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The theory of normative social behavior (TNSB) postulates that people are influenced by others' behaviors, which they observe from messages and experience. In addition to focusing on perceived (i.e., descriptive and injunctive) norms, the TNSB was expanded to include collective norms, which represent what people actually do. Testing this expanded theoretical model, the current study examined whether two types of collective norms – collective political norms and collective regional norms – interacted with descriptive norms to influence pandemic mask wearing behavior expectations among U.S. adults (N = 444). The interaction was statistically significant for collective political norms (β = -.74, p =.009) but not collective regional norms (β = -.16, p =.85). Specifically, descriptive norms were related to increased mask wearing expectation for all values of political party collective norms, but the effects were stronger when political party collective norms were low (i.e., low mask wearing behavior was normative). The findings support the inclusion of collective norms in the TNSB, clarify the relationships among different types of norms, and provide insights for norms-based interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Depression can affect individuals' attitudes by enhancing cognitive biases and altering perceptions of control. We investigate the relationship between depressive symptoms and Americans' attitudes regarding domestic extremist violence. We develop a theory that suggests the association between depression and support for political violence depends on conspiracy beliefs, participatory inclinations, and their combination. We test our theory using a two‐wave national survey panel from November 2020 and January 2021. We find that among those who hold conspiracy beliefs and/or have participatory inclinations, depression is positively associated with support for election violence and the January 6 Capitol riots. The participatory inclination dynamic is particularly strong for men. Our findings reveal how the intersection of two concerning features of American society—poor mental health and conspiratorial beliefs—strongly relate to another feature: support for political violence. The results also make clear that interventions aimed at addressing depression can potentially have substantial political consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much political behavior research highlights the role of post-immigration experiences in framing Latinx immigrants' preferences in the United States. We contend that immigrants' pre-migration political socialization also shapes their current views, political engagement, and ideological orientations. Findings from a unique set of 146 interviews on political party choice before and after migration suggest that Latinx immigrants exhibit consistency of political orientations for party choice across borders. In other words, home-country political and ideological orientations help guide choice of U.S. political party. Pre-immigration variables are thus crucial for a more comprehensive assessment of Latinx immigrant political psychology and behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We test three competing theoretical accounts invoked to explain the rise and spread of political (mis)information. We compare the ideological values hypothesis (people prefer news that bolster their values and worldviews); the confirmation bias hypothesis (people prefer news that fit their preexisting stereotypical knowledge); and the political identity hypothesis (people prefer news that allow them to believe positive things about political ingroup members and negative things about political outgroup members). In three experiments (N = 1,420), participants from the United States read news describing actions perpetrated by their political ingroup or outgroup. Consistent with the political identity hypothesis, Democrats and Republicans were both more likely to believe news about the value-upholding behavior of their ingroup or the value-undermining behavior of their outgroup. Belief was positively correlated with willingness to share on social media in all conditions, but Republicans were more likely to believe and want to share apolitical fake news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses a novel experimental approach to isolate "expressive" or "noninstrumental" payoffs to voting along identity lines, separating them from "substantive" motivations. Applying social identity theory to the case of gender in U.S. elections, the study answers the question: Do some men and women receive a purely expressive payoff from preferring same‐gender candidates? A series of experiments test whether a purely expressive payoff from voting along gender lines is stronger among certain voters. Employing a self‐affirmation treatment and measures of group‐identity attachment, as well as a voting vignette, the evidence shows that Republican men receive a purely expressive payoff from voting for male over female candidates. That is, Republican men's preference for a male over a female candidate can be reduced by a self‐affirmation treatment that has subjects focus on their individuating characteristics, thereby temporarily "detaching" them from their group attachments. Women and Democratic men are not affected by the self‐affirmation treatment. This study deepens our understanding of voter gender bias in the United States, with a particular focus on the implications of ingroup bias among certain partisan voters for the supply of female candidates within party primary elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite being a defining issue in the culture war, the political psychology of abortion attitudes remains poorly understood. We address this oversight by reviewing existing literature and integrating new analyses of several large‐scale, cross‐sectional, and longitudinal datasets to identify the demographic and ideological correlates of abortion attitudes. Our review and new analyses indicate that abortion support is increasing modestly over time in both the United States and New Zealand. We also find that a plurality of respondents (43.8%) in the United States are consistently "pro‐choice," whereas 14.8% are consistently "pro‐life," across various elective and traumatic abortion scenarios. We then show that age, religiosity, and conservatism correlate negatively, whereas Openness to Experience correlates positively, with abortion support. New analyses of heterosexual couples further reveal that women's and men's religiosity decrease their romantic partner's abortion support. Noting inconsistent gender differences in attitudes toward abortion, we then discuss the impact of traditional gender‐role attitudes and sexism on abortion attitudes and conclude that, rather than misogyny, benevolent sexism—the belief that women should be cherished and protected—best explains opposition to abortion. Our review thus provides a comprehensive overview of the demographic and ideological variables that underly abortion attitudes and, hence, the broader culture war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of belief system structure and dynamics assume that belief systems are a person-level construct. However, measures of belief system structure do not measure the structure of person-level belief systems and instead measure aggregated belief system structure (e.g., the belief system in a particular country). In this paper, I show that a measure of conceptual similarity between attitudes and identities of a belief system works as a valid, reliable, flexible, and efficient measure of person-level belief system structure in the United States. In Studies 1 (N = 387), 2 (N = 389), and 3 (N = 598), I show conceptual similarity judgments are reliable and are related to measures of political engagement, political