Predicting Political Biases Against the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party Movements

Accusations of hypocrisy have flown against both supporters and opponents of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and Tea Party movements. Integrating the ideologically objectionable premise model (IOPM), a newly devised model of political judgment, with political tolerance research, we find that how the political activities of OWS and Tea Party demonstrators are described determines whether or not biases against these groups emerge among people low and high in right‐wing authoritarianism (RWA). Specifically, people low in RWA were more biased against the Tea Party than OWS regardless of whether the groups engaged in normatively threatening or reassuring political behavior, whereas people high in RWA were more biased against OWS than the Tea Party when the groups engaged in normatively threatening (and therefore objectionable), but not normatively reassuring (and therefore acceptable) behavior. These findings further support the IOPM's contention that premise objectionableness, not right‐wing orientation, determines biases in political judgment.     

The Wished‐For Always Wins Until the Winner Was Inevitable All Along: Motivated Reasoning and Belief Bias Regulate Emotion During Elections

How do biases affect political information processing? A variant of the Wason selection task, which tests for confirmation bias, was used to characterize how the dynamics of the recent U.S. presidential election affected how people reasoned about political information. Participants were asked to evaluate pundit‐style conditional claims like “The incumbent always wins in a year when unemployment drops” either immediately before or immediately after the 2012 presidential election. A three‐way interaction between ideology, predicted winner (whether the proposition predicted that Obama or Romney would win), and the time of test indicated complex effects of bias on reasoning. Before the election, there was partial evidence of motivated reasoning—liberals performed especially well at looking for falsifying information when the pundit's claim predicted Romney would win. After the election, once the outcome was known, there was evidence of a belief bias—people sought to falsify claims that were inconsistent with the real‐world outcome rather than their ideology. These results suggest that people seek to implicitly regulate emotion when reasoning about political predictions. Before elections, people like to think their preferred candidate will win. After elections, people like to think the winner was inevitable all along.     

Distance stability analysis in multidimensional scaling using the jackknife method

Stability or sensitivity analysis is an important topic in data analysis that has received little attention in the application of multidimensional scaling (MDS), for which the only available approaches are given in terms of a coordinate‐based analytical jackknife methodology. Although in MDS the prime interest is in assessing the stability of the points in the configuration, this methodology may be influenced by imprecisions resulting from the inherently necessary Procrustes method. This paper proposes an analytical distance‐based jackknife procedure to study stability and cross‐validation in MDS in terms of the jackknife distances, which is not influenced by the Procrustes method. For each object, the corresponding jackknife estimated points are considered as naturally clustered points, and stability and cross‐validation are analysed in terms of the MDS distances arising from the jackknife procedure, on the basis of a weighted cluster‐MDS algorithm. A jackknife‐relevant configuration is also proposed for cross‐validation in terms of coordinates, in a cluster‐MDS framework.     

员工政治自我效能对组织公民行为的影响研究：心理资本的调节作用

本研究以来自5家公司的272对主管与员工之间的配对数据为样本,探讨了员工政治自我效能与组织公民行为间的关系以及心理资本的调节作用。研究结果表明：政治自我效能与组织公民行为之间呈现倒U型的关系,当员工政治自我效能较低和较高时,组织公民行为都比较低,而当他们的政治自我效能处于中等水平时,组织公民行为最高;心理资本对组织公民行为具有积极的促进作用,同时能够减弱员工政治自我效能对组织公民行为的倒U型影响。     

Political intolerance: the role of intergroup threat and negative intergroup emotion

This study investigated whether the perception of intergroup threat, and intergroup emotion, are related to political intolerance. One hundred and twenty three South African undergraduate students (females?=?76%; males?=?24%; White?=?65%; Coloured?=?24%; Indian?=?8%; Chinese?=?2%; mean age =?19.8, SD?=?3.03 years) were randomly assigned to either a heightened (n?=?68) or low intergroup threat condition (n?=?55). Data on intergroup threat, intergroup emotion and political intolerance were collected utilising a questionnaire. T-test effect comparisons including multiple regression analyses were computed to determine effects of intergroup threat and negative intergroup emotion on political intolerance. Results revealed negative intergroup emotion and perceived intergroup threat to predict political intolerance. Negative intergroup emotion mediated the relationship between perceived threat and political intolerance. These findings suggest that intergroup threat may lead to the rise of negative intergroup emotion which in turn creates an environment conducive to the development of political intolerance.     

