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Rural resentment is a form of place-based grievance politics that scholars have used to explain the growing urban-rural divide in American politics. However, whereas extant theory assumes that rural resentment stems from rural identification, recently available data shows that beliefs about geographic inequity, which are central to rural resentment, are not held exclusively by those who embrace a rural identity. If geography is not the sole source of rural resentment, then what else explains this ostensibly place-based phenomenon? Among White Americans who do not identify as rural, we posit that belief in the existence of deliberate rural deprivation by government and media elites can be conceived as 'place-based empathy' toward rural Americans. Further, we argue that place empathy toward rural areas is partially an expression of White grievance politics stemming from the belief that the stereotypical rural resident is a White American suffering from relative deprivation at the hands of government officials who privilege non-white (and non-rural) constituents over them. Using the 2020 American National Election Time Series, as well as novel mTurk data, we show that White consciousness predicts beliefs about geographic inequity among non-rural identifiers but not rural identifiers. Instead, consistent with previous research, we show that racial prejudice is a better predictor of geographic attitudes for rural identifiers and White consciousness has little independent association. These findings provide a more complete and nuanced understanding of the ways race and place intersect to explain the grievance politics of White Americans in the Trump era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we develop and test three propositions related to the status of a primary counterpoint of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement—"Blue Lives Matter" (BlueLM). Employing correlational and causal analyses on a wide array of data, including public opinion, news and social media, internet searches, and merchandise sales, our findings are threefold: first, we offer evidence that Whiteness is associated with attitudinal and behavioral indicators of support for BlueLM; second, we present evidence that support for BlueLM is systematically linked to White racial prejudice; and third, we demonstrate that BlueLM activity is caused by BLM protest following a high-profile police killing of a Black man, which comports with the conceptualization of BlueLM as engaging in a process of "competitive victimhood" against BLM. Together, these findings suggest that BlueLM is a new incarnation of an ongoing history of White countermobilization against organized Black claims-making activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internal factors-such as psychological traits or individual attitudes-relate to and explain political cleavages. Yet, little is known about how locus of control, agency, and modal attitudes impact political ideology. Utilizing textual analysis within the context of the Chilean 2015 constituent process, we go beyond traditional survey methods to explore community clusters in "Values" and "Rights" networks built upon the deliberation of 106,000 people. Our findings reveal distinct attitudinal patterns across political orientations: the progressive left generally exhibits a more propositive and non-agentic attitude, the traditional left adopts an evaluative stance towards values, and the right-wing community leans towards a factual attitude but shifts to an evaluative stance when discussing rights. These results underscore the role of psychological constructs in shaping political ideologies and introduce textual analysis as a robust tool for psychological and political inquiry. The study offers a comprehensive understanding of the complexities of political behavior and provides a new lens through which to examine the psychology of political ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The attachment and caregiving domains maintain proximity and care-giving behavior between parents and offspring, in a way that has been argued to shape people's mental models of how relationships work, resulting in secure, anxious or avoidant interpersonal styles in adulthood. Several theorists have suggested that the attachment system is closely connected to orientations and behaviors in social and political domains, which should be grounded in the same set of familial experiences as are the different attachment styles. We use a sample of Norwegian twins (N = 1987) to assess the genetic and environmental relationship between attachment, trust, altruism, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), and social dominance orientation (SDO). Results indicate no shared environmental overlap between attachment and ideology, nor even between the attachment styles or between the ideological traits, challenging conventional wisdom in developmental, social, and political psychology. Rather, evidence supports two functionally distinct systems, one for navigating intimate relationships (attachment) and one for navigating social hierarchies (RWA/SDO), with genetic overlap between traits within each system, and two distinct genetic linkages to trust and altruism. This is counter-posed to theoretical perspectives that link attachment, ideology, and interpersonal orientations through early relational experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a response to the insightful pieces written about my beginning attempt of defining and elaborating on a cultural political psychology (Carriere, 2022), of which there were four - Beckstead and Jordan (2023); Busch-Jensen and Røn-Larsen (2023); Mazur (2023a); and Rutherford (2023). Their commentaries were varied in their expansions and thoughts on the work, and each provided a unique perspective on the future of a cultural political psychology. Here, I expand on the points made by each of the authors and synthesize their expansions to look forward to further theoretical elaborations within a cultural political psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is an exploratory research that seeks to investigate how ideology predicts Taiwanese perceptions of cross-strait relations, including attitudes toward Taiwan independence, perceptions of mainland China and Chinese people, Chinese invasion of Taiwan, and Chinese democracy. We took an inductive approach to left-right differences in Taiwan to offer a more systematic empirical understanding of ideology beyond the West. To do so, we conducted a nationally representative survey among adult Taiwan citizens (N = 1,350). Findings revealed that those who identified with the Left (vs. Right) tended to demonstrate more negative perceptions of cross-strait relations. Specifically, the political left is more negative about the outlook of Chinese democracy while favoring Taiwan independence, than the political right. Furthermore, the political left perceives both mainland China and the Chinese people more negatively than the political right. These findings underscore the role of ideology for a full comprehension of cross-strait relations, as they indicated a fundamental difference between the political left vs. right in terms of perceptions of cross-strait relations. The present research extends existing political psychology literature on ideology and international relations, particularly in the East Asian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

