Poli Sci 306 Exam 2
Racial Resentment
A form of prejudice that focuses on the moral character of Black people; it contends that they do not work hard enough and that they take what they have not earned
Self-Interest
A person's narrow, economic interests.
Old-Fashioned Racism
A set of beliefs about the innate inferiority of Black Americans.
Values
Abstract enduring beliefs regarding how the world should work.
Know why democratic theorists believe citizens and politicians need to communicate effectively. (p.152)
According to many democratic theorists, citizens and politicians need to communicate effectively with one another so that, among other reasons, citizens can evaluate the performance of elected officials and these officials can know the political preferences of the citizens.
Party Identification
Allegiance with or attachment to a political party; a self-classification rather than a description of a person's behavior.
Black Utility Heuristic
Among black citizens, use of racial group interests as a cue to determine an individual's own issue opinions and party preferences.
Explain what is meant by the spillover of racialization and what examples of this did we discuss in class and from the Tesler video. pg 220
An issue that recently became race-coded is health care policy, according to Michael Tesler. Tesler argues that health care is now a racialized issue because it was linked with President Obama in the minds of American citizens, a phenomenon he refers to as the spillover of racialization. Because President Obama is Black, racialized considerations were activated in discussions of health care reform. As a result, racial prejudice shaped white citizens' views on health care policy proposals. Kneeling before the flag.
Explain what Dr. Jardina finds makes racial identity more salient to whites and how it has a major impact on political attitudes.
Ashley Jardina argues that "the growing non-white population, the pending loss of whites' majority status, and the increasing political and economic power of people of color in the United States" have made racial identity salient to some whites. Jardina refers to this sense of commonality, attachment, and solidarity as white identity and demonstrates that it has a major impact on political attitudes and behavior. White identity is activated when whites feel anxious about and threatened by their changing political, social, and economic circumstances. They feel a loss of privilege, and they don't like it.
Be able to define ideology and describe its two main parts.
Attitudes that are coherent and related to one another. Does not refer to just any set of related attitudes, but, rather, to beliefs about society and especially the proper size of government.
White Identity
Belief among whites that they have a commonality, attachment, and solidarity with other whites.
Racial Identity
Belief that a person's fate is tied to the fate of his or her racial group.
Linked Fate
Belief that a person's life chances are tied to the fate of demographic group(s) to which he or she belongs.
Individualism
Belief that people should get ahead on the basis of their own efforts.
Moral Traditionalism
Belief that traditional family and societal organization is best.
Activated Mass Opinion
Beliefs that are salient to citizens and lead them to be politically active.
Selective Exposure
Choosing new outlets based on the political content of the news; more specifically, consuming news that coincides with one's existing political views.
Social Movements
Citizens organizing and working together to influence politics.
Ideology
Conservatism or liberalism; overarching set of beliefs regarding the proper role of government in society, in regulating the economy, and in individual's lives.
Know the overarching conclusion Converse (1964) comes to and be able to list and explain the 5 main categories he came up with to categorize the American public.
Converse's overall conclusion, as we have already mentioned, was that elites were much more likely to possess belief systems compared with the general public. Ideologues: Those individuals who did use this continuum, such as by differentiating the parties based on ideology and correctly linking specific policy positions of the parties to this ideology. Near-Ideologues: People who used ideological labels such as liberal or conservative but perhaps did not fully understand the meaning of these terms or did not use ideology as their primary tool for evaluating politics. Group Interested Citizens: These individuals tended to discuss the parties and candidates in terms of whether they favor the interests of specific groups, such as the man who disliked Republicans because "they are more for big business" or the woman who liked that the Democrats "have always helped the farmers." Nature of the Times: linked the parties or candidates with the current state of the nation. More specifically, parties in charge during times of peace or prosperity were evaluated more favorably than were those who ruled during war or economic downturns. No Issue Content: evaluated the parties and candidates on grounds other than issues. No Issue Content citizens included those who used personal characteristics to evaluate candidates, were not sure what either political party stood for (even when they identified with one of the parties), or did not follow politics closely enough to discuss parties or candidates. One person in 2000, for instance, liked Bush because of "his sincerity. He surrounds himself with good people and he is well connected."
