scholarly journals Adolescents Provide more Complex Reasons for Lowering the Voting Age than Adults

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Oosterhoff ◽  
Laura Wray-Lake ◽  
K. Paige Harden
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
Cognitive Capacity ◽  
Multiple Perspectives ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Us ◽  
Adolescents And Adults ◽  
Voting Age

Debates about lowering the voting age often center on whether 16 and 17-year-olds possess sufficient cognitive capacity and political knowledge to participate in politics. Little empirical research has examined age differences in adolescents’ and adults’ complexity of reasoning about political issues. We surveyed N = 778 adults (Mage = 38.5, SD = 12.5) and N = 397 16 and 17-year-olds concerning judgements and justifications about whether the US should change the minimum voting age. Justifications for changing the voting age were coded for integrative (i.e., integrating multiple perspectives to form a judgment about changing the voting age), elaborative (i.e., providing multiple reasons to support the same judgement about changing the voting age), and dialectic (i.e., recognizing multiple differing perspectives on changing the voting age) complexity of reasoning. Bayesian regressions indicated that adolescents provided greater integrative and elaborative complexity in their reasoning to change the voting age than adults. Adolescents and adults did not meaningfully differ in their dialectic complexity. Findings are consistent with past research indicating that adolescents possess the cognitive capacity and political knowledge to vote in US elections.

scholarly journals Reconsidering the Minimum Voting Age in the United States

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Oosterhoff ◽  
Laura Wray-Lake ◽  
Daniel Hart
Keyword(s):  
Life Experience ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cognitive Capacity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
Us States ◽  
The Public ◽  
Voting Age

Several US states have proposed bills to lower the minimum local and national voting age to 16 years. Legislators and the public often reference political philosophy, attitudes about the capabilities of teenagers, or past precedent as evidence to support or oppose changing the voting age. Dissenters to changing the voting age are primarily concerned with whether 16 and 17-year-olds have sufficient political maturity to vote, including adequate political knowledge, cognitive capacity, independence, interest, and life experience. We review past research that suggests 16 and 17-year-olds possess the political maturity to vote. Concerns about youths’ ability to vote are generally not supported by developmental science, suggesting that negative stereotypes about teenagers may be a large barrier to changing the voting age.

scholarly journals Reconsidering the Minimum Voting Age in the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 174569162199422
Author(s):  
Benjamin Oosterhoff ◽  
Laura Wray-Lake ◽  
Daniel Hart
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cognitive Capacity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
The Public ◽  
Voting Age

Several U.S. states have proposed bills to lower the minimum local and national voting age to 16 years. Legislators and the public often reference political philosophy, attitudes about the capabilities of teenagers, or past precedent as evidence to support or oppose changing the voting age. Dissenters to changing the voting age are primarily concerned with whether 16- and 17-year-olds have sufficient political maturity to vote, including adequate political knowledge, cognitive capacity, independence, interest, and life experience. We review past research that suggests 16- and 17-year-olds possess the political maturity to vote. Concerns about youths’ ability to vote are generally not supported by developmental science, suggesting that negative stereotypes about teenagers may be a large barrier to changing the voting age.

Animals in Dreams of Children, Adolescents, and Adults: The UK Library Study

2021 ◽  
pp. 027623662096063
Author(s):  
Michael Schredl ◽  
Mark Blagrove
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Media Consumption ◽  
Continuity Hypothesis ◽  
Future Studies ◽  
Adolescents And Adults ◽  
The Uk

Animal dreams have fascinated mankind for ages. Empirical research indicated that children dream more often about animals than adults and dogs, cats, and horses are the most frequent animals that appear within dreams. Moreover, most dreamer-animal interactions are negative. The present study included 4849 participants (6 to 90 yrs. old) reporting 2716 most recent dreams. Overall, 18.30% of these dreams included animals with children reporting more animal dreams that adolescents and adults. The most frequent animals were again dogs, horses, and cats; about 20% of the dream animals were in fact pets of the dreamers. About 30% of the dream animals showed bizarre features, e.g., metamorphosing into humans or other animals, bigger than in real life, or can talk. Taken together, the findings support the continuity hypothesis of dreaming but also the idea that dreams reflect waking-life emotions in a metaphorical and dramatized way. Future studies should focus on eliciting waking-life experiences with animals, e.g., having a pet, animal-related media consumption, and relating these to experiences with animals in dreams.