White Americans are more affectively polarized today than at any point since at least the 1870s—and the trend shows no sign of abating any time soon. Recent work using the Common In-group Identity Model (CIIM) suggests that appealing to a super-ordinate identity—in this case, American national identity—holds the potential of bridging the social distance between partisans (Levendusky, 2018). However, CIIM assumes that the normative content—i.e. the norms and stereotypes—that people associate with being an American are the same across subordinate groups. Using the 2016 and 2020 American National Election Studies cross-sectional surveys, as well as the 2016–2020 ANES panel survey, we demonstrate three key findings. First, White Democrats and White Republicans have systematically different ideas about what attributes are essential to being a member of the national community. Second, the association between partisanship and these competing conceptions of American identity among White Americans has gotten stronger during the Trump Era, largely because of Democrats adopting a more racially inclusive conception of American identity. Lastly, appeals to American identity only dampen out-partisan animosity when the demographic composition of the opposing party matches their racialized conception of American identity. When there is a mismatch between people's racialized conception of American identity and the composition of the opposition party, American identity is associated with higher levels of partisan hostility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large literature contends that conservatives differ from liberals in their dispositional sensitivity to threat and needs for social order and security. Thus, a puzzle emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic when American conservatives, despite their purported threat sensitivity, responded to the pandemic in ways that evinced little concern toward the risks posed by COVID-19. Threat tolerant liberals present an equally interesting case, having fervently masked, isolated, and advocated for stringent public health restrictions when facing down COVID-19. Why did so many Americans adopt health behaviors and policy preferences at odds with their dispositional orientations toward threat and needs for security during the COVID-19 pandemic? In this paper, I analyze three national surveys to evaluate how psychological dispositions affected Americans' responses to COVID-19. I find that authoritarianism, a common measure of dispositional threat sensitivity and needs for security, conditionally affected Americans' responses to the pandemic. Directly, authoritarianism was associated with greater concern over COVID-19 and, in turn, increased willingness to engage in protective health behaviors, support restrictive public health measures, and support economic interventions amidst the pandemic-induced downturn. Indirectly, however, authoritarianism promoted identification with and cue-taking from right-wing elites who frequently downplayed the severity of COVID-19; attention to such rhetoric reduced politically engaged authoritarians' concern over COVID-19 and, in turn, their willingness to adopt protective health behaviors and support public health restrictions or economic interventionism. Attention to political discourse thus appears to have countervailed Americans' dispositional orientations toward threat and security during the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article examines sociopolitical discourse using a method of the intelligent analysis of texts on social and political psychology. A methodology for applying the tool in sociopolitical research is proposed. The most significant psycholinguistic indicators for comments on political and nonpolitical Russian YouTube channels are determined and analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a discussion inspired by the invitation formed by Kevin Carriere's book: "Psychology in Policy – Redefining Politics Through The Individual". From a theoretical standpoint in culture psychology Carriere challenges the idea of politics as a particular practice carried out by mainly politicians. Instead, he attempts to anchor processes of politics in the everyday lives of individuals, directed at changing their worlds. In this article, we discuss how this ambition could evolve even further by relating it to other theoretical approaches working with similar ambitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From a cultural political psychology perspective, Carriere (2022) emphasises the role of the individual and their meaning-making processes in the psychology of policy and politics (including the role of values and power dynamics). I propose a 'complex' semiotic cultural political psychology (SCPP) framework that reflects on and extends Carriere (2022). My complexity perspective involves 'self-organising' relations within persons (a sense of 'I') and within cultures (a sense of 'We') and 'socio-culturally organising' relations between persons (a sense of 'Me') and between cultures (a sense of 'Us'). I apply the SCPP framework to the issue of environmental sustainability policy. I contend there are intra- and inter-personal and intra-and inter-cultural values on the issue/s of environmental sustainability policy. International research supports Carriere's focus on personal ('I am' versus 'We are') values in environmental policy but this effect may be most prevalent in the US context. On social power in personal and cultural sustainability, empirical research points to 'power struggles' and 'vested interests' as the main problems for people. Also, from research it is deduced that (complex) environmental sustainability policy and governance need to empower people (individuals and groups) and avert unintended power dynamics, appreciating the co-occurring cultural nuances at work. It is concluded that my semiotic cultural political psychology reflections on Carriere introduces a potentially integrative 'complexity' perspective to psychological and behavioural science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thomas Harding's book, "The Maverick: George Weidenfeld and the Golden Age of Publishing," explores the life and career of George Weidenfeld, a prominent figure in the publishing industry. Weidenfeld, an impoverished Jewish refugee from Austria, arrived in London before World War II and eventually founded the publishing house Weidenfeld & Nicolson. He focused on publishing books that transformed the industry and culture of ideas, working with notable authors such as Saul Bellow and J.D. Salinger. Harding's biography highlights Weidenfeld's determination, charm, and willingness to take risks in publishing controversial ideas. [Extracted from the article]

