I'm wearing a mask, but are they?: Perceptions of Self-Other Differences in COVID-19 Health Behaviors

As information about COVID-19 safety behavior changed, people had to judge how likely others were to protect themselves through mask-wearing and vaccination seeking. In a large, campus-wide survey, we assessed whether University of Kansas students viewed others' protective behaviors as different from their own, how much students assumed others would share their beliefs and behaviors, and which individual differences were associated with those estimations. Participants in our survey (N = 1,704; 81.04% white, 64.08% female) evaluated how likely they and others were to wear masks on the University of Kansas campus, wear masks off-campus, and seek a vaccine. They also completed measures of political preference, numeracy, and preferences for risk in various contexts. We found that participants estimated that others would be less likely to engage in health safety behaviors than themselves, but that their estimations of others were widely shared. In addition, of all the individual differences we assessed, political preference displayed the most consistent associations across health behaviors. Not only was false uniqueness ubiquitous across different forms of COVID-19 safety behavior, it was indeed false - estimates of others' health behavior were lower than their actual rates. Understanding this relationship could allow for more accurate norm-setting and normalization of mask-wearing and vaccination.

The Social Representational Theory of Symbolic Politics

<p>While there have been repeated exhortations that the study of political behaviour be accorded greater status in social psychological research, such calls have gone relatively unheeded. This thesis is intended to address to some small extent this problem. Specifically, an argument is presented to address the flaws of a little-heralded theory of political behaviour, symbolic politics theory (Sears, 1993), by re-articulating that theory within a broader theory of social behaviour, social representations theory (Moscovici, 1973; 1988). At its heart symbolic politics contends that political behaviour is based on the evocation of 'symbolic predispositions' in response to symbolic content of political objects. Following Verkuyten (1985) political symbols and symbolic predispositions are re-interpreted from the perspective of social representations theory. The result is a shift in emphasis onto the role of values, discourse, and social interaction in political preference and opinion. These concepts are investigated using data derived from a four-phase panel survey of the Wellington, New Zealand, electorates, as well as transcripts of parliamentary debates, and a laboratory experiment to provide support for the re-articulation of symbolic politics within this framework. The first two studies present qualitative and quantitative analyses of open-ended questions designed to probe the subjective meanings of ideological labels, and the concepts, ideas, and values associated with the major political parties of the time. The results indicate that the boundaries of group membership are defined by differences in representational content between groups, as well as within-group consensus. The second set of studies investigate the role of social values in political perception and preference. Firstly, political parties were differentiated by the frequency of rhetorical use by their members of the two values of freedom and equality, consistent with the predictions of Rokeach (1973). Secondly, survey respondents used a value-attribution instrument to indicate the values which they perceived parties to oppose or endorse. Again, the values associated with these parties were shown to be predictive of preference. Thirdly, respondents completed the Schwartz (1992) values inventory, which was used to produce a value profile of supporters of different parties' supporters. Weak support was found for Rokeach's (1973) two-value model of politics, with the parties differentiable on two discriminant functions defined by self-reliance values and equality values. The final study in this section presents the results of a laboratory manipulation in which groups of participants viewed different party political advertisements before rating the major parties for favourability and value attributions. This study indicates that exposure to political media may influence the values parties are seen to represent, and that this may impact positively or negatively on perceptions of the favourability of those parties. The final empirical chapter utilises a social network measure to investigate the role, if any, that one's interpersonal environment may play in political preference and representations. A clear relationship was found between the political composition of the environment and primary respondent preference and ideological self-identification. These findings are interpreted as supporting the social representational theory of symbolic politics. Qualifications and limitations of a representational theory of symbolic politics are discussed, as are the implications for such a conceptualisation of political and social behaviour.</p>

