Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy最新文献

A short-term obstacle to united political action to fight climate change in various countries is opposition to pro-environmental policies among conservatives. Three preregistered studies test the hypothesis that because conservatives have a higher need for closure than liberals (Hypothesis 1), framing pro-environmental policies in a way that appeals to the need for closure, reduces conservatives’ opposition to these policies (Hypothesis 2). Study 1 confirms Hypothesis 1. Next, two studies test Hypothesis 2 and find that conservatives are less opposed to pro-environmental policies proposed by a politician (Study 2) or an NGO (Study 3) if these policies are framed in a way that appeals to the need for closure, while the opposite is the case for liberals. Across these two studies, we also test the underlying process but find no evidence for the idea that differences in need for closure mediate the effect (Hypothesis 3a). Instead, the effect is primarily driven by inferences about group membership and ingroup bias (Hypothesis 3b, non-preregistered). That is, these data suggest that framing policies to appeal to closure needs reduces conservatives’ opposition because they infer that the policy is proposed by a fellow conservative.

Previous literature demonstrates how the use of negations can be used to communicate stereotypic expectations (e.g., the professor is not smart, instead of stupid). In light of the COVID-19 pandemic and increased discrimination against Asian Americans, we tested whether the negation bias is used to communicate stereotypes about Asian Americans. Participants were provided with stereotype-consistent, stereotype-inconsistent, and neutral scenarios about a subject portrayed as Asian American (Studies 1 and 2), or non-Asian American (Study 2). They were then asked to choose between two descriptions (Study 1) or to describe their impressions of the subject (Study 2). Across studies, participants were more likely to use negations when describing stereotype-inconsistent behavior compared to stereotype-consistent behavior of Asian Americans, supporting our predictions. Results suggest that negations play a role in communicating previously held expectations of Asian Americans and are used in stereotype maintenance.

K-12 public school teachers faced unprecedented and novel disruptions in their workplace during the first entire school year of the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to concerns about their treatment, mental health, and job satisfaction. Between April and June 2021, 341 public U.S. K-12 school teachers from 12 states (covering Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, West, and Pacific Northwest) completed online surveys regarding their perceived general support, experiences of ageism and sexism, job satisfaction, and mental health. Mental health symptoms mediated the relationships between sexism, ageism, and perceived support with job satisfaction (Model 1) and job satisfaction mediated the relationships between sexism, ageism, and perceived support with mental health symptoms (Model 2). Thus, the data supported two models pointing to dual co-existing pathways from (a) general support and (b) experiences of discrimination to both job satisfaction and mental health. These results highlight the importance of developing and implementing policies and programs that can improve teachers’ general support from their community along with addressing job satisfaction.

Evidence suggests that political differences have increased markedly in the United States in recent decades. Differences may also emerge in the way that partisans express themselves through language, and it is possible that language differences vary in times of crisis and war. In the current work we examined over a decade's worth of transcripts from a liberal (MSNBC) and conservative (Fox) news network. More specifically, we examined evidence for two competing perspectives on language differences during the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. One perspective, the depolarization perspective, suggests that we should see decreased differences, or parity in language styles between the two networks leading up to and during the invasion. Another perspective, the polarization perspective, suggests we should see increased differences in language styles between networks leading up to and during the early stages of the invasion. We examined an index of personalizing and formalizing language as well as 77 Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) dictionaries plus noun frequency using smoothed curves and linear discriminant function analyses (LDA) to examine the pattern of results in our data. Our results provide more support for the depolarization perspective, showing that both Fox News and MSNBC became more similar than different leading up to and during the invasion. Implications are discussed.

Two studies tested the hypothesis that men who are sexually objectified during an interview will experience a negative emotion, rate the experience as harassing, and perform badly on tasks compared to un-objectified controls. However, observers who watch videos of objectified experiencers and predictors who read about the interaction will demonstrate stronger effects, with women showing the strongest. In Study 1, 90 undergraduates (60 men) were interviewees or watched a video of a mock job interview in a 2 (objectification: objectifying interview vs. non-objectifying interview) × 3 (perspective: experiencer who was a man vs. observers, some men and some women) mixed model design with repeated measures on the second factor. In Study 2, 71 undergraduates read about a job interview in a 2 (objectification: objectifying vs. non-objectifying interview) × 2 (gender: man vs. woman) between-subjects design. Results showed that while objectified experiencers (men) showed no objectification effects, observers and predictors anticipated a reasonable person would experience more harassment than the experiencers reported, with observers’ enjoyment of sexualization moderating these forecasts. Additionally, the predictors’ forecasted negative emotions mediated the effects of objectification on judgments and task performance. These studies argue for informing Title VII's 2-prong subjective-objective test with social fact testimony in same-sex harassment cases.

