Thought Fragments Concerning Ideology in Social Science

I took a course in sociology my first year as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley. The course was an introduction to sociology taught by professor and social activist, Harry Edwards. The course blew me away because it felt so viscerally real. Professor Edwards would talk about social class, race, and gender in America and students would chime in about their own experiences that brought these big social constructs to life. What I learned in Professor Edwards’ class resembled nothing we had discussed in my high school history classes—I grew up in a politically conservative suburb in San Diego, and we didn’t have much ideological diversity in our discussions of law and society. Sociology, and social sciences more broadly, really spoke to me.

SPSP 2015: Status Shapes Preferences for Redistribution

A lot of people think about political ideology as a powerful causal force that influences the structure of our society and our respective positions within it. In the politics and inequality symposium Jazmin Brown-Iannuzzi of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and her colleagues examined political ideology from a different perspective: Instead of shaping the structure of society, does political ideology arise from our position within that structure? That is, do we create our political beliefs strategically in order to justify our own lives and the lives of those around us?

The psychology within the biggest news of 2013

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As we ring in the new year, every major news outlet is publishing their “top” lists of 2013: the top movies, the top tweets, the top sports moments, the top medical breakthroughs, the top business blunders - the lists go on and on. To add a bit of psychology to this “top” list trend, in this post, I take the three top news stories of 2013 as chosen by CNN.com’s readers and highlight what psychological research can contribute to each of them.

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1. New pope. When the 266th pope of the Catholic Church was elected this year, many praised him for his commitment to interfaith dialogue. His support of cross-religious interactions underscores his belief that communication between members of different groups can help to reduce prejudice and conflict. Seeking to heal rifts among people due to religious differences or prior conflicts, the pope himself has sought out personal relationships with many religious leaders across the globe. He hopes that by encouraging his followers to establish similar interfaith relationships, current tensions can be quelled and prejudice alleviated.

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Research on the intergroup contact hypothesis tells us that the pope’s strategy is likely a good one. The basic prediction of the hypothesis is that contact between people of different groups will usually reduce prejudice. Forming relationships with members of another group can help people learn more about a group, experience less anxiety about interacting with the group, and feel more empathy for that group. All three of these outcomes can then diminish prejudice. Some research has even shown that merely having a friend who interacts with someone from another group can reduce prejudice (the extended contact hypothesis). While it’s not always the case that intergroup contact yields less prejudice, the pope does seem to be taking the right approach for prejudice reduction by continuing to support interfaith dialogue.

SWAG: Video Games and Violence

wikipedia.org

Every Wednesday afternoon, I gather with a bunch of faculty and graduate students at the University of Illinois to discuss a journal article about social psychology, and to eat a snack. This blog post reflects the discussion we had during this week's seminar affectionately called Social Wednesdays and Grub (SWAG). This week, SWAG was led by Jesse Preston, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois. Her summary of the SWAG discussion follows below:

Can playing violent video games cause violent behavior? After the massacre at Columbine, it was revealed that the shooters spent much of their free time playing Doom, and James Holmes, who shot 71 people in a theatre in Aurora Colorado, was also an avid gamer. High profile cases like these seem to confirm the belief many people already hold – that the simulated violence enacted in these games is projected into the real world, with real life and death consequences. Many studies in social psychology (see work by Craig Anderson and Brad Bushman) also support the conclusion that violent video games beget violent behavior. But in a 2011 case (Brown vs. Entertainment Merchants Association), the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) was not convinced. This week in SWAG, we read an article by Christopher J. Ferguson in American Psychologist, describing the SCOTUS decision and the role of social psychology research in making the case against video games.

SWAG: The World is ending and that's unfair!

www.earthtimes.org

Every Wednesday afternoon, I gather with a bunch of faculty and graduate students at the University of Illinois to discuss a journal article about social psychology, and to eat a snack. This blog post reflects the discussion we had during this week's seminar, affectionately called Social Wednesdays and Grub (SWAG).

Ever watch a video like this one? I imagine that for different people it activates very different emotions. For some, this sort of video might galvanize people, strengthening resolve for reducing their carbon footprint. For others, however, it might be a very threatening video to watch, a video that could potentially challenge some of your deeply held assumptions about the world being a fair and safe place.

