GOTV strategy: anger-mongering

The one thing more distressing than listening to politicians demonize their opponents as deliverers of doom and destruction - is to read a study on why it's such an effective strategy.

Why people bother to go out to the polls (when clearly their one vote counts so little) is a question that's been dogging political scientists for years. There are countless explanations for this quaint act of civic participation, many of which probably contribute to the full, true, picture. A big part of that picture is habit. Those of us who vote in our 30s, usually keep voting for the rest of our lives. But how does that habit start?

Anger is partly to blame (or credit, I suppose), according to a paper by Nicholas Valentino. Like fear, anger is a common response to perceived threats - aka Democrats who are going to turn America into a socialist state or Republicans who are conversely gunning for Fascism. Unlike fear, however, anger gets you into action; fear will instead keep you quaking in your boots (and staying home on election day).

Whether your response to political threats is anger or fear depends upon your sense of "internal efficacy" - that is, how "competent and influential" you think you are in the political sphere. Just as when someone pushes into you on the subway platform, depending upon their size and appearance - and thus your "competence" to deck them - will determine whether your response is anger or fear. (Yes, the question of makes one high or low on the "internal efficacy" continuum is not answered -but, really, we can only deal with one quandary at a time.)

In young people the effect of inciting anger can be quite effective - boosting political participation as much as 10%. Given that voting becomes a habit, getting young angry citizens to the polls can reap long-term benefits (like advertising Coke to 5 year olds).

That's bad news if, like me, you want to tamp down on angry rhetoric in politics. The small silver lining, however, is that inciting fear does not have similar results. Right now I need all the silver linings I can get.

In war we trust

Americans distrust government, more so today than since pollsters started tracking levels of trust back in the 60s.

There are countless academic and popular theories why Americans have such a dim view of their political leaders today. Most suggest a progressive decline in democracy - the rise of a 24/7 media culture dumbs down debate; a lack of campaign finance limits makes politicians beholden to special interests; 60s social welfare culture has made the state self-perpetually bloated; extreme partisanship has politicians more interested in winning than in solving problems, etc.

Two profs from Vanderbilt and University of Illinois, however, think things haven't really changed that much since the 60s. According to a paper by Marc Hetherington and Thomas Rudolph, government's doing as well (or poorly) as it ever has and citizens' views of government hasn't really changed over the decades.

So how do they explain the apparent decline in trust over the years? It's a question of salience - that is, what Americans happen to think is the most important issue at any given time.

As you might imagine, we tend to pay more attention to things that worry us. So when the economy is fine but we're worried about nuclear war with Russia, we think international issues are most pressing. But if inflation is spiking and jobs are thinning out, we'll turn our focus onto the economy.

Concerns about international vs. domestic troubles do not, however, have the same effect on our trust in government. Fear of foreign threats increases our faith in the state, while worries about problems at home decreases our trust. The reverse is also true - a peaceful globe makes us less beholden to our state and a booming economy keeps us content with government - but the effect is not as strong. That leaves us with the following picture:

When attention on the economy or crime increases (the 70s and early 90s), political trust decreases. Even more clearly, eyes on international issues (60s, mid-80s and 9/11) boosts confidence in government. Today, with 9/11 faded in our memories and the economy teetering on double-dip recession, it makes sense that we distrust government more than ever.

recent research

More political behavior highlights from Kevin Lewis' blog:

• High power + low status = jerky behavior.
• Organizational leaders can inspire their employees - but only if they don't deliver their message directly.
• Not all altruists participate alike.
• Those who feel more socially connected are also more apt to dehumanize "others."
• When it comes to forming policy alliances, ideology - not power - is the glue that binds.
• Americans haven't changed the way they participate in groups over the past three decades, but citizens who are involved in many groups have become more partisan.
• When seeing is misleading.
• More evidence that once we've made our minds up, we only hear evidence that supports our decision.
• Yes, it's possible to make juror instructions comprehensible.
• We're more likely to believe someone when he's talking to others - than talking directly to ourselves.
• Want to make someone more progressive? Have them turn a crank clockwise.
• "Social Proof" strikes again: this time in getting residents to conserve water.
• Perception of popularity benefits niche products more than mass-appeal products.
• We love what we create. Perhaps too much. Not that we can't love what we buy too much too.
• When labels confuse more than enlighten.

Select your 150 friends wisely

Online technol0gy is transformative. It can make the world flat, spark revolutions and even wrap us into personalized filter bubbles. But there’s one thing technology hasn’t been able to do yet: expand our circle of friends.

You’re probably familiar with Dunbar’s “150 rule:” the reason that humans tend to limit the size of their communities to 150 people – whether in prehistoric towns, in military units or in cults – is because the human brain maxes out at 15o friends.

Now it turns out that even Twitter can’t free us of this 150 ceiling. Bruno Concalves and colleagues at Indiana U recently looked at 1.7 million tweeters over 6 months to see how many connections they kept up (connections, as opposed to mere followers, had actual back-and-forth exchanges). True to Dunbar’s prediction, twits generally don’t maintain more than 100-200 friends.

That’s bad news for the filter bubble. You can imagine one hope of avoiding a personalized information bubble is to widen your circle of friends in order to include folks with different viewpoints. That way you might expand the information that arrives on your laptop screen. But, as Eli points out in the intro to his book, merely adding friends to your FaceBook list doesn’t mean you’ll interact with them. No interaction means those “friends” will be virtually invisible on your feed. You’re still stuck in a community of 150.

The only way to truly escape the bubble may be to replace some of your current connections with people who disagree with you – and actually engage them in discussion. Of course, if we’re concerned about the limitations of human behavior, that may be the most pollyanish hope of all.

cross-posted from TheFilterBubble

recent research

Keeping up with the latest in political behavior, via Kevin Lewis:

• How many proselytizers does it take to convert a nation? According to one model, 10%.
• We become more morally hypocritical when we view ethics abstractly.
• Rational decision making does not make more moral choices. We're better off going with our gut.
• It pays to be a crazy and "infamous" politician - but it can pay your opponent more.
• Want to increase marriage rates? Get rid of blood test requirements.
• Weak ties in Congress are good news for compromise and legislative success.
• Congressional bundling: adding spoonfuls of sugar to make legislative medicine go down.
• Voters hold politicians responsible for the positions they hold, not the outcomes they produce.
• How presidential political capital and congressional partisanship interact.

Filtering ourselves by eyewear

Personalization algorithms, especially those that factor in our friends’ preferences, have a way of clumping us into ever more homogeneous and like-minded groups. That’s one of the central ideas of The Filter Bubble.

But, as Eli freely admits, online personalization is not the only force filtering out diversity and sieving in homogeneity. We humans are very good at sorting ourselves into groups that look and think much like ourselves – without the help of algorithms.

The power of homophily, the sociological term for our self-sorting tendencies, hardly needs scholarly backing ; just glancing around any college cafeteria should be enough to convince that we flock to birds of similar feathers. But that doesn’t stop academics from supplying hundreds of studies for evidence. In two such recent papers, researchers show the breadth and depth of our self-sorting behavior.

On the high-commitment end, we marry within our political party. That may not seem surprising, but when you compare it to a weaker tendency to marry people with similar personality traits, it suggests that for the most important decisions in life we value people who think like we do more than those who act like us.

At the other – superficial – extreme, we sit near people who look like us. Based on self reports and experiments, researched subjects tend to find seats next to people of the same gender, race, hair length, hair color and general attractiveness. And, yes, eyeglass wearers prefer sitting next to each other too.

cross-posted from TheFilterBubble

why the GOP may always win

This chart says it all.