Public Perceptions of Child Sexual Exploitation Abroad: A Vignette Experiment on the Influence of Social Distance

This study examines the impact of social and spatial distance on public opinion about sexual exploitation of children. A randomized vignette experiment among members of a Dutch household panel investigated whether public perceptions of child sexual exploitation were more damning or more lenient when it occurred in a country closer to home, and explored theoretical explanations. The results show that offenses committed in the Netherlands or U.S. are overall perceived as more negative than those committed in Romania or Thailand. Social distance affects public perceptions about crime severity, and victims are attributed more responsibility in socially close than socially distant conditions. The study concludes that public perceptions are contingent upon the crime location, even when applied to child sexual exploitation.

Rejecting Ethnic Pandering in Urban Africa: A Survey Experiment on Voter Preferences in Nairobi, Kenya

Ethnic pandering, in which candidates promise to cater to the interests of coethnic voters, is presumed to be an effective strategy for increasing electoral support in Africa’s emerging multiethnic democracies. However, ethnic political mobilization may be disdained by citizens for its divisive and polarizing effects, particularly in urban areas. As a result, pandering may fall on deaf ears among Africa’s urban voters. This study examines how voters in Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi, respond to ethnic pandering using data from a vignette experiment conducted in 2015 and a replication study implemented in 2016. Results show that respondents are more supportive of candidates who make ethnically inclusive rather than targeted appeals, regardless of whether the candidate is identified as a coethnic. We propose that the results are driven by a broad distaste among urban voters for parochial politics, rather than by strategic calculations related to candidate viability.

The Role of the Deservingness Criteria in the case of Single Mothers’ Perceived Welfare Deservingness in Hungary

A growing number of studies investigate the relative importance of the major deservingness criteria (control, attitude, reciprocity, identity, need) in explaining the perceived welfare deservingness of different social groups. This paper addresses the roles of those criteria in predicting the perceived deservingness of a rarely examined group, single mothers. We conducted a survey in Hungary and compare the responses to direct questions about deservingness to the results of a vignette-based survey experiment in which the deservingness criteria were translated to characteristics of hypothetical mothers. Our results show that in the absence of deservingness cues (direct questions), respondents relied on the attitude, reciprocity/control, identity (measured by traditional family values), and need criteria to the same extent. On the other hand, in the presence of specific deservingness cues (vignette experiment), people disregarded their family values and stereotypes, and the perceived need became the strongest predictor of single mothers’ deservingness. These results support the existence of the deservingness heuristic, however, compared to previous literature that emphasized the role of perceived control and reciprocity of recipients, in the case of single mothers, the deservingness heuristic seems to direct people’s attention to the perception of need.

Reputation of Those Who Cooperate Beyond Group Boundaries: A Comparison of Universalistic and In-Group Favoring Strategies

It has been suggested by various studies that between-group cooperation is more difficult to achieve than within-group cooperation. To investigate the factors that inhibit between-group cooperation, the reputation of a universalist, who cooperates beyond group boundaries, was considered. If the universalists were to be evaluated negatively, people would hesitate to cooperate beyond group boundaries. To examine this possibility, a comparison was drawn between the evaluation of people who employed the universalistic strategy and those who employed the in-group favoring strategy (who cooperates only with in-group members) by conducting a vignette experiment. In the experiment, participants evaluated two in-group members: one employed the in-group favoring strategy, and the other employed the universalistic strategy. In addition to the type of strategy, a trade-off between what in-group members received and what out-group members received was manipulated. Two studies were conducted by varying the universalistic strategy. The universalistic strategy meant giving resources equally to both group members in Study 1, and it meant maximizing the joint profit between the groups in Study 2. The results across the two studies suggest that the universalistic strategy was evaluated more positively than the in-group favoring strategy, with the exception that the in-group favoring strategy was chosen as the same group member in the future. Whether there was a trade-off had little effect on the evaluations of the two strategies. Consequently, this study suggests that the negative reputation of universalists might not be a factor that inhibited between-group cooperation.

Communicating Reform: Testing an Apology for Police History as a Supplement to a Policy Communication

Policing in the United States has a racist history, with negative implications for its legitimacy among African Americans today. Legitimacy is important for policing's effective operations. Community policing may improve policing's legitimacy but is difficult to implement with fidelity and does not address history. An apology for policing's racist history may work as a legitimizing supplement to community policing. On the other hand, an apology may be interpreted as words without changes in practices. Using a survey vignette experiment on Amazon's Mechanical Turk to sample African Americans, this research tests the legitimizing effect of a supplemental apology for historical police racism during a community policing policy announcement. Statistical findings suggest that supplementing the communication with an apology imparted little to no additional legitimacy on policing among respondents. Qualitative data suggested a rationale: Apologies need not indicate future equitable behavior or policy implementation, with implementation itself seeming crucial for police legitimacy improvements.