PYM: Holiday Edition

Looking for your perfect holiday?

The holidays are upon us, which can mean family, fun, food, and cheer. But also, stress, anxiety, conflict, and caloric guilt. Psychology has a lot to say about how to promote the former and avoid the latter, so like last year, I've compiled posts from the previous year to provide you with tips on how to make your holidays a little bit brighter.

On giving and receiving gifts:

-It is not the thought that counts. There is a mismatch in our preference for giving and our preference for receiving gifts. We like to think that a thoughtful gift is the best kind, but gift recipients really just want to receive a gift they like - so know that picking a gift from someone's amazon wish-list is a surefire way to guarantee a happy Christmas. But if you went off-road this Christmas when buying your presents, temper your expectations for how happy the recipient will be when receiving a gift accompanied by out-of-the-box thinking. And if you are receiving a gift that isn't what you expected, remember that the gift giver thought they were doing something nice by putting in that extra thought and not just clicking on the amazon link.

What is Charisma?

Did charisma win the 2012 election?

Today on PYM we are pleased to bring you the second guest blog from Emily Plutov, advanced undergraduate at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

In some of PYM’s election coverage, Amie cited an example of the incredible influence television has over voters’ conceptions of political figures: the famous debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960. In this debate, Kennedy was the clear victor; not only was he calm and collected, but he also was said to have displayed “charisma,” an attribute that people widely believe makes politicians into effective leaders.

What is charisma?

Your Thanksgiving Table - The Political Metaphor

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This week, I'd like to follow up on Michael's post about the ways that our parents' attitudes shape our political ideals. 

A recent study (Fraley, Griffin, Belsky & Roisman, 2012) has found that parents who tend to believe in authoritarian parenting raise kids more likely to become conservative. Those that have egalitarian parenting attitudes tend to have kids who become liberal.

As you fly home and think about your parents' strict or relaxed styles, I'd like to ask how it is that parents help shape our core values. 

An Emotional Election

Politics and emotions are deeply intertwined. Think of the last political conversation you had and how you reacted to it emotionally. Was your blood boiling with anger? Were you paralyzed with anxiety and worry about what might happen? Were you bouncing with enthusiasm and motivated to go get out the vote?

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Bigger picture, how do these emotional-political experiences (specifically, of anger, anxiety, and enthusiasm) affect the ways we seek out and interpret political messages and engage in political behavior?

The power of image: Does TV influence our view of the presidential candidates?

A family mesmerized by JFK during the first televised debate

In 1960, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon engaged in the first televised presidential debate. Previously, debates had only been broadcast over the radio. One longstanding popular story about that first debate is that the medium through which people heard the debate affected who they believed had won. As the story goes, people who listened to the debate were more likely to believe that Nixon had won, whereas those individuals who watched the debate on the television were more likely to believe that JFK had done better. Why? On TV JFK was beautifully bronzed, young and able, while Nixon was sweating profusely and “looked like death.”

One artistic rendering of the first debate

I found myself in a similar experience during the presidential debates that took place this past month. During the first debate I started listening while in the car and then transitioned to the radio at home while making dinner. Then I realized that I could stream the video online and so I switched over to the televised version of the debate. But apparently I wasn’t the only one doing so, and the video kept freezing. Every time the video froze, I would turn the radio back on, switching back and forth constantly between audio and video.

Obama or Romney? Leave the decision to your parents!

Tell your parents that obedience
 is overrated! (source)

Whenever I teach a group of undergraduates I always hope that I will be shaping their young political minds in meaningful ways. I hope that our discussions in class will open their eyes to the various and important social issues of our time, and maybe lead to greater awareness of injustice, unfairness, and inequality in society. I've often thought that this is my most important role as a Professor. I also think that this is one of the concerns of parents who send their children to college--the fear is that the liberal education will forever change the political attitudes that will shape the rest of their adult lives.

While we don't know how much the college experience shapes political attitudes, new research published in Psychological Science, and written by researchers at the University of Illinois, suggests that liberal and conservative political beliefs are shaped by early childhood parenting environments.