This study investigates possible factors leading to voting for a presidential incumbent in Indonesia, a Muslim-majority democratic country. In addition to economic factors, we argue that religious-psychological factors will also play a role. However, they may operate through different mechanisms. Using data from a national survey ( N = 1088), we found some support for our hypotheses. We found that economic factors (objective personal economy and subjective national economy, but not subjective personal economy) had significant direct relationships with the incumbent vote. In contrast, religiousness did not directly correlate significantly with the vote. Indirect effect analyses showed that incumbent evaluation mediated the relationship between economic factors (except for objective economic conditions) and the incumbent vote. On the other hand, we did not find a mediating role of incumbent performance evaluation in the relationship between religiousness and incumbent vote. Rather, we found a significant mediation effect of political ideology. We also found that the relationship between religiousness and the incumbent vote was mediated by political ideology and incumbent performance evaluation in serial. These findings suggest a stronger effect of non-religious than religious factors. However, the indirect effect analysis suggests that the role of religiousness is not negligible.

Addressing the global climate emergency and an urgent need for psychological research, the present study drew on two major psychological perspectives: social identity theory's notion of a socially constructed sense of self, and prospect theory's cognitive heuristics on the asymmetric effects of gain and loss framed messaging. A 2 (Human vs. Environmental Identity) × 2 (Gain vs. Loss framing) factorial experiment (N = 160) sought causal evidence for superordinate identities, gain versus loss framed messaging, and their interactions upon motivations for pro-environmental behavior. Results suggested interaction effects between social identity and message frames on activism, support for environmental policy, and enactment measures. Challenging prospect theory's original findings, gain framed messages were dominant in enhancing private sustainable behaviors, while loss frames were dominant in enhancing political behaviors. Whereas income was a significant demographic predictor, the overall social psychological findings inform campaign strategies for pro-environmental behavior.

The present work proposes that the relation of employment conditions (i.e., unemployment and precarious work vs. permanent employment) with participation in collective action and satisfaction with life depends on the extent to which acceptance of inequality is high or low, and that collective action mediates the association between employment conditions and satisfaction with life. We analyzed data from the European Social Survey (Round 8, 2016) and found that (1) when acceptance of inequality is low (vs. high), employment disadvantage is positively related to engagement in collective action and, in turn, satisfaction with life; (2) employment disadvantage is negatively related to satisfaction with life, and this relation increases when acceptance of inequality is low (vs. high). This study generates findings of interest to inequality researchers by showing the relevance of acceptance of inequality for collective action and life satisfaction in the context of employment.

Despite the ubiquity of poverty, its causes remain largely misunderstood and many attribute poverty to individual shortcomings. This stigma not only predicts negative physical and mental health outcomes for those living in poverty, it also psychologically distances them from the economically advantaged. Thus, solutions to the problem of poverty should include efforts to reduce stigma among the economically advantaged, who are often crucial decision-makers with the power and resources to act as allies. The current research utilized an intensive and immersive intervention designed to challenge the attributions that underpin poverty stigma. In two studies, we tested the effectiveness of this intervention. Results of both studies demonstrate that participation in the intervention consistently predicted more favorable attributions for poverty, and that these changes in attributions, in turn, had meaningful positive effects on participants’ support for poverty-reducing policies and willingness to engage in poverty-related allyship.

Mask-wearing, social distancing, and vaccination remain effective ways to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Yet, many hesitate to enact some or all these preventive behaviors. We created three persuasive messages—framed to promote benefits to either (1) oneself, (2) close-others, or (3) distant-others—to determine whether the effectiveness of these messages varied based on personality differences (specifically independent/interdependent self-construal and chronic construal level). In two online experiments (N = 862), we measured individual differences and showed participants one of the three messages. Consistent interactions between interdependent self-construal and message conditions showed that those high in interdependent self-construal responded most positively to the self-focused messages promoting mask-wearing, social distancing, and COVID-19 vaccination. Those low in interdependent self-construal responded most negatively to the self-focused messages. Although no interaction effect was observed for independent self-construal, and inconsistent evidence emerged for construal level, other-focused messages performed either better or equally well to the self-focused messages for most participants and may thus be promising for future public health communication efforts.