Ideological research links liberal and conservative orientations to variations in genetic, psychological, and physiological factors. Yet, while a knowledge of the mechanistic causes of ideologies are advancing quickly, we know less about their potential functional causality. Here, we ask what the social functions of ideologies are and investigate whether the behaviors associated with different ideological orientations are consistent with different strategies for social interactions. We recruit an American sample of (N = 454) liberals and conservatives to complete two rounds of an iterated prisoner's dilemma. Using a three-wave design, we obtain a sample of each ideological group that is comparable on multiple demographic factors. We hypothesize that a liberal orientation is underpinned by an approach-oriented social strategy that is directed towards pursuing cooperative opportunities, while a conservative orientation is underpinned by a social strategy directed towards avoiding loss. On multiple measures of ideology, we find evidence that liberals and conservatives differ in their: (1) initial cooperativeness; (2) overall cooperation; and, (3) forgiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popular support for ethnocentric, nationalistic politicians, parties, and policies around the world has renewed interest in authoritarianism. Measured by people's preferences for certain desirable qualities in children, scholars have identified relationships between it and support for right wing populist parties and the ideas they champion. But despite authoritarianism's unique ability to explain present political dynamics, scholars have devoted too little attention to this operationalization's measurement properties. We address these and other issues here. We demonstrate that (1) the childrearing measure taps authoritarianism, (2) it is exogenous to a wide range of political attitudes, (3) its temporal stability is consistent with its conceptualization as a personality adaptation and (4) adding new items to the existing set improves our ability to measure authoritarianism. We thus provide scholars with a measure that better explains political opinions, which should allow future work to better identify when, how, and among whom authoritarianism explains political thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we identify and compare the arguments offered by two leading Ottoman public intellectuals in the nineteenth century, Namık Kemal and Ziya Gökalp, on why Western institutions are compatible with those of their own society. We argue that these arguments exemplify patterns of reasoning, identified by cognitive social psychologists, which purport to resolve inconsistencies that arise in individuals' belief structures. We draw two conclusions from this analysis. Our first conclusion is that the ideas of Ottoman political thinkers, like those of their Western counterparts, constitute a domain of evidence for research in cognitive social psychology. We secondly conclude that political theories have resources to overcome ideological conflicts in a society without resorting to partisanship or utopianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election required voters to not only form opinions of leading candidates, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, but also to make judgments about the integrity of the election itself and what—if anything—to do about it. However, partisan motivated reasoning theory (Leeper and Slothuus, Political Psychology, 35(Suppl 1): 129–156; Lodge and Taber, The rationalizing voter, Cambridge University Press, 2013) suggests judgments are often strongly influenced toward affectively desirable conclusions. Before, during, and after election projections were announced, partisan supporters of Trump and Biden rated: judgments about voter fraud and foreign interference, their acceptance of the results, and their support for recourse against the outcome (e.g., legal challenges, legislative overhauls, violence). Before the election, partisans were mildly concerned about election integrity but willing to accept the outcome without recourse. However, during vote counting, and especially after Biden was projected to be the winner, partisans dramatically changed their judgments in opposite directions, consistent with the affectively desirable conclusions relevant to each group. Biden supporters affirmed the election's integrity and accepted the results whereas Trump supporters disputed the integrity, rejected the results, and began to support recourse against the outcome. Data are consistent with partisan motivated reasoning. Discussion highlights the practical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inconsistent political realities are associated with mental health issues such as hopelessness, anxiety, and depression. The psychological impact of Brexit is clearly an important and timely issue, but hitherto has been understudied. This study uses a critical realist approach to qualitatively explore the lived experiences of British citizens living in Luxembourg during the Brexit era. The study reports on semi-structured interviews conducted with 6 British citizens aged 18–65. An experientially focused thematic analysis was conducted, exploring two main themes: Loss (with psychological and broader social implications) and Integration (contrasting the mover's community with the receiving community). This study demonstrates the psychological impact of Brexit and highlights the urgency for future researchers and mental health practitioners alike — both in the UK and overseas — to consider the human consequences associated with political upheaval. Open access materials for this project can be viewed here: https://osf.io/38rg7/?view_only=b8c04dfc3fe5474f9aff4897e370b3e6. