David O. Sears

College sophomores in the laboratory: Influences of a narrow data base on social psychology's view of human nature.

For the 2 decades prior to 1960, published research in social psychology was based on a wide variety of subjects and research sites. Content analyses show that since then such research has overwhelmingly been based on college students tested in academic laboratories on academiclike tasks. How might this heavy dependence on one narrow data base have biased the main substantive conclusions of sociopsychological research in this era? Research on the full life span suggests that, compared with older adults, college students are likely to have less-crystallized attitudes, less-formulated senses of self, stronger cognitive skills, stronger tendencies to comply with authority, and more unstable peer group relationships. The laboratory setting is likely to exaggerate all these differences. These peculiarities of social psychologys predominant data base may have contributed to central elements of its portrait of human nature. According to this view people (a) are quite compliant and their behavior is easily socially influenced, (b) readily change their attitudes and (c) behave inconsistently with them, and (d) do not rest their self-perceptions on introspection. The narrow data base may also contribute to this portrait of human natures (e) strong emphasis on cognitive processes and to its lack of emphasis on (f) personality dispositions, (g) material self-interest, (h) emotionally based irrationalities, (i) group norms, and (j) stage-specific phenomena. The analysis implies the need both for more careful examination of sociopsychological propositions for systematic biases introduced by dependence on this narrow data base and for increased reliance on adults tested in their natural habitats with materials drawn from ordinary life.

SELECTIVE EXPOSURE TO INFORMATION: A CRITICAL REVIEW

This study reviews the literature on selective exposure to information and re-analyzes prevalent theories by pointing up existing knowledge regarding the extent to which communication bias and attitude bias actually correlate, and by considering other factors than attitude bias that might account for selectivity. If attitude bias is not a prime cause of selectivity, what about the desire for supportive information, for useful information, for relief from cognitive dissonance, and many other factors? David 0. Sears is Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Jonathan L. Freedman is Associate Professor of Psychology at Stanford University.

The Role of Self-Interest in Social and Political Attitudes

Publisher Summary The purpose of this chapter is to examine the empirical evidence on the role of self-interest in forming and maintaining sociopolitical attitudes. Psychoanalytic theory highlighted the persisting effects of early experience and the influence of unconscious motives. Behaviorism focused especially on mindless conditioning and on the resistance to change of ingrained habits even in quite changed circumstances. The Conflict theory highlighted the unusual power of fear and irrationalities such as displaced aggression. The Gestalt theories emphasized perceptual biases introduced by the humans effort to achieve a coherent perceptual organization of the world. Priming an accessible construct has been demonstrated in several ways to give an impact over other attitudes, judgments, and behavior. Self-interest has had quite a specific meaning, focusing on the conjunction of egoism, materialism, and rationality. The chapter examined attitudes toward racial policies and black candidates, economic policy issues, pocketbook voting, and attitudes toward political violence. Self-interest ordinarily does not have much effect upon the ordinary citizens sociopolitical attitudes.

The origins of symbolic racism.

The theory of symbolic racism places its origins in a blend of anti-Black affect and conservative values, particularly individualism. We clarify that hypothesis, test it directly, and report several findings consistent with it. Study 1 shows that racial prejudice and general political conservatism fall into 2 separate factors, with symbolic racism loading about equally on both. Study 2 found that the anti-Black affect and individualism significantly explain symbolic racism. The best-fitting model both fuses those 2 elements into a single construct (Black individualism) and includes them separately. The effects of Black individualism on racial policy preferences are mostly mediated by symbolic racism. Study 3 shows that Black individualism is distinctively racial, with effects distinctly different from either an analogous gender individualism or race-neutral individualism.

Multiculturalism in American Public Opinion

Multiculturalism has emerged to challenge liberalism as an ideological solution in coping with ethnic diversity in the United States. This article develops a definition of political multiculturalism which refers to conceptions of identity, community and public policy. It then analyses the 1994 General Social Survey and a 1994 survey of Los Angeles County to assess the contours of mass support and opposition to multiculturalism, testing hypotheses concerning the role of social background, liberalism–conservatism and racial hostility. The main conclusions are that ‘hard’ versions of multiculturalism are rejected in all ethnic groups, that a liberal political self-identification boosts support for multiculturalism, and that racial hostility is a consistent source of antagonism to the new ethnic agenda of multiculturalism. There is strong similarity in the results in both the national and Los Angeles samples.