Attitude Stability
Degree to which political opinions remain the same over time
Gender Gap in Party Identification
Differences between men and women in party identification; studies show there is a tendency for women to be more likely than men to identify with the Democratic Party.
Political Polarization
Divide in the political preferences of the public; commonly understood as opinions clustered at the extremes.
Explain why egalitarianism and individualism are difficult to measure.
Egalitarianism and individualism are abstract concepts and therefore difficult to measure.
Sociotropic Concerns
General concerns about society.
Explain the racialization of poverty since the 1950's
Gilens found that whites were the dominant image of poverty in the 1950s and early 1960s. In 1965, however, the racial makeup of the poor in these magazine stories on poverty changed quite dramatically. The representation of Blacks jumped from 27 percent of the poor in 1964 to 72 percent in 1967. From 1967 on, Blacks tended to dominate the coverage of poverty, averaging 57 percent of the poor portrayed by these newsmagazines between 1967 and 1992. To illustrate the skewed nature of this media coverage, Gilens compared the true percentage of Blacks among the poor (based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau) with the racial makeup of the poor depicted in the newsmagazines. In reality, Blacks only made up about 29 percent of the poor during this period. Thus, the magazines' depiction essentially doubled the proportion of Blacks among the poor. Gilens also found that the overrepresentation of Blacks became even more extreme when unsympathetic topics were covered. For example, Blacks made up 100 percent of the poor people pictured in stories on the underclass and 84 percent of the poor in stories on urban problems. In contrast, there were no Blacks pictured in stories on old-age assistance and only about one-quarter of the poor were Black in stories on hunger and medical care. Rosalee Clawson and her colleagues have updated and extended Gilens's study by examining the representation of poverty in five newsmagazines between 1993 and 2012. They analyzed the same three magazines as Gilens, as well as two additional newsmagazines, the New York Times Magazine and Business Week. They found that Blacks continued to be grossly overrepresented in pictures of the poor, making up well over 50 percent of the magazine poor during this period. Another study demonstrates that Hispanics are underrepresented in newsmagazine pictures of poverty, a finding attributed to the common stereotype that Hispanics have a stronger work ethic than other racial groups, whites included.
Why does Taeku Lee believe that political scientists rely too heavily on public opinion polls to assess citizens' attitudes? Pg 204 and 205
He maintains that public opinion polls are not well suited for the task of distinguishing between elite and non elite influences on the public.
Know whether James Madison was correct in his rationale for representative government, due to his belief that individuals would only follow their own self-interest.
He's wrong. People look beyond their own self itnerest most of the time. Pg 198 - 200
Explain how race-neutral policies have turned into race-coded policies, especially when it comes to welfare and poverty.
How did a seemingly race-neutral issue like welfare become a race-coded issue? Gilens argues that news media coverage of poverty and welfare disproportionately focuses on Black Americans, which leads to this linkage between race and poverty in the minds of white citizens.
Symbolic Ideology
Ideological self-identification (as conservative, moderate, liberal, or something else).
Know what group membership is based upon.
In other words, group membership is based on ascription, that is, how others describe a person based on social norms and legal definitions, rather than on a person's identification with a group.