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conspiracy theories thrive in moments of crises because they provide straightforward answers that assist individuals in coping with threats. The COVID-19 outbreak is such a crisis and is boosted by the political turmoil related to the politicization of the pandemic in some countries. To assess the role of political partisanship, intolerance of uncertainty (IU), and conspiracy beliefs in our two criterion variables (support for COVID-19 prevention measures and compliance with social distancing), we applied an online questionnaire to 662 participants. Our results indicate direct effects of political partisanship on support for COVID-19 prevention measures and non-compliance with social distancing while IU has not directly affected any of them. We have also found a significant effect of political partisanship on conspiracy theory dimensions involving personal wellbeing (PW) and control of information (CI) but not government malfeasance (GM) ones. Moreover, beliefs in CI theories predicted non-compliance with social distancing. Intolerance of uncertainty, on its turn, predicted the three dimensions of conspiracy beliefs. As to interaction effects, belief in GM, PW, and CI conspiracy theories moderated the effect of political partisanship on support for COVID-19 prevention measures whereas only belief in GM and PW theories moderated the effect of IU on past non-compliance with social distancing. Overall, our results suggest the relevance of diminishing politicization around the virus, providing basic scientific knowledge to the general population, and assisting individuals in coping with uncertainty. Besides, these findings provide insights into developing information campaigns to instruct the population to cope with the pandemic, producing behavioral change at societal and individual levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Living with digital government is less of a technical issue but more of a political process. In political science, one new issue in need of greater theorizing and investigating is public anxiety about the use of big data and artificial intelligence (AI) by digital government which has become an emerging challenge for the country to obtain public support. Employing an online survey in China, we test whether technology anxiety influences public support for policy and examine the mechanisms within them, namely, political persuasion, interaction orientation, and people’s happiness. Survey evidence reveals that technology anxiety exerts a significantly negative effect on public support, especially in flexible employment and service industry. Additionally, technology anxiety indirectly influences public support for policy through the three abovementioned mechanisms, with political persuasion based on algorithm demonstrating the most pronounced mediating role. The findings contribute to understanding the relationship between public anxiety and political support in Chinese context and beyond, and enrich the studies of political psychology and legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevalence of traumatic events in South Africa is considerably high due to a history of political violence and the ongoing cycle of interpersonal, community-based, and socioeconomic violence. While conventional therapeutic techniques have been found to support trauma survivors in the local context, alternative approaches that focus on the mind–body connection have become increasingly popular. However, studies reporting on the use of these approaches remain scarce. This study aimed to add to the body of knowledge on yoga as a non-conventional therapy to support trauma survivors and foster posttraumatic growth. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a sample of seven Kundalini yoga practitioners who had been exposed to trauma. A thematic analysis confirmed that Kundalini yoga was beneficial in fostering posttraumatic growth. Overall, the study findings, evidence a pocket of success in relation to value of such an intervention within a low socio economic black South African context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The claim that partisanship has developed into a social identity is one of the dominant explanations for the current rising levels of affective polarization among the U.S. electorate. We provide evidence that partisanship functions as a social identity, but that the salience of partisan identity—in and of itself—does not account for increased affective polarization. Using a two-wave panel survey capturing natural variation in the salience of politics, we find that partisanship contributes more to individuals' self-concept in times of heightened political salience. We also show that partisans can be detached from their Democratic or Republican identity by having them focus on individuating characteristics (by way of a self-affirmation treatment). However, we find only limited evidence that when partisan social identity is made less salient, either by way of natural variation in political context or through a self-affirmation treatment, partisans are any less inclined to express in-party favoritism and out-party hostility. Taken together, our evidence shows that partisanship does operate as an important social identity, but that affective polarization is likely attributable to more than the classic in-group versus out-group distinction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some artificial intelligence (AI) systems can display algorithmic bias, i.e. they may produce outputs that unfairly discriminate against people based on their social identity. Much research on this topic focuses on algorithmic bias that disadvantages people based on their gender or racial identity. The related ethical problems are significant and well known. Algorithmic bias against other aspects of people’s social identity, for instance, their political orientation, remains largely unexplored. This paper argues that algorithmic bias against people’s political orientation can arise in some of the same ways in which algorithmic gender and racial biases emerge. However, it differs importantly from them because there are (in a democratic society) strong social norms against gender and racial biases. This does not hold to the same extent for political biases. Political biases can thus more powerfully influence people, which increases the chances that these biases become embedded in algorithms and makes algorithmic political biases harder to detect and eradicate than gender and racial biases even though they all can produce similar harm. Since some algorithms can now also easily identify people’s political orientations against their will, these problems are exacerbated. Algorithmic political bias thus raises substantial and distinctive risks that the AI community should be aware of and examine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nature, measurement, and correlates of the psychological trait of authoritarianism have spurred an intense and long-lasting debate in political psychology, dating back to the 1950s. This article aims at advancing extant knowledge on authoritarianism—measured here by child-rearing items—in two ways. First, by investigating the impact of authoritarianism on political attitudes and voting, net of individual heterogeneity, thus improving causal estimation. Second, by investigating the extent to which there exists reverse causality between authoritarianism and political attitudes. To do so, we employ a longitudinal analysis that covers a timespan of two years using the 2021 British Election Study Panel. The results suggest that authoritarianism in Britain is positively associated with anti-immigration attitudes, anti-EU preferences, and opposition to economic redistribution. However, when accounting for potential confounding through the inclusion of individual fixed effects, we find that authoritarianism retains its significant association with anti-immigration preferences alone. Further, lagged relations between authoritarianism