Crooked Hillary and Sleepy Joe: name-calling’s backfire effect on candidate evaluations
Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties
Personality’s Role in Shaping Civic Aptitude
Personality and the Challenges of Democratic Governance, 2017
In the final chapter the author evaluates the results reported previously in relation to personal... more In the final chapter the author evaluates the results reported previously in relation to personality’s effect on the ability of individuals to understand and engage in politics in a manner consistent with the demands placed upon them as democratic citizens. In addition to summing up the empirical results, the author also discusses where our political system can go from here. Calls for more and better education will continue to have little effect on the average citizen’s overall political knowledge and interest because much of the cause of their apathy is outside of conscious thought. Personality is but one factor found in the hidden depths of the unconscious mind influencing political behavior. Thus, the author takes the baton from Achen and Bartels (Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016) and presents his ideas on how the electoral process should be altered in order to accommodate the way our individual minds really work.
Hidden State and the Punitive Public
Personality and the Challenges of Democratic Governance, 2017
In this chapter the author returns to Mettler’s (The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Po... more In this chapter the author returns to Mettler’s (The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011) submerged state policies. Mettler’s work documents the reality that citizens often fail to recognize instances where government programs support their lives. This chapter examines the policy attitudes of individuals who benefit from three of the largest submerged state programs (home mortgage interest, retirement savings, and health insurance tax deductions) and shows how holding hypocritical attitudes toward more visible welfare policies depends on personality. In particular, the chapter demonstrates how conscientiousness leads these individuals to express a desire to reduce or eliminate more visible government programs like welfare in general and food stamps in particular, while benefiting themselves from submerged welfare policies. Interestingly, agreeableness appears to have the opposite effect.
Connecting Attitudes to Party Positions
Personality and the Challenges of Democratic Governance, 2017
The author looks beyond one’s ability to identify factual policy information and to citizens’ abi... more The author looks beyond one’s ability to identify factual policy information and to citizens’ ability to connect their personal policy preferences to the party that best represents them. One basic necessity for quality democratic participation is the capability to connect one’s own policy preferences to the proper party. There is ample reason to suspect that the average citizen fails to make these simple connections with regularity. This chapter examines how personality correlates with how well individuals are able to connect their attitudes to the correct party in the same five issue areas as in Chapter 3. The findings point to particularly important roles for extraversion and openness to experience, although in opposite directions. Extraversion contributes to failing to connect one’s policy preferences to the correct party, while openness contributes to success in making this connection.
Just the Facts: Citizen Issue Comprehension
Personality and the Challenges of Democratic Governance, 2017
The author focuses directly on the Big Five’s role in causing individuals’ failure to understand ... more The author focuses directly on the Big Five’s role in causing individuals’ failure to understand basic facts about important political issues. The chapter looks at individuals’ responses to factual survey questions in five policy areas—(1) food stamps, (2) same-sex marriage, (3) health insurance subsidies, (4) drug testing welfare recipients, and (5) U.S. oil production. As one would expect, partisanship plays an important role in driving incorrect understandings about what is happening in these policy areas. However, partisanship is not the only cause. While a substantial amount of personality research has spent time attempting to draw connections between one or the other Big Five personality traits and political ideology and partisanships, here the author shows that personality does not simply work through its effects on citizens’ partisanship. It has its own independent effect on how people understand political issues, even highly partisan ones.
Functioning democracies require voters to connect their own personal and subjective policy prefer... more Functioning democracies require voters to connect their own personal and subjective policy preferences to the political party that best represents them. Aaron Dusso's new book examines how individual psychologies and people's tendencies to be introverted or extroverted affects their ability to match their policy preference to the correct political party. He finds that the more extroverted one is, the less ...
Bridging versus Bonding Social Capital: How the Type of Social Capital Produced in a Community Influences the Content of Civic Engagement
The positive value of civic engagement has been called into question in recent research. The con... more The positive value of civic engagement has been called into question in recent research. The concern is that when people choose to involve themselves with the community; they tend to join associations of similar, like minded individuals. Even when someone is not bowling alone, they are simply bowling with reflections of themselves. We challenge these findings and offer a ray of hope. First, we focus on the effect of social capital on what is actually produced rather than just participation. In doing so, we utilize local communities’ passage of anti-Patriot Act resolutions as a test of our hypotheses: (1) Communities with larger numbers of bridging associations will produce more comprehensive higher quality documents than those with fewer and (2) that the opposite will hold true for communities with larger numbers of bonding associations. We find strong support for the positive effect of bridging organizations and negative effect of bonding organizations.