knowledge, attitude consistency, and preference congruence as predicted by computational models of belief system dynamics. In Studies 4 (N = 981) and 5 (N = 983), I show that conceptual similarity judgments are affected by partisan frames and that changes in conceptual similarity judgments are associated with attitude change as predicted by computational models of belief system dynamics. Conceptual similarity judgments can be used with a variety of attitudes and identities in easy to administer studies. It provides a tool to fill an empirical gap identified by theories of belief system dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the last fifty years, Congress has embraced a tactical approach to naming its legislation. In that span, a distinctly American lawcraft has emerged, with official short titles frequently taking the form of acronyms (e.g., the USA PATRIOT Act), victim names (e.g., Megan's Law), or other evocative phrasings (e.g., the Ryan White CARE Act). What was once mundane and routine has become yet another opportunity for political messaging. At their best, tactical titles may be cute, clever, or even moving, but they still fail to provide useful insights about their underlying directives. It is hardly surprising, then, that they have become an object of scorn or ridicule, with scholars, commentators, and occasionally legislators calling for measures to curb the practice. If tactical titles lack the power to change the likelihood of a law's passage, then we might be able to disregard the phenomenon as a silly, if trivial, pastime. But what if titles have the power to manipulate people's opinions of the laws so named? What if titles give laws an advantage by making them more likely to be noticed or remembered? Then these titles become a threat to democratic principles by harming the electorate's ability to make informed conclusions about laws and those who support them. Remarkably, there has never been an empirical study of the effect of tactical titling on Americans. To fill that void, we have designed a novel experiment that isolates the effects of common title types (acronyms, victim names, sponsor names, and generic titles) on favorability and memory. This experimental design further reveals how these effects are moderated or enhanced by the political ideologies of those who read them. Our results indicate that tactical titles have the power to change people's opinions of underlying laws. Troublingly, this effect appears to be ideologically asymmetrical: Left-leaning participants' opinions did not exhibit a titling effect, but Right-leaning participants gave higher ratings to a law with an acronym title and lower ratings when the very same law had a victim-named title. Moreover, the effect was limited to a conservative law; we did not observe it on either a liberal or nonpartisan law. Our results also showed that, regardless of the participant's or the law's political leaning, participants were better at recalling acronym titles than our other title types. The magnitude of the effect was substantial. Regarding opinion, our results indicated an average shift in the favorability of a law from a six to a nine on a ten-point scale. As to memory, participants were nearly twice as likely to remember the names of laws with acronym titles than generic titles. These findings dovetail with political psychology research on negativity and in-group biases. And most importantly, they provide empirical justification for measures that seek to put an end to tactical titling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rhetoric leaders use to speak to domestic audiences about security is not simply bluster. Political agents rely upon stories of enmity and threat to represent what is happening in the international arena, to whom and why, in order to push national and international security policy agendas. They do so for the simple reason that a good story is a powerful political device. This article examines historical 'calls to arms' in the United States, based on insights from archival research at US presidential libraries and the United States National Archives. Drawing on narrative theory and political psychology, the article develops a new analytic framework to explain the political currency and staying power of hero–villain security narratives, which divide the world into opposing spheres of 'good' and 'evil'. Shifting the conceptual focus away from speakers and settings towards audience and affect, it argues that the resonance of hero–villain security narratives lies in the way their plot structure keeps the audience in suspense. Because they are consequential rhetorical tools that shape security policy practices, the stories political agents tell about security demand greater attention in the broader field of international security studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People with different worldviews may have different interpretations for the same object. Freedom fighters for some are terrorists for others; immigrants can be seen as a threat or being threatened. To incorporate differences in interpretations into quantitative models, I propose the construct of value‐instantiating beliefs, or perceived consequences of actions for basic human values. I hypothesize that these beliefs moderate the relationship between personal values and attitudes. In a preregistered mixed‐methods study (N = 2038) I assess personal value priorities, attitudes, and perceived consequences of four political behaviours. Beliefs about consequences of the behaviours differed with political affiliation: for example, liberals saw voting for Trump in light of negative consequences for universalistic values, while conservatives stressed positive consequences for self‐direction and security. The moderation hypothesis was confirmed. Including value‐instantiating beliefs in the models significantly improved the predictions of attitudes towards and intentions to perform the behaviours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American politics scholars disagree on the extent to which voters use policy information to evaluate politicians versus relying on partisan cues to evaluate policies. We demonstrate the coexistence of both of these perspectives, by studying the degree to which objective facts (measured with local COVID-19 cases) and partisan cues (measured with President Trump's tweets about the virus) influence differences in the social distancing behaviors in Democrat and Republican counties in 2020. We find that both factors play an important role in social distancing but that the relative importance between cues and facts favors the latter. Furthermore, the importance of these signals declines over time, suggesting a crucial but underappreciated dynamic of how partisan positions evolve in a Bayesian framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the United States intervenes in foreign countries, the lives of both foreign combatants and foreign civilians are put at risk. I examine two rhetorical strategies, the use of sanitized and dehumanizing language that can influence the public's support of foreign intervention. In the context of foreign policy, sanitized language operates by obscuring casualties of war, while dehumanizing language operates by devaluing the lives of groups of individuals. Drawing on data from two experiments, I find that sanitized language operates through creating less of an emotional reaction toward casualties of war, which causes individuals to adopt more hawkish foreign policy attitudes. I find that dehumanizing language also leads to more hawkish foreign policy attitudes, but, contrary to expectations, does not lead to increased disgust or anger toward dehumanized groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We offer novel tests of hypotheses regarding the conditional relationship of psychological needs to political