For the Love of Humanity: The Psychology of Thinking Globally

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When was the last time you thought about the fact that you are a member of the human species? For most of us, this aspect of our identity is not front and center. More relevant are things like gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, political party, sports team affiliations, and all of our other group memberships, large and small. Not only do we stake our identity and often also our sense of self-worth in these groups, but we tend to be more helpful towards those who belong to them, often at the expense of those who do not. A significant minority of people, however, seem less concerned with group distinctions. For example, while many turned a blind eye, some individuals risked their lives to rescue Jews during the Holocaust. In interviews conducted by Kristen Renwick Monroe for her book, The Heart of Altruism, many of these individuals described a sense of common humanity, or "belonging to one human family." By contrast, those who did not offer help were less likely to possess this feeling of expanded kinship.

In a recent article published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, psychologists Sam McFarland, Matthew Webb, and Derek Brown developed a new scale for measuring individual differences in this attribute, the Identification With All Humanity scale (IWAH). The scale involves a series of questions assessing the degree to which someone identifies with "all humans everywhere" ("identifying" includes things like feeling love toward, feeling similar to, and believing in), independent of how much they identify with people in their own community and country. They then examined how scores on this measure relate to various personality traits and behaviors. Here are some highlights from the findings.

Entitlement, laziness, and internal attributions: What Romney and the rest of us think about government assistance.

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"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them."

Mitt Romney's “47 percent” quote has been making the media rounds for days now. I'd like to shed one stream of light on what underlies this sentiment.   

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As you may have heard, the quote is misleading. Mr. Romney was referring to 47% of Americans who don’t pay income taxes.  However, this group is composed of different demographics. It includes elderly Americans who would otherwise be left with nothing in their old age, struggling families supporting children with extremely limited means, troops deployed to war zones who are exempt from taxes while on duty, and very many people living far below the poverty line. A third of these individuals earn less than $10,000 a year.

Perhaps Mr. Romney doesn't quite care who is in the 47 percent. One tagline of the Republican campaign urges us to take responsibility for our own lives. Relying on the government for help is considered lazy, indulgent, and maybe a little selfish. It is especially so when we're not giving back by paying income taxes. Part of our national character and pride stems from the idea that we are a county where a little elbow grease can go a long way. If hard work is rewarded fairly, then unemployment and low incomes can only be a personal failing. If America is a place where anyone can succeed, economic hardship is a symptom of personal failure.

Don't stand so close to me: Why morality divides us.

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Have you ever discovered that a friend has a dramatically different position than you on a moral matter? Perhaps you found yourself on opposite sides with an old pal in the wake of 9/11 and the US invasion of Iraq. Maybe, during the Occupy Movement, you discovered that some of your friends had a different take on financial inequality than you did. Or, possibly, last week you found out that a colleague lined up proudly to get a Chik-Fil-A sandwich in order to support "traditional marriage day,” whereas you had a different take on the issue. How would these differences of opinion make you feel? It's likely you might find yourself questioning your opinion of the friend and your relationship with him or her.

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Why can’t we accept differences in moral opinion the same way we  readily accept differences in other opinions like music preference? What makes moral attitudes so different and divisive?

Don't be a sheep...or a donkey or an elephant

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As election season approaches, many of us are deciding how to vote on policies that will influence our country and communities. How do we make these important choices? What sources do we turn to when deciding how to vote? We certainly can and do seek out objective information, listen to educated opinions, and consult our own values. However, it might surprise you to learn that what other people think makes the largest impact on our own policy attitudes.

People are surprisingly susceptible to the influence of others and the voting booth is no exception. In fact, one classic paper in political psychology (Cohen, 2003) shows that what other Democrats or Republicans think influences our opinions much more than the actual content of a policy. The paper has a few important lessons we should all keep in mind as we begin to formulate our opinions about candidates and policies.

Can Mitt Romney connect with the working-class voter?

Mitt Romney (source)

During a US Presidential campaign it is common practice for a candidate to engage in some form of impression management. For instance, in 2008 many media outlets thought John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as a Vice Presidential candidate was a move to boost McCain's image as a "Maverick" candidate. For similar reasons, Bill Clinton played saxophone live on the Arsenio Hall Show during the 1992 campaign. In these examples, candidates tend to create public personas that convey their similarity to average Americans (who tended to be younger, less wealthy/educated, and hipper than the candidates themselves).

