recent research

Highlight's from Kevin Lewis' blog:

• A model for how society might want to make it's rules: legislated rules are too unwise; social rules are too rigid; but private rules are just right. (Peter Leeson)
• The power of protests: taking advantage of different weather conditions, researchers show how states with bigger Tax Day Tea Party rallies (in sunny states) rather than small rallies (where it rained on Tax Day) ended up with bigger Tea Party gains on election day. (Andreas Madestam) This Michael Bailey study concurs that activism is what counts.
• Americans like the idea of direct democracy - unless they are asked ballot questions and don't have a college degree. (Loren Collingwood)
• Political polarization may not be all bad: it might make politicians less corrupt and keep them on their toes. (Cecelia Testa)
• Mandatory voting may get you more faith in the legitimacy of government, but it won't increase civic engagement. (Krister Lundell)
• When it comes to violations of human rights in the name of security, courts - not legislatures - are the only check. (Benedikt Goderis)
• Maybe citizens in majoritarian democracies (like the US and UK) are just destined to be more dissatisfied than those in proportional representation democracies (like most of Europe). (Julian Bernauer)
• Are voters staying home on election day because they think they're poorly informed - and so that it's best to leave the election to the better informed? (Joseph McMurray)
• We're not so easily bought: thank you gifts from charities decrease giving (George Newman), while deals from companies for targeted customers can decrease sales (Yu Wang).
• When making your donation pitch, don't mix altruistic and egotistic arguments. (Daniel Feiler)
• We're not the only ones who have to worry about our reputation: orangutans and chimpanzees also make judgments on who to trust based on observation. (Esther Herrmann)
• Inducing generosity: all it takes is a quote. (Celine Jacob)
• Birds of a feather may not be drawn together; they may just be the only ones willing to talk with each other. (David Schaefer)
• We become more cooperative when we can communicate. That may just be because we can set the social norms. (William Baum)
• But social norms (or in the case of this study, the "framing of norms"), may only work when individuals' reputations haven't been established. (Tore Ellingsen)
• Usually the more people are involved in public associations, the more they have a generalized sense of social trust - but that's not so much the case when there's a big gap between rich and poor. (Chan-ung Park)
• First come, first preferred: we tend to like the first (of anything) we come across. (Dana Carney)
• It's been known that when we think abstractly a number of things happen - including we become more tolerant of other groups. Paradoxically, though, we also tend to follow our own group's social norms more. (Alison Ledgerwood)