Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy最新文献

Societal injustice can trigger moral outrage, an important predictor of solidarity-based collective action (CA). The present work investigated whether the impact of emotion regulation strategies on feelings of moral outrage shapes solidarity-based CA intentions in the context of two recent examples of environmental injustice—water crises of 2015–2016 and 2021 in Flint, Michigan, and Benton Harbor, Michigan. Three studies investigated the effect of engaging in distancing compared with immersion when processing information about the events on feelings of moral outrage among people who did not live in either city. The studies also investigated the downstream effect of moral outrage on people's willingness to engage in CA in solidarity with those affected. Processing the injustice by engaging in distancing compared with immersion resulted in less moral outrage, which reduced interest in engaging in CA. This research highlights the important role of emotion regulation strategies in influencing solidarity-based collective action among people not directly targeted by an injustice.

Individuals across the globe engage in volunteering activities for various purposes, such as contributing to eradicating poverty, enhancing basic health and education, ensuring access to potable water and proper sanitation, addressing environmental concerns and climate change, mitigating disaster risks, and combating social exclusion and violent conflicts. The ongoing development and sustainability of volunteering are imperative to maintain progress and warrant attention. This study explores the impediments and challenges associated with the development and sustainability of volunteering, encompassing a broad spectrum of factors, from micro-level individual aspects to macro-level structural elements. Data were collected via in-depth interviews with 30 managers within the volunteering sector. The narratives were subjected to thematic analysis, leading to the identification and examination of four distinct themes at various levels. The primary findings underscore the significance of personal experiences, familial backgrounds, organizational structures, and the socio-political milieu in which they function for comprehending the challenges and barriers to volunteering. In conclusion, this study shows that there are wide-ranging and multidimensional challenges and barriers to the development and sustainability of volunteering activities. Therefore, analyzing these problems in coordination with the stakeholders of the volunteering field, making arrangements and developing practices may ensure the development of the volunteering field.

Belief systems impact poverty reduction efforts, as they can enhance, or diminish, support for redistributive economic policies. We examined the predictive utility of mindsets about the changeability (growth mindsets) or the stability (fixed mindsets) of the nature of poverty in society. We conducted six studies, two pre-registered, using both cross-sectional (N = 763) and experimental methods (N = 1361). Growth mindsets of poverty in society predicted greater support for redistributive policies, in part through decreased blame, although there was also a small but unreliable negative indirect effect through social class essentialism. The three experimental studies, each using a different approach, were successful in manipulating mindsets of poverty. However, only the approach leveraging system justifying beliefs had implications for blame, essentialist beliefs, and indirect consequences for policy support. We discuss potential implications of this work for leveraging multiple belief systems to optimally promote support for policies designed to abolish poverty.

Are differences in issue-specific knowledge associated with different candidate preferences, as would be expected if voters are judging candidates and their policy commitments on the basis of essential contextual knowledge they receive from the media? By utilizing a bias-sensitive method of measuring politically relevant knowledge—on economic, foreign policy, and environmental issues—we were able to identify candidate-selection effects of policy-specific information. The study also offers new evidence on how psychological traits affect political thinking within a partisan group, whereas most research has focused on psychological asymmetries across ideological and partisan groups. Based on previous research, we expected Sanders supporters and supporters of other “anti-establishment” candidates to have less accurate knowledge on these issues than Biden (and other establishment candidate) supporters, as the demographic groups that differentially supported Sanders tend to have lower levels of political knowledge. Instead, Sanders and anti-establishment candidate supporters were found to be more knowledgeable on these issues. We also found psychological asymmetries among Democrats and Democrat-leaning Independents, which were associated with candidate preference. Overall, issue-specific political knowledge was found to be an important predictor of vote choice.

Living in democratic systems may lead the citizens of those countries to be less vigilant of the policies enforced by their governments, with the risk of endorsing anti-democratic measures. Rights violations can indeed occur even in a democratic country. The aim of the present research is to understand whether people tend to be more accepting of repressive police actions when they occur in a country considered democratic than when they are perpetrated in a country considered authoritarian. Results on 363 Italian participants showed that participants were less ready to condemn a violent police intervention when it occurred in a country perceived to be democratic than in one considered to be less so. Moreover, as hypothesized, this paradox is supported more by people with a low value orientation, while people with a high value orientation do not accept intervention in either context. The implication of this research was to show the importance of considering theories that focus on the legitimacy of the authority's demands. Specifically, the political orientation theory emphasizes the importance of monitoring the policies issued even by established democracies to protect from their possible degeneration into autocracies.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, many countries faced a mismatch between the demand and supply of vaccines. Particularly in countries where different rights were granted to vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals, this situation may have fostered what we here refer to as policy-induced feelings of social exclusion. Using data from Germany in spring 2021, we investigate how individuals’ vaccination status related to feelings of (1) being excluded by others (interpersonal level) and (2) being excluded by the government (societal level) at a time when vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals had different rights. We find that being unvaccinated is associated with feeling excluded by others and by the government and that individuals generally report higher levels of exclusion by the government than by other people. These findings have important implications for policymakers not only in times of a pandemic but in light of major crises more generally.

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.