The Influence of Personal Factor on US Foreign Policy (Secretary of State John Kerry)

2014 ◽  
pp. 72-83
Author(s):  
A. Borisova
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Political Leader ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Road Map ◽  
Secretary Of State ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Usa

The last five years defined an alternative course in the US foreign policy. Obama's reelection caused staff transfers which notably influenced the course. This comprehensive process is based on tremendous work conducted by the Administration of Barak Obama, in particular by John Kerry, who was appointed as a Secretary of State in 2013. His personality plays a significant role in American domestic and foreign policy interrelation. Adoption or rejection of the bills, which are well-known today, depended in large on a range of circumstances, such as personality, life journey and political leader career of the today's Secretary of State. John Kerry’s professional life is mainly associated with domestic policy; nevertheless, he has always been interested in foreign relations and national security issues. Those concerns generally included: non-proliferation, US security, ecological problems, fight against terrorism. The article is intended to highlight Kerry’s efforts in each of these fields, showing not only his actions, but also difficult process of adoption or banning bills in the USA. The author tried to display the whole complicated decision-making process among different parties, businessmen and politicians, law and money clashes. The results of many former endeavors can be seen today, in the modern US policy. Based on assumptions about Secretary of State’s beliefs, certain road map can be predicted. In conclusion, the article offers several courses, where the United States are likely to be most active during the next few years. It can be judged exactly which way some current political issues will develop, how the US foreign policy will be shaped by today's decision-makers in the White House.

Political sophistication

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Παύλος Βασιλόπουλος
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Cognitive Capacity ◽  
Basic Knowledge ◽  
Political Sophistication

This dissertation is concerned with the concept of political sophistication, referring to the extent and organization of a person’s stored political cognition (Luskin 1987).Available empirical evidence on the levels of political sophistication in mass publics comes almost exclusively from the United States and point to two broad conclusions: First, systematic empirical research has demonstrated that political information in the mass public is particularly low (Converse 1964, Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996). Citizens lack basic knowledge over political affairs. Time and again empirical studies have systematically showed that citizens in the United States and elsewhere fall short of passing even the most rudimentary political knowledge tests. This finding that was first illustrated by the Michigan school in the early 1960s (Campbell et al. 1960) resulted in a wide pessimism over the meaning of public opinion and even of representative democracy (Inglehart 1985).The second broad conclusion is that the politically sophisticated and unsophisticated differ: Political sophisticates have the cognitive capacity to translate their deeper held political values and predispositions into consistent political attitudes (Zaller 1992). They are able to use their political knowledge in order to make informed vote choices in the sense that they accurately adjust their political positions to the parties’ platforms (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996, Lau and Redlawsk 1997, 2006). What is more, they are more likely to participate in elections and other political activities and are less susceptible to political propaganda (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996).However the idea that political sophistication matters for the quality of the public’s political decision-making has met strong theoretical and methodological criticism by the ‘low information rationality’ perspective (Popkin 1991, Lupia 1994,Graber 2001). This group of theories argues that politically inattentive citizens can form their political judgment on the basis of heuristics that allow them to make reasonable choices reflecting their predispositions and interests even though they lack political knowledge.The principal aims of this thesis are: a)to compare different measurement perspectives on political sophistication and assess their methodological potential especially in regard with comparative research on political knowledgeb)to explore the extent to which the pattern of ignorance that has been repeatedly highlighted in the American literature is an internal characteristic of political behavior stemming from the low expected utility of acquiring political information or it is subject to particular cultural and systemic characteristics. To this direction I use Greece as a case study by undertaking an analytical survey of political sophistication, one of the very few that have been conducted across the Atlantic.c)The third aim is to investigate the determinants of political sophistication and especially the potential of the mass media in political learning and in the context of the Greek political and media system.d)d) Finally this thesis addresses the unresolved question concerning the differences in quality of political decisions between the political sophisticated and unsophisticated layers of the public by evaluating the explanatory potential of two competing theories (political sophistication v. low information rationality) in the multi-party political environment of Greece

Forging Women's Substantive Representation: Intersectional Interests, Political Parity, and Pensions in Bolivia

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 433-459 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Ewig
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Multiple Perspectives ◽  
Substantive Representation ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Pension Reforms ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Political Intersectionality

AbstractLacking tools to measure substantive representation, empirical research to date has determined women’s substantive representation by identifying “women’s interests” a priori, with little attention to differences across race, class, or other inequalities. To address this problem, I develop the concept of intersectional interests and a method for identifying these. Intersectional interests represent multiple perspectives and are forged through a process of political intersectionality that purposefully includes historically marginalized perspectives. These interests can be parsed into three types: expansionist, integrationist, and reconceived. Identification of intersectional interests requires, first, an inductive mapping of the differing women’s perspectives that exist in a specific context and then an examination of the political processes that lead to these new, redefined interests. I demonstrate the concept of intersectional interests and how to identify these in Bolivia, where I focus on the political process of forging reconceived intersectional interests in Bolivia’s political parity and pension reforms.

scholarly journals Teaching students how to think, not what to think: Pedagogy and political psychology

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 388-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel Velez ◽  
Séamus A. Power
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Political Psychology ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Ivory Tower ◽  
Active Engagement ◽  
Multiple Perspectives ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Psychology Courses ◽  
Approach To Teaching ◽  
Do So