and immigration preferences indicate that within-person changes in immigration attitudes precede changes in authoritarianism—not the other way around. Finally, the findings indicate that authoritarianism’s correlation with vote choice is a product of omitted variable bias rather than representing a causal relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addressing the question of how to tackle gender inequalities, we test whether women who perceive women’s representation in politics as achievement are empowered. We embed an experiment in an online survey conducted on a sample of 4545 U.S. women, varying whether the number of women in Congress is presented as achievement or reason for concern. We find that women who are presented with the “achievement” frame are more likely to consider job opportunities for a range of jobs. Heterogeneity based on pre-treatment moderators, particularly political partisanship, which correlates with a host of gender attitudes like feelings of marginalization, helps explain variation in treatment effects. The study broadens our understanding of how descriptive representation matters for non-political outcomes, showing that it empowers women to consider applying to more jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a product of China's planned economy, the state-run hukou system has dramatically influenced national and social management. However, hukou identity often results in social exclusion and alienation of outsiders. This study explores how hukou identity affects urban residents' perception of local government performance. The least-square method (OLS), ordered-logit regression, and propensity score matching method (PSM) are applied to test our hypothesis. We found that hukou identity has a significant impact on perceived performance of local government. Specifically, non-locals' perceived performance is lower than that of native locals, but there is no apparent distinction between new locals' perceived performance and native locals through hukou conversion. Furthermore, hukou identity's influence on perception of local government performance has individual heterogeneity. Here, the opinions of highly educated residents coincide due to hukou identity. Beginning with the unique heterogeneous social structure in urban China attributable to hukou system, this study provides a new way to understand residents' complicated political psychology in urban China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political and revolutionary character of Vygotsky's theory consists not only in the project of a psychology based on the principles of Marxism, but in the idea of the primary role of practice as the source of the development of theoretical research itself. In the Vygotskyan analysis of the differences between normal and pathological in psychological processes, the normative character of psychology emerges, imposing patterns of behavior and personality beyond the specific social and cultural contexts in which they were developed. After the turning point of the monograph by Van der Veer and Valsiner (Understanding Vygotsky: A quest for synthesis, Blackwell, 1991), and the new knowledge derived from the publication of the Notebooks, edited by Zavershneva and Van der Veer (Vygotsky's notebook: A selection, Springer Nature, Berlin, 2018), recent historical studies on Vygotsky's work show that, faithful to this perspective, the Russian psychologist investigated the dialectical relationship between theory and practice particularly in the areas of pedology and defectology where the risk of a normativity, imposed from above and mediated by psychology, was very high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Narratives are increasingly cited by scholars, international organisations, NGOs, and governments as one of the most powerful factors in migration politics and policymaking today. However, narratives are typically conceptually underspecified, with relatively little known about why some narratives become publicly popular or the nature of their effects. This article reviews recent scholarly advances to specify what narratives are and to offer a novel theoretical framework to better explain variation in their public popularity and effects. It is argued that the popularity of a narrative, defined as a generalisable, constructed and selective depiction of reality across time, is determined by a combination of contextual factors, such as issue complexity and salience, the plausibility of the narrative and the traits of the recipient of the narrative. These findings are relevant for policymakers and, particularly, communicators. However, although significant work has gone into explaining how narratives affect migration policymaking, the often-assumed effects of narratives on attitudes to immigration and migration behaviour have rarely been robustly tested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How much will people sacrifice to support or oppose political parties? Extending previous work on the psychology of interpersonal cooperation, we propose that people's minds compute a distinct cost–benefit ratio—a welfare tradeoff ratio—that regulates their choices to help or hurt political parties. In two experiments, participants decide whether to financially help and hurt the inparty and outparty. The results show that participants were extremely consistent (> 90%) while making dozens of decisions in a randomized order, providing evidence for tradeoff ratios toward parties. Moreover, participants' ratios correlated in the expected directions with partisanship, political ideology, and feelings of enthusiasm and anger toward each party, corroborating that these ratios are politically meaningful. Generally, most participants were willing to sacrifice at least some money to help their inparty and hurt the outparty. At the same time, a sizable minority hurt their inparty and helped their outparty. Welfare tradeoff ratios push our understanding of partisanship beyond the classic debate about whether voters are rational or irrational. Underneath the turbulent surface of partisan passions hide precise calculations that proportion our altruism and spite toward parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the strength of arguments for veganism in the animal rights literature, alongside environmental and other anthropocentric concerns posed by industrialised animal agriculture, veganism remains only a minority standpoint. In this paper, I explore the moral motivational problem of veganism from the perspectives of moral psychology and political false consciousness. I argue that a novel interpretation of the post-Marxist notion of political false consciousness may help to make sense of the widespread refusal to shift towards veganism. Specifically, the notion of false consciousness fills some explanatory gaps left by the moral psychological notion of akrasia, often understood to refer to a weakness of will. Central to my approach is the idea that animal exploitation is largely systemic and