What are the two main identifying key factors of the differences in Black-White public opinion in the U.S. (p.213)
In the United States, Blacks and whites hold very different opinions, especially when it comes to party identification and racial issues. In the 1960s, the partisanship of Blacks was heavily influenced by the national Democratic Party's support of the civil rights movement and the party's push for legislation to end discrimination against Blacks. As a result, African Americans who came of age during the civil rights movement have the strongest identification with the Democrats. Younger cohorts of African Americans who were socialized after the civil rights movement have demonstrated a small yet significant move toward identification with the Republican Party.5 Nevertheless, in 2016, an overwhelming majority of Blacks (81 percent) continued to identify with the Democratic Party (see Figure 7.1).6 As we discussed in Chapter 2, the civil rights movement also influenced the party identification of some white citizens as they opposed the pro-equality position of the national Democratic Party and changed their allegiance to the Republican Party. In 2016, just 38 percent of whites identified with the Democratic Party. In addition to party identification, Blacks and whites also differ in their issue opinions, as you can see in Figure 7.1. Blacks are more supportive of social welfare programs than whites. Forty-four percent of Blacks favored more government services even if it meant an increase in spending, whereas only 27 percent of whites endorsed that position in 2016. There was also a difference between Blacks and whites on support for military spending. Thirty-three percent of Blacks favored increased defense spending, whereas 46 percent of whites held that view. Blacks and whites tend to differ a great deal when the issue domain is racial policies. For instance, 53 percent of Blacks supported government efforts to improve the social and economic position of their group in 2016; only 20 percent of whites agreed the government should make such efforts.
Operational Ideology
Individual's views toward specific public policy issues.
Moral Issues
Issues that address matters related to the family or morality, such as pornography, gay marriage, and school prayer.
Pocketbook Issues
Issues that affect people's personal economic circumstances.
Women's Issues
Issues that are presumed to be of particular interest to women, such as abortion and the role of women in the workforce.
Know whether or not measures of ideological self-identification have enhanced Converse's main argument of refuted it.
It does enhance Converse's main argument. If ideological identification is meaningful for individuals, it should influence a number of political attitudes and behaviors. By and large, it does not, argue Kinder and Kalmoe.45 Other than among the most politically informed members of the public, ideology generally does not predict which candidate people vote for in presidential elections. Ideological identification is weakly related, if at all, to specific issue opinions, a conclusion that is in line with Ellis and Stimson's findings. So this shows that people don't really vote according to what they believe unlike elites.
Explain the main findings of Klar and Krupnikov on partisan independence and why their results should be worrisome to party elites.
Klar and Krupnikov find that when the political context supplies negative images of partisans, the tendency to identify as an Independent increases. This is worrisome because the more independents there are, the harder it is to get their votes. As mentioned earlier by the study on ideological self identification, people are most motivated by party affiliation, the more independents means that each party is weaker. Candidates and parties need ordinary people to influence their friends and spread the party's message to their networks. Candidates and parties succeed to the extent that ordinary voters are vocal, clear, and public in their support. Candidates and parties lose all of this when people try to avoid partisanship.
Explain how Hetherington and Weiler measure authoritarianism. Pg 191
Like Stenner, they measure authoritarianism by assessing citizens' child-rearing values. Those who "score high in authoritarianism have (1) a greater need for order and, conversely, less tolerance for confusion or ambiguity, and (2) a propensity to rely on established authorities to provide that order." Hetherington and Weiler demonstrate that authoritarians and nonauthoritarians (that is, those whom Stenner would call libertarians) have very different attitudes toward many of the most prominent issues of our day.
Partisan News
Media outlets that cover and present the news from a specific political point of view.
Ethnographic Research
Method for assessing political attitudes and behaviors in which researchers immerse themselves in a setting or community, observing individuals, asking them questions, and more generally interacting with them.
Affective Polarization
Negative feelings or hostility toward political opponents coupled with warm feelings toward political allies. Pg 177.
Be able to explain the differences between Old-Fashioned Racism (OFR) and Racial Resentment and know how Kinder and Sanders believe it developed in whites.
