- Interests:Cognitive aspects of political behaviour.Evolutionary biology/neurology.Rationality.Emotion.Identity Formation.Prejudiceedit
In its most simple form, the research question that we want to answer is: Do individuals with different political values differ in their general social-cognitive strategies? Based on prior work by Dr. Mansell, we will examine whether such... more
In its most simple form, the research question that we want to answer is: Do individuals with different political values differ in their general social-cognitive strategies? Based on prior work by Dr. Mansell, we will examine whether such political differences are confined to the political domain or whether they reflect (potentially, emerge from) broader social strategies relating to (a) seeking to harvest cooperative surpluses (predicted to be more frequent among liberals) and (b) avoiding cheaters (predicted to be more frequent among conservatives).
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In the following thesis I examine the possible evolutionary significance of behavioural differences associated with liberal and conservative ideological orientations. In investigating the evolutionary significance of these two... more
In the following thesis I examine the possible evolutionary significance of behavioural differences associated with liberal and conservative ideological orientations. In investigating the evolutionary significance of these two orientations I have two primary research questions. First, how do liberal and conservative oriented individuals differ in their responses to the same socio-environmental stimuli? Second, do differences in their responses to socio-environmental stimuli represent alternative behavioural strategies for social interaction, specifically adaptive strategies to maximize returns from social interactions? To answer these research questions I evaluate how trust and cooperation among liberal and conservative oriented individuals are affected by conditions of social change and inequality. Previous research finds that attitudes and behaviours consistent with the tolerance or intolerance of social change and inequality are strong predictors of ideological orientation across a liberal-conservative scale. Based on a synthesis of behavioural research I construct two theoretical frameworks to account for the adaptive utility associated with a sensitivity to social change and inequality; 1) The Group Reciprocity Hypothesis, and 2) The Social Risk Hypothesis. I test these frameworks using an experimental research design. I predict that, if liberal and conservative orientations are reflective of alternative adaptive strategies to maximize returns from social interaction, then the willingness of liberal and conservative individuals to participate in a social interaction should be differentially affected by conditions related to social change and inequality.
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Political scientists recognize discriminatory attitudes as key to understanding a range of political preferences. Sexism is associated with both explicitly and non-explicitly gendered attitudes. But why do certain individuals display... more
Political scientists recognize discriminatory attitudes as key to understanding a range of political preferences. Sexism is associated with both explicitly and non-explicitly gendered attitudes. But why do certain individuals display discriminatory attitudes, while others do not? Drawing from psychology, we examine the potential power of an underexplored set of personality traits—secure versus fragile self-esteem—in explaining gendered attitudes and preferences. With an online sample of (N = 487) U.S.-based participants, we find that fragile self-esteem is an important trait underlying individuals’ attitudes: individuals who display a discordant view of self—explicitly positive but implicitly negative—are more likely to hold hostile sexist attitudes and prefer men in leadership; these individuals are also more likely to support the Republican Party and former U.S. president Donald Trump. While present in only a fraction of the population, our results suggest that this trait may be i...
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We investigate whether learning about one's relatively poor competitive performance compared to another gender induces prejudice toward that gendered outgroup. A sample of (n=1620) subjects will complete an experiment involving a... more
We investigate whether learning about one's relatively poor competitive performance compared to another gender induces prejudice toward that gendered outgroup. A sample of (n=1620) subjects will complete an experiment involving a competitive task. Participants are randomly assigned to receive negative feedback about their gendered group's poor performance. Following this, we assess their levels of sexism. We hypothesize that: 1) men who receive negative feedback about their performance relative to women will report higher sexism. We also introduce a non-binary measure of masculinity/femininity that helps explain how gender identity affects these outcomes.
