Public concerns about voter fraud are widespread and are frequently cited to justify new voting restrictions and harsh punishment for violators. But to what extent do beliefs about a perpetrator’s identity shape public support for efforts to prevent and punish voter fraud? Antipathy toward racial and ethnic groups is a strong predictor of public beliefs about voter fraud. Yet, prior studies have only been able to approximate beliefs about deviant behavior, and not specifically casting an illegal ballot. Drawing from sociology and criminology, we use a “typification” strategy that more directly measures which people are perceived as typical perpetrators of casting illegal ballots. We utilize nationally representative surveys of US voters in the 2017–2020 modules of the Cooperative Election Study to apply and empirically test the typification theory. Among white respondents, we find that the typification of racially minoritized groups such as Blacks, Latinos, Arabs, and immigrants as illegal voters is widespread and is strongly associated with beliefs about voter fraud, support for restrictive election policies, and harsh punishment of illegal voting. The pictures of likely criminals that white voters carry in their heads shape their preferences for crime policies, and this extends to the domain of voter fraud.
{"title":"Your Typical Criminal: Why White Americans Hate Voter Fraud","authors":"Adriano Udani, Anita Manion, David Kimball","doi":"10.1093/poq/nfae023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfae023","url":null,"abstract":"Public concerns about voter fraud are widespread and are frequently cited to justify new voting restrictions and harsh punishment for violators. But to what extent do beliefs about a perpetrator’s identity shape public support for efforts to prevent and punish voter fraud? Antipathy toward racial and ethnic groups is a strong predictor of public beliefs about voter fraud. Yet, prior studies have only been able to approximate beliefs about deviant behavior, and not specifically casting an illegal ballot. Drawing from sociology and criminology, we use a “typification” strategy that more directly measures which people are perceived as typical perpetrators of casting illegal ballots. We utilize nationally representative surveys of US voters in the 2017–2020 modules of the Cooperative Election Study to apply and empirically test the typification theory. Among white respondents, we find that the typification of racially minoritized groups such as Blacks, Latinos, Arabs, and immigrants as illegal voters is widespread and is strongly associated with beliefs about voter fraud, support for restrictive election policies, and harsh punishment of illegal voting. The pictures of likely criminals that white voters carry in their heads shape their preferences for crime policies, and this extends to the domain of voter fraud.","PeriodicalId":51359,"journal":{"name":"Public Opinion Quarterly","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2024-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141510157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The rich literature on election trust predominantly uses domestic determinants as explanatory factors. But given the international nature of the autocratization wave, can an autocratization event across borders erode election trust? This article argues that an authoritarian’s electoral success in a neighboring country can shatter democratic norms and demonstrate the viability of authoritarians. This autocratization event abroad can thus reduce citizens’ principled support for democracy and its political system. Consequently, citizens across borders are less likely to see democratic elections as the “only game in town” and they have less trust in elections. To test this idea, I study the spillover effects of the 2018 Brazilian presidential election, in which an authoritarian candidate won decisively. Using the AmericasBarometer in Colombia that was launched throughout this election, I find that the election trust of Colombian citizens erodes after Jair Bolsonaro’s electoral success. To probe into the mechanism, I uncover that his electoral victory leads Colombian citizens to be less supportive of the domestic political system and reduces their principled support for democracy. The causal mediation analysis demonstrates that these two variables mediate the effect of the authoritarian’s electoral success on election trust. These findings on autocratization spillover effects illustrate the importance of external autocratization events in the study of election trust.
