παραγόντων που επηρεάζουν τις στρατηγικές της επιλογές.

The Law Of The Sea Convention, The Eastern Mediterranean, And Clinton’S Testimony, Zenonas Tziarras

Zenonas Tziarras

Since the U.S. is still the world’s sole superpower, its participation in international conventions is very important for both itself and the better function and implementation of the various International Legal Frameworks. As such, a possible future ratification of the [Law of the Sea] Convention by the U.S. would have broad politico-legal implications for other states and areas in the world, where the Treaty has not been signed or ratified and maritime disputes are in place. One such region is the Eastern Mediterranean. This paper firstly looks at the development of the Law of the Sea, the contested provisions of …

Fanon: Violence And The Search For Human Dignity, Winston Langley

Winston E. Langley

Fanon informs us that interdependence in economics, politics, ethics, or aesthetics (and/or the social institutions with which they are associated) encompasses the interdependence of psyches in the form of confrontations, threats, forbearances, negotiations, accommodations, control, and domination, as persons and groups of persons seek to influence the conduct and shape the social being of others. Today, global and sub-global interdependence is often neither based on reciprocity nor equality. Rather, what one generally finds in the multiplicities of continuing and new (sometimes, instantaneous) connections, is a system of non-reciprocal, imposed interdependence, where one's peace is another's subjugation, one's wealth another's poverty, …

Motivated Reasoning, Political Sophistication, And Associations Between President Obama And Islam, Todd K. Hartman, Adam J. Newmark

Todd K. Hartman

Recent polls reveal that between 20% and 25% of Americans erroneously indicate that President Obama is a Muslim. In this article, we compare individuals' explicit responses on a survey about religion and politics with reaction time data from an Implicit Association Test (IAT) to investigate whether individuals truly associate Obama with Islam or are motivated reasoners who simply express negativity about the president when given the opportunity. Our results suggest that predispositions such as ideology, partisanship, and race affect how citizens feel about Obama, which in turn motivates them to accept misinformation about the president. We also find that these …

Η Τουρκική Περιφερειακή Πολιτική Ασφάλειας Σε Νέο Γεωπολιτικό Περιβάλλον, Zenonas Tziarras

Zenonas Tziarras

Το 2011 μπορεί να χαρακτηριστεί δικαίως ως μια χρονιά ορόσημο για τις διεθνείς σχέσεις και ειδικότερα για τη Μέση Ανατολή και τον Αραβικό κόσμο. Όντας στην καρδιά των αραβικών εξεγέρσεων και άλλων περιφερειακών φλεγόντων ζητημάτων, η Τουρκία δεν θα μπορούσε να μείνει ανεπηρέαστη αλλά ούτε και παθητική απέναντι στις αλλαγές που επήλθαν γειτονιά της. Κάνοντας αναφορές στο «δόγμα Νταβούτογλου» της τουρκικής εξωτερικής πολιτικής και στην εξέλιξή του κατά την τελευταία δεκαετία, η παρούσα μελέτη εξετάζει την προσαρμογή της τουρκικής περιφερειακής πολιτικής ασφάλειας στο νέο γεωπολιτικό περιβάλλον που αναδύεται στην Μέση Ανατολή και την Ανατολική Μεσόγειο. Καταλήγει στις αδυναμίες και τις …

Media, Military, Militarism: Media Consumption, Awareness Of U.S. Military Foreign Policy, And Support For War, Daniel James Patten

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

This study examines the relationship between the media, attitudes towards supporting war, and military awareness. Online survey data were collected from a four-year university located in a heavily militarized area. This study found that having knowledge of Afghanistan and Iraq War facts negatively affected one's decision to support war and was the strongest predictor of this decision. The media was not found to be a significant predictor impacting this knowledge when controlling for other variables. Political ideology and other related variables were found to be more influential of this knowledge. These findings imply that the public may be imprudently supporting …

Public Support For Military Interventions Across Levels Of Political Information And Stages Of Intervention: The Case Of The Iraq War, Cigdem V. Sirin

Cigdem V. Sirin

This study examines the effect of political information levels and intervention stages on the formation and continuity of public support for military interventions by analyzing survey data pertaining to the 2003 military intervention in Iraq. The results show that before and immediately after the launch of the intervention, politically uninformed individuals expressed higher support for the war compared to politically informed ones. However, as the intervention proceeded and casualties were incurred, higher rates of decrease in support were observed among the politically uninformed. Politically informed individuals, on the other hand, demonstrated more stable levels of support throughout the course of …

Agenda Setting From The Oval Office: An Experimental Examination Of Presidential Influence Over The Public Agenda, José D. Villalobos, Cigdem V. Sirin