This practice is still true in the 2012 US Presidential election: Candidates attempt to manage their public persona, to appear similar to the younger, working/middle class Americans that make up a majority of the voters in the election. Importantly, given that the country is just starting to recover from an economic recession, it is critical for candidates to appear that they understand and empathize with the average working-class American. The Republican Presidential hopefuls have varied widely in their ability to convey their understanding for working-class Americans. Perhaps the most successful candidate has been Ron Paul: One of the pillars of Paul's campaign has been putting an end to government practices that favor the elite. The least successful in my view has been Mitt Romney. 

Placing Trust in God and Nation

Guest blogger Olga Antonenko is back with another great post! This time she's talking about the link between God and government.

Does the universe have meaning and structure?  Is there some kind of force or power that controls events and preserves order in our lives?

These may seem like questions for philosophers or theologians, but some social psychologists have chimed in with their own evidence-based opinions. Their answer is a resounding … “Well, people certainly think so!”

Most people live with the assumption that there is an order and reason underlying the things that happen in the universe.  In fact, it could be said that one of the larger cognitive motivators in life is the preservation of that belief.  Without this sense of order, we would be left with a terrifying and chaotic existence in which a terrible fate could befall us at any time.

Some may argue that this chaotic view of life is closer to reality than any sense of meaning or order.  We do, indeed, live a life in which something terrible can happen at any moment for no reason.  Innocent people die every day and horrendous criminals get away with terrible acts.  Senseless natural disasters befall thousands of people every year.  So, is this sense of stability and rationality a false hope held by the feeble minded among us? Probably not.

In the face of senseless tragedies, we feel a sense of anger, injustice, and confusion. These reactions are quick and automatic.  They indicate that, at our core, we all feel that the things that happen need to have a reason.  The deaths of innocent people don’t pass without notice.  It shakes our internal sense of order, which needs to be restored.   

While many of us look inside ourselves for a sense of stability, we also look for external sources of order.  Today, I want to talk about two sources of stability that many people rely on – God and government.

Psi Your Mind?

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Earlier this year, Daryl Bem, a Professor at Cornel University, published a paper on Psi phenomena (also known as psychic phenomena). Bem's Paper was published in the premier journal of social-personality psychology, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP). In the paper, Bem presents results from eight experiments where he finds evidence for precognition (conscious cognitive awareness of future events) and premonition (affective apprehension about future negative events). The results have shocked our field!

Cutting up flags and kissing your sister – what is morality?

Today's post comes from another great guest blogger. Olga Antonenko Young is a graduate student in the social-personality psychology program at UC-Berkeley.
Enjoy!

Is burning the American flag immoral?

A woman cleaning her bathroom decides to cut up an old American flag and use it as a rag to scrub the toilet. Is this morally wrong? Two adult siblings enjoy French kissing each other. Are they acting immorally? Your answers to these questions may depend on your definition of morality as well as unexpected factors including your culture, socio-economic status, and political orientation.

Most people agree that morality concerns itself with the welfare of others. The reason we deem an action immoral is that it, in some way, negatively impacts other individuals or society as a whole. However, exactly what kinds of actions fall into this category vary depending on the person you ask. Think about it for yourself. How do you define morality? What categories of actions count as immoral?

You most likely thought of actions that hurt other people or seem unjust. So, then, what’s wrong with French kissing your sister?

Friday Fun: A Healthy Skepticism About Science?

"There are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data, so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects." -- Rick Perry, Governor of Texas

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Last week a colleague of mine pointed out this wonderful little video from the Daily Show. In it, the Daily Show's "chief science correspondent" Aasif Mandvi asks some pretty hilarious and revealing questions about the scientific method. This piece is amazing and I definitely recommend taking the 6 minutes or so to watch it. At one point, Mandvi speaks to a Republican strategist, Noelle Nikpour, who seems to be skeptical of science (that is a bit of an understatement). In the interview, Ms. Nikpour says "Scientists are scamming the American people for their own financial gain." Hilarity aside, that one person, let alone hundreds or thousands, would believe this about science is a disturbing thought. Particularly since Ms. Nikpour's opinions are likely to influence more people than any single scientist's research ever would. Admittedly, recent events in social psychology have not been a good defense against this opinion (see here and here). Nonetheless, today I'd like to discuss why this opinion is inaccurate.