ideology. Using five personality measures and a large national sample, our findings affirm that political engagement plays an important moderating role in the relationship between needs for certainty and security and political identification, values, and policy preferences. We find that needs for certainty and security are strongly associated with right-wing political identification and cultural values and policy preferences, particularly among politically engaged citizens. In the economic domain, however, we find that needs for certainty and security are typically associated with left -wing values and policy preferences among politically unengaged citizens. It is only among politically engaged citizens that such needs are associated with right-wing economic values and policy preferences. Our findings confirm the importance of heterogeneity across both ideological domain and political engagement for how psychological needs translate into political ideology in the American mass public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When individuals evaluate something as serious as sexual misconduct allegations in politics, they are often motivated to defend their party—but outside forces can reduce these partisan biases. We bridge work from political psychology with studies of social movements to theorize how the #MeToo movement helps to mitigate partisan‐motivated evaluations of sexual misconduct. With a two‐wave survey experiment, we find that partisans are more likely to view out‐party members as guilty of sexual misconduct and that individuals less likely to reflect are particularly biased in their evaluations. We then turn to the #MeToo movement and its potential to promote reflection. We show that support for #MeToo is associated with more evenhanded evaluations of sexual misconduct in politics, particularly among those unlikely to reflect on their own. This study contributes to our broader understanding of how movements can induce reflection and moderate partisan‐motivated reasoning among the mass public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the current political environment in the United States and around the world becomes more polarized, it is important to better understand the intrapersonal and interpersonal effects of engaging political discourse with political humility. Across two studies, we explored the predictors of political humility (Study 1), and how political humility might impact engagement with different viewpoints (Study 2). In Study 1 (N = 311), political humility was positively related to openness, but negatively associated with political commitment. In Study 2 (N = 194), controlling for political commitment, political humility was positively associated with identifying positives in the opposite political perspective, identifying the results of a neutral essay as inconclusive, and having more favorable ratings of a political essay contrary to their own views. On the other hand, political humility was negatively related to experiential avoidance. We conclude by discussing limitations and suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People with different ideological identities differ in their values, personality, affect, and psychological motivations. These differences are observed on measures of practical and clinical importance and these differences are the central node tying together theories about the psychology of political ideology; however, they rest on a critical untested assumption: The measures are invariant across ideological groups. Here, we test this assumption across 28 constructs in data from the United States and the Netherlands. Measures are not invariant across ideological divisions. At the same time, estimates of ideological similarities and differences are largely similar before and after correcting for measurement noninvariance. This may give us increased confidence in the results from this research area, while simultaneously highlighting that some instance of noninvariance did change conclusions and that individual items are not always comparable across political groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars who study public opinion and American foreign policy have accepted what Rathbun et al. (2016) call the "Vertical Hierarchy Model," which says that policy attitudes are determined by more abstract moral ideas about right and wrong. This article turns this idea on its head by introducing the Prejudice First Model, arguing that foreign policy preferences and orientations are driven by attitudes toward the groups being affected by specific policies. Three experiments are used to test the utility of this framework. First, when conservatives heard about Muslims killing Christians, as opposed to the opposite scenario, they were more likely to support a humanitarian intervention and agree that the United States has a moral obligation to help those persecuted by their governments. Liberals showed no religious preference. When the relevant identity group was race, however, liberals were more likely to want to help blacks persecuted by whites, while conservatives showed no racial bias. In contrast, the degree of persecution mattered relatively little to respondents in either experiment, and the effects of moral foundations were shown to be generally weak relative to those of prejudice. In another experiment, conservatives adopted more isolationist policies after reading a text about the country becoming more liberal, as opposed to a paragraph that said the United States was a relatively conservative country. While not necessarily contradicting the Vertical Hierarchy Model, the results indicate that under most conditions the Prejudice First Model presents a better lens through which to understand how foreign policy preferences are formed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the changing demography of the United States, there has been a significant growth in the literature focused on inter-group attitudes. While this has advanced our understanding of how pervasive negative inter-group attitudes are among racial and ethnic populations, little work has been able to explore these attitudes across multiple populations. This is a significant drawback, as it prevents the ability to establish any frame of reference when examining any specific relationship among populations under study. Drawing on the 2008 Collaborative Multiracial Political Study (CMPS), we examine perceptions of both intra- and inter-group competition among Latinos, Blacks, Asian Americans, and Whites. Our research design makes four important contributions to the literature: (1) we examine the correlation between perceptions of competition across multiple racial groups simultaneously; (2) we include a measure of internal-competition to test whether perceptions of competition with one's own group lead to higher levels of perceived competition with outside groups; (3) we test the relative impact of real and perceived neighborhood diversity on perceptions of competition; and finally, (4) we examine the relationship between perceived competition and other racial attitudes to gain a better understanding of whether perceptions of competition should be interpreted as evidence of inter-group tension or conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, American elections underwent a series of reforms that weakened partisan control over elections. The variation in the electoral rules during this period offers scholars a unique opportunity to examine how electoral institutions and reforms structure election outcomes. In this article, I examine how electoral rules translated voter preferences into outcomes for the selection of two prominent positions, governors and U.S. senators. These two elected positions offer an interesting comparison because while they are chosen to represent the same geographic constituency, there is notable variation in