Reply to Comments on ��Sarah Palin, a Nation Object(ifie)s��

In our original article, Sarah Palin, A Nation Object(ifie)s: The Role of Appearance Focus in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election, we suggested that a focus on Sarah Palin??s appearance may have harmed the Republican ticket in the 2008 presidential election by leading others to objectify her(creating perception of her as less competent, warm, trustworthy, and generally less human) and potentially undermining her performance by inducing her own self-objectification. In this paper, we address several issues raised by Budesheim (2011) and Heldman and Wade (2011) in response to our article. Specifically, we fine-tune our definition of objectification, provide better evidence that Palin??s appearance was highly focused on, and address some alternative accounts (e.g., overcorrection) raised to account for our experimental findings. We conclude by reiterating the relevance of our research to this real-world situation, but heed the warning to keep our claims grounded with solid empirical and theoretical roots.     

Going Out on a Limb in an Underdeveloped Branch of Objectification Research

This paper comments on Heflick and Goldenberg (2010) and examines the evidence cited to support their claim that the objectification of Sarah Palin undermined her performance and voters?? perceptions of her competence. Drawing on evidence related to U.S. media and U.S. political elections, I discuss the conflicting images of Sarah Palin and how they may have contributed to a greater focus on her appearance. I review evidence of how Sarah Palin and other female political candidates have been treated by the media and conclude the evidence for objectification by the media is weak. While the experimental evidence of the objectification of Sarah Palin is intriguing, it does not eliminate plausible alternative explanations for judgments of her competence. Particular attention is paid to the problem of operationally defining objectification, whether in analyses of the media or in laboratory studies. More empirical research on the objectification of others is encouraged, and directions for future experimental research in this area are discussed.     

Objectifying Sarah Palin: Evidence that objectification causes women to be perceived as less competent and less fully human

Although a great deal of research has examined the effects of objectification on women’s self-perceptions and behavior, empirical research has yet to address how objectifying a woman affects the way she is perceived by others. We hypothesize that focusing on a woman’s appearance will promote reduced perceptions of competence, and also, by virtue of construing the women as an “object”, perceptions of the woman as less human. We found initial experimental evidence for these hypotheses as a function of objectifying two targets - Sarah Palin and Angelina Jolie. In addition, focusing on Palin’s appearance reduced intentions to vote for the McCain-Palin ticket (prior to the 2008 US Presidential election). We discuss these findings in the context of the election and the objectification of women.     

ATTENTION TO THE MASS MEDIA AMONG STRAIGHT AND SPLIT TICKET VOTERS: A RESEARCH NOTE

This study deals with one aspect of the communication behavior of voters who voted a straight ticket and those who split their ticket in the 1972 election in Michigan. In an election situation it is assumed that information about the candidates helps the individual make a decision how to vote. Paying attention to the candidates in the mass media is an important means of obtaining information. It was thus hypothesized that if an individual exposes himself to mass media information on only one party's candidates, he is less likely to split his ticket than if he exposes himself to candidates of both parties. It was found that the higher the attention level of the individual to all the candidates, the more he tended to split his ticket. Also, the less his attention was selective to candidates of only one party, the more he tended to split his ticket.     

Motivational and Emotional Consequences of Self-Engagement: Voting in the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election

The role played by self-engagement in the prediction and consequences of goal-directed behavior was examined. Components of the Triangle Model of Responsibility were measured 4 days prior to the 2000 U.S. presidential election, and reported voting and reactions to the election were measured the day after the election. In support of the model, engagement in voting was highest when the guidelines for voting were perceived as clear, when the individual perceived personal control over voting, when the individual perceived voting as relevant to his or her role as a citizen, and when who won the election was important to the individual. Engagement in voting was strongly related to reports of actually voting in the election, and completely mediated the relationship between the other predictors and reported voting. Engagement was also related to a variety of behavioral activities (e.g., watching the presidential and vice-presidential debates, staying up late to watch the election results) indicative of investment in the election. Finally, being engaged in the act of voting prior to the election was strongly related to being in a heightened state of uncertainty and anxiety as a function of not knowing the outcome of the election. The importance of self-engagement in predicting behavior and emotional consequences to behavior is discussed.     

Sexualizing Sarah Palin

Using Sarah Palin??s candidacy for the vice-presidency, Heflick and Goldenberg (2011) empirically link female sexual objectification with the negative perceptions and poor performances of female candidates. We argue that the authors undersell the importance of their findings, especially considering shifts in the content and ubiquitousness of mass media. Advances in communication technologies have enabled a new era of objectification, marked by an increasing presence and acceptance of sexual objectification in media, greater pornographic content in mainstream media, and greater acceptance of pornography in U.S. society more broadly. In the years since U.S. scholars began critiquing sexual objectification, its normalization and degree of penetration into our daily lives have increased, largely due to a proliferation of marketing and entertainment media images enabled by the Internet and other communication technology. Given this new era of objectification, we conclude that the phenomenon identified by Heflick and Goldenberg is more likely to influence the success of female politicians now than it was in the 1970s (when the sexual objectification of women was first problematized) and that it may also help explain the recent stagnation in U.S. progress towards gender equity in political representation.     

