scholarly journals Early EEG responses to pre-electoral survey items reflect political attitudes and predict voting behavior

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Giulia Galli ◽  
Davide Angelucci ◽  
Stefan Bode ◽  
Chiara De Giorgi ◽  
Lorenzo De Sio ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Political Attitudes ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Attitude Assessment ◽  
Neural Signals ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
Electoral Choice ◽  
Implicit And Explicit ◽  
Mainstream Party

AbstractSelf-reports are conventionally used to measure political preferences, yet individuals may be unable or unwilling to report their political attitudes. Here, in 69 participants we compared implicit and explicit methods of political attitude assessment and focused our investigation on populist attitudes. Ahead of the 2019 European Parliament election, we recorded electroencephalography (EEG) from future voters while they completed a survey that measured levels of agreement on different political issues. An Implicit Association Test (IAT) was administered at the end of the recording session. Neural signals differed as a function of future vote for a populist or mainstream party and of whether survey items expressed populist or non-populist views. The combination of EEG responses and self-reported preferences predicted electoral choice better than traditional socio-demographic and ideological variables, while IAT scores were not a significant predictor. These findings suggest that measurements of brain activity can refine the assessment of socio-political attitudes, even when those attitudes are not based on traditional ideological divides.

scholarly journals Effortless Retaliation: the Neural Dynamics of Interpersonal Intentions in a Chicken Game Using Brain-Computer Interface

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yiwen Wang ◽  
Yuxiao Lin ◽  
Chao Fu ◽  
Zhihua Huang ◽  
Rongjun Yu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Brain Activity ◽  
Brain Computer Interface ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Computer Interface ◽  
Neural Dynamics ◽  
Neural Signals ◽  
Chicken Game ◽  
Common Response ◽  
Tit For Tat ◽  
Novel Method

Abstract The desire for retaliation is a common response across a majority of human societies. However, the neural mechanisms underlying aggression and retaliation remain unclear. Previous studies on social intentions are confounded by low-level response related brain activity. Using an EEG-based brain-computer interface (BCI) combined with the Chicken Game, our study examined the neural dynamics of aggression and retaliation after controlling for nonessential response related neural signals. Our results show that aggression is associated with reduced alpha event-related desynchronization (ERD), indicating reduced mental effort. Moreover, retaliation and tit-for-tat strategy use are also linked with smaller alpha-ERD. Our study provides a novel method to minimize motor confounds and demonstrates that choosing aggression and retaliation is less effortful in social conflicts.

Locus of Control, Political Attitudes, and Voting Behavior in a College-Age Population

1972 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 529-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward B. Blanchard ◽  
M. Eugene Scarboro
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Locus Of Control ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Political Attitudes ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Older Students ◽  
College Age ◽  
Activity Factor ◽  
Previous Election ◽  
First Time

Rotter's (1966) I-E Scale and Mirels' (1970) Political Activity Factor derived from that scale were shown to have no significant value in predicting the voting behavior or political attitudes of 18- or 19-yr.-old college students voting for the first time or of older students who had been eligible to vote in a previous election Parental voting behavior and political attitudes were not significantly related to those behaviors and attitudes in students.

scholarly journals Political Responses to Economic Shocks

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 277-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yotam Margalit
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Job Loss ◽  
Political Attitudes ◽  
Economic Shocks ◽  
Transient Effect ◽  
Sharp Drop ◽  
Political Views

How does the experience of economic shocks affect individuals' political views and voting behavior? Inspired partly by the fallout of the financial crisis of 2008, research on this question has proliferated. Findings from studies covering a broadening range of countries and economic contexts highlight several notable patterns. Economic shocks—e.g., job loss or sharp drop in income—exert a significant and theoretically predictable, if often transient, effect on political attitudes. In contrast, the effect on voting behavior is more limited in magnitude and its manifestations less understood. Negative economic shocks tend to increase support for more expansive social policy and for redistribution, strengthening the appeal of the left. But such shocks also tend to decrease trust in political institutions, thus potentially driving the voters to support radical or populist parties, or demobilizing them altogether. Further research is needed to detect the conditions that lead to these distinct voting outcomes.

scholarly journals Political attitudes vary with detection of androstenone

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-37
Author(s):  
Amanda Friesen ◽  
Mike Gruszczynski ◽  
Kevin B. Smith ◽  
John R. Alford
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Political Attitudes ◽  
Biological Traits ◽  
Primary Reason ◽  
Odor Detection ◽  
Attitudes And Behaviors ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
Political Orientations ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
And Behaviors

AbstractBuilding on a growing body of research suggesting that political attitudes are part of broader individual and biological orientations, we test whether the detection of the hormone androstenone is predictive of political attitudes. The particular social chemical analyzed in this study is androstenone, a nonandrogenic steroid found in the sweat and saliva of many mammals, including humans. A primary reason for scholarly interest in odor detection is that it varies so dramatically from person to person. Using participants’ self-reported perceptions of androstenone intensity, together with a battery of survey items testing social and political preferences and orientations, this research supports the idea that perceptions of androstenone intensity relate to political orientations—most notably, preferences for social order—lending further support to theories positing the influence of underlying biological traits on sociopolitical attitudes and behaviors.