the rules used to elect each office. Based on analysis of more than 350 senate-gubernatorial election pairs, I find that varying levels of partisan control over elections throughout time conditioned the likelihood that the partisan outcome of these elections mirrors one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canonical rational choice models of voter preferences assume that voters select candidates whose policy positions most closely match their own. Yet, much of the electorate often appears to prioritize identity variables (e.g., social categories, group membership) over policy considerations. Here, we report an empirical test of policy-identity interactions using surveys of likely voters conducted in the 24 hours before the 2016 United States presidential election and the 2018 United States senatorial elections. Each respondent indicated not only their policy preferences but also key social group identities and how those identities would be reinforced by voting. We observed striking evidence for a competition between policy and social group identification: For voters who exhibited the maximal effects of identity, policy positions were essentially irrelevant to their candidate preferences. These results account for dissociations between voters' stated policy preferences and their voting behavior, while linking empirical observations of political behavior to new models derived from psychology and neuroscience. [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]

Internationalization is a key aim of the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP). This article uses bibliometric techniques to explore international collaborations in the Society's core activities, namely the journal Political Psychology and annual meetings. We explore how authors from different regions of the world are interconnected through coauthorship, using country information extracted from authors' affiliation and coded as Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) or non‐WEIRD. Study 1 analyzes coauthorship in the Society's journal Political Psychology from 1985–2014 (30 years), with 1151 authors from 42 countries and 1337 coauthorship ties between them. Study 2 mapped the coauthorship relationships for annual meetings for which documentation was available, eventually collecting data from 2006 to 2014 (9 years). In total, 4260 authors from 74 countries were represented, with 6884 collaborative ties. Annual meetings reflected more international collaboration than the journal on several dimensions, including a large internationally connected giant component of collaborating authors evident in annual meetings, but not the journals. In annual meetings, there were more collaborations between WEIRD and non‐WEIRD authors. However, even at annual meetings, deep internationalization involving non‐WEIRD authors was rare, and the activities of the Society primarily represent academics from WEIRD countries, particularly the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democracies across the globe are shaken by a new class of populist right‐wing politicians. A defining element of right‐wing populism is a preference for antagonistic rhetoric to describe opponents. Three studies connect support for right‐wing populist rhetoric to collective nostalgia for the past. Importantly, the results show that collective nostalgia can both increase and decrease support for right‐wing populist antagonistic rhetoric, depending on how the past is conceptualized. Nostalgia for a past characterized by political incorrectness is associated with increased support, whereas nostalgia for the past's greater decorum is associated with decreased support for right‐wing populism. Studies 1 and 2 show this with vignettes. Study 3 measures support for Trump and the GOP in the 2018 midterm elections. Although right‐wing populism is often seen as the result of a wave of nostalgia, our results show that this link can be disconnected and even reversed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Muslim converts tend to be overrepresented in terrorist activity compared to fellow nonconvert Muslims. However, due to the low base rate of terrorism activity, there is a significant risk that this overrepresentation is a "false positive." We therefore tested the prevalence of far more common, but potentially antecedent, cognitions to terrorism—activism and radicalism––among convert and nonconvert Muslims. We surveyed 356 American Muslim adults, of which 177 were self‐identified converts, with the Activism and Radicalism Intention Scale or ARIS. We found that converts as compared to nonconverts do demonstrate higher activism and radicalism intention scores. We also found that activism fully mediates the relationship between conversion and radicalism. This suggests that converts may be more likely to engage in radical behavior (such as terrorism) than nonconverts, but only because they are more likely to engage in activism than nonconverts. We discuss these findings in light of current psychology and political mobilization literature, then we offer suggestions for future research on the relationships between conversion, activism, radicalism, and terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The circulation of misinformation, lies, propaganda, and other kinds of falsehood has, to varying degrees, become a challenge to democratic publics. We are interested in the question of what publics believe about their own exposure to falsehoods in news, and about what contributes to similarities and differences in these beliefs across countries. We are also interested in the question of whether publics report attempting to verify news that is suspect to them. Here we report on a comparative election survey in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. We find three key predictors of publics' beliefs that they have been exposed to falsehoods: discussion of news, use of social media for political purposes, and exposure to counter-attitudinal information. The nexus between these three predictors and beliefs about falsehoods exists in all three countries, as we anticipate that it likely exists elsewhere. We do not find voters on the right to be different from those on the left in the United Kingdom and France, but do find a substantial difference in the United States, which is likely due to the 2016 Trump campaign. We conclude with concerns about the imbalance in beliefs about exposure to falsehoods in the United States and the apparent capacity of a single leader, in the right context, to shape public beliefs about what is to be believed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conservatism is, according to conservative thought leaders, based on sometimes consistent and many times inconsistent and conflicting ideological perspectives. This may be attributed to Adam Smith's perspective of moral sentiments, where he asserts that the foundation of conservatism is based on shared feelings and sentiments, and this basis in sentience may account for the changing and conflicting basis of conservative thought. Exploring these sentiments leads to considering Wilfred Bion's sentience based basic assumption groups--fight or flight, dependency and pairing. These groups and their underlying theoretical foundations contribute to understanding not only conservative ideologies but also liberals' systems of beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been a robust racial justice movement in the United States, which has pursued power with the goal of promoting wellness and liberating people from racially and historically oppressed communities. Organizations such as Black Lives Matter and Showing Up for Racial Justice continue building power and promoting psychological and political liberation. The purpose of our study is to investigate the developmental processes by which anti‐racist activists resist psychological and political oppression to approach wellness and liberation. We conducted 24 interviews from self‐identified anti‐racist activists in the United States and utilized thematic analysis to construct qualitative codes to identify the psychological and political strategies activists implemented in their racial justice work. We found that activists adopted four psychological strategies, two political strategies, and two bridging strategies to resist oppression. Psychologically, activists tended to examine political and historical contexts to understand the root causes of oppression and how their own oppressed and privileged identities fit within those larger systems. Politically, activists sought opportunities to enhance their capacity as activists and engage in critical actions to build power and seek liberation. Bridging these psychological and political domains, activists also formulated a theory of liberation and engaged in critical self‐reflection, which guided their political actions. [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]