Cognitive links between economic grievances and political responses

Changes in the economy are associated with changes in support for the incumbent President (or members of his party) at the aggregate level but not generally at the individual level. That is, thepersonal impact of economic hardships has only rarely been linked to individual political responses. This paper finds again that various indicators of personal economic grievances are not in general associated with either economic policy preferences or support for President Carter. However, some rare circumstances in which the personal impact of economic grievances did have more power were identified, specifically when voters blamed the President for their economic hardships. Support was also found for Kinder and Kiewiets (1979) notion that collective judgments about the health of the economy, rather than ones personal economic situation, drive political responses.

Opposition to Bilingual Education: Prejudice or the Defense of Realistic Interests?

Racial prejudice and the protection of realistic interests are examined as two competing explanations for Anglo opposition to bilingual education programs. Past research has left unclear the extent to which these two theories explain opposition to policies that assist members of minority groups because the two theories generally have been treated in isolation from each other ; no clear, sharp theoretical and empirical contrast has been drawn between them ; and both approaches have been used to explain white opposition to policies designed to assist African-Americans but have not been extended to explain majority opposition to policies that benefit members of diverse racial and ethnic minority groups. To further contrast the prejudice and the realistic interest approaches, we developed clearer measures for each approach, tested the theoretical origins of each set of measures, and extended the two theories to a new research area, namely Anglo opposition to bilingual education programs.

Event-driven political communication and the preadult socialization of partisanship

This study investigates political communication as a mediator of the socializing effects of major political events. We earlier found that presidential campaigns are occasions for increased crystallization of partisan attitudes among adolescents (Sears and Valentino, 1997). But what drives the socialization process during the campaign? Either the campaign saturates the media environment with political information, socializing all adolescents roughly equally, or greater individual exposure to political information is necessary for significant socialization gains during the campaign. The analyses utilize a three-wave panel study of preadults and their parents during and after the 1980 presidential campaign. Here we find that adolescents exposed to higher levels of political communication experience the largest socialization gains, that the socializing effects of political communication are limited to the campaign season, and that communication boosts socialization only in attitude domains most relevant to the campaign. We conclude that both a high salience event at the aggregate level and high individual levels of communication about the event are necessary to maximize socialization gains.

Does everybody like a liker

Abstract The primary hypothesis examined was that people giving positive evaluations are themselves regarded as more attractive than when they give negative evaluations. This research tests whether this holds when reciprocity is not at issue. Subjects in six experiments were presented with stimulus persons who varied in the proportion of positive to negative evaluations they gave of various attitude objects (political figures, cafeteria workers, cities, movies, and college courses). Giving predominantly positive evaluations did in fact lead to greater liking of the stimulus person in each experiment. This finding held over (1) audio or written interviews with the stimulus persons, (2) a variety of classes of attitude objects, and (3) both within-subject and between-subject designs. Greater liking for likers occurred even controlling for attitude similarity.

Coming to like obnoxious people when we must live with them.

The pattern of individual affective accommodation to no-choice relationships with others was examined in two experimental studies on the effects of anticipated interaction. From Heiders concept of unit-sentiment balance it was predicted that the anticipation of no-choice interaction with other individuals would lead to increased liking for individuals who initially had ambiguous or dislikable characteristics, but not for those who were initially likable. This pattern of accommodation was tested in two studies in which female subjects indicated liking for likable, ambiguous, or dislikable individuals with whom they anticipated interaction. In Experiment 1, information about the person with whom interaction was anticipated was presented in written form, while in Experiment 2 individuals actually interacted with the stimulus person prior to indicating their impression of her. In both studies the balance-predicted pattern of accommodation was found: Anticipated interaction increased liking for initially dislikable or ambiguous people, but not for those who were initially likable.