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Morals ‘Trump’ Party: Make America Cooperate Again, Jered Abernathy Oct 2020

Morals ‘Trump’ Party: Make America Cooperate Again, Jered Abernathy

Theses and Dissertations

Conflict between Democrats and Republicans is a central component of the contemporary American political system. Negative feelings and discrimination based on political orientation are at an all-time high, leading otherwise similar Americans to deeply distrust one another. Social identity theory provides a framework for not only understanding how this distrust between partisans persists, but how it may be negated. This study builds on recent work on moral judgments and trust games to create situations to increase trust across party lines. Using an online-experimental design, this study investigates the effects of two types of moral judgments on trust building: 1) moral …


How Self-Sentiments And Personal Networks Impact Political Polarization, Matthew Facciani Jul 2020

How Self-Sentiments And Personal Networks Impact Political Polarization, Matthew Facciani

Theses and Dissertations

This project investigates how identities, self-sentiments, and personal network composition impact political polarization. I apply the framework of Affect Control Theory to capture how Democrats and Republicans feel about their political ingroup and outgroups (through evaluation, potency and activity ratings) and evaluate the likelihood of events involving these groups. In my first experiment, I study if self-uncertainty and self-affirmation primes impact political bias. I also apply Affect Control Theory-Self to measure self-sentiment change (self-evaluation, self-potency, and self-activity) from these primes as well. I predict that priming self-uncertainty should increase political bias (due to inflated self-sentiments) and that priming self-affirmation should …


Thou Shalt Lie: Anticipatory Deflection Management, Victoria L. Money Apr 2020

Thou Shalt Lie: Anticipatory Deflection Management, Victoria L. Money

Theses and Dissertations

As people visualize ongoing or future interactions, do they lie to maintain situational congruency? While visualizing various behavioral options, or the outcomes of such behaviors, people have a unique opportunity to preemptively alter the definition of the situation based on anticipated sentiments. Affect Control Theory emphasizes the salience of deflection management in everyday life. This is otherwise known as an attempted realignment of experiences and expectations in the face of situational incongruency such as the bizarre. Using a vignette experiment, I extend Affect Control Theory by illuminating deflection not yet experienced but instead anticipated. I do so by estimating the …