A set of tools to analyze CAMs created using the Valence software tool. The documentation can be found here: https://cam-analysis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
In this study we investigate the effect of threats to self-concept on individuals' levels of prejudice, self-concept, and efficacy, as well as individuals' levels of political ambition, political efficacy, and preference for... more
In this study we investigate the effect of threats to self-concept on individuals' levels of prejudice, self-concept, and efficacy, as well as individuals' levels of political ambition, political efficacy, and preference for political leadership
<strong>In the work, we investigate which factors are most important for the issuance of SAHO among n=54 African countries between January 31st and June 15th, 2020. We employ a novel dataset of 260 different variables capturing... more
<strong>In the work, we investigate which factors are most important for the issuance of SAHO among n=54 African countries between January 31st and June 15th, 2020. We employ a novel dataset of 260 different variables capturing country-level information on economic, political, social, external, and health-related factors for each country in our dataset. To identify the most significant factors, we treat the question of which countries issue SAHO as a classification problem (issued orders vs. did not issue orders) and utilize a random forest classifier, a method of machine learning, to identify the variables that best explain whether a country issued a SAHO order or not.</strong>
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Politics is often seen as a zero-sum game, so understanding how competition affects political behavior is a fruitful, yet underexplored area of study. Reactions to competition are known to be gendered, as women are significantly more... more
Politics is often seen as a zero-sum game, so understanding how competition affects political behavior is a fruitful, yet underexplored area of study. Reactions to competition are known to be gendered, as women are significantly more aware of and averse to the potential negative effects of competition—risk and loss—than are men. Participants (n = 1296) completed an experiment involving a non-political competitive task, where they were randomly assigned to receive a negative cue about their individual or gendered group's poor performance. Following this, we assessed their levels of political ambition, efficacy, interest, and sexism. We hypothesize that: (1) negative performance feedback on a competitive task will decrease political ambition, efficacy, and interest among women; and (2) men who receive negative feedback about their performance relative to women will report higher levels of sexism. We use a non-binary measure of masculinity/femininity that helps explain how gender i...
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In the following thesis I examine the possible evolutionary significance of behavioural differences associated with liberal and conservative ideological orientations. In investigating the evolutionary significance of these two... more
In the following thesis I examine the possible evolutionary significance of behavioural differences associated with liberal and conservative ideological orientations. In investigating the evolutionary significance of these two orientations I have two primary research questions. First, how do liberal and conservative oriented individuals differ in their responses to the same socio-environmental stimuli? Second, do differences in their responses to socio-environmental stimuli represent alternative behavioural strategies for social interaction, specifically adaptive strategies to maximize returns from social interactions? To answer these research questions I evaluate how trust and cooperation among liberal and conservative oriented individuals are affected by conditions of social change and inequality. Previous research finds that attitudes and behaviours consistent with the tolerance or intolerance of social change and inequality are strong predictors of ideological orientation across...
Political tolerance is a core democratic value, yet a long-standing research agenda suggests that citizens are unwilling to put this value into practice when confronted by groups that they dislike. One of the most disliked groups,... more
Political tolerance is a core democratic value, yet a long-standing research agenda suggests that citizens are unwilling to put this value into practice when confronted by groups that they dislike. One of the most disliked groups, especially in recent times, are those promoting racist ideologies. Racist speech poses a challenge to the ideal of political tolerance because it challenges another core tenet of democratic politics – the value of equality. How do citizens deal with threats to equality when making decisions about what speech they believe should be allowed in their communities? In this article, we contribute to the rich literature on political tolerance, but focus on empathy as a key, and understudied, personality trait that should be central to how – and when – citizens reject certain types of speech. Empathy as a cognitive trait relates to one’s capacity to accurately perceive the feeling state of another person. Some people are more prone to worry and care about the feel...
We tested a novel method for studying human experience (thoughts and affect). We utilized Cognitive-Affective Maps (CAMs)–an approach to visually represent thoughts and their affective connotations as networks of concepts that individuals... more
We tested a novel method for studying human experience (thoughts and affect). We utilized Cognitive-Affective Maps (CAMs)–an approach to visually represent thoughts and their affective connotations as networks of concepts that individuals associate with a given event. Using an innovative software tool, we recruited a comparative sample of (n = 93) Canadians and (n = 100) Germans to draw a CAM of their experience (events, thoughts, feelings) with the Covid-19 pandemic. We treated these CAM networks as a series of directed graphs and examined the extent to which their structural properties (latent and emotional) are predictive for the perceived coronavirus threat (PCT). Across multiple models, we found consistent and significant relationships between these network variables and the PCT in both the Canadian and German sample. Our results provide unique insights into individuals' thinking and perceptions of the viral outbreak. Our results also demonstrate that a network analysis of ...