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]

Using county-level data, the author evaluates how labor affected the general population's political behavior during the 2000 U.S. presidential election. Voter turnout increased with unionization, but at declining rates with higher levels of unionization. The unionization/voter turnout link was stronger in counties with lower median incomes, higher income inequality, and lower levels of education, suggesting that unions partially closed the political participation gap between low- and high-SES (socioeconomic status) populations. State right-to-work laws, and the absence of collective bargaining rights for public employees, reduced labor's ability to increase voter turnout. The union effect on candidate preference had a positive, curvilinear association with union membership, but this effect was stronger in high-SES regions than in low-SES regions. Overall, these results imply a paradox for organized labor: unions can effectively increase working-class voter turnout, but they have difficulty persuading the working class to vote for pro-labor political candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2016 U.S. presidential election coincided with the rise of the "alternative right," or alt-right. Alt-right associates have wielded considerable influence on the current administration and on social discourse, but the movement's loose organizational structure has led to disparate portrayals of its members' psychology and made it difficult to decipher its aims and reach. To systematically explore the alt-right's psychology, we recruited two U.S. samples: An exploratory sample through Amazon's Mechanical Turk (N = 827, alt-right n = 447) and a larger, nationally representative sample through the National Opinion Research Center's Amerispeak panel (N = 1,283, alt-right n = 71–160, depending on the definition). We estimate that 6% of the U.S. population and 10% of Trump voters identify as alt-right. Alt-right adherents reported a psychological profile more reflective of the desire for group-based dominance than economic anxiety. Although both the alt-right and non-alt-right Trump voters differed substantially from non-alt-right, non-Trump voters, the alt-right and Trump voters were quite similar, differing mainly in the alt-right's especially high enthusiasm for Trump, suspicion of mainstream media, trust in alternative media, and desire for collective action on behalf of Whites. We argue for renewed consideration of overt forms of bias in contemporary intergroup research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory of resilience and relational load was used to examine the impact of voting patterns in the 2016 U.S. presidential election on individuals' romantic relationships. Married/cohabitating individuals (N = 961) completed online surveys at three time points during the transition to the Trump Presidency. The results supported our emotional capital hypothesis in that ongoing relationship maintenance in one's relationship predicted less stress about the Trump presidency, less conflict, less relational load, greater communal orientation, and greater relational resilience. The positive effect of ongoing relationship maintenance on these relational outcomes occurred regardless of how the partners voted. At the same time, voting differently than one's partner was still stressful and negatively influenced these outcomes. The results also supported our relational load model, which found that differences in voting negatively affected individuals' communal orientation and the degree to which they maintained their relationships, which fueled conflict and stress. This conflict and stress was associated with an increase in relational load and a decrease in relational resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study examined links among sexism, psychosocial functioning, and political behavior in 210 young women from the United States. Participants completed a survey including the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, Revised Religious Fundamentalism Scale, Attitudes Toward Women Scale, Internalized Misogyny Scale, and Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale. Higher religious fundamentalism was associated with lower relationship quality, mediated by internalized misogyny, traditional gender roles, and hostile sexism. Although mental health outcomes were also collected, associations with sexist attitudes were nonsignificant. The intersection of sexist attitudes and internalized misogyny with political affiliation and voting behavior was also explored. Participants who voted for Clinton/Kane reported lower levels of internalized misogyny when compared to those who voted for Trump/Pence. In addition, Democrat and Independent individuals reported significantly lower levels of internalized misogyny and hostile sexism when compared to Republican and Not Affiliated individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mid‐twentieth century "collective behavior" school asserted that (1) collective behavior—the actions of crowds, movements, and other gatherings—had distinct dynamics; (2) such action was often "nonrational," or not governed by cost‐benefit calculation; and (3) collective behavior could pose a threat to liberal democracy because of these features. While this tradition fell out of scholarly favor, the 2016 election has given us empirical reasons to revisit some elements of collective behavior approaches. We argue for three key orienting concerns, drawn from this tradition, to understand the current political era. First is a focus on authoritarianism and populism, particularly among those who feel disaffected and isolated from political institutions, pared of psychologistic determinism and geared more sensitively to their manifestations as a political style. Second is a focus on racialized resentment, strain, and perceptions of status decline, especially in how such feelings are activated when people are confronted with disruptions to their lives. Third is an analysis of "emergent norms" and the extent to which political actors produce normative understandings of contextually appropriate action that are distinct from traditional political behavior. We elaborate on these themes, apply them to examples from current politics, and suggest ways to incorporate them into contemporary sociological research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of ambivalence is important to the study of political psychology and behavior. We examine the causes of partisan ambivalence following the passage of major civil rights legislation to test our argument that the correlates of ambivalence will change following the alteration of long-standing party positions on a highly salient issue. We find support for this hypothesis for White Southerners during this time