{"title":"Autocratization Spillover: When Electing an Authoritarian Erodes Election Trust across Borders","authors":"Ka Ming Chan","doi":"10.1093/poq/nfae018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfae018","url":null,"abstract":"The rich literature on election trust predominantly uses domestic determinants as explanatory factors. But given the international nature of the autocratization wave, can an autocratization event across borders erode election trust? This article argues that an authoritarian’s electoral success in a neighboring country can shatter democratic norms and demonstrate the viability of authoritarians. This autocratization event abroad can thus reduce citizens’ principled support for democracy and its political system. Consequently, citizens across borders are less likely to see democratic elections as the “only game in town” and they have less trust in elections. To test this idea, I study the spillover effects of the 2018 Brazilian presidential election, in which an authoritarian candidate won decisively. Using the AmericasBarometer in Colombia that was launched throughout this election, I find that the election trust of Colombian citizens erodes after Jair Bolsonaro’s electoral success. To probe into the mechanism, I uncover that his electoral victory leads Colombian citizens to be less supportive of the domestic political system and reduces their principled support for democracy. The causal mediation analysis demonstrates that these two variables mediate the effect of the authoritarian’s electoral success on election trust. These findings on autocratization spillover effects illustrate the importance of external autocratization events in the study of election trust.","PeriodicalId":51359,"journal":{"name":"Public Opinion Quarterly","volume":"2017 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2024-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141510158","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Matthew H Graham, D Sunshine Hillygus, Andrew Trexler
In today’s competitive information environment, clicks are the currency of the digital media landscape. Clickbait journalism attempts to entice attention with provocative and sensational headlines, but what are the implications when public opinion polls are the hook? Does the use of survey clickbait—news stories that make misleading claims about public opinion—have implications for perceptions of the public, journalists, or the polling industry? In two survey experiments conducted in the United States, we find that exposure to apolitical survey clickbait that makes exaggerated claims about the incompetence of the American public undermines perceptions of their capacity for democratic citizenship. At the same time, we find no evidence that this type of survey clickbait damages the reputations of the media or polling industry, suggesting that the media may have perverse incentives to use low-quality polls or to misrepresent polling results to drive traffic.
{"title":"Misleading Polls in the Media: Does Survey Clickbait Have Social Consequences?","authors":"Matthew H Graham, D Sunshine Hillygus, Andrew Trexler","doi":"10.1093/poq/nfae009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfae009","url":null,"abstract":"In today’s competitive information environment, clicks are the currency of the digital media landscape. Clickbait journalism attempts to entice attention with provocative and sensational headlines, but what are the implications when public opinion polls are the hook? Does the use of survey clickbait—news stories that make misleading claims about public opinion—have implications for perceptions of the public, journalists, or the polling industry? In two survey experiments conducted in the United States, we find that exposure to apolitical survey clickbait that makes exaggerated claims about the incompetence of the American public undermines perceptions of their capacity for democratic citizenship. At the same time, we find no evidence that this type of survey clickbait damages the reputations of the media or polling industry, suggesting that the media may have perverse incentives to use low-quality polls or to misrepresent polling results to drive traffic.","PeriodicalId":51359,"journal":{"name":"Public Opinion Quarterly","volume":"49 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2024-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140626587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Matthew DeBell, D Sunshine Hillygus, Daron R Shaw, Nicholas A Valentino
It is well documented that survey overreporting of voter turnout due to social desirability bias threatens inference about political behavior. This paper reports four studies that contained question wording experiments to test questions designed to minimize that bias using a “pipeline” approach. The “pipeline” informs survey participants that researchers can perform vote validation to verify turnout self-reports. This approach reduced self-reported turnout by 5.7 points in the 2020 American National Election Study, which represents a majority of the estimated overreporting bias. It reduced reported turnout by 4 points in two nonprobability samples. No effect was found in a third nonprobability study with Amazon Mechanical Turk workers. Validated vote data also confirm that the pipeline approach reduced overreporting. We tested heterogeneous effects for sophistication and several other variables, but results were inconclusive. The pipeline approach reduces overreporting of voter turnout and produces more accurate estimates of voters’ characteristics.
{"title":"Validating the “Genuine Pipeline” to Limit Social Desirability Bias in Survey Estimates of Voter Turnout","authors":"Matthew DeBell, D Sunshine Hillygus, Daron R Shaw, Nicholas A Valentino","doi":"10.1093/poq/nfae007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfae007","url":null,"abstract":"It is well documented that survey overreporting of voter turnout due to social desirability bias threatens inference about political behavior. This paper reports four studies that contained question wording experiments to test questions designed to minimize that bias using a “pipeline” approach. The “pipeline” informs survey participants that researchers can perform vote validation to verify turnout self-reports. This approach reduced self-reported turnout by 5.7 points in the 2020 American National Election Study, which represents a majority of the estimated overreporting bias. It reduced reported turnout by 4 points in two nonprobability samples. No effect was found in a third nonprobability study with Amazon Mechanical Turk workers. Validated vote data also confirm that the pipeline approach reduced overreporting. We tested heterogeneous effects for sophistication and several other variables, but results were inconclusive. The pipeline approach reduces overreporting of voter turnout and produces more accurate estimates of voters’ characteristics.","PeriodicalId":51359,"journal":{"name":"Public Opinion Quarterly","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2024-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140629979","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Christian nationalism, the fusion of religious and national identities, has emerged as an important factor shaping public opinion on a range of issues. However, debates in the existing literature on the motivations behind support for Christian nationalism remain unresolved: Is Christian nationalism a response to secularization and/or a cover for discomfort with racial diversity and equality? Is Christian nationalism rooted in fear of social change, disgust about social change, or something else? We use an experiment embedded in a national survey of adults to isolate the effects of knowledge of both religious and racial demographic change among White Christians. Our analysis suggests that exposure to religious demographic change shifts support for Christian nationalism and perceptions of discrimination against Whites and Christians, but exposure to racial demographic change has limited impact. This effect is mediated by emotion—religious demographic change increases fear and disgust, which then influence support for Christian nationalism and perceptions of discrimination against Whites and Christians. Although our treatment suggesting exposure to racial demographic change had null effects, we note that racial attitudes do independently influence support for Christian nationalism and perceptions of discrimination against Whites and Christians.
