Party over Pocketbook? How Party Cues Influence Opinion When Citizens Have a Stake in Policy

Do political parties influence opinion when citizens have a personal stake in policy? With an experimental design that exploits a naturally occurring, sharp variation in party cues, we study the effects of party cues during a collective bargaining conflict over the salary and work rights for public employees in Denmark. Even in this context—where the self-interest of public employees was strongly mobilized and where their party went against it—we find that party cues move opinion among partisans at least as much as in previous studies. But party cues do not lead citizens to go against their self-interest. Rather, we show that party cues temper the pursuit of self-interest among public employees by moderating the most extreme policy demands. These findings highlight an unappreciated potential of political parties to moderate—not fuel—extreme opinion.

The Angelus: Devotional Television, Changing Times

The ringing of the Angelus, a Catholic call to prayer, is a staple of Irish state television broadcasting, occurring at 6 o’clock every evening. Over the years, the image track accompanying the bell has changed, transitioning from still to moving images and incorporating an increasingly secular pictorial repertoire. Although the Angelus is TV you are not supposed to watch, the document archives at Radió Teleifís Éireann offer plenty of rich evidence that people have always watched the Angelus closely, that they feel a personal stake in its modes of representation, and that they approach religious images as statements about religion and the Church.

The Outrage Effect of Personal Stake, Familiarity, Effects on Children, and Fairness on Climate Change Risk Perception Moderated by Political Orientation

Outrage factors are perceived characteristics of risk that provoke emotional responses and influence risk perception. Although several studies examined how multiple influences affect climate change risk perception, outrage factors have not been comprehensively assessed in the context of climate change risk perception. Using an online survey in South Korea (n = 592), we investigated outrage factors associated with climate change risk perception and whether political orientation moderates these outrage effects. We considered 11 of 20 outrage factors: voluntariness, controllability, familiarity, fairness, uncertainty, delayed effects, effects on children, trust, reversibility, personal stake, and human vs. natural origin. Factors that overlapped with the selected outrage factors or those that were not relevant to climate change were excluded. The survey revealed that the climate change risk perception of an individual increased when they perceived climate change to be relevant to their personal lives, when they felt unfamiliar with climate change, when they thought climate change would have a severe impact on children, or when they thought climate change would have unequal consequences. Moreover, respondents who identified as political conservatives were subject to a greater outrage effect of personal stake for climate change. The implications of the outrage effect on climate change risk perception and the greater vulnerability of conservatives to outrage effect are discussed.

Propaganda and Artificial Glory

This project involves the analysis of both primary and secondary sources to investigate what caused men from three towns in Indiana to volunteer to fight in the Spanish-American War, a conflict that they had no personal reason to join. The predominantly-used primary sources were newspapers from the three towns in Indiana and speeches by politicians. These three towns were selected after careful analysis of demographic information including population and number of volunteers in the Spanish-American War from every major city in the state. To further expand on these ideas, political leanings and occupations were taken into account. Upon completing this study, it was discovered that both the rhetoric of pro-imperial politicians, the propaganda that filled the newspapers of the time, and the creation of the concept of glory and the valor that could be won through combat had an effect on the men’s decision to register for a conflict in which the soldiers had no personal stake.

Reality from Fantasy

A major difficulty with teaching ethics is that it is relatively easy for participants to state the “right” thing to do when they have no personal stake in the outcome. One way of dealing with this problem is to teach ethics through engrossing, immersive, predictive scenario games in which players are forced to deal with ethical issues as they arise, where they have a personal stake in the outcome, and where there is not always a clear right answer. Predictive scenario games are a form of serious live-action roleplaying in which participants take on the roles of people involved in complex situations. In these games, knowledge of the game world is distributed among the players through overlapping and conflicting goals, and in which ethical dilemmas emerge naturally, without fanfare, much as they would in the real world. There is a high level of tension between cooperation and competition among the players. This structure creates the opportunity for players to experience the consequences of their own judgment in realistic, ethically fraught situations, to receive feedback, and to engage in constructive discussion, within a relatively short time period.