Politics and the Life Sciences最新文献

Mental health, like physical health, represents an important resource for participating in politics. We bring new insights from six surveys from five different countries (Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States) that combine diversified questions on mental health problems and political participation. Unlike previous research on depression, we find only limited evidence for the Resource Hypothesis that mental health problems reduce political participation, except in the case of voting and only in some samples. Instead, we find mixed evidence that mental health problems and their comorbidity (experiencing multiple problems) are associated with increased political participation. Our study leads us to more questions than answers: are the measures available in public opinion surveys appropriate for the task? Do general survey samples adequately capture people with mental disorders? And is the assumption that poor mental health reduces political participation wrong?

There is growing concern about the impact of declining political trust on democracies. Psychological research has introduced the concept of epistemic (mis)trust as a stable disposition acquired through development, which may influence our sociopolitical engagement. Given trust's prominence in current politics, we examined the relationship between epistemic trust and people's choices of (un)trustworthy political leaders. In two representative samples in the UK and US (N = 1096), we tested whether epistemic trust predicts political leader choices through three political dimensions: dogmatism, political trust, and ideology. Although epistemic trust did not directly predict choices of political leaders, it predicted dogmatism and political ideology, which in turn predicted choices of political leaders. A network analysis revealed that epistemic trust and political dimensions only interact through their common connection with dogmatism. These findings suggest that cognitive and affective development may underlie an individual's political ideology and associated beliefs.

The political involvement of adolescents is characterized by a substantial socioeconomic gradient already at a young age with enduring effects into adulthood. This study investigates whether high parental income creates an enhancing environment that increases the influence of genetic dispositions on political interest using the German TwinLife study (2014-2020, age 10-29, n = 6,174, 54% female, 19% migration background). While 30-40% of the total variance in political interest of twin adolescents (age 10-18) can be attributed to genetic influences, a gene-environment interaction model shows that this share is much lower among poor compared to rich families. Family fixed-effects models among early adults further show no significant effect of income differences on political interest after controlling for family background and genetic influences. This study suggests that the income gap in political participation cannot be fully understood without accounting for life cycle processes and genetic background.

There remain important questions about how personality shapes risk perceptions, willingness to engage in protective behaviors, and policy preferences during a changing pandemic. Focusing on the Big-5 and COVID-19 attitudes, we find associations between risk perceptions and negative emotionality and agreeableness, as well as between each Big-5 trait and protective behaviors and support for government restrictions. These associations are mostly stable over time, with instability pronounced for lockdown policy support, where agreeableness and conscientiousness diminish in importance as pandemic conditions improve. Negative emotionality, conscientiousness, and agreeableness reduce differences between the political left and right and between those who do and do not trust experts. We highlight the heterogeneous interplay between personality and political ideology to understand pandemic policy support, attitudes, and behaviors.

Research shows that attractive women may face disadvantages in male-dominated contexts or those stereotypically associated with masculinity, because they tend to be ascribed more stereotypically feminine character traits and capabilities. This is known as the "beauty is beastly effect." However, its impact on political elections remains largely unexamined. This study investigates whether such an effect exists for female candidates in Germany, where political competition is male-dominated and rewards stereotypically masculine traits. Using a comprehensive data set from the 2005 to 2021 federal elections, we empirically test for interactions between gender and physical attractiveness. Despite extensive multilevel analyses, no evidence was found for the "beauty is beastly effect" in this context. Nevertheless, positive main effects suggest female candidates may still face disadvantages. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed.

Despite the destruction it inevitably engenders and the opposition it often elicits, war remains a near-human universal. There is almost no society, across time or place, that has not experienced some form of violent conflict, whether internally or against its neighbors or adversaries. The most common explanations for the causes of war and conflict tend to center around social and material factors, such as conflicts over resources, territory, or regime type. Certainly, these factors play a role in many conflicts, but they cannot alone explain every war. Other arguments, however, drawn from evolutionary psychology and biological anthropology, based on fundamental aspects of human nature with regard to male coalitionary psychology, do posit specific sources for conflict that provide an underlying platform for its emergence and can help explain its wide variety across time and space. A comprehensive and accurate understanding of the nature of war must include these considerations.

The field of misinformation studies has experienced a boom of scholarship in recent years. Buoyed by the emergence of information operations surrounding the 2016 election and the rise of so-called "fake news," researchers hailing from fields ranging from philosophy to computer science have taken up the challenge of detecting, analyzing, and theorizing false and misleading information online. In an attempt to understand the spread of misinformation online, researchers have adapted concepts from different disciplines. Concepts from epidemiology, for example, have opened doors to thinking about spread, contagion, and resistance. The life sciences offer concepts and theories to further extend what we know about how misinformation adapts; by viewing information as an organism within a complex ecosystem, we can better understand why some narratives succeed and others fail. Collaborations between misinformation researchers and life scientists to develop responsible adaptations of fitness models can bolster misinformation research.

Existing academic research has highlighted a connection between dietary habits and political beliefs. An individual's dietary choices can mean more than just the need or pleasure of eating. Dietary choice can also be tied to a personal identity, in which food consumption reinforces through other beliefs and in-group identities, including partisan affiliation and political ideology. This study analyzes survey data from the Natural Marketing Institute's (NMI) 2019 Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS) survey and compares the results to Mosier and Rimal's original evaluation using the NMI's 2016 LOHAS survey data. The results show most Americans continue to have a meat-based diet irrespective of political party, with gender being the most consistent and robust explanatory factor for dietary choice. However, there are some notable shifts in dietary choice and significance for certain partisan affiliations that highlight how in-group dynamics may be reflective of attitude and behavioral norms.

Research in social psychology has long argued that exposure to objectifying portrayals of women can lead to increasingly misogynist attitudes and behavior. We argue that such images can also impact on gendered policy attitudes. We suggest that objectifying images prime sexist attitudes and reduce perceptions of women's agency, warmth, and competence. We argue that this may translate into decreased support for reproductive rights and other gender-salient policies. Furthermore, these effects may vary by the gender of those exposed to these images. In two survey experiments with brief exposures to objectifying images, we find mixed support for these predictions. Although we find some negative effects as predicted, we also find positive effects of objectification among women in the sample that are suggestive of a backlash effect. We discuss potential explanations for this heterogeneity. Overall, our results suggest interesting avenues to further explore the effects of objectification on political outcomes.

This preregistered study replicates and extends studies concerning emotional response to wartime rally speeches and applies it to U.S. President Donald Trump's first national address regarding the COVID-19 pandemic on March 11, 2020. We experimentally test the effect of a micro-expression (ME) by Trump associated with appraised threat on change in participant self-reported distress, sadness, anger, affinity, and reassurance while controlling for followership. We find that polarization is perpetuated in emotional response to the address which focused on portraying the COVID-19 threat as being of Chinese provenance. We also find a significant, albeit slight, effect by Trump's ME on self-reported sadness, suggesting that this facial behavior served did not diminish his speech, instead serving as a form of nonverbal punctuation. Further exploration of participant response using the Linguistic Inventory and Word Count software reinforces and extends these findings.