The Intergenerational Transmission of Party Preferences in Multiparty Contexts: Examining Parental Socialization Processes in the Netherlands

Research shows that parents have a strong influence on the party preferences of their children. Yet little is known about how such preferences are transmitted in multiparty systems with weak party identification and high electoral volatility. We propose a model of intergenerational transmission that includes both direct effects of parents' party preferences on those of their children, as well as indirect effects through left–right and issue positions. We test this model with original survey data of Dutch adolescents (14–20 years old) and their parents (N = 751 adolescent-parent pairs). We find two paths through which parents exert influence on the party preferences of their adolescent children. On the first path, parental party preferences function as a direct predictor of adolescent party preferences. On the second path, adolescent left–right and issue positions function as a mediator between parental left–right and issue positions and adolescent party preferences, with the effect of left–right positions being stronger than that of issue positions. The frequency with which adolescents discuss political topics with their parents moderates these effects.     

The associations of cultural worldviews,political orientation,and trust with COVID-19 risk beliefs in the U.S.

Given that risk beliefs predict engagement in behaviors to prevent disease, it is important to understand the factors associated with risk beliefs. In the present paper, we conducted path analyses to investigate the associations of belief systems (political orientation and cultural worldviews of individualism and hierarchy) with COVID-19 risk beliefs (i.e., perceived likelihood, perceived severity, and worry about disease; Studies 1 and 2), and the indirect effect through trust in information sources in these relationships (Study 1). Two online panels of U.S. adults were surveyed at three timepoints during the COVID-19 pandemic (Study 1: baseline n = 1,667, 1-year follow-up n = 551; Study 2: n = 404). Results of path analyses indicated that, across studies and timepoints, when controlling for political orientation, trust, and demographic factors, greater individualism had consistent significant direct effects on lower perceived severity and worry about COVID-19, whereas greater hierarchy had consistent significant direct effects on lower perceived severity. However, after accounting for cultural worldviews of individualism and hierarchy (and trust and demographic factors), none of the associations among political orientation and any of the three COVID-19 risk beliefs were significant. The test of indirect effects indicated that individualism and hierarchy were indirectly associated with lower perceived severity of and worry about COVID-19 through less trust. The findings suggest that cultural worldviews of individualism and hierarchy play a role in shaping people's risk beliefs.     

Living in a Non‐Communist Versus in a Post‐Communist European Country Moderates the Relation Between Conservative Values and Political Orientation: A Multilevel Study

We performed a multilevel, multinational analysis using the 2012 European Social Survey dataset (N = 41 080, nested in 20 countries) to study how living in a non‐communist versus in a post‐communist country moderates the link between individual conservative values (drawn on Schwartz's theory of basic human values) and political orientation (assessed as self‐placement on the left–right axis and attitude towards economic redistribution). The results supported the moderating role of living in a non‐communist versus in a post‐communist country in the case both of political self‐placement and of attitude towards economic redistribution, even controlling for the countries' degree of individualism, power distance and democracy. Specifically, conservative values were positively related to a rightist political self‐placement among participants living in countries without a communist past, and to a favourable attitude towards economic redistribution in countries with a communist past. The limitations, implications and future directions of this study are discussed. Copyright © 2016 European Association of Personality Psychology     

God Versus Party: Competing Effects on Attitudes Concerning Criminal Punishment,National Security,and Military Service

We explore how images of God interact with political party to predict attitudes concerning the appropriate role of government in both criminal punishment and national security. Using the second wave of the Baylor Religion Survey (2007), we analyze the extent to which beliefs regarding God's moral judgment moderate the influence of party affiliation on opinions about the death penalty, fighting terrorism, punishing criminals, serving in the military, and U.S. involvement in the Iraq War. Specifically, we find that Democrats who believe in a judgmental God tend to support more conservative policies. In fact, attitudes converge such that the effects of party membership are erased if rival partisans both believe in a judgmental moral authority.     

Psychological variables underlying political orientations in an old and a new democracy: A comparative study between Sweden and Latvia

This study examines in detail the psychological variables underlying ideological political orientation, and structure and contents of this orientation, in Sweden and Latvia. Individual political orientation is conceptualized on two dimensions: acceptance vs. rejection of social change and acceptance vs. rejection of inequality. Swedish (N = 320) and Latvian (N = 264) participants completed measures of political orientation, Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA), self vs. other orientation, tolerance for ambiguity, humanism and normativism, core political values, system justification, as well as moral foundations questionnaire and portrait values questionnaire. The results showed that the relation among the measured variables was similar in both samples. Swedish participants showed stronger endorsement of egalitarian attitudes and social values, whereas we found more self‐enhancing and socially conservative values and attitudes among the Latvian participants.