scholarly journals Fairness views and political preferences: evidence from a large and heterogeneous sample

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Müller ◽  
Sander Renes
Keyword(s):  
Charitable Giving ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
German Population ◽  
Heterogeneous Sample ◽  
Preferences For Redistribution ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
Field Behavior ◽  
The Government ◽  
Distributional Fairness ◽  
Laboratory Measures

Abstract We elicit distributional fairness ideals of impartial spectators using an incentivized experiment in a large and heterogeneous sample of the German population. We document several empirical facts: (i) egalitarianism is more popular than efficiency- and maxi-min ideals; (ii) females are more egalitarian than men; (iii) men are relatively more efficiency minded; (iv) left-leaning voters are more likely to be egalitarians, whereas right-leaning voters are more likely to be efficiency-minded; and (v) young and high-educated participants hold different fairness ideals than the rest of the population. Moreover, we show that fairness ideals predict preferences for redistribution and intervention by the government, as well as actual charitable giving, even after controlling for a range of covariates. This paper thus contributes to our understanding of the underpinnings of voting behavior and ideological preferences and to the literature that links laboratory measures and field behavior.

The political meaning of dining out: testing the link between lifestyle and political choice in Italy

2015 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-45
Author(s):  
Nicoletta Cavazza ◽  
Piergiorgio Corbetta
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Political Attitudes ◽  
Theoretical Implication ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Choice ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Demographic Features

The debate that has arisen around the weakening of the traditional cleavages’ heuristic power in explaining vote suggests considering the role of lifestyles in designing politically meaningful social aggregates. We investigated the relationship between lifestyle and voting behavior, establishing the degree to which this relationship traces the effect of the socio-structural categories (e.g. social class) or is, at least in part, independent of them. Through a k-means clustering, we individuated a typology of four Italian lifestyles; we showed its relation to socio-demographic features and its ability to discriminate participants’ political attitudes. The subscription to each lifestyle was significantly associated with voting behavior, net of the variance accounted for by the traditional cleavages. The theoretical implication and further direction of research are discussed.

The Linkage between Constituency Attitudes and Congressional Voting Behavior: A Causal Model

1966 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles F. Cnudde ◽  
Donald J. McCrone
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Main Body ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Congressional Voting ◽  
Theoretical Question ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Policy Agreement

Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stokes' publication in 1963 of a preliminary report on the Survey Research Center's representation study is an important landmark in the development of empirical political theory. That report addressed itself to the crucial theoretical question of the linkage between mass political opinions and governmental policy-making. More specifically, the report found considerable policy agreement between Congressional roll call votes and the attitudes of the individual Congressman's constituency. This policy agreement was then interpreted through several causal paths and the Congressman's perception of his constituency's attitudes was found to be the main path by which the local district ultimately influenced Congressional outputs.The main body of the report dealt with the broad civil rights issue dimension, and, by specifying the perceptual path by which constituency influence is brought to bear, documented the effect of political issues despite the generally low level of political information held at the mass level. Thus, the Congressmen, through their broad cognitive evaluations, were aware of how far they could proceed in determining their civil rights roll call votes on the basis of their own attitudes before risking the displeasure of their constituents.Beyond such major substantive contributions the representation study introduced to political science a variance-apportioning technique similar to that developed by Sewall Wright, in 1921. Through this variance-apportioning technique, the importance of the perceptual link was isolated and evaluated. This study, then, symbolizes the growing recognition in political science of the importance of more sophisticated methodological tools in the process of theory building.

Re-evaluating Dissociations between Implicit and Explicit Category Learning: An Event-related fMRI Study

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (7) ◽  
pp. 1697-1709 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd M. Gureckis ◽  
Thomas W. James ◽  
Robert M. Nosofsky
Keyword(s):  
Implicit Learning ◽  
Category Learning ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Incidental Learning ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Neural Systems ◽  
Explicit Learning ◽  
Learning Condition ◽  
Perceptual Category Learning ◽  
Implicit And Explicit

Recent fMRI studies have found that distinct neural systems may mediate perceptual category learning under implicit and explicit learning conditions. In these previous studies, however, different stimulus-encoding processes may have been associated with implicit versus explicit learning. The present design was aimed at decoupling the influence of these factors on the recruitment of alternate neural systems. Consistent with previous reports, following incidental learning in a dot-pattern classification task, participants showed decreased neural activity in occipital visual cortex (extrastriate region V3, BA 19) in response to novel exemplars of a studied category compared to members of a foil category, but did not show this decreased neural activity following explicit learning. Crucially, however, our results show that this pattern was primarily modulated by aspects of the stimulus-encoding instructions provided at the time of study. In particular, when participants in an implicit learning condition were encouraged to evaluate the overall shape and configuration of the stimuli during study, we failed to find the pattern of brain activity that has been taken to be a signature of implicit learning, suggesting that activity in this area does not uniquely reflect implicit memory for perceptual categories but instead may reflect aspects of processing or perceptual encoding strategies.

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