{"title":"Fear and Loathing: How Demographic Change Affects Support for Christian Nationalism","authors":"Brooklyn Walker, Donald P Haider-Markel","doi":"10.1093/poq/nfae005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfae005","url":null,"abstract":"Christian nationalism, the fusion of religious and national identities, has emerged as an important factor shaping public opinion on a range of issues. However, debates in the existing literature on the motivations behind support for Christian nationalism remain unresolved: Is Christian nationalism a response to secularization and/or a cover for discomfort with racial diversity and equality? Is Christian nationalism rooted in fear of social change, disgust about social change, or something else? We use an experiment embedded in a national survey of adults to isolate the effects of knowledge of both religious and racial demographic change among White Christians. Our analysis suggests that exposure to religious demographic change shifts support for Christian nationalism and perceptions of discrimination against Whites and Christians, but exposure to racial demographic change has limited impact. This effect is mediated by emotion—religious demographic change increases fear and disgust, which then influence support for Christian nationalism and perceptions of discrimination against Whites and Christians. Although our treatment suggesting exposure to racial demographic change had null effects, we note that racial attitudes do independently influence support for Christian nationalism and perceptions of discrimination against Whites and Christians.","PeriodicalId":51359,"journal":{"name":"Public Opinion Quarterly","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2024-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140601897","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Adam J Berinsky, Alejandro Frydman, Michele F Margolis, Michael W Sances, Diana Camilla Valerio
The surge in online self-administered surveys has given rise to an extensive body of literature on respondent inattention, also known as careless or insufficient effort responding. This burgeoning literature has outlined the consequences of inattention and made important strides in developing effective methods to identify inattentive respondents. However, differences in terminology, as well as a multiplicity of different methods for measuring and correcting for inattention, have made this literature unwieldy. We present an overview of the current state of this literature, highlighting commonalities, emphasizing key debates, and outlining open questions deserving of future research. Additionally, we emphasize the key considerations that survey researchers should take into account when measuring attention.
{"title":"Measuring Attentiveness in Self-Administered Surveys","authors":"Adam J Berinsky, Alejandro Frydman, Michele F Margolis, Michael W Sances, Diana Camilla Valerio","doi":"10.1093/poq/nfae004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfae004","url":null,"abstract":"The surge in online self-administered surveys has given rise to an extensive body of literature on respondent inattention, also known as careless or insufficient effort responding. This burgeoning literature has outlined the consequences of inattention and made important strides in developing effective methods to identify inattentive respondents. However, differences in terminology, as well as a multiplicity of different methods for measuring and correcting for inattention, have made this literature unwieldy. We present an overview of the current state of this literature, highlighting commonalities, emphasizing key debates, and outlining open questions deserving of future research. Additionally, we emphasize the key considerations that survey researchers should take into account when measuring attention.","PeriodicalId":51359,"journal":{"name":"Public Opinion Quarterly","volume":"54 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2024-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140601728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-23eCollection Date: 2024-01-01DOI: 10.1093/poq/nfae001
John Robert Warren, Jessie Himmelstern, Andrew Halpern-Manners
We estimate the extent to which the methodological problem called panel conditioning biases the federal government's estimates of the prevalence of food insecurity in the United States. To do so, we use 2002 through 2020 data from the Current Population Survey's Food Security Supplement-the same data used to produce the federal government's annual statistics about food insecurity. We take advantage of the CPS's rotating panel design feature to estimate the effects of panel conditioning. By comparing CPS respondents who participated in the Food Security Supplement in each of two consecutive years but who-strictly by chance-were selected to begin the CPS one year apart, we both approximate an experimental design and derive estimates of panel conditioning that are purged of biases from panel attrition. For the 200,000+ unique households in our sample, the treatment is having previously participated in the Food Security Supplement; the outcome is participants' subsequent responses to survey questions about food security. We find that in nearly every year people in the treatment group-that is, the group of people who have previously responded to the Food Security Supplement-are less likely to be food insecure than people responding for the first time. These differences are statistically significant and large in magnitude. We conclude that the federal government's estimates of the prevalence of food insecurity in America are substantially biased; depending on the mechanism underlying panel conditioning, the true prevalence of food insecurity may be substantially higher or lower than officially reported.