period—Indeed, our results demonstrate that the strength of one's partisan attachment is unrelated to partisan evaluations for such individuals immediately following the passage of major civil rights legislation, but is again a predictor by the early 1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this monograph, we argue for the establishment of a developmental science of politics that describes, explains, and predicts the formation and change of individuals' political knowledge, attitudes, and behavior beginning in childhood and continuing across the life course. Reflecting our goal of contributing both theoretical conceptualizations and empirical data, we have organized the monograph into two broad sections. In the first section, we outline theoretical contributions that the study of politics may make to developmental science and provide practical reasons that empirical research in the domain of politics is important (e.g., for identifying ways to improve civics education and for encouraging higher voting rates among young adults). We also review major historical approaches to the study of political development and provide an integrative theoretical framework to ground future work. Drawing on Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems model as an organizing scheme and emphasizing social justice issues, we describe how factors rooted in cultural contexts, families, and children themselves are likely to shape political development. In the second section of the monograph, we argue for the importance and utility of studying major political events, such as presidential elections, and introduce the major themes, rationales, and hypotheses for a study of U.S. children's views of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In addition, we apply a social‐justice lens to political thought and participation, addressing the role of gender/sex and race/ethnicity in children's political development broadly, and in their knowledge and views of the 2016 U.S. presidential election specifically. In interviews conducted within the month before and after the election, we examined two overarching categories of children's political attitudes: (a) knowledge, preferences, and expectations about the 2016 election, and (b) knowledge and attitudes concerning gender/sex and politics, particularly relevant for the 2016 election given Hillary Clinton's role as the first female major‐party candidate for the presidency. Participants were 187 children (101 girls) between 5 and 11 years of age (M = 8.42 years, SD = 1.45 years). They were recruited from schools and youth organizations in five counties in four U.S. states (Kansas, Kentucky, Texas, and Washington) with varying voting patterns (e.g., Trump voters ranged from 27% to 71% of county voters). The sample was not a nationally representative one, but was racially diverse (35 African American, 50 Latinx, 81 White, and 21 multiracial, Asian American, Middle Eastern, or Native American children). In addition to several child characteristics (e.g., age, social dominance orientation [SDO]), we assessed several family and community characteristics (e.g., child‐reported parental interest in the election and government‐reported county‐level voting patterns, respectively) hypothesized to predict outcome variables. Although our findings are shaped by the nature of our sample (e.g., our participants were less likely to support Trump than children in larger, nationwide samples were), they offer preliminary insights into children's political development. Overall, children in our sample were interested in and knowledgeable about the presidential election (e.g., a large majority identified the candidates correctly and reported some knowledge about their personal qualities or policy positions). They reported more information about Donald Trump's than Hillary Clinton's policies, largely accounted for by the substantial percentage of children (41%) who referred to Trump's immigration policies (e.g., building a wall between the United States and Mexico). Overall, children reported as many negative as positive personal qualities of the candidates, with negative qualities being reported more often for Trump than for Clinton (56% and 18% of children, respectively). Most children (88%) supported Clinton over Trump, a preference that did not vary by participants' gender/sex or race/ethnicity. In their responses to an open‐ended inquiry about their reactions to Trump's win, 63% of children reported negative and 18% reported positive emotions. Latinx children reacted more negatively to the election outcome than did White children. Girls' and boys' emotional responses to the election outcome did not differ. Children's personal interest in serving as U.S. president did not vary across gender/sex or racial/ethnic groups (overall, 42% were interested). Clinton's loss of the election did not appear to depress (or pique) girls' interest in becoming U.S. president. With respect to the role of gender/sex in politics, many children (35%) were ignorant about women's absence from the U.S. presidency. Only a single child was able to name a historical individual who worked for women's civil rights or suffrage. Child characteristics predicted some outcome variables. For example, as expected, older children showed greater knowledge about the candidates than did younger children. Family and community characteristics also predicted some outcome variables. For example, as expected, participants were more likely to support Trump if they perceived that their parents supported him and if Trump received a greater percentage of votes in the children's county of residence. Our data suggest that civic education should be expanded and reformed. In addition to addressing societal problems requiring political solutions, civics lessons should include the histories of social groups' political participation, including information about gender discrimination and the women's suffrage movement in U.S. political history. Providing children with environments that are rich in information related to the purpose and value of politics, and with opportunities and encouragement for political thought and action, is potentially beneficial for youth and their nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of geographic classifications to make empirical or theoretical generalizations is common in political science research. Yet, in most cases, these groupings, in and of themselves, lack broader meaning. Offering an in-depth example of the American South, this study demonstrates the need to scrutinize the qualities we are actually interested in when using geographic classifications to explore political trends. The article begins by discussing the many ways that "the South" has been defined in the existing literature. Then, it evaluates the theoretical and empirical consequences of these various definitions using examples focused on discriminatory practices, voter turnout, and civil rights roll call votes. This evidence demonstrates the importance of grounding one's definition in substantive metrics and historical context over and beyond basic geography. The study concludes with a discussion of its broader implications that apply to several topics of interest and research strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research on conspiracy beliefs reveals that the general predisposition to believe conspiracy theories cuts across partisan and ideological lines. While this may signify that political orientations have no bearing on conspiratorial reasoning, it also may suggest that conspiracy theorists are simply less engaged in traditional left-right politics. In this manuscript, I consider the relationship between conspiratorial thinking and political constraint, or the extent to which individuals have a clear picture of "what goes with what" with respect to the various objects of the political