International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 2015
This paper examines how perceived threats from immigration are associated with individuals' defin... more This paper examines how perceived threats from immigration are associated with individuals' definition of national identity. Using a nationally representative, face-to-face survey conducted in South Korea, we find that people's reactions to immigration are basically cultural: those who believe immigrants undermine the longstanding cultural unity of South Korea are likely to embrace more exclusive definitions of national in-group, whereas threats regarding the national economy are not necessarily associated with nationalist sentiments. Concerns about public safety due to immigrants also turn out to affect South Koreans' sense of belonging to the nation. Additional analysis reveals that perceived cultural threats-neither economic nor social concerns-predict lower levels of national pride among South Koreans. The results suggest that increasing levels of racial and ethnic diversity correspond to an ethnocentric response by heightening non-economic concerns. Implications are discussed, referring to the unique socio-cultural context of South Korea.
Personality Traits and the Dimensions of Political Ideology
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
Alan S. Gerber Yale University Professor Department of Political Science Institution for Social a... more Alan S. Gerber Yale University Professor Department of Political Science Institution for Social and Policy Studies 77 Prospect Street, PO Box 208209 New Haven, CT 06520-8209 [email protected] 203-432-5232 (voice), 203-432-3296 (fax)
Using data from two recent surveys, we analyze the relationship between Big Five personality trai... more Using data from two recent surveys, we analyze the relationship between Big Five personality traits and political participation. We examine forms of participation that differ in domain (local politics vs. national campaigns) as well as in the amount of conflict involved, whether they are likely to yield instrumental benefits, and whether they are likely to be viewed as a duty-characteristics that may affect the relationships between dispositional personality traits and political activity. We find relationships between personality traits and: (1) both self-reported and actual turnout (measured using administrative records), (2) overreporting of turnout, and (3) a variety of other modes of participation. The effect of personality on political participation is often comparable to the effects of factors that are central in earlier models of turnout, such as education and income. Consistent with our theoretical expectations, these relationships vary depending on personality-relevant characteristics of each participatory act.
Although the statistically significant relationship between personality traits and subjective wel... more Although the statistically significant relationship between personality traits and subjective well-being (i.e., self-reported happiness and life satisfaction) is well-known in the field of positive psychology, some scholars still cast doubt on the external validity of this finding and the strength of personality dimensions vis-à-vis other individual-level determinants of subjective well-being such as income, employment status, marital status, self-reported health, and so on. Using a nationally representative, face-to-face survey fielded in South Korea in 2009, we find that personality traits (measured by the Five-factor Model)-particularly, Emotional Stability and Extraversion-are positively associated with happiness and life satisfaction, after controlling for other covariates. The effects of personality traits are often on par with, and sometimes even greater than, those of other well-known determinants.
This paper investigates the relationships among national identity, national pride, and happiness,... more This paper investigates the relationships among national identity, national pride, and happiness, using a nationally representative survey dataset from South Korea. Two dimensions of national identity-civic and ethnic-are considered, after factor-analyzing eight survey items. The results demonstrate that national pride is positively associated with happiness, but empirical evidence is scarce regarding the relationship between national identity and happiness. Also, we have not found alleged moderating effects of national identity on the relationship between national pride and happiness. Lack of statistically significant effects of national identity is not consistent with the pre-existing findings from cross-national surveys. Given that national identity is deeply rooted in a historically unique context of each nation, this study calls for a more nuanced conceptualization of national identity and culture-specific measures to fully grasp its association with happiness.
Using a nationally representative survey fielded in 2009, we analyze the relationships between pe... more Using a nationally representative survey fielded in 2009, we analyze the relationships between personality traits and various modes of political participation in South Korea. We find statistically significant relationships between personality (measured by the Five-Factor Model) and several nonelectoral modes of participation. Openness correlates positively with protest participation, rally attendance, financial contributions to political causes, news media contacts, and political activities via the Internet. Agreeableness correlates negatively with these five participation modes as well as petition signing. Conscientiousness is positively associated with individual political acts (e.g., contacting news media and elected officials and donation), while it is negatively associated with collective actions such as participation in rally. However, we do not find any significant relationship between personality and voter turnout. Reflecting an unusually conflictual political climate of South Korea in 2008, we discuss these findings' implications focusing on the personality-situation interactions.
When mediators are not experimentally manipulated, estimates of mediation effects are likely to b... more When mediators are not experimentally manipulated, estimates of mediation effects are likely to be biased. This is so even when the analyzed data are free from measurement error, reciprocal causality, and other problems that have attracted attention since the publication of . We demonstrate the bias mathematically and show, in a content analysis of recent articles, that it is likely to affect many published studies of mediation. We propose two new methods of mediation analysis, both of which require manipulation of mediators. These methods are more difficult to implement than nonexperimental approaches, but they produce unbiased estimates of mediation effects, and the success that psychologists have already had manipulating mediators suggests that they are often feasible. * We thank
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2010
Psychologists increasingly recommend experimental analysis of mediation. This is a step in the ri... more Psychologists increasingly recommend experimental analysis of mediation. This is a step in the right direction because mediation analyses based on nonexperimental data are likely to be biased and because experiments, in principle, provide a sound basis for causal inference. But even experiments cannot overcome certain threats to inference that arise chiefly or exclusively in the context of mediation analysis-threats that have received little attention in psychology. The authors describe 3 of these threats and suggest ways to improve the exposition and design of mediation tests. Their conclusion is that inference about mediators is far more difficult than previous research suggests and is best tackled by an experimental research program that is specifically designed to address the challenges of mediation analysis.
D espite the importance of local elections in the United States, political scientists have little... more D espite the importance of local elections in the United States, political scientists have little knowledge of what shapes vote choice in most municipalities and special districts, particularly in the suburbs where a majority of Americans live. This article develops and tests models of local voting behavior using unique survey data of over 1,400 voters in 30 different suburban communities. Suburban electoral politics are dominated by a nonrepresentative group of "stakeholders," who are highly informed and interested in local affairs. Because of this, vote choice in suburban elections ends up sharing many characteristics with larger contests (i.e., issue salience, partisanship, and candidate likeability), although their impact varies with the size and diversity of the particular community (e.g., in smaller suburbs, voters are more engaged in local politics, more likely to know candidates personally, and more likely to vote against incumbents). These findings suggest the importance of developing new theories about voting behavior in micro-electoral contexts.
... they were not reluctant to offer a wide variety of psychiatric diagnoses. ... Motives Goals R... more ... they were not reluctant to offer a wide variety of psychiatric diagnoses. ... Motives Goals Regulating mechanisms Defense mechanisms Major theorists: Sigmund Freud David McClelland Abraham ... most common labels for these five factors, along with a brief description of politically ...
P revious research on personality traits and political attitudes has largely focused on the direc... more P revious research on personality traits and political attitudes has largely focused on the direct relationships between traits and ideological self-placement. There are theoretical reasons, however, to suspect that the relationships between personality traits and political attitudes (1) vary across issue domains and (2) depend on contextual factors that affect the meaning of political stimuli. In this study, we provide an explicit theoretical framework for formulating hypotheses about these differential effects. We then leverage the power of an unusually large national survey of registered voters to examine how the relationships between Big Five personality traits and political attitudes differ across issue domains and social contexts (as defined by racial groups). We confirm some important previous findings regarding personality and political ideology, find clear evidence that Big Five traits affect economic and social attitudes differently, show that the effect of Big Five traits is often as large as that of education or income in predicting ideology, and demonstrate that the relationships between Big Five traits and ideology vary substantially between white and black respondents.
Uploads
Papers by Shang Ha