the assumption that moral motivation is inseparable from moral thinking. In this light, the primary obstacle to the adoption of veganism arises not so much from a failure to put genuine beliefs into action, but rather in a shared, distorted way of thinking about animals. Thus, common unreflective objections to veganism may be said to be manifestations of false consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the influence of social networks on political behavior has led to findings showing an apparent trade-off between positive attitudes toward the outparty and political engagement. The prevalent sentiments have been that partisan bonding or ties with fellow partisans hurts evaluations of the outparty but helps political engagement. Partisan bridging or ties with opposite partisans, on the other hand, improves evaluations of the outparty but hurts engagement. I argue that this trade-off is essentially an illusion driven by a mistaken assumption that bonding and bridging are two opposite ends of the same continuum. Analyzing two original national surveys of the American public, I show that bonding and bridging are independent constructs with different consequences. Consistent with previous studies, I find that bonding hurts and bridging helps outparty attitudes. Both bonding and bridging, however, are positively related to political engagement. I also show that network disagreement partially mediates the effects of partisan bonding, but not the effects of partisan bridging. This suggests that the efforts to encourage voters to build relationships with politically different others can be done without having to worry that they will lead to decreased engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies conducted in the last few decades show that young people have a negative evaluation of politics since they relate it to conventional forms of participation. In addition, they engage in unconventional forms of political participation, though they do not think of them as political practices. In this context, a qualitative study was carried out in order to describe the social representations of politics through the narratives provided by adolescents during an interview based on Piaget's clinical method. The results obtained reveal the coexistence of two representations of politics: a conventional and an unconventional one. The representation in which politics is mainly understood as conventional forms of participation appears to be hegemonic, although a polemic unconventional representation was identified. Moreover, in many of the subjects both representations coexist in state of cognitive polyphasia that express a relation of selective prevalence between them, depending on the discursive context they are elicited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This election season, a rogue band of Republican Party operatives has attracted considerable media attention, and the Twitter wrath of President Trump, with a series of negative advertisements attacking the incumbent. The Lincoln Project strategy demonstrates how social and cultural conservatives are attracted to a particular aesthetic, prompted by their psychological attraction to rhetorical forms that are threat-oriented, clear, efficient, hyperbolic, emotional, and authoritative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study assessed youth anxiety about political issues and associated characteristics. Caregivers (N = 374) were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk and reported on their child's anxiety about 15 voting issues covered in the media since the 2016 presidential election as well as their child's psychological functioning and their own trait anxiety. For the majority of voting issues, over 50% of caregivers indicated that their child experienced at least one related worry; worries about the environment and gun violence were most common. Youth empathy and intolerance of uncertainty were each positively associated with worry about political issues but did not predict such worry after accounting for the effect of youth trait anxiety. Youth with clinical levels of generalized anxiety experienced more severe worry about political issues than did youth with minimal/subthreshold anxiety. Future studies should identify strategies for mitigating the negative impact of political news on youth with anxiety disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. President Donald Trump has frequently made foreign countries central to his political messages, often conveying animosity. But do foreign citizens react more to the speaker of these messages—Trump himself—or their content? More generally, when people are exposed to messages sent from foreign countries, are their attitudes influenced by information heuristics or information content in messages? Although related studies are abundant in the literature of American public opinion, these questions are not fully examined in the literature of foreign public opinion. To address them, we used Japan as a case and fielded a survey experiment exposing citizens to U.S. policy messages that varied by source, policy content, and issue salience. Results suggest that while the source cue (Trump attribution) causes negative perceptions of the U.S., the policy content (cooperative vs. uncooperative) has a larger effect in shaping opinion of the U.S. Furthermore, analysis of interaction effects shows that only when U.S. policy approach is uncooperative does the Trump attribution have significantly negative and large effects. We conclude that foreign citizens rely more on policy content in transnational opinion formation—an aspect that past research in this area has overlooked. Substantively, these findings may demonstrate that even under a presidency that has alienated foreign countries and seemingly undermined U.S. stature in the world, foreign opinion toward the U.S. does not hinge entirely on its political leader. In short, Trump has not irreparably damaged the U.S. image abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the decision to vote signify that African Americans are "fired up" (i.e., that they are excited about the election), or is it a function of Blacks' long-term commitment to activism (i.e., that their sense of social responsibility keeps them "ready to go" to the polls)? We argue that campaign enthusiasm and civic duty can work together, exerting an interactive influence in some contexts, and moving independently in others. Using survey data from the 2012 and 2016 American National Election Studies, we discover that both enthusiasm or civic duty matter in the sense that high levels of civic duty can substitute for a lack of enthusiasm, and that high levels of enthusiasm can substitute for the lack of a sense of civic duty. This pattern of enthusiasm and civic duty being "mutually-attenuating" conditions of Black turnout is clearest in 2016: the stronger the effect of one variable, the weaker the impact of the other, and this conditional effect is exists regardless of age. Our findings