James M. Carlson

Religiosity, Belief in a Just World and Crime Control Attitudes

2 samples of 90 college students, one Catholic and one Protestant, completed a questionnaire on attitudes toward criminal justice, the Just World Scale, and measure of religiosity and evangelicalism. Belief in a just world was associated with punitive criminal justice attitudes among Protestant but not Catholic students. Such attitudes were not mitigated significantly by religiosity. Evangelicalism was associated with punitive criminal justice attitudes among Catholic students, but not when statistical control for belief in a just world was instituted.

Personality and Political Recruitment: Actualization or Compensation?

Summary Two hypotheses have been offered relating self-concept and political participation. The actualization hypothesis predicts that individuals with a positive self-concept will most often be found among the politically active, while the compensation hypothesis states that those with poor self-concepts participate at high rates to overcome their low estimates of self-esteem. These hypotheses are tested using data from a sample of party activists. Three measures of self-esteem are related to office-seeking. Office-seekers differed from nonoffice-seekers on only one of the self-esteem measures. The actualization hypothesis was partially supported.

Androgyny and Politics The Effects of Winning and Losing on Candidate Image

Through the use of experimental method, this article examines the impact of sex of subjects, sex of candidates, the offices sought by candidates (legislative or executive), and whether candidates win or lose on the basis of their perceived masculinity or femininity. The findings indicate that candidates who seek executive offices are perceived as being more masculine than candidates who seek legislative offices. Male candidates who lose their elections are perceived as less masculine than winners, while female candidates who win are perceived as less feminine than losers. These findings may help explain why fewer women run for office than men.

Perspectives on entertainment television's portrayal of a racial incident: An intensive analysis

Television entertainment plays an important role in the development of political orientations concerning authority, order, freedom and equality. This article shows that viewers have “limited autonomy” in constructing meaning from television entertainment. Q‐method was employed to determine viewers subjective reactions to an episode of Law and Order that fictionalized a racial incident that took place in Brooklyn, New York in 1991. The analysis revealed that there were at least seven distinct readings of the program. While there was consensus about some aspects of the story, viewers obviously had some autonomy regarding interpretation. We argue for a synthesis of theories that emphasize “closed” and “open” meanings of television programs. Entertainment is politically relevant and the most useful way to examine its impact is through intensive methods.

An experimental study of the influence of religious elites on public opinion

Abstract This paper presents experimental findings concerning the influence of source attributions upon subjects’ reactions to a set of domestic and foreign policy initiatives. An attempt was made to determine whether or not the positions of the American Catholic Bishops’ pastoral letter, when attributed to the Bishops themselves or to The Reverend Billy Graham, would influence public opinion in two populations of Catholic and Evangelical Protestant college students. In both conditions, even when controlling for a number of intermediating variables, results were null. Based on these data the hypothesized influence of religious leadership on opinion is non‐existent when the experimental conditions are compared with the control (no source) condition. The results are compared with similar experimental studies examining the impact of other political institutions and symbols.

IDEOLOGY AND CAMPAIGN ACTIVITY AT THREE LEVELS OF GOVERNMENT

This article examines the relationship between self-designated political ideology, opinions on twenty-one issues, and campaign activity at local, state, and national levels. The samples examined include delegates to the 1984 Party Conventions in eleven states. Generally, the findings indicate that ideology and issue position are most strongly associated with activity in national campaigns. Among Democrats liberalism is associated with national activity, whereas among Republicans those who are conservative are most active in national campaigns. Some important intraparty differences are found between local campaign activists and national activists. For example, among Democrats local campaign activists are much more conservative than national activists on several issues.

A New Cleavage in the Democratic Party? A Comparison of Mondale & Hart Supporters at the Connecticut State Democratic Convention

Much has been written about new cleavages within the Democratic Party. This article looks at delegates to the 1984 Democratic Party Convention in Connecticut to test whether there were important differences between backers of Hart and Mondale that would lend credence to any of the theories about new divisions within the party. The authors conclude that, while there were differences, they did not conform to the lines that might have been expected, nor did they portend ill for the party. Indeed, their evidence points to party vitality and not decay.

CONCEPTIONS OF REPRESENTATION A Study of Delegates to the 1984 National Party Conventions

Using Q-technique, we examined conceptions of representation among a sample of delegates to the 1984 Democratic and Republican National Conventions. Analysis of the data revealed four perspectives on representation in the sample: the “trustee,” the belief that group interests should be represented, the belief that representation is a matter of the representatives conscience, and the “delegate-servant.” Surprisingly, no delegates saw themselves as representatives of party officials or presidential candidates. We conclude that representation is a subjective process and should be examined from that perspective.

Politics and Interpersonal Attraction

Two explanations have been offered for the similarity of husband and wife political views. One is mutual socialization, which states that after a period of time married couples come to share political values. An alternative explanation is that individuals select mates who share their political views. A test of the mutual socialization hypothesis would require panel data, but the selection hypothesis can be tested using experimental techniques. Drawing on the literature from social psychology, an experiment was designed to deter mine whether political views make any difference in interpersonal attraction. The findings of the experiment revealed that the political views of opposite sex others do have an effect on interpersonal attraction. The attraction scores of females who were interested in politics were influenced the most by political issues. This study provides partial confirma tion of the selection hypothesis.