{"title":"Panel Conditioning Biases in the Current Population Survey's Food Security Supplement.","authors":"John Robert Warren, Jessie Himmelstern, Andrew Halpern-Manners","doi":"10.1093/poq/nfae001","DOIUrl":"10.1093/poq/nfae001","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>We estimate the extent to which the methodological problem called panel conditioning biases the federal government's estimates of the prevalence of food insecurity in the United States. To do so, we use 2002 through 2020 data from the Current Population Survey's Food Security Supplement-the same data used to produce the federal government's annual statistics about food insecurity. We take advantage of the CPS's rotating panel design feature to estimate the effects of panel conditioning. By comparing CPS respondents who participated in the Food Security Supplement in each of two consecutive years but who-strictly by chance-were selected to begin the CPS one year apart, we both approximate an experimental design and derive estimates of panel conditioning that are purged of biases from panel attrition. For the 200,000+ unique households in our sample, the treatment is having previously participated in the Food Security Supplement; the outcome is participants' subsequent responses to survey questions about food security. We find that in nearly every year people in the treatment group-that is, the group of people who have previously responded to the Food Security Supplement-are less likely to be food insecure than people responding for the first time. These differences are statistically significant and large in magnitude. We conclude that the federal government's estimates of the prevalence of food insecurity in America are substantially biased; depending on the mechanism underlying panel conditioning, the true prevalence of food insecurity may be substantially higher or lower than officially reported.</p>","PeriodicalId":51359,"journal":{"name":"Public Opinion Quarterly","volume":"88 1","pages":"193-213"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2024-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12287631/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144709749","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Flavio Rogerio Hickel, Kassra A R Oskooii, Loren Collingwood
Various polls suggest that Donald Trump has enjoyed the support of a sizable minority of the Latinx electorate despite his racially offensive rhetoric and support for some of the most restrictive immigration policies in recent memory. Building on Social Identity Theory and Self-Categorization Theory, we contend that some Latinxs harbor negative stereotypes about immigrants, blame them for the status devaluation of the Latinx community, and cognitively distinguish themselves from Latinx immigrants. Rather than viewing anti-immigrant policies, rhetoric, and politicians as a direct status threat, those exhibiting this “Latinx Immigrant Resentment (LIR)” may regard them as a means to enhance the status and interests of “prototypical” Latinxs by signaling their distinction from “atypical” Latinxs. To evaluate this theory, we use the 2020 American National Election Study (ANES) and 2016 Collaborative MultiRacial Post-Election Survey (CMPS) as a proof-of-concept to first confirm that negative immigrant stereotypes and cognitive intragroup distinctions are associated with increased support for Donald Trump and restrictive immigration policies. We then introduce a more refined measure of LIR by fielding online surveys of US Latinxs administered through Lucid in 2020–2021 (N = 1,164) and 2021/22 (N = 1,017). We demonstrate the validity of this measure and its predictive power for attitudes toward Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and restrictive immigration policies after accounting for a range of rival explanations.