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We introduce the Politics and the Life Sciences special issue on Psychophysiology, Cognition, and Political Differences. This issue represents the second special issue funded by the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences that... more
We introduce the Politics and the Life Sciences special issue on Psychophysiology, Cognition, and Political Differences. This issue represents the second special issue funded by the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences that adheres to the Open Science Framework for registered reports (RR). Here pre-analysis plans (PAPs) are peer-reviewed and given in-principle acceptance (IPA) prior to data being collected and/or analyzed, and are published contingent upon the preregistration of the study being followed as proposed. Bound by a common theme of the importance of incorporating psychophysiological perspectives into the study of politics, broadly defined, the articles in this special issue feature a unique set of research questions and methodologies. In the following, we summarize the findings, discuss the innovations produced by this research, and highlight the importance of open science for the future of political science research.
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We test a method for applying a network-based approach to the study of political attitudes. We use cognitive-affective mapping, an approach that visually represents attitudes as networks of concepts that an individual associates with a... more
We test a method for applying a network-based approach to the study of political attitudes. We use cognitive-affective mapping, an approach that visually represents attitudes as networks of concepts that an individual associates with a given issue. Using a software tool called Valence, we asked a sample of Canadians (n = 111) to draw a cognitive-affective map (CAM) of their views on the carbon tax. We treat these networks as a series of undirected graphs and examine the extent to which support for the tax can be predicted based on each graph’s emotional and structural properties. We find evidence that the emotional but not the structural properties significantly predict individuals’ attitudes toward the carbon tax. We also find associations between CAMs’ structural properties (density and centrality) and several measures of political interest. Our results provide preliminary evidence for the efficacy of CAMs as a tool for studying political attitudes. The study data are available at...
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Research links liberal and conservative ideological orientations with variation on psychological and cognitive characteristics that are important for perceptual processes and decision-making. This study investigates whether this variation... more
Research links liberal and conservative ideological orientations with variation on psychological and cognitive characteristics that are important for perceptual processes and decision-making. This study investigates whether this variation can impact the social behaviors of liberals and conservatives. A sample of subjects (n = 1,245) participated in a modified public goods game in which an intragroup inequality was introduced to observe the effect on individuals’ tendency toward self-interested versus prosocial behavior. Overall, the contributions of neither liberal- nor conservative-oriented individuals were affected by conditions of a general intragroup inequality. However, in response to the knowledge that group members voted to redress the inequality, levels of contribution among liberals significantly increased in comparison to the control. This was not true for conservatives. The results provide evidence that differences in ideological orientation are associated with individual...
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Research shows that individuals with liberal and conservative ideological orientations display different value positions concerning the acceptance of social change and inequality. Research also links the expression of different values to... more
Research shows that individuals with liberal and conservative ideological orientations display different value positions concerning the acceptance of social change and inequality. Research also links the expression of different values to a number of biological factors, including heredity. In light of these biological influences, I investigate whether differences in social values associated with liberal and conservative ideologies reflect alternative strategies to maximize returns from social interactions. Using an American sample of Democrats and Republicans, I test whether information about shared and unshared social values in the form of implicit social attitudes have a disproportionate effect on the willingness of Democrats and Republicans to trust an anonymous social partner. I find evidence that knowledge of shared values significantly increases levels of trust among Democrats but not Republicans. I further find that knowledge of unshared values significantly decreases trust am...
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Research shows that individuals with liberal and conservative ideological orientations display different value positions concerning the acceptance of social change and inequality. Research also links the expression of different values to... more
Research shows that individuals with liberal and conservative ideological orientations display different value positions concerning the acceptance of social change and inequality. Research also links the expression of different values to a number of biological factors, including heredity. In light of these biological influences, I investigate whether differences in social values associated with liberal and conservative ideologies reflect alternative strategies to maximize returns from social interactions. Using an American sample of Democrats and Republicans, I test whether information about shared and unshared social values in the form of implicit social attitudes have a disproportionate effect on the willingness of Democrats and Republicans to trust an anonymous social partner. I find evidence that knowledge of shared values significantly increases levels of trust among Democrats but not Republicans. I further find that knowledge of unshared values significantly decreases trust am...