Old-Fashioned Racism is a set of beliefs about the innate inferiority of Black Americans. These beliefs served as a justification for segregating Blacks and whites." Donald Kinder and Lynn Sanders argue that a "new form of prejudice has come to prominence, one that is preoccupied with matters of moral character, informed by the virtues associated with the traditions of individualism. At its center are the contentions that Blacks do not try hard enough to overcome the difficulties they face and that they take what they have not earned." Kinder and Sanders label this new form of prejudice racial resentment. Instead of blaming biological or genetic factors for Black inferiority, as old-fashioned racism does, racial resentment blames a lack of work ethic for the continued inequality between Blacks and whites in our society. Kinder and Sanders make the case that racial resentment developed among whites in response to the success of the civil rights movement. As discriminatory laws were knocked down by the Supreme Court and Congress passed civil rights legislation, white Americans began to think that racial problems were solved.
Attitudes Towards Groups
Opinions toward important social and political groups that shape political attitudes.
Negative Partisanship
Party affiliation that is driven by negative affect toward the opposing party.
Know what is the main driver of political opinions, decisions, and perceptions is. (p.168).
Party identification
Libertarians
People who have a predisposition to favor minimal government involvement in the economy or society; alternatively, people who value diversity and individual freedom.
Authoritarians
People who have a predisposition to value sameness and conformity to group norms; people who prefer order and rely on authorities to provide that order.
Conservatives
People whose political ideology emphasizes order, tradition, individual responsibility, and minimal government intervention in economic matters.
Liberals
People whose political ideology favors government intervention in the economy when necessary to combat features of the free market, also, individuals who value equality and openness to dissenting views.
Pluralistic Roots
Perspective that public opinion is shaped by several factors, not just ideology.
Be able to explain the main critiques of Converse and whether or not his results have held up over time.
Pg 159 The question remains: Were Converse's results due to the nature of the times? The era of his study was considered an era of Consensual Politics. Disagreements between the parties was minor, and the political environment wasn't dominated by conflict, and the public was not much in tune with politics. During the 1960s/70s, we saw a much more Ideologically Contentious time with salient issues that sparked an interest in politics. Did Converse's results still hold up? There was a rise in attitude constraint during this era, due to polarized presidential candidates and an unpopular war. Attitude constraint and stability seem to be high for more salient issues and ones that are grounded in religion, morality, and civil rights are tied to more ideological issues. Despite this, we have not witnessed high levels of attitude constraint among the public since Converse's initial study. Consistent with Converse, elites possess more ideologically constrained belief systems than average citizens allowing for more attitude stability. His survey research methods have also come under attack, because focused, specific questions do not allow citizens to show issue nuances. Ideological spectrum problem: Libertarians would show low levels of constraint, despite attitudes being consistent. It is thought that In-Depth Interviews would be superior to surveys in this regard. This would allow us to analyze the context in which their thoughts exist.
Race-Targeted Policies
Policies designed to specifically aid racial minorities, such as affirmative action and the government taking steps to ensure fair treatment in employment.
Race-Neutral Policies
Policies that affect citizens regardless of race.
Race-Coded Policies
Policies that are race-neutral yet have become linked with racial minorities in the minds of white citizens.
Know who Converse believes actually organizes their political world on a liberal-conservative continuum.
Political elites are more likely than citizens to organize the political world ideologically along the liberal-conservative continuum.
Black Political Ideology
Political system belief present among African Americans; specific views often include group-based perspectives, such as beliefs regarding the status of blacks in society.
Ideologically Contentious
Quality of politics characterized by salient political actors disagreeing over the key issues of the day, particularly when the disagreements fall along ideological lines
Explain why Millennials are much more progressive than previous generations.
Race trumps generation in other words, which bolsters the argument that young people are more progressive because of their racial and ethnic diversity.