join the ongoing and spirited conversation about racial politics in the United States, and they contribute to the study of campaign enthusiasm and civic duty, two of the strongest and most reliable motivators of political behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How did anxiety influence vote choice in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, when both major candidates faced substantial voter disapproval? Drawing from the model of affective intelligence (Marcus et al. 2000), I argue that anxious voters will base their vote choice more strongly on issues and candidate qualities and less on partisanship relative to non-anxious voters. This study uses a registered report as part of the 2016 Election Research Preacceptance Competition, wherein a complete analysis plan was submitted for review prior to the 2016 American National Election Study's release. In so doing, it serves as a model for other preregistered and potentially preaccepted research. Consistent with past findings, this study shows that anxious voters in 2016 were less likely to rely on past partisanship and more likely to base decisions on personal qualities. However, anxiety did not condition the effect of issues in the election. Further, Donald Trump faced no more anxiety among Republican voters than Mitt Romney did in 2012 due to a rise of in-party enthusiasm. The non-conditional effect of issues and a relatively narrow gap in partisan anxiety served as unique features of the 2016 election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colorblindness and social dominance orientation (SDO) are social attitudes that contribute to the continuation of racism in the United States (U.S.). Colorblindness encourages people to no longer see race, so when race does matter, they cannot see it. SDO reflects the extent to which people support group equality. The current study was conducted to examine if those social attitudes affected young adults (age 18–35) activist behavior against racism in the U.S. Two hundred twenty-two participants completed a survey consisted of previously validated scales: Colorblind Scale as reported by Neville et al. (Journal of Counseling Psychology 47:59–70, 2000), Social Dominance Orientation7(s) as reported by Ho et al. (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 109:1003–1028, 2015), and Activism Orientation Scale as reported by Corning and Myers (Political Psychology, 23:703–729, 2002). The survey was distributed at a University in the Mid-Atlantic region with results revealing that colorblind attitude and social dominance orientation significantly associated negatively with activist behavior. I conclude with explaining the importance of combating colorblind ideology in the fight against racism in the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of critical psychology and socio-constructionist theories, the present work aims at analyzing attitudes of political agency, psychological adjustment to trauma, and resistance, as protective factors against political violence in 122 children living in refugee camps in Palestine: Aida and Dheisheh camps in the West Bank and Jabalia camp on the Gaza Strip. Data were collected over 3 months, during summer camps that lasted at least 6 days. We conducted a comparative analysis of the use of drawing as a diagnostic tool for children who have experienced severe trauma and its use as a narrative instrument. Two strikingly different portraits emerge from a diagnostic perspective on the inner states of trauma-impacted children versus a narrative child-centered perspective that values children's own efforts to construct meaning. The former type of analysis is underpinned by an image of vulnerable children, afflicted by symptoms and at risk of losing emotional and behavioral control. In contrast, the analysis of children's narratives reveals abundant sources of functioning, coping abilities and agency in facing adversity. We discuss the fact that the first of these approaches fails to capture the protective and functioning factors underlying aspects of dysfunction and maladaptation. Diagnosis-oriented approaches risk to victimize and pathologize children living in contexts of ongoing trauma. The results of this preliminary survey on children's activism and agency show and confirm the crucial role of context in shaping children's suffering and reactions to war and ongoing violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the functioning of democratic societies, it is a crucial question why some citizens value or even enjoy political engagement while others hardly bother about politics at all. However, despite scholarly agreement on the relevance of childhood experiences, the early causes of varying inclinations for volitional political engagement remain largely unidentified. Arguing for the relevance of non-political factors, this study theorizes the role of basic psychological needs in shaping proclivities for political engagement. Specifically, this study hypothesizes that children who grow up in need-supportive parental homes will be more inclined to engage with politics decades later. Findings from two independent representative cohort studies (N = 5927, N = 6158) suggest that need-supportive parenting stimulates the development of curiosity and appreciation towards politics. Moreover, need-supportive parenting interacts with social learning processes in stimulating political engagement. Providing insights into the promotion of political engagement, these findings underscore the importance of factors seemingly remote to the political domain but deeply engrained in human processes of psychosocial functioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholarly publications in the field of Chinese political studies show a strong Western liberal bias. Very often we find their descriptions and predictions on China to be inaccurate or false. To probe the problem of Western liberal bias, this study uses a multidisciplinary approach to analyze the Sino-Western cognitive habits and the cultural and historical roots of these differences. We find that there are some important cognitive differences between Chinese and Western people. These differences may derive from their linguistic, psychological, and genetic variations, and are closely associated with their different political values, preferences, and behavior patterns. The implication of these finding suggests that some of the Western liberal ideas may not be congruent with Chinese culture which emphasizes social harmony, rule of ethics, and respect to authority. Effort to promote Western liberal democracy as a universal value does not take into consideration of these important cognitive and cultural differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nobel Prize winner Richard Thaler was among those who expected Remain to win the EU referendum. Yet on 23 June 2016, a majority in the UK voted to Leave by a margin of 52–48%. A study of over 450 Leave voters, based on the MINDSPACE framework, looks at whether