Cigdem V. Sirin

This study employs an experimental approach to isolate and directly test the extent to which presidents can affect public perceptions of issue importance and support for policy action, taking into consideration key factors that condition such effects. Our findings provide new empirical evidence that presidents can, in fact, positively influence public opinion through agenda setting, particularly by increasing the perceptual importance of low salience foreign policy issues. However, the results also indicate that such positive effects do not translate into public support for policy action; instead, presidential appeals actually decrease support. Last, our study offers new evidence that employing bipartisan …

Phenomenological Theories Of Crime, Peter K. Manning, Michael W. Raphael

Graduate Student Publications and Research

The distinctive aspect of phenomenological theories of crime is that they are based upon a stated epistemology: how things are known and a specific ontology—the nature of social reality. This specificity aligns itself with neo-Kantian concern with forms of knowing, interpretation, and meaning, as well as with 20th-century concern with perception, cognition, and the framing of events. While there are influences of phenomenological thinking on varieties of theorizing, such as symbolic interactionism, critical theory, queer theory, and gender-based theories of crime, these ideas are refractions and are inconsistent in their reference to and understanding of the foundational phenomenological works. A …

Webs Of Faith As A Source Of Reasonable Disagreement, Gregory Brazeal

Gregory Brazeal

Contemporary political theorists and philosophers of epistemology and religion have often drawn attention to the problem of reasonable disagreement. The idea that deliberators may reasonably persist in a disagreement even under ideal deliberative conditions and even over the long term poses a challenge to the common assumption that rationality should lead to consensus. This essay proposes a previously unrecognized source of reasonable disagreement, based on the notion that an individual's beliefs are rationally related to one another in a fabric of sentences or web of beliefs. The essay argues that an individual's beliefs may not form a single, seamless web, …

Toll Booths On The Information Superhighway? Policy Metaphors In The Case Of Net Neutrality, Todd K. Hartman

Todd K. Hartman

Scholars have argued for centuries that metaphors are persuasive in politics, yet scant experimental research exists to validate these assertions. Two experiments about the issue of federally regulating the Internet were conducted to test whether metaphors confer a unique persuasive advantage relative to conventional messages. The results of these studies confirm that an apt metaphor can be a powerful tool of persuasion. Moreover, the evidence suggests that metaphor-induced persuasion works particularly well for politically unsophisticated citizens by increasing assessments of message quality. Ultimately, this research concerns how individuals make sense of politics and how policymakers can use what we know …

Turkey's Syria Problem: A Talking Timeline Of Events, Zenonas Tziarras

Zenonas Tziarras

This article analyzes the stages of the Syrian crisis’ escalation and the various Turkish reactions. Each stage of Turkey’s management of the crisis reveals certain features of its foreign policy. By examining its reactions throughout the crisis we can observe the gap between the capabilities and aspirations of Turkish foreign policy. The result is a “talking timeline of events” which shows that the Syrian crisis has been a “reality check” for Turkey.

The Importance Of Moral Construal: Moral Versus Non- Moral Construal Elicits Faster, More Extreme, Universal Evaluations Of The Same Actions, Jay J. Van Bavel, Dominic J. Packer, Ingrid J. Haas, William A. Cunningham

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

Over the past decade, intuitionist models of morality have challenged the view that moral reasoning is the sole or even primary means by which moral judgments are made. Rather, intuitionist models posit that certain situations automatically elicit moral intuitions, which guide moral judgments. We present three experiments showing that evaluations are also susceptible to the influence of moral versus non-moral construal. We had participants make moral evaluations (rating whether actions were morally good or bad) or non-moral evaluations (rating whether actions were pragmatically or hedonically good or bad) of a wide variety of actions. As predicted, moral evaluations were faster, …

Gender Bias In Employment Contexts: A Closer Examination Of The Role Incongruity Principle, Crystal L. Hoyt

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

This research extends the role incongruity analysis of employment-related gender bias by investigating the role of dispositional and situational antecedents, specifically political ideology and the salience of cues to the traditional female gender role. The prediction that conservatives would show an anti-female candidate bias and liberals would show a pro-female bias when the traditional female gender role is salient was tested across three experimental studies. In Study 1, 126 participants evaluated a male or a female job applicant with thoughts of the traditional female gender role activated or not. Results showed that when the gender role is salient, political ideology …

Environmental Protection, U.S. Influence On Latin American Policies, Cigdem Sirin

Cigdem V. Sirin

No abstract provided.

Examining The Role Of Identity In Negotiation Decision Making: The Case Of Cyprus, Cigdem V. Sirin

Cigdem V. Sirin

This study examines the effects of ethnic and social identities on negotiation decision making in the context of the Cyprus conflict. I conduct a theory-driven case study of the 1959 Zurich-London agreements on Cyprus, analyzing the positions of Turkey, Greece, Britain, and the Turkish and Greek Cypriot communities during the negotiation process. I find that even in the presence of adversarial ethnic ties, decision makers who have a shared (and salient) social identity are more likely to employ collective-serving decision strategies and seek evenhanded solutions that will not jeopardize their mutual interests. In contrast, decision makers with severe ethnic fragmentation …