world. Using the 2012 American National Election Study, I construct a measure of conspiratorial thinking, as well as several operationalizations of both ideological and group-based constraint and ideological thinking. Results show that individuals prone to conspiratorial thinking are less politically constrained—when it comes to both thoughts about issues and feelings about political groups—than their less conspiratorial counterparts. Moreover, conspiratorial thinking is positively associated with antigovernmental orientations and a lack of political efficacy, with conspiracy theorists perceiving a governmental threat to individual rights and displaying a deep skepticism that who one votes for really matters. These findings suggest that conspiratorial thinking may have broader implications for individuals' basic conceptualization of politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature on intergroup conflict and identity is well established; this literature includes work on competitive victimhood—the process by which groups attempt to establish that they have suffered more than opposing groups (Noor et al., Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2012, 16(4), 351–374) to restore feelings of moral identity, or cache often for use in a political context (Sullivan et al., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2012, 102(4), 778). Within prior work on competitive victimhood, models of reconciliation based on the particular needs and identities established within the competitive victimhood dynamic have also been posited (SimanTov‐Nachlieli et al., European Journal of Social Psychology, 2015, 45(2), 139–145; Shnabel et al., Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2013, 49(5), 867–877). While competitive victimhood theory has been applied in prior work to several cross‐national settings, there exist other important areas of intergroup tension that have not been explored. We propose that the concept of competitive victimhood can be fruitfully used to understand movement‐countermovement dynamics, including those related to conflictual race relations in the United States. Specifically, this article will examine the dynamic between the movements "Black Lives Matter" and "Blue Lives Matter" as a salient paired research case of a movement and countermovement for investigating identity and victimhood. In our present article, we map the discourse of the Black and Blue Lives Matter movements as illustrations of collective victimhood (Schori‐Eyal et al., Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2014, 44(12), 778–794) and competitive victimhood (Noor et al., Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2012, 16(4), 351–374). We find that while both movements demonstrate competitive victimhood, they are also qualitatively different. Due to differences in threat, power, and history of those the movements advocate for, each movement demonstrates different needs (Burton, Conflict: Human needs theory, Springer, 1990). We posit that the identity dynamics of competitive victimhood within social movements specifically lead to important and different identity needs for agency and morality (Shnabel & Noor, in Restoring civil societies: The psychology of intervention and engagement following crisis (pp. 192–207), Wiley‐Blackwell, Chichester, England, 2012). We examine what these differences would mean in these particular movements, as well as for potential avenues of community building based on addressing these needs. In all cases, we aim to show that what has largely been considered a criminal justice phenomenon in the United States is fundamentally political, with roots and possible solutions in intergroup identity dynamics that can be fruitfully explored within political psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The roles of authoritarianism, social dominance orientation (SDO), and prejudice in the prediction of far‐right support were examined in Europe and the United States. A meta‐analysis shows remarkably similar, positive, and strong associations of far‐right support with these three variables in previous studies conducted in Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Results from two cross‐sectional studies in the United States further indicated that higher levels of authoritarianism and SDO related to higher voting intentions and support for Trump, via increased prejudice. In a three‐wave longitudinal study in the United Kingdom, authoritarianism and SDO predicted pro‐Brexit attitudes and support for the U.K. Independence Party, again via prejudice. These results shed a new light on the widely held beliefs in "American and British exceptionalism," as Trump and Brexit adherents share the same social‐psychological underpinnings as far‐right supporters observed in several European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The workplace is an environment where individuals have little choice about with whom they interact. As such, employees may find themselves engaged in conversations with coworkers whose political opinions and perspectives are divergent from their own. In the present study, we examined how coworkers' (dis)similarity in political identity is related to the quality of their interpersonal interactions and subsequent well‐being. We predicted that political identity dissimilarity is associated with experiences of workplace incivility and, in turn, declines in psychological and occupational well‐being. We tested our hypotheses in a four‐wave survey study conducted during the 2012 U.S. presidential election using structural equation modeling. Consistent with our expectations, results indicated that political identity dissimilarity was associated with increased reports of incivility experiences instigated by coworkers, which, in turn, was associated with increased burnout and turnover intentions and diminished job satisfaction. The relationship between incivility and well‐being was mediated by psychological distress. Overall, the findings demonstrate that political identity dissimilarity is detrimentally related to job attitudes and well‐being via triggering workplace incivility, which provides meaningful implications for organizations on how to mitigate the negative influences of identity dissimilarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In two studies, we analysed the relationships between different types of self‐evaluation (i.e., narcissism and self‐esteem) and support for democracy. Support for democracy requires the ability to respect the views and opinions of others, even if one disagrees with them. Classic studies have linked support for democracy with high self‐evaluation, which should assume psychological security and, thus, the ability to trust others. However, not all forms of high self‐evaluation are secure. Narcissists have high feelings of self‐worth, but tend to be defensive: They are easily threatened by criticisms or conflicting views. We then expected that while support for democracy should be positively predicted by secure, non‐narcissistic self‐evaluation, it should be negatively predicted by narcissistic self‐evaluation. In two studies, conducted in the United States (Study 1, n = 407) and in Poland (Study 2, n = 405), support for democracy was positively predicted by self‐esteem and negatively predicted by narcissism. Study 2 additionally demonstrated that interpersonal trust mediated the effects of self‐esteem on support for democracy. We discuss the role of psychological predispositions in understanding support for democratic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An emerging literature in psychology and political science has identified political identity as an important driver of political decisions. However, less is known about how a person's political identity is incorporated into their broader self-concept and why it influences some people more than others. We