Academia is often critiqued as an “ivory tower” where research, thinking, and teaching are isolated from the complexity and everyday experience of so many people. As instructors of political and other psychology courses, we strive to break down these barriers and engage with the dynamic and nuanced nature of phenomena as situated in lived social and political contexts. In this report, we unpack and detail how we strive to achieve this goal by expanding on Plous’ articulation of action teaching (2012). We first define our pedagogical focus on active engagement, critical thinking, and staying on the move between multiple perspectives. We then provide specific examples of how we enact our philosophy in activities and assessment. We end by articulating how this approach to teaching in social and political psychology can be understood as furthering not only our students’ intellectual growth as psychologists, but also their development as democratic citizens. In doing so, we argue that action teaching not only involves course activities directly engaging with social issues, but also provides students with a scaffold to actually do so in a way that is attentive to the complexity, pluralism, and dynamism of social and political issues.

Journalists’ Misjudgement of Audience Opinion

2021 ◽  
pp. 194016122110522
Author(s):  
David Nicolas Hopmann ◽  
Andreas R.T. Schuck
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Public Support ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
Federal States ◽  
Voting Age ◽  
The Right

Prior studies have reported a right-leaning bias in the media’s reporting of how the public thinks of political issues, raising the question: Why, and to what extent, is this the case? One reason in particular has been discussed in this regard: Journalists judge public opinion to be more right leaning than it actually is (Beckers et al. 2021; Lewis et al. 2004). This paper therefore studies to what extent journalists misjudge audience opinion. The analyses are based on large-scale representative surveys of journalists (1993/2005) and the voting-age population (1994/2005) in Germany. Results show that German journalists (mis-)judge audience opinion to be more right-leaning than the audience sees itself. The results also show that journalists judge audience opinion to be to the right of their own stances, and that journalists in federal states with a right-leaning government and in West Germany judge audience opinion to be even further to the right. Audience feedback does not push journalists’ judgements of their audience towards the right, however. These results are discussed vis-à-vis research showing that there is a consistent bias in the depiction of opinions expressed by ordinary citizens, and research documenting that political elites overestimate public support for right-wing policies.

Guru

2021 ◽  
pp. 81-107
Author(s):  
Robert Volpicelli
Keyword(s):  
Reception History ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Rabindranath Tagore ◽  
Spiritual Leader ◽  
The Us ◽  
Literary Figure

Chapter 3 argues that Rabindranath Tagore followed W. B. Yeats in becoming a cultural representative while traveling on the circuit, but it also contends that Tagore’s reception as a popular guru ultimately hampered his ability to engage with political issues in the same way that Yeats had on his tour. More specifically, this chapter considers how this specific reception history evolved across Tagore’s first two US lecture tours, which took place in 1912–13 and 1916–17 respectively. While US audiences certainly played a large part in labeling Tagore as a guru, the poet was also a much cannier manipulator of his own reception than his critics have previously acknowledged. Through his public lecturing on his first tour, Tagore cultivated a spiritual image without playing to certain stereotypes that painted the East as a place of staid contemplation. Yet this effort became much more difficult during his next tour, when he began using his lectures on Hinduism as a platform for waging an explicit anti-colonial campaign. At this point, the poet was met with criticism, not only from Euro-Americans, but also from Bengali immigrants living in the US. This chapter therefore comes to the conclusion that Tagore’s success in altering his identity as a spiritual leader came at the expense of his popularity as an international literary figure.

Advances in Monitoring Have Not Translated into Improvements in Humanitarian Health Services

2007 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 384-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Les Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Health Data ◽  
Health Priorities ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Life Saving ◽  
The Us ◽  
Control And Prevention ◽  
Political Actions

AbstractBackground:This paper is an attempt to review the advances and shortfalls in data collection and use of health data that have occurred during health emergencies in recent decades for the opening session of the Humanitarian and Health Conference at Dartmouth University in September of 2006.Methods:Examples of various kinds of successes and failures associated with health data collection are given to highlight advances with an effort to emphasize multi-agency efforts reviewed by outside scholars.Results:Health data, particularly surveillance data, have allowed relief workers to set priorities for life-saving humanitarian programs. The main guidelines widely utilized such as those of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Médecins sans Frontières, and the Sphere Project have considerable similarity due to the consistency of data collected in various crises. Moreover, difficult to see problems and successes have been revealed by coherent surveillance efforts. Yet, these data collection efforts can not show significant improvements in the quality of humanitarian aid in recent years. Moreover, health data often do not appear to have meaningful influence on the prioritizing of relief resources globally or on those political issues that trigger emergencies.Conclusions:The field of humanitarian relief is relatively nascent. Methods for documenting basic health measures on the local level have been developed and general health priorities have been documented. Some technical improvements in monitoring still are needed but decision-making is most often limited by the lack of data rather than the problems with data. The ability of health data to influence spending global priorities, legal or political actions undertaken by international organizations, remains very limited.

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