Meta-cognition and resistance to political persuasion: evidence from a three-wave panel study

ABSTRACT

We investigate the temporal course of meta-cognition and resistance processes following exposure to counter-attitudinal information in the 2012 Presidential election. Using a unique 3-wave survey panel design, we tracked eligible voters during the last months of the 2012 campaign and experimentally manipulated exposure to negative political messages targeting Barack Obama and Mitt Romney on an online platform. As predicted, we found that politically unengaged (vs. engaged) individuals were less likely to counter-argue a message attacking their favored candidate. Resistance, in turn, led to increased attitudinal certainty, polarization, and correspondence with actual voting behavior over the course of the campaign. These findings provide the first analysis of the longitudinal effects of meta-cognitive processes underlying persuasion for real-world attitude change and behavior.     

Why do newcomers vote for a newcomer? Support for an immigrant party

This article studies the voters of DENK, the first immigrant party to gain seats in a national parliament. It builds further on the existing literature on how immigrants and people from immigrant descent vote in Western European countries. From the literature we derive seven expectations about the kind of voters that are likely to vote for an immigrant party in terms of their political cynicism, attitudes towards economic, globalisation and moral issues. We find that DENK voters are younger Muslims, who have conservative views on moral matters, cynical attitudes towards politics, right-wing views on economic matters and progressive views on issues that pertain to the globalisation dimension, such as immigration, integration and Islam and in particular discrimination. This article uses VAA data to construct a matched sample that in terms of key variables is representative for voters with and without a migration background.     

Another Issue Comes Out: Gay Rights Policy Voting in Recent U.S. Presidential Elections

Drawing from the theory of policy voting, this study examines the impact of opinions about gay rights on voting for presidential candidates. Qualitative analysis of the major party platforms and candidate campaign rhetoric from the six presidential elections held between 1988 and 2008 indicates that Democratic and Republican presidential candidates began openly expressing opposing positions on gay rights issues in 1992. Quantitative analysis of public opinion shows that, starting in 1992 and continuing through 2008, gay rights issues became more salient to the public, and opinions about gay rights began to exert a significant effect on vote choice. The study concludes with a discussion of the partisan forces that shaped the electoral significance of gay rights issues during the period from 1988 to 2008 and speculation about the role of gay rights issues in shaping future partisan electoral strategy.     

The boomerang effect of psychological interventions

Research has found that teaching people about psychological biases can help counteract biased behavior. On the other hand, due to the innate need for preservation of a positive self-image, it is likely that teaching people about biases they hold, may cause a boomerang effect in cases where being associated with a specific bias implies negative social connotations. In the three studies below we examine situations in which psychological bias implies negatively associated behavior, and show that teaching people about bias in those contexts can be counterproductive.     

Conditions for Exercising Residents’ Voting Rights in Long-Term Care Residences: A Prospective Multicenter Study

To assess voting conditions in long-term care settings, we conducted a multicenter survey after the 2009 European elections in France. A questionnaire about voting procedures and European elections was proposed in 146 out of 884 randomized facilities. Sixty-four percent of facilities answered the questionnaire. Four percent of residents voted (national turnout: 40%), by proxy (58%) or at polling places (42%). Abstention related to procedural issues was reported in 32% of facilities. Sixty-seven percent of establishments had voting procedures, and 53% declared that they assessed residents’ capacity to vote. Assistance was proposed to residents for voter registration, for proxy voting, and for voting at polling places, respectively, in 33%, 87%, and 80% of facilities. This survey suggests that residents may be disenfranchised and that more progress should be made to protect the voting rights of residents in long-term care facilities.     

Competing for the diaspora's influence at home: party structure and transnational campaign activity in El Salvador

ABSTRACT

How do parties in migrant-sending countries engage with the diaspora? Migrants exercise an increasingly important voice in electoral politics in their home countries, though they often either cannot legally vote or vote in very low numbers, yet parties attempt to leverage the influence they believe migrants have over voters at home. However the degree and manner by which parties reach out to diaspora citizens varies widely. A case study of El Salvador points to party organisation as a determinant of variation among parties in diaspora campaigning, based on interviews with Salvadoran party elites in the U.S. and El Salvador, party documents, and historical comparison of campaign activities of El Salvador's two major parties, ARENA and FMLN, over three presidential elections and one mayoral election. FMLN, with a hierarchical model and base committee structure, more effectively mobilizes diaspora support while ARENA, with a horizontal model and sectoral structure, exhibits difficulties in party-diaspora coordination and largely makes indirect and symbolic references to diaspora issues.     

A longitudinal test of the gender turnover model among U.S. House and Senate members

This study builds on previous research by examining the impact of gender when predicting roll call voting behavior in the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate over several recent congresses. In order to unearth gender effects, it employs a longitudinal design based on turnover in the membership of both the House and the Senate. Through a comparison of the voting records of members of Congress representing the same geographic territory it holds constituency constantly while allowing for gender and party to vary. It does so with models including dependent variables that measure roll call ideology and support for women's issues exhibited in the voting records of members in both institutions. The results show that male and female members in each chamber representing the same constituency amass virtually indistinguishable voting records on the liberal-conservative policy dimension. However, on votes dealing with issues of concern to women, female senators tend to be more supportive than the male senators they replace and male senators tend to be less supportive than the female senators they replace.     

Discovering hidden statistical issues through individual-level models in ecological studies

ABSTRACT

In ecological studies, individual inference is made based on results from ecological models. Interpretation of the results requires caution since ecological analysis on group level may not hold in the individual level within the groups, leading to ecological fallacy. Using an ecological regression example for analyzing voting behaviors, we highlight that the explicit use of individual-level models is crucial in understanding the results of ecological studies. In particular, we clarify three relevant statistical issues for each individual-level models: assessment of the uncertainty of parameter estimates obtained from a wrong model, the use of shrinkage estimation method for simultaneous estimation of many parameters, and the necessity of sensitivity analysis rather than adhering to one seemingly most compelling assumption.     

Calculable Power: A Case Study of IMF Quotas and Voting Rights Reform*

Voting procedure is an important mechanism for public choice in collective bodies such as international organizations. This paper measures and compares IMF member countries’ voting power before the 2008 reform and after the 2010 reform on the basis of datasets on IMF quotas and voting rights distribution provided by IMF. Our study verifies that IMF’s quotas and voting rights reforms do help to reduce the voting power gap among member countries. The 2008 and 2010 reforms produce a greater improvement in emerging members’ voting power under the 70 percent majority rule than the 85 percent rule; the 70 percent majority rule means the United States would lose its absolute veto. Moreover, the paper disproves the underlying assumption that regards a member’s voting power as proportional to its voting rights. Countries with different amounts of voting rights can still have the same voting power.     

论股东投票权的来源及其法律实现

公司并非仅仅是一种法人人格,它实际上是公司中的利益相关者之间的博弈,体现为一种关系契约。基于关系契约的视角,公司与股东的关系作为一种契约关系,内含了股东应当而且必须享有自由平等的权利,而股东作为公司剩余财产的最后索取人,享有对公司决议的最后决策权。股东的投资转化为股权后,股权作为独立民事权利,具有资本性和流动性,使股东可以通过股权表达自己公司运作的意向。股东在考虑了投票表决的效率、具体的可行性操作后,在资本多数决的表决机制上达成了默契,这种表决机制提供了到目前为止能够在尽可能维护公司整体利益的前提下保障效率的最佳方案。正是从必然性和必要性两方面的考量,公司各利益关涉方积极捍卫基于资本多数决的投票表决机制所最后达成的决议。