{"title":"Social Mobility through Immigrant Resentment: Explaining Latinx Support for Restrictive Immigration Policies and Anti-immigrant Candidates","authors":"Flavio Rogerio Hickel, Kassra A R Oskooii, Loren Collingwood","doi":"10.1093/poq/nfad066","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfad066","url":null,"abstract":"Various polls suggest that Donald Trump has enjoyed the support of a sizable minority of the Latinx electorate despite his racially offensive rhetoric and support for some of the most restrictive immigration policies in recent memory. Building on Social Identity Theory and Self-Categorization Theory, we contend that some Latinxs harbor negative stereotypes about immigrants, blame them for the status devaluation of the Latinx community, and cognitively distinguish themselves from Latinx immigrants. Rather than viewing anti-immigrant policies, rhetoric, and politicians as a direct status threat, those exhibiting this “Latinx Immigrant Resentment (LIR)” may regard them as a means to enhance the status and interests of “prototypical” Latinxs by signaling their distinction from “atypical” Latinxs. To evaluate this theory, we use the 2020 American National Election Study (ANES) and 2016 Collaborative MultiRacial Post-Election Survey (CMPS) as a proof-of-concept to first confirm that negative immigrant stereotypes and cognitive intragroup distinctions are associated with increased support for Donald Trump and restrictive immigration policies. We then introduce a more refined measure of LIR by fielding online surveys of US Latinxs administered through Lucid in 2020–2021 (N = 1,164) and 2021/22 (N = 1,017). We demonstrate the validity of this measure and its predictive power for attitudes toward Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and restrictive immigration policies after accounting for a range of rival explanations.","PeriodicalId":51359,"journal":{"name":"Public Opinion Quarterly","volume":"309 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2024-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140199965","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We develop the first implicit association test (IAT) to measure general implicit extremist attitudes in Germany, Great Britain, and the Netherlands. We find that implicit extremist attitudes are positively but weakly correlated with existing explicit measures. This indicates that implicit measures capture different parts of the population, for example, cases in which associations are based on automated cognitive processes instead of conscious thought. Further results show that particularly the higher-educated and nonreligious respondents score higher on the implicit than on the explicit extremism measures. Our results highlight the importance of studying implicit attitudes of political extremism. We further provide novel insights into how to develop IATs for abstract concepts such as democracy and extremism, for the study of which we cannot use readily available images or concepts.
{"title":"Measuring Implicit Political Extremism through Implicit Association Tests","authors":"Sebastian Jungkunz, Marc Helbling, Mujtaba Isani","doi":"10.1093/poq/nfad061","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfad061","url":null,"abstract":"We develop the first implicit association test (IAT) to measure general implicit extremist attitudes in Germany, Great Britain, and the Netherlands. We find that implicit extremist attitudes are positively but weakly correlated with existing explicit measures. This indicates that implicit measures capture different parts of the population, for example, cases in which associations are based on automated cognitive processes instead of conscious thought. Further results show that particularly the higher-educated and nonreligious respondents score higher on the implicit than on the explicit extremism measures. Our results highlight the importance of studying implicit attitudes of political extremism. We further provide novel insights into how to develop IATs for abstract concepts such as democracy and extremism, for the study of which we cannot use readily available images or concepts.","PeriodicalId":51359,"journal":{"name":"Public Opinion Quarterly","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2024-03-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140205454","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Even among those who share the same partisan commitments, some people say they despise the opposing party while others report far less animosity. Why are some people more likely to express hostility toward the opposing political party? We explore how individual-level differences in feelings of self-confidence fuel out-party animosities. Drawing on responses to a module of the 2020 Cooperative Election Study, we show that higher levels of internal political efficacy are associated with greater affective polarization. Those who feel self-assured about their political abilities are more likely to admit severing social ties with those who disagree with them and are more tolerant of discrimination against partisan opponents. In a survey experiment, we confirm that those with greater internal efficacy are also more likely to accept discrimination against a member of the opposing party. Affective polarization is greatest among those who feel the most confident of their ability to influence politics.
{"title":"Political Self-Confidence and Affective Polarization","authors":"Carey E Stapleton, Jennifer Wolak","doi":"10.1093/poq/nfad064","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfad064","url":null,"abstract":"Even among those who share the same partisan commitments, some people say they despise the opposing party while others report far less animosity. Why are some people more likely to express hostility toward the opposing political party? We explore how individual-level differences in feelings of self-confidence fuel out-party animosities. Drawing on responses to a module of the 2020 Cooperative Election Study, we show that higher levels of internal political efficacy are associated with greater affective polarization. Those who feel self-assured about their political abilities are more likely to admit severing social ties with those who disagree with them and are more tolerant of discrimination against partisan opponents. In a survey experiment, we confirm that those with greater internal efficacy are also more likely to accept discrimination against a member of the opposing party. Affective polarization is greatest among those who feel the most confident of their ability to influence politics.","PeriodicalId":51359,"journal":{"name":"Public Opinion Quarterly","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.4,"publicationDate":"2024-03-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140199827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}