When people vote, does their preferred candidate represent the policies that are best for them? N... more When people vote, does their preferred candidate represent the policies that are best for them? Not necessarily – a lack of information can often lead to people voting ‘incorrectly’ against their interests or beliefs. Using a new method of measuring this incorrect voting in presidential elections, Aaron Dusso finds that when choosing between candidates, strong partisans and those who believe that the economy is doing better for them, but who also have poor knowledge of candidates’ policy positions, are much more likely to vote for the ‘wrong’ candidate.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
Bridging Versus Bonding Social Capital: Explaining the Content of Anti-Patriot Resolutions
There have been 414 local resolutions passed across the country protesting some portion of the US... more There have been 414 local resolutions passed across the country protesting some portion of the USA Patriot Act. These anti-Patriot Act resolutions differ widely with regard to their scope and content. They also come from nearly every state and from communities that vary both demographically and ideologically, yet these variations have not received scholarly attention. Research on social capital makes a strong distinction between the effects of bridging versus bonding social capital and we test two hypotheses derived from this research. The first is that as the number of bonding organizations in a community increases, the number of issues supporting the central claim of a community's anti-Patriot Act resolution will decrease. Second, an increase in the number of bridging organizations is associated with an increase in the number of issues supporting the central claim of the resolution. We find support for both hypotheses suggesting that bridging organizations play an important ci...
In this chapter, the author develops his thesis that an individual’s personality is a durable and... more In this chapter, the author develops his thesis that an individual’s personality is a durable and measurable manifestation of unconscious brain processes that systematically influence individuals’ civic aptitude, that is, the quality of one’s engagement with the political world. The chapter examines a vast array of works across the academic fields of psychology, sociology, political science, philosophy, genetics, and neuroscience. In particular, this chapter builds the argument that the Big Five (also known as the Five Factor Model) personality traits are significant contributors to the successes and failures citizens have in understanding and participating in politics in four separate areas: (1) citizens’ ability to understand politics with abstract notions like liberal and conservative; (2) know factual information about important public policy areas; (3) connect their own personal policy preferences to the correct party; and (4) understand their own relationship with government p...
Partisanship Versus Democracy: Voting in Turkey’s Competitive Authoritarian Elections
Political Studies Review
Do voters care about anti-democratic behavior by their leaders? While political pundits and acade... more Do voters care about anti-democratic behavior by their leaders? While political pundits and academics often hope that they do, there has been little research that tests the effects that specific anti-democratic actions have on voters during elections. This is because there are few clear instances where violations of democratic norms are so visible to the average voter that one would expect it to have an effect, above and beyond traditional predictors of the vote. However, the recent elections in Turkey offer a unique opportunity to test the effect that nullifying an entire election (an unequivocal violation of democratic norms) has on voters. We do exactly that with a survey of voters following the election re-do. We find that even in such an extraordinary circumstance, voters rely on standard voting drivers like partisanship, rather than concern for the functioning of democracy itself. Ultimately, our findings have important implications for voting in competitive authoritarian regi...
The Influence of Corporate Lobbying on Federal Contracting
Social Science Quarterly
Ideological Cognitive Dissonance
Personality and the Challenges of Democratic Governance
The psychology of institutional development: How parties' willingness to accept risk affects the districts they draw and the seats they win
UMI, ProQuest ® Dissertations & Theses. The world's most comprehensive collection of dis... more UMI, ProQuest ® Dissertations & Theses. The world's most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses. Learn more... ProQuest, The psychology of institutional development: How parties' willingness to accept risk affects the districts they draw and the seats they win. ...
Objectives: Authoritarianism has a long history suggesting that it is primarily a phenomenon of t... more Objectives: Authoritarianism has a long history suggesting that it is primarily a phenomenon of the right. However, I argue that this has led to scholars overlooking the potential that in some contexts, authoritarianism can lead to support for left-wing candidates. African-American voters in the U.S. provide such a context. A key component of right-wing authoritarianism is that individuals will support whom they believe to be their rightful leader. In the U.S., who one believes to be their group's rightful leader is contingent on the race of the voter and the party of the candidate. I hypothesize that as African-American voters' level of authoritarianism increases, they will be more likely to support the left-wing Democratic candidate. Methods: I test this hypothesis with a national sample of voters after the 2012 U.S. presidential election. I estimate multiple logit models predicting the probability of voting for Obama. The key independent variables being respondents' right-wing authoritarian score, their race, and the interaction of these two variables. Results: The results present strong support for my hypothesis that an increase in right-wing authoritarianism increases the probability of African-American votes choosing Obama. Conclusion: The results show that the effect of authoritarianism on vote choice is contingent on race/ethnicity. Too often scholars have overlooked the potential that whom individuals deem to be their established authority is contingent on the political context. These results challenge scholars to provide a more nuanced approach to how authoritarianism influences behavior.
It has long been understood that political knowledge in the U.S. is very low. For those who care ... more It has long been understood that political knowledge in the U.S. is very low. For those who care about the quality of American democracy, this is a big problem. In attempting to find a solution, many people often blame education. While increasing civic knowledge is a laudatory goal, increased political sophistication does not necessarily turn individuals into good democratic citizens. Research in cognitive and social psychology paints a picture of people as motivated reasoners. Instead of having an open-minded engagement with issues, individuals typically only seek, see, and understand information in a manner that reinforces what they already believe. Here, we examine motivated reasoning and argue that the strongest partisans and the most committed ideologues will be the most susceptible to holding contradictory policy positions with regard to same-sex marriage and religious freedom.
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