behavioural factors affected the outcome and at what lessons could be learned for any future votes. It finds that voters had low levels of knowledge which may have undermined any 'status quo bias'; that messengers used by the Remain campaign didn't work for this audience; that the Remain campaign's loss-framed figure of £4300 per household per year was judged to be less than the Leave campaign's figure of £350 m a week (it is six times larger); and that behaviourally-based arguments on immigration might have had an impact. It notes how behavioural science was used successfully to increase turnout. The implication for communicators is that a 'Test, Learn, Adapt' strategy could be helpful in future campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper critically engages with some of the normative arguments in Julian Savulescu and Ingmar Persson's book Unfit for the Future. In particular, it scrutinizes the authors' argument in denial of a moral right to privacy as well as their political proposal to alter humankind's moral psychology in order to avert climate change, terrorism and to redress global injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore how gender, attitudes about traditional gender roles, and threats to masculinity and femininity affect U.S. participants' support for transgender rights. First, we present analyses using data from the 2016 pilot survey of the American National Election Survey (ANES) showing how men and women differ in their attitudes toward transgender people as measured by thermometer ratings toward transgender people and questions about perceptions of whether they are victims of discrimination. Next, we describe our randomized laboratory experiment, testing three hypotheses/predictions: (a) that men are less supportive of transgender people and rights than women are, (2) that threatening a man's masculinity increases opposition to transgender rights whereas threatening a woman's femininity has no effect, and (3) that this effect will be stronger among men who report that their gender identity is very important to them. Consistent with existing scholarship, we find that women are more supportive of transgender rights compared to men. More importantly, we also find that threatened masculinity is an even better predictor of opposition to transgender rights than gender identity. In short, we find that attitudes toward transgender people and rights are closely linked with the way people think and feel about their own gender identity and expectations of gender performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research has indicated that women who work in male-dominated fields, such as politics, face discrimination due to a stereotypically perceived poor fit between their gender and occupational expectations. Even when their potential for success is undeniable, these women are typically derogated and viewed as unlikeable for violating prescriptive gender norms. We examined whether conservative U.S. women would respond in this unfavorable manner toward Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton during the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. Female undergraduates (n = 140) were randomly assigned to watch a set of three campaign ads that included either no slogan, a gender-neutral slogan ("Stronger Together"), or a gendered slogan ("I'm with Her"). Afterwards, they rated Clinton on dimensions related to interpersonal hostility, competency, and overall support. Given its adherence to traditional values and gender roles, we hypothesized that political conservatism would be predictive of critical responses to Clinton, especially when the campaign slogan made her gender-norm violation salient. Results revealed that conservative ideology was more strongly associated with increased ratings of perceived hostility and less support for Clinton within the "I'm with Her" condition than with the comparison groups. These findings point to the social maintenance of political inequality and suggest that female leaders may need to use gender-neutral platforms to diminish the negative effects of their perceived norm violation, at least among conservative voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Classical theories of political representation claim that high levels of political knowledge and awareness across the electorate are crucial for a well-functioning democracy. In real life, though, the actual amount of political information possessed by voters is small and unevenly distributed. In addition, electoral decision making is complex and often characterized by severe time pressure. This study therefore experimentally tests the theoretical framework of “fast and frugal” voters and the “less-is-more effect” (Gigerenzer and Goldstein in Psychol Rev 103(4):650-669, 1996), which expects that in some instances low levels of political knowledge may actually result in equally good or even better outcomes than in the case of well-informed decisions. It is hence assumed that employing specific cognitive shortcuts can help voters make good and quick decisions, even with a lack of information. We have used a laboratory experiment to create an environment characterized by severe time pressure that allowed for only shallow information search and limited comparisons across alternatives. Subjects were able to base their decisions only on a small number of criteria operationalized by candidates’ positions on current political issues with various levels of perceived salience. Voters appear to simplify decision making by focusing mainly on those policy attitudes they consider important. Consequently, it seems that shifting the decision-making strategy from accuracy to efficiency has no effect on the final outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

City elections in the U.S. are widely thought to be low-information contests decided by non-ideological factors. This consensus casts doubt on the possibility of electoral accountability in cities, and renders recent evidence of municipal responsiveness puzzling. However, our knowledge of how voters actually behave in local elections is severely limited by a lack of individual-level survey data collected from local contests. Using three such original surveys, I re-examine the role of ideology in mayoral elections, recruiting samples of local voters via geotargeted Facebook advertisements. In two large cities, I find ideology is a powerful and independent predictor of vote choice. Using a panel design, I find voters learn the relative ideological positions of candidates over the course of a campaign, and that learning causally impacts vote choice. The effect of ideology also replicates in a conjoint experiment fielded to a sample of small-city voters in another region. Electoral accountability is thus a plausible explanation for ideological responsiveness in U.S. cities, and the methodological tools introduced here can now be applied to a variety of questions about local voter behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]