Candidate Vulnerability and Exposure to Counterattitudinal Information: Evidence From Two U.S. Presidential Elections

Politically motivated selective exposure has traditionally been understood through the lens of long‐standing attitudes and beliefs, but the role of environment in shaping information exposure practices merits further consideration. Citizens might respond to the political environment in their information‐seeking behavior for numerous reasons. Citizens who believe their position is politically vulnerable have specific cognitive and affective needs that may make them uniquely attuned to counterattitudinal information. In the context of a presidential election, this means that as the defeat of a supported candidate appears more likely, attention to counterattitudinal content will increase. Data collected in the 2008 and 2012 U.S. Presidential elections support this prediction, although this relationship was observed primarily among supporters of the Republican candidate in both elections.     

Election Outcome and Tax Compliance: The Role of Political Party Affiliation,Affect Balance,and Trust in Government

The present study examines partisan reactions to presidential election outcomes. Our model investigates the interactive role of political party affiliation on the relationship between identification with the winning party and affect balance. We subsequently examine how tax compliance intentions are influenced by this moderation relationship through affect balance and trust in government. We conducted a quasi-experiment one week prior to the first mass 2016 presidential primary, where 12 of the 50 US states voted to decide which candidates would represent the Republican and Democratic parties in the 2016 US presidential election. Our sample consisted of 205 Republicans and Democrats. We manipulated press releases showing various presidential candidates winning the presidency to examine how matches / mismatches between partisans’ political party affiliation and the party winning the election influence citizens’ overall feelings, beliefs, and intentions. We find election outcomes generate significant overall positive or negative feelings (i.e., affect balance) among partisans, which influences beliefs about trust in government, and subsequently their tax compliance intentions. Political party moderates the relationship between election outcomes and affect balance in such a way that Democrats experience greater overall positive affect balance when their party wins the election compared to Republicans.     

A single exposure to the American flag shifts support toward Republicanism up to 8 months later

There is scant evidence that incidental cues in the environment significantly alter people's political judgments and behavior in a durable way. We report that a brief exposure to the American flag led to a shift toward Republican beliefs, attitudes, and voting behavior among both Republican and Democratic participants, despite their overwhelming belief that exposure to the flag would not influence their behavior. In Experiment 1, which was conducted online during the 2008 U.S. presidential election, a single exposure to an American flag resulted in a significant increase in participants' Republican voting intentions, voting behavior, political beliefs, and implicit and explicit attitudes, with some effects lasting 8 months after the exposure to the prime. In Experiment 2, we replicated the findings more than a year into the current Democratic presidential term. These results constitute the first evidence that nonconscious priming effects from exposure to a national flag can bias the citizenry toward one political party and can have considerable durability.     

Parent-Child Psychotherapy: A Follow-Up Study Comparing Two Techniques

The “lost letter technique” was validated against actual election returns in two randomly selected precincts in Greensboro, North Carolina. The technique was not successful in predicting the outcome of the presidential race. It was found that letters addressed to The Health Research Center were significantly more likely to be returned than letters addressed to presidential candidates. This indicated that the failure to predict was due either to voter apathy in this particular election or to an active dislike of both candidates.     

Intersubjective cultural representations predicting behaviour: The case of political culture and voting

Research has shown that cultural identification is influenced by the congruence between people's personal values and intersubjectively represented cultural values. The current research extended this finding to voter choice and behaviour. We hypothesized that people whose values and attitudes are similar to the collective representations of the political party that an election candidate belongs to would be more likely to vote for that candidate. Also, this relationship would be mediated by party identification. We found support for our hypotheses in two studies, one on the Legislative Council election in Hong Kong and the other on the 2004 US presidential election.     

Male responses to female competence

This study investigated the conditions under which a male would denigrate a female because of her competence. Sixty-four male subjects either cooperated or competed on anagram tasks with high/low competence male or female co-workers in the presence of a male or a female experimenter. Subsequently, these subjects evaluated their co-workers. No evidence was found to support the notion that males rejected a female partner because of her competence. In fact, some measures revealed that competent females were valued over their male counterparts in the cooperative conditions. Unexpectedly, sex of the experimenter interacted significantly with sex of the co-worker to determine the subject's responses to his partner's competence on two of the dependent measures. The discrepancies between these findings and earlier research findings are addressed. The implications for females in a mixed-sex work context are discussed.     

Impact of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election on Politically Divided Relationships

Political identity represents a salient component of counselor and client identity tied to one's values and beliefs. The 2016 U.S. presidential election has been viewed as an especially divisive political environment that may have heightened emotion and elevated personal and collective political identities to new levels of awareness. We present findings from a consensual qualitative research study exploring personal and relational impacts of the election and discuss participants' (N = 16) strategies for relationship maintenance.     

