Elizabeth Theiss-Morse

Conceptualizations of good citizenship and political participation

Theorists have variously defined what it means to be a good citizen. But how do citizensthemselves views their responsibilities? And is there any relationship between a persons view of citizenship and his or her political participation? This paper uses a combination of methods to explore these issues. A Q method study reveals four citizenship perspectives that provide evidence for striking differences in how people define the participatory responsibilities of a good citizen. An exploratory survey analysis finds that the four citizenship perspectives are significantly related to political behavior, even when socioeconomic status and attitudinal variables related to participation are controlled. While adding to our understanding of participation, these findings also underscore the importance of investigating the conceptualizations of citizens to gain more complete understandings of how political systems work.

The Media's Role in Public Negativity Toward Congress: Distinguishing Emotional Reactions and Cognitive Evaluations

Theory: The nature of political news as presented by the mass media in the modern United States is such that it affects peoples emotional reactions more than their cognitive evaluations of political actors and institutions. Hypotheses: People who rely on electronic media for their news and people who consume a great deal of news from the mass media will not be more likely to evaluate Congress negatively but will be more likely to have negative emotional reactions to Congress. Methods: Regression analysis of data from a 1992 national survey (N = 1430) on public attitudes toward political institutions, inter alia. Results: People who primarily obtain, their news from television or radio are not any more or less likely to evaluate Congress negatively than are people who primarily obtain their news from newspapers. Similarly, people who are exposed to news a great deal do not evaluate Congress more negatively than those who pay little attention to the news. The same cannot be said for emotional reactions: a primary reliance on television and especially radio for news and a generally heavy exposure to news generate significantly more negative emotions than newspaper use and low exposure to the news.

National Identity and Self-Esteem

Is the self-esteem of individuals tied to their nation? If so, is that a good reason to strive for a world of safe, secure nations? Many liberal nationalists answer yes to these questions, but they do so without looking at the large social-psychology literature on groups and self-esteem. We examine the claims of liberal nationalists in light of this literature. The good news is that self-respect We use the terms self-respect and self-esteem interchangeably. and group identity are strongly connected and can lead people to place collective interests above individual interests. The bad news is that the liberal-nationalist assumption that low-status groups have little self-respect and majority groups have it in abundance is mistaken. Perhaps most worrisome is the competitive nature of collective self-esteem: people feel better when their group does better than others. This competitiveness can lead to outright hostility when groups compete for resources and political power. Self-esteem is clearly an unstable foundation for a liberal nation. Although we do not think that problems caused by national identity and self-esteem can be fully solved, we do suggest ways in which they can be contained.

Civics Is Not Enough: Teaching Barbarics in K-12.

racy (in improved civic education for every student). These polarities in the proposed standards no doubt reflect the multiple constituencies of American education, and the consequent pluralism and compromise of educational policy making. But because they are also symbolic, national standards and assessments in civics will allow policymakers to surmount pluralism, to reproduce these polarities, and to join hands in a ritualized dance of hegemonic public policy. The performance may satisfy policymakers that civics education will reduce contemporary strife, but I think what is happening is happening mainly to the performers themselves, not to their putative student audience. References

Linking Neuroscience to Political Intolerance and Political Judgment

There is substantial evidence that intolerance arises from perceptions of difference. A prevailing view holds that even if intolerance is understandable as a defense mechanism, or as an attitude intended to ward off threatening groups and noxious activities, it often is the result of human irrationality and indulgence of prejudice. This conclusion is supported by studies that seem to demonstrate the apparent irrelevance of the actual level of threat to levels of intolerance. These studies show human actions attendant to diversity are caused by established convictions (i.e., prejudice) rather than by the degree of threat. However, informed by theoretical approaches provided by neuroscientists, we report findings that threat is, indeed, a provocative factor that modifies political tolerance in predictable ways. Previous studies defined threat as probabilistic assessments of the likelihood of bad events. When threat is defined as novelty and normative violations (i.e., as departures from expected, or normal, occurrence), then consistent relationships to intolerance are obtained.