The Social Representational Theory of Symbolic Politics

<p>While there have been repeated exhortations that the study of political behaviour be accorded greater status in social psychological research, such calls have gone relatively unheeded. This thesis is intended to address to some small extent this problem. Specifically, an argument is presented to address the flaws of a little-heralded theory of political behaviour, symbolic politics theory (Sears, 1993), by re-articulating that theory within a broader theory of social behaviour, social representations theory (Moscovici, 1973; 1988). At its heart symbolic politics contends that political behaviour is based on the evocation of 'symbolic predispositions' in response to symbolic content of political objects. Following Verkuyten (1985) political symbols and symbolic predispositions are re-interpreted from the perspective of social representations theory. The result is a shift in emphasis onto the role of values, discourse, and social interaction in political preference and opinion. These concepts are investigated using data derived from a four-phase panel survey of the Wellington, New Zealand, electorates, as well as transcripts of parliamentary debates, and a laboratory experiment to provide support for the re-articulation of symbolic politics within this framework. The first two studies present qualitative and quantitative analyses of open-ended questions designed to probe the subjective meanings of ideological labels, and the concepts, ideas, and values associated with the major political parties of the time. The results indicate that the boundaries of group membership are defined by differences in representational content between groups, as well as within-group consensus. The second set of studies investigate the role of social values in political perception and preference. Firstly, political parties were differentiated by the frequency of rhetorical use by their members of the two values of freedom and equality, consistent with the predictions of Rokeach (1973). Secondly, survey respondents used a value-attribution instrument to indicate the values which they perceived parties to oppose or endorse. Again, the values associated with these parties were shown to be predictive of preference. Thirdly, respondents completed the Schwartz (1992) values inventory, which was used to produce a value profile of supporters of different parties' supporters. Weak support was found for Rokeach's (1973) two-value model of politics, with the parties differentiable on two discriminant functions defined by self-reliance values and equality values. The final study in this section presents the results of a laboratory manipulation in which groups of participants viewed different party political advertisements before rating the major parties for favourability and value attributions. This study indicates that exposure to political media may influence the values parties are seen to represent, and that this may impact positively or negatively on perceptions of the favourability of those parties. The final empirical chapter utilises a social network measure to investigate the role, if any, that one's interpersonal environment may play in political preference and representations. A clear relationship was found between the political composition of the environment and primary respondent preference and ideological self-identification. These findings are interpreted as supporting the social representational theory of symbolic politics. Qualifications and limitations of a representational theory of symbolic politics are discussed, as are the implications for such a conceptualisation of political and social behaviour.</p>

Evolution of the plandemic communication network among serial participants on Twitter

The coronavirus pandemic has been accompanied by the spread of misinformation on social media. The Plandemic conspiracy theory holds that the pandemic outbreak was planned to create a new social order. This study examines the evolution of this popular conspiracy theory from a dynamic network perspective. Guided by the analytical framework of network evolution, the current study explores drivers of tie changes in the Plandemic communication network among serial participants over a 4-month period. Results show that tie changes are explained by degree-based and closure-based structural features (i.e. tendencies toward transitive closure and shared popularity and tendencies against in-degree activity and transitive reciprocated triplet) and nodal attributes (i.e. bot probability and political preference). However, a participant’s level of anger expression does not predict the evolution of the observed network.

Predictive modeling to study lifestyle politics with Facebook likes

Abstract“Lifestyle politics” suggests that political and ideological opinions are strongly connected to our consumption choices, music and food taste, cultural preferences, and other aspects of our daily lives. With the growing political polarization this idea has become all the more relevant to a wide range of social scientists. Empirical research in this domain, however, is confronted with an impractical challenge; this type of detailed information on people’s lifestyle is very difficult to operationalize, and extremely time consuming and costly to query in a survey. A potential valuable alternative data source to capture these values and lifestyle choices is social media data. In this study, we explore the value of Facebook “like” data to complement traditional survey data to study lifestyle politics. We collect a unique dataset of Facebook likes and survey data of more than 6500 participants in Belgium, a fragmented multi-party system. Based on both types of data, we infer the political and ideological preference of our respondents. The results indicate that non-political Facebook likes are indicative of political preference and are useful to describe voters in terms of common interests, cultural preferences, and lifestyle features. This shows that social media data can be a valuable complement to traditional survey data to study lifestyle politics.

Title: Modern Hamelin Pied Piper: Country, Classic Rock and Metal Music

The objective of the study was to evaluate whether any certain music genre is most associated with red or blue political affiliation in the United States. The study used the red or blue political affiliation as the outcome variable. The US states most common music genres, state's average intelligence quotient (IQ), per capita income, state’s percentage of the evangelical population, percent of the catholic population, percentage of households with gun ownership, percentage of weekly worship, and alcohol consumption as independent variables. The study found that the states' population listening to country, classic rock, and metal are six times more likely to vote for a red affiliated presidential candidate. These findings stayed significant after adjusting for income where lower-income states are fifteen (15) times more likely to vote for a red presidential candidate compared to the states with higher per capita income. Further study is needed to evaluate whether there is a pattern of human likes (like profiles) that can determine not only political preference but also personal preferences for daily life activities.