examined the role of political identity in representations of the self-concept as one determinant of people's political behaviors. We tested the predictions of a recent theoretical account of self-concept representation that, inspired by work on conceptual representation, emphasizes the role of causal beliefs. This account predicts that people who believe that their political identity is causally central (linked to many other features of the self-concept) will be more likely to engage in behaviors consistent with their political identity than those who believe that the same aspect is causally peripheral (linked to fewer other features). Consistent with these predictions, in a study run when political identity was particularly salient-during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election-we found that U.S. voters who believed their political party identity was more causally central (vs. those who believe it was causally peripheral) were more likely to vote for their political party's candidate. Further, in two studies, we found that U.K. residents who believed that their English or British national identity was more causally central were more likely to support the U.K. leaving the European Union (Brexit) than those who believed the same identities were more causally peripheral. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decades of research have illuminated the pernicious effects of white racial prejudice on American politics. However, by focusing on prejudice, scholars have neglected other racial attitudes that might be relevant to whites' political preferences. Our project addresses this omission by exploring how American politics is affected by white collective guilt—defined as remorse that a white person experiences due to her group's actions toward black people. We expect collective guilt to motivate white support for both policies perceived to benefit African Americans and black politicians; we also theorize conditions under which collective guilt is uniquely activated. We examine these expectations using original data from five national surveys, including two embedded experiments. The results reveal that collective guilt has considerable explanatory power, even after taking standard measures of racial attitudes into account. We conclude that collective guilt is an independent racial attitude with significant consequences for white opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on literatures on social movements and collective action, mentalization, and morality, four studies investigated whether a social movement's use of nonviolence can increase people's willingness to support and join the movement. In a correlational study with a nested design, across 23 movements perceived use of nonviolence predicted participants' willingness to support and join the movement (Study 1, n = 203). This effect was also found experimentally, with Americans supporting nonviolent movements more than violent ones, in hypothetical and real foreign countries (Study 2 and 3, ns = 606 and 373). Study 4 (n = 247) replicated the effects in participants' own country. The effects were transmitted by attribution of mental states to nonviolent movements and subsequent greater perceived morality (Study 2–4). This research demonstrates that nonviolence can benefit social movements in terms of support and mobilization potential, and that these benefits are rooted in perceptions of mental capacity, humanness, and morality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: Previous research has shown that Americans with disabilities turn out to vote at significantly lower levels than people without disabilities, even after accounting for demographic and other situational factors related to political involvement. The authors examined the potential mechanisms underlying their low turnout. They asked whether people with disabilities exhibit participatory attitudes and behaviors at levels commensurate with their other individual-level characteristics. Methods: The present study conducted descriptive and predictive analyses on data from the 2012 and 2016 American National Election Studies. Findings: Despite low levels of turnout in recent elections, people with disabilities were just as participatory, if not more so, when considering alternative forms of political engagement. The authors' analyses indicate that, while disability status had no bearing on political efficacy or partisan strength, those with disabilities reported being even more interested in politics than those without disabilities. Evidence is provided that depressed turnout rates among those with disabilities may be due in part to lower levels of attentiveness to the news, political knowledge, and negative perceptions of government. Conclusions: The psychological impacts and behavioral consequences that emerge from possessing a disability and the broader role of disability in the American political context are multifaceted. This area of research would benefit from future studies that examine a variety of electoral contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although still a minority, the growing number of women on both the Bench and at the Bar of the U.S. Supreme Court has important implications for judicial decision-making and successful advocacy at the Court. Research in judicial behavior generally focuses on vote direction and the presence of female attorneys in a case. We offer a more nuanced account of how gender impacts both attorney success and judicial decision-making by drawing on work in social and political psychology and utilizing quantitative textual analysis to explore the tension between masculine norms of behavior that are valued in the legal profession and feminine norms of behavior that are expected of women, but devalued in the legal profession. Based on the Court's long-standing disdain for emotional arguments, we examine how the emotional content in 601 party briefs shapes the Court's majority opinions. Our results indicate that male justices evaluate counsel based on their compliance with traditional gender norms—rewarding male counsel for cool, unemotional arguments and rewarding female counsel for emotionally compelling arguments. However, we find no evidence that gender norms shape the opinions of female justices. Given that the justice system is supposed to be "blind," our results highlight the durability of gendered expectations and raise questions about the objectivity of judicial decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Authoritarianism, it seems, is alive and well these days. The Trump administration's blatant dismissal of democratic norms has many wondering whether it fits the authoritarian model. This review offers a framework for understanding authoritarianism in the American past, as well as the American present. Starting in the early twentieth century, this analysis seeks to provide a better understanding of how authoritarianism once existed in enclaves in the Jim Crow South, where it was intended to dominate blacks in the wake of emancipation. Confining the definition of authoritarianism to regime rule, however, leaves little room for a discussion of more contemporary authoritarianism, at the micro level. This review shifts focus to an assessment of political psychology's concept of authoritarianism and how it ultimately drives racism. Ultimately, we believe a tangible connection exists between racism and authoritarianism. Even so, we question the mechanism. Along the way, we also discuss the ways in which communities of color, often the targets of authoritarianism, resist the intolerance to which they have been exposed. We conclude with a discussion of why we believe, despite temporal and spatial differences as well as incongruous levels of analysis, that micro- and macro-level authoritarianism have much in common. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]