Examining the Relationship Between Interpersonal and Institutional Trust in Political and Health Care Contexts

While many agree that interpersonal and institutional trust are key ingredients for social order, the differences between the two and how they influence one another remain unclear. We define trust as the willingness to be vulnerable to another party, and focus our discussion on situations where the trustor (trusting party) is an individual member of the public and the trustee (party being trusted) is an institution or one of its members. We review the literature on trust and related concepts that address the potential relationships between interpersonal trust and institutional trust, focusing on two illustrative contexts: the political arena and health care. For each context, we examine extant research to provide definitions of institutions and note how these definitions have implications for defining institutional trust in each context. Second, we examine how characteristics of the trustor (individual-level characteristics) may affect the relationship between interpersonal and institutional trust. For example, a trustor’s gender, race and ethnicity, and familiarity with the institutional trustee may frame his/her interactions with, and subsequently their trust in, the institution. Being cognizant of these factors will improve understanding of the cases where a relationship between interpersonal and institutional trust exists. We conclude by highlighting how these arguments can inform future research.

Belonging In a “Christian Nation”: The Explicit and Implicit Associations between Religion and National Group Membership

If many consider the United States to be a Christian nation, how does this affect individuals who are American citizens but not Christian? We test two major hypotheses: (1) Americans consider Christians to be more fully American than non-Christians. We examine whether Americans explicitly and implicitly connect being Christian with being a true American; and (2) Christian Americans are more likely to be patriotic and set exclusive boundaries on the national group than non-Christian Americans. Among non-Christians, however, those who want to be fully accepted as American will be more patriotic and set more exclusive boundaries to emulate prototypical Americans than non-Christians who place less emphasis on national group membership. We test these hypotheses using data from a survey and from an Implicit Association Test. We find that Americans in general associate being Christian with being a true American. For Christians, this is true both explicitly and implicitly. For non-Christians, only the implicit measure uncovers an association. We also found that non-Christians exhibit significantly more pro-national group behaviors when they desire being prototypical than when they do not.

Too much of a good thing: More representative is not necessarily better

Reform sentiments are much in evidence on the American political scene as we approach the end of the century, and improving the way public opinion is represented in political institutions is often the major motivation of reformers. This is clear from the essays in this collection, from the activities of contemporary political elites, and from the mood of ordinary people. Gross dissatisfaction exists with the nature of representation perceived to be offered by the modern political system.

Political Trust in Polarized Times.

As political trust levels continue to decline while levels of partisan polarization increase, we contend that more research is needed to explore the interaction between these two central features of contemporary American politics. Political scientists have debated whether explanations of political trust levels are best informed by the public’s assessment of the political system or of evaluations of individual politicians. In times when partisan polarization is a salient feature of the political arena, we contend that both are important. During highly polarized times, party and trust heuristics become heavily intertwined in the sense that people may continue to rely on their default trust evaluations of the political system but party as the source of government action becomes the major determinant of trust. We discuss how these dynamics influence two specific consequence of political trust—policy outcomes and support for democratic processes. We outline a theoretical framework informed by prior research concerning the dynamics of political trust and partisan polarization and their influence on policy outcomes. Finally, we offer empirical evidence obtained from an experiment that supports our contention that when partisan polarization is primed by the information environment, there are important consequences for support for democratic processes.

The effect of political candidates’ occupational background on voters’ perceptions of and support for candidates

Our study investigates how political candidates’ occupational background and gender influence voters’ perceptions of candidates’ competence to handle a variety of policy issues and voters’ support for candidates. Using experimental data collected among American and New Zealand students (N = 794), our multivariate analyses indicate that students perceive candidates with political experience as most competent in handling security-related issues, candidates with a business background as most competent in handling economic issues, and candidates with a background in education as most competent in handling human services issues. This pattern is similar for male and female candidates and holds in both countries. The effect of candidates’ occupational background on the likelihood to vote for the candidate, however, differs between both countries. Whereas occupational background does not seem to matter for American students, New Zealand students are substantially less likely to vote for a candidate with a business background than for a candidate with political experience.