A festschrift for Carolyn Ingrid Saarni

ABSTRACT

To introduce this special issue honoring Carolyn Saarni, this article provides a brief biography of her career. It highlights Carolyn’s foresight in integrating developmental science and counseling psychology to enlighten our understanding of the development of children’s emotional lives. It also describes some of her most creative research, studies that inspired many scholars to this day. It casts Carolyn’s contributions in the historical changes that have taken place in developmental psychology. Lastly, this article also previews the articles presented by contributing authors who count themselves among Carolyn’s colleagues. Those articles focus on research directions in the study of emotional competence, emotion regulation, emotion knowledge, and emotion socialization that have evolved from and been inspired by Carolyn’s rich contributions to developmental psychology.     

Radical sophiology: Fr. Sergej Bulgakov and John Milbank on Augustine

Looking at John Milbank??s recent turn to Fr. Sergej Bulgakov, this paper argues that the theological and philosophical commitments they share are overshadowed by a deeper difference concerning the role each assigns the church in secular culture. It turns to Milbank??s roots in Augustine??s philosophy of history, which he argues could have allowed the church to overtake the pagan (which founds the secular) were it not for his distinction between the ??visible?? church and its deferred (eschatological) perfection. Bulgakov also criticizes Augustine??s doctrine of the church, or so he thinks. He actually misreads Augustine, accusing the bishop of holding a doctrine of the church that Milbank would have liked him to have held. This suggests that Bulgakov would not agree with Milbank??s view that the church should ??enact?? God??s judgment in history by opposing itself to the secular.     

Age differences in affective forecasting and experienced emotion surrounding the 2008 US presidential election

In everyday life, people frequently make decisions based on tacit or explicit forecasts about the emotional consequences associated with the possible choices. We investigated age differences in such forecasts and their accuracy by surveying voters about their expected and, subsequently, their actual emotional responses to the 2008 US presidential election. A sample of 762 Democratic and Republican voters aged 20 to 80 years participated in a web-based study; 346 could be re-contacted two days after the election. Older adults forecasted lower increases in high-arousal emotions (e.g., excitement after winning; anger after losing) and larger increases in low-arousal emotions (e.g., sluggishness after losing) than younger adults. Age differences in actual responses to the election were consistent with forecasts, albeit less pervasive. Additionally, among supporters of the winning candidate, but not among supporters of the losing candidate, forecasting accuracy was enhanced with age, suggesting a positivity effect in affective forecasting. These results add to emerging findings about the role of valence and arousal in emotional ageing and demonstrate age differences in affective forecasting about a real-world event with an emotionally charged outcome.     

Partisan Provocation: The Role of Partisan News Use and Emotional Responses in Political Information Sharing in Social Media

Citizens increasingly rely on social media to consume and disseminate news and information about politics, but the factors that drive political information sharing on these sites are not well understood. This study focused on how online partisan news use influences political information sharing in part because of the distinct negative emotions it arouses in its audience. Using panel survey data collected during the 2012 U.S. presidential election, we found that use of proattitudinal partisan news online is associated with increased anger, but not anxiety, directed at the opposing party's presidential candidate and that anger subsequently facilitated information sharing about the election on social media. The results suggest partisan media may drive online information sharing by generating anger in its audience.     

Crime Type,Perceived Stereotypicality,and Memory Biases: A Contextual Model of Eyewitness Identification

The fallibility of eyewitness identifications is well documented. Nevertheless, research has yet to assess the possibility that the type of crime committed systematically influences who eyewitnesses mistakenly identify. We address this oversight by presenting a contextual model of eyewitness identification (CMEI). The CMEI asserts that discrete crimes automatically activate distinct stereotypes about a perpetrator's appearance. Depending on the congruence between these stereotypes and the perpetrator's actual appearance, eyewitnesses will remember the perpetrator as appearing more (or less) representative of his or her group (i.e., higher or lower on perceived stereotypicality). Estimator and system variables are posited to affect identifications at different stages of the identification process. The literatures on stereotype activation, perceived stereotypicality, and stereotype‐consistent memory biases are reviewed to support the CMEI. Our conceptual integration provides a model of eyewitness identification that explains when mistaken identifications are likely to occur and who they are likely to affect. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Republican Voters Prefer Candidates Who Have Conservative‐Looking Faces: New Evidence From Exit Polls

Research shows people share common political facial stereotypes: They associate faces with political ideologies. Moreover, given that many voters rely on party affiliation, political ideology, and appearances to select political candidates, we might expect that political facial stereotypes would sway voting preferences and, by extension, the share of votes going to each candidate in an election. And yet few studies have examined whether having a stereotypically conservative‐looking (or liberal‐looking) face predicts a candidate's vote shares. Using data from U.S. election exit polls, we show that the Republican voters within each state are more likely to vote for a candidate (even a Democrat) the more that person has a stereotypically Republican‐looking face. By contrast, the voting choices of the Democratic voters within each state are unrelated to political facial stereotypes. Moreover, we show that the relationship between political facial stereotypes and voting does not depend on state‐level ideology: Republican voters in both right‐leaning (“red”) and left‐leaning (“blue”) states are more likely to vote for candidates with conservative‐looking faces. These results have several important practical and theoretical implications concerning the nature and impact of political facial stereotypes, which we discuss.