College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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Item American Populism, Political Information, and Trade Opinion(2022) Campana, Robert David Louis; Gimpel, James G.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Trade policy is a complex issue that involves economics and international politics. Traditionally, Americans have not often expressed opinions on trade policy due to its high issue complexity and because Democrats and Republican politicians since the later part of the 20th century have been inconsistent in their support for neoliberalism or protectionism. Despite this, populist candidates like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have repeatedly used their support for protectionist policies to differentiate themselves from more mainstream candidates. Using multiple public opinion surveys and survey experiments, this project explores how populism, anti-expert sentiment, anti-capitalism, diversity anxiety, and ethnonationalism influence American’s views on free trade policy and shows that all these factors are associated with greater support for protectionist policies. Additionally, this project examines and adjusts for the unusually high level of non-response regarding questions about trade policy.This project also analyzes what causes Americans to think trade policy (specifically, the withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership) is more important. This project finds that Americans who believe themselves to be strangers in their own country are more likely to believe the withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific partnership is important. Meanwhile, Americans who believe the United States is less respected than in the past are less likely to believe the Trans-Pacific Partnership is important. Two survey experiments are conducted to see how the presence of “don’t know” responses in trade opinion questions and patriotic framing shift attitudes on trade policy. In both cases, issue framing does not significantly shift opinion on trade policy. This project carries out a longitudinal study to see how the same group of Americans shift their attitudes on trade policy over a multi-year time frame. Generally, these shifts are very small; however, Americans with differing views on regulation displayed the greatest attitudinal shift. Initially, Americans who wanted more government regulation were the most protectionist while Americans who wanted less government regulation were the least protectionist. Over the multi-year period, this association became significantly less visible. Finally, this project analyzes how economic attitudes, immigration attitudes, economic identity, immigrant identity, local immigrant populations, and local economic data influence views on trade policy. The study finds that immigration attitudes are closely aligned with views of trade policy.Item FOUR ESSAYS ON HOW PRESIDENTIAL POLICY REPRESENTATION ON THE ISSUE OF IMMIGRATION AFFECTS LATINO POLITICAL BEHAVIOR(2018) Rodriguez, Antonoi; Rouse, Stella M.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)I bridge the presidency literature and priming literature to develop a new model for understanding how the executive office can prime the public's attitudes. The Executing Priming Theory (EPT) hypothesizes that the president can subtly alter the public's views toward him by responding to the public’s policy demands through the use of his executive powers. These actions will often draw news coverage from the media, taking the president's policy actions directly to the public and raising the salience of these issues. In turn, this affects the criteria that will be used to evaluate the president's performance and influence political behavior. In four essays, based on data from the Pew Research Center, I find an association between Latino approval of President Obama’s policies on immigration and their political behavior. These findings present a new way of thinking about the president's policy responsiveness. Previous presidents have been found to respond to policy demands with symbolic actions (Cohen 1997) rather than substantive policies or motivated primarily by partisan factors (Wood 2009). I demonstrate here that President Obama utilized unilateral actions to provide Latinos with substantive policy representation to improve his standing within this community. Overall, I find that substantive presidential policy representation influences not only Latino but also non-Latino political behavior. The findings presented in these four essays demonstrate that substantive policy representation by the president matters.Item The Dynamics of Political Participation: An Analysis of the Dynamic Interaction between Individuals and their Political Micro-Environment(2012) Wendel, Stephen A.; Oppenheimer, Joe; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)While political choices are rarely isolated or simultaneous, the vast majority of empirical models in political science assume they are. This dissertation examines the dynamic interactions over time between individuals and their micro-environment, in which a single factor both influences, and is influenced by, the act of voting. These dynamic interactions occur in a surprisingly broad swathe of the current literature on American voting behavior, as implicit but unexamined elements of four major research traditions. When these interactions are present, they establish feedback cycles that pose both theoretical and statistical challenges if not analyzed appropriately. Researchers ignoring these cycles tend to underestimate long term influences on voting behavior, make unrealistic assumptions about changes in voting behavior over time, and produce biased results under certain conditions. I propose a methodology that can successfully identify and model these interactions: employing simulation models to represent dynamic interactions in an intuitive format, and using optimization techniques to conduct parameter estimation and hypothesis testing against empirical data. To guide the development of these simulation models, I outline a theoretical framework of the major pathways by which dynamic interactions can influence voting behavior. I then present two applications of this methodology, to study the dynamic impacts on voting of political mobilization, and of social conformity over time. In both cases, the models receive strong statistical support, in benchmark tests against existing econometric models and against empirical data on voting behavior. Both mobilization and social conformity have unstudied indirect impacts that can lead to an additional 1.7% to 4% increase in voter turnout beyond existing models. Targeted use of peer pressure can lead to even more significant increases in turnout - up to a 30% increase among otherwise indecisive voters. In the long term, targeted mobilization can create cadres of repeatedly-mobilized activists, which raises questions about whether political campaigns effectively use their mobilization funds to build their parties in the long term. These two simulation models also provide a foundation for a host of new research questions, ranging from the impact of high-intensity get-out-the-vote drives on future mobilization efforts, to the effects of an aging population on turnout behavior over time.Item Behavioral Indicators of Schizotypy in the Biological Parents of Social Anhedonics: A Preliminary Examination of the Familiality of Schizotypal Signs(2005-05-05) Collins, Lindsay M.; Blanchard, Jack J; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Social anhedonia appears to be related to risk for schizophrenia-spectrum disorders and thus is a promising indicator of Meehl's construct of schizotypy. Findings from diagnostic, cognitive, and psychophysiological studies have supported the validity of social anhedonia as an indicator of schizotypy, but only recently have the behavioral characteristics of these putative schizotypes been examined. This study replicated previous findings of atypical behavioral characteristics in social anhedonics and expanded upon prior research through an examination of their biological parents, serving as a preliminary investigation into the familiality of schizophrenia-spectrum behaviors. A community sample of 88 18- to 19- year-olds (48 social anhedonics, 40 controls) and their biological parents (42 mothers of social anhedonics, 37 mothers of controls; 24 fathers of social anhedonics, 20 fathers of controls) received diagnostic evaluations that were videotaped as part of an ongoing study and served as the basis for ratings of behavioral signs of schizoidia and schizotypy in the present study. Proband social anhedonics exhibited atypical interpersonal behaviors characteristic of schizoid and schizotypal personality disorders as well as clinical symptoms of schizoid and schizotypal personality disorders. Mothers of social anhedonics displayed atypical interpersonal behaviors characteristic of schizotypal personality disorder but did not show elevations on clinical symptoms of schizophrenia-spectrum personality disorders. Meaningful, though not statistically significant, effects were observed for behavioral sign ratings and clinical symptom ratings of schizoid and schizotypal personality disorders in the smaller sample of fathers of social anhedonics. Correspondence on schizoid behavioral ratings was observed for probands, particularly males, and their fathers. Results provide preliminary support for the familiality of atypical interpersonal behavior in social anhedonics, as putative schizotypes.