The effects of perceived competence and sociability on electoral outcomes

Previous research demonstrated that inferences of competence from the face are good predictors of electoral outcomes [Todorov, A., Mandisoza, A. N., Gore, A., & Hall, C. C. (2005). Inferences of competence from faces predict election outcomes. Science, 308, 1623-1626]. In the current work we examined the role of another key dimension in social perception, namely perceived sociability. Results showed that people considered both competence and sociability, as inferred from the face, as related to higher chances of winning the elections. A different pattern emerged in relation to the actual electoral outcomes. Indeed, perceived competence was related to higher chances of winning, whereas perceived sociability was negatively related to electoral success. It is thus shown that these two fundamental dimensions in social perception exert opposite effects on voting behaviors.     

Endorsing Obama licenses favoring Whites

Three studies tested whether the opportunity to endorse Barack Obama made individuals subsequently more likely to favor Whites over Blacks. In Study 1, participants were more willing to describe a job as better suited for Whites than for Blacks after expressing support for Obama. Study 2 replicated this effect and ruled out alternative explanations: participants favored Whites for the job after endorsing Obama, but not after endorsing a White Democrat, nor after seeing Obama’s photo without having an opportunity to endorse him. Study 3 demonstrated that racial attitudes moderated this effect: endorsing Obama increased the amount of money allocated to an organization serving Whites at the expense of an organization serving Blacks only for participants high in a measure of racial prejudice. These three studies suggest that expressing support for Obama grants people moral credentials [Monin, B., & Miller, D. T. (2001). Moral credentials and the expression of prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 33-43], thus reducing their concern with appearing prejudiced.     

Presidential speechmaking style: Emotional response to micro-expressions of facial affect

Research considering the effect of Presidential speech making style shows individuals are likely to attend to and be emotionally affected by the facial expressions of leaders, especially those that are inappropriate for the context. In this study we tested how rapid and subtle expressions of facial affect (i.e., expressions of less than one-second, often termed micro-expressions) in speeches by a political leader impacts participants’ emotional state. We do this by removing seven brief expressions (less than one-second) from a nearly twelve minute televised speech by President George H. W. Bush concerning the 1990 commitment of US military in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. FACS coding identified all these expressions as containing a component of smiling (lip corner puller: AU12), in some cases with the addition of other facial movements (sometimes associated with anger and/or disgust). Experiments carried out on 206 university undergraduates showed emotional state was altered as a result of these micro-expressions when the control (unaltered speech) and experimental group (micro-expressions removed from speech) were compared. Specifically, participants who viewed the micro-expressions felt less threatened and less angry. Thus, facial expression (even very brief micro-expressions) can have a significant impact on the receiver of a political speech.

Theorizing Politics After Camus

Theorizing has been conceived historically in illuminative and ocular metaphors, and as an activity that occurs in a fixed and privileged relation to political society that permits a panoramic perspective. These elements of light, sight, and distance, are supportable existentially and ethically in post-war, post-Holocaust world. One of the first to explore the challenges to theorizing in this era was Albert Camus. He provided phenomenological and existential investigations of the obstacles to theorizing politics in his literary works, particularly his trilogy of novels: The Stranger, The Plague, and The Fall. In this paper, I offer a reading of these novels that isolates theorizing as an activity performed not from a transcendent perceptual vantage of perfect light and vision, but from the immanent perspectives achieved in the city, among friends, or by exile.     

Intellectual humility and between-party animus: Implications for affective polarization in two community samples

The extent to which individual differences in personality traits and cognitive styles diminish affective polarization (AP) is largely unknown. We address this gap by examining whether intellectual humility (IH) buffers against AP. We examined the associations between domain-general and domain-specific measures of IH, on the one hand, and AP, on the other, in two community samples. Measures of IH were robustly negatively associated with AP. Moreover, IH significantly incremented measures of allied constructs, including general humility, in the statistical prediction of AP. There was some evidence that IH buffered the relationships between strong political belief and AP. Future research is needed to clarify whether IH is sufficient to protect against AP in the presence of ideological extremity.     

政治心理学的争辩议题述评

作为政治学与心理学的交叉学科, 政治心理学在欧美学界的发展逐步走向成熟。作者详细归纳了政治心理学学科发展史和理论史上的争辩议题, 包括政治心理学与理性的关系问题, 政治心理学的主导范式与分散化关系问题, 政治心理学解释的性情和情境取向的分歧问题, 政治学路径还是心理学路径的平衡问题, 以及文化因素如何影响政治心理的问题。最后, 作者讨论了中国政治心理学研究如何看待文化差异问题、文化与理性的关系等问题。     

The effect of mortality salience on the attitudes toward state control: The case of Russia

Our study examined the effects of mortality salience (MS) on attitudes toward state control in different domains in Russia. Using the theory of Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition (CMSC) and the Terror Management Theory (TMT), we put forward two alternative hypotheses. Based on the CMSC, MS would enhance the approval of state control in different spheres, while, in line with TMT, the MS effect would be dependent on pre-existing views. The participants in the study were 450 Russian students who completed a questionnaire to measure attitudes toward state control in six spheres of life (the economy, the mass media, political parties, social organisations, science and education). After a week, they were randomly assigned one of three conditions—MS, frightening, and a neutral condition—and again completed the questionnaire on political attitudes. Our results showed that MS mostly provokes “control shifting,” confirming the CMSC's hypothesis. However, a separate analysis conducted among people with different pre-existing political attitudes has revealed that “control shifting” is more pronounced for freedom-oriented participants. We discuss these findings in line with alternative views on the nature of the MS effect and specifics of socio-political context.     

Investigating whether group status modulates the relationship between individual differences in epistemic motivation and political conservatism

Previous research has found that individual differences in epistemic motivation predict political conservatism. However, meta-analyses indicate substantial heterogeneity in this association and such variation remains underexamined. Using a large, pre-existing dataset, we investigated whether group status—a group’s social value—modulates this relationship. We used several assessments of epistemic motivation (need for structure, need for cognition) and group status (race, gender, social class). We found that the epistemic motivation-ideology relationship was stronger for women (versus men) and for members of lower (versus higher) social class groups, although the relationship strength differences were relatively small. The relationship did not consistently vary across racial group status. Group status appears to be a small, but not consistent, moderator of the epistemic motivation-ideology relationship.