Social Media Polarization and Echo Chambers in the Context of COVID-19: Case Study

Background Social media chatter in 2020 has been largely dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Existing research shows that COVID-19 discourse is highly politicized, with political preferences linked to beliefs and disbeliefs about the virus. As it happens with topics that become politicized, people may fall into echo chambers, which is the idea that one is only presented with information they already agree with, thereby reinforcing one’s confirmation bias. Understanding the relationship between information dissemination and political preference is crucial for effective public health communication. Objective We aimed to study the extent of polarization and examine the structure of echo chambers related to COVID-19 discourse on Twitter in the United States. Methods First, we presented Retweet-BERT, a scalable and highly accurate model for estimating user polarity by leveraging language features and network structures. Then, by analyzing the user polarity predicted by Retweet-BERT, we provided new insights into the characterization of partisan users. Results We observed that right-leaning users were noticeably more vocal and active in the production and consumption of COVID-19 information. We also found that most of the highly influential users were partisan, which may contribute to further polarization. Importantly, while echo chambers exist in both the right- and left-leaning communities, the right-leaning community was by far more densely connected within their echo chamber and isolated from the rest. Conclusions We provided empirical evidence that political echo chambers are prevalent, especially in the right-leaning community, which can exacerbate the exposure to information in line with pre-existing users’ views. Our findings have broader implications in developing effective public health campaigns and promoting the circulation of factual information online.

Infodemics on Youtube: Reliability of Content and Echo Chambers on COVID-19 (Preprint)

UNSTRUCTURED Social media radically changed how information is consumed and reported and elicited a disintermediated access to an unprecedented amount of content. The world health organization (WHO) coined the term infodemics to identify the information overabundance during an epidemic. Indeed, the spread of inaccurate and misleading information may alter behaviours and complicate crisis management and health responses. This paper addresses information diffusion during the COVID-19 pandemic period with a massive data analysis on YouTube. First, we analyze more than 2M users’ engagement in 13000 videos released by 68 different YouTube channels, with different political bias and fact-checking indexes. We then investigate the relationship between each user’s political preference and her/his consumption of questionable/reliable information. Our results, quantified using information theory measures, provide evidence for the existence of echo chambers across two dimensions represented by the political bias and by the trustworthiness of information channels. Finally, we observe that the echo chamber structure cannot be reproduced after properly randomizing the users’ interaction patterns.

A Tale of Odds and Ratios: Political Preference Formation in Postindustrial Democracies

This report surveys four approaches that are pivotal to the study of preference formation: (a) the range, validity, and theoretical foundations of explanations of political preferences at the individual and mass levels, (b) the exploration of key objects of preference formation attached to the democratic political process (i.e., voting in competitive elections), (c) the top-down vs. bottom-up character of preference formation as addressed in leader–follower studies, and (d) gene–environment interaction and the explanatory weight of genetic predisposition against the cumulative weight of social experiences.In recent years, our understanding of sites and processes of (individual) political-preference formation has substantially improved. First, this applies to a greater variety of objects that provide fresh insight into the functioning and stability of contemporary democracy. Second, we observe the reaffirmation of pivotal theories and key concepts in adapted form against widespread challenge. This applies to the role played by social stratification, group awareness, and individual-level economic considerations. Most of these findings converge in recognising economics-based explanations. Third, research into gene–environment interplay rapidly increases the number of testable hypotheses and promises to benefit a wide range of approaches already taken and advanced in the study of political-preference formation.

Red shape, blue shape: political ideology influences the social perception of body shape

Political elections have a profound impact on individuals and societies. Optimal voting is thought to be based on informed and deliberate decisions yet, it has been demonstrated that the outcomes of political elections are biased by the perception of candidates’ facial features and the stereotypical traits voters attribute to these. Interestingly, political identification changes the attribution of stereotypical traits from facial features. This study explores whether the perception of body shape elicits similar effects on political trait attribution and whether these associations can be visualized. In Experiment 1, ratings of 3D body shapes were used to model the relationship between perception of 3D body shape and the attribution of political traits such as ‘Republican’, ‘Democrat’, or ‘Leader’. This allowed analyzing and visualizing the mental representations of stereotypical 3D body shapes associated with each political trait. Experiment 2 was designed to test whether political identification of the raters affected the attribution of political traits to different types of body shapes. The results show that humans attribute political traits to the same body shapes differently depending on their own political preference. These findings show that our judgments of others are influenced by their body shape and our own political views. Such judgments have potential political and societal implications.