Explain how self-interest can have powerful and long-lasting effects on citizens and explain Erikson and Stoker's main findings of their survey study about the Vietnam War. pg 198-199
Robert Erikson and Laura Stoker demonstrate that self-interest can have powerful and long-lasting effects when citizens are faced with circumstances in which their lives might be severely disrupted and even put in jeopardy. Specifically, Erikson and Stoker examine what happens to the political attitudes of young men when they are faced with the prospect of being drafted for military service. In 1969 in the midst of the Vietnam War, Republican president Richard Nixon instituted a new policy that assigned numbers (1 through 366) to draft-eligible men based on their birth dates. The men assigned low numbers were called up first for duty, whereas the men assigned high numbers were virtually assured they would not be drafted. In effect the policy randomly assigned some men to be vulnerable to being sent to war in Vietnam and others not to be. This was a perfect case in which self-interest should have shaped public opinion because those with low draft numbers faced "a (relatively) high likelihood of being forced to abandon all personal plans and undertakings and to take part in a potentially life-threatening war. As one's lottery number increased, one's vulnerability decreased.
Belief System
Set of related, coherent political attitudes; attitudes are related because they derive from an overarching worldview (such as a political ideology).
Attitude Constraint
Situation that exists when political opinions are related to one another, degree to which researchers can predict a person's opinion toward a political object when knowing his or her opinions toward other objects
Normative Threats
Situations in which core values are called into question.
Compassion Issues
Social welfare policies that help others, such as programs that aid children, the elderly or the poor.
Personality Traits
Stable personal characteristics (such as dogmatism, conscientiousness, and empathy).
Open-Ended Questions
Survey items that allow respondents to answer however they see fit; these items do not present respondents with predetermined response options.
Be able to explain the difference between symbolic and operational ideology and know why Americans are a paradox between these two ideas.
Symbolic Ideology- is an individual's ideological identification (Label). Operational Ideology- is grounded more explicitly in concrete decisions, such as what the government should be doing concerning public matters. Ellis and Stimson point to a number of factors, including that symbolic ideology is a personal identity. Put another way, it reflects how people think of themselves. As it turns out, more Americans are comfortable thinking of themselves as conservative rather than as liberal. This is due, in part, to the popularity of a conservative identity outside of politics, most notably in reference to religious worldview and lifestyle choices. "Along with church on Sunday," write Ellis and Stimson, "imagine living by conventions—marriage, family, children, and work—and you have a lifestyle often called conservative. 'Conservative' in this context means conventional behavior and appearance, playing by the established rules, and fitting into established social patterns." Some individuals who think of themselves as conservative in these nonpolitical domains transfer this identity to politics, thus self-identifying as politically conservative even if they do not hold conservative policy views.
Racialization of Poverty
Tendency to overrepresent racial minorities, particularly blacks, in images of poor people
Explain how the Big Five personality traits are related to the Republican and Democratic parties. Pg 196
The Big Five traits are also associated with party identification. Given that the Democratic Party is the more liberal party in the United States, it should come as no surprise to learn that the trait of openness is related to Democratic Party identification. Republican identifiers are quite high in conscientiousness, again not surprisingly. Beyond which party a person identifies with, Big Five traits are related to the strength of one's party identification and whether someone even identifies with a party. People high in extraversion or high in agreeableness are more likely to have a partisan identity and have stronger party identifications than do those who are low in either trait. Extraverts are sociable whereas agreeable individuals are communal, thus likely leading them to be "drawn to the affective, social benefits of party identification ... [or] to the communal and cooperative components of joining a political 'team.'" In contrast, those high in openness to new experiences are less likely to affiliate with a political party. Partisan ties help to structure the political world, providing cues and context with which to interpret political debates and events. Those who are high in openness do not desire structure to the degree that those low in openness do, perhaps making partisanship less appealing to the former.
Partisan Sorting
The alignment of partisanship and ideology, such that Democrats are more likely to be liberal while Republicans are more likely to be conservative.
Social Sorting
The alignment of partisanship with other social identities, such as those based on race and religion.
Behavioral Path Dependence
The passing down of political attitudes and norms across generations, via institutions and overt socialization.
Egalitarianism
The passing down of political attitudes and norms across generations, via institutions and overt socialization.
The Big Five
The passing down of political attitudes and norms across generations, via institutions and overt socialization.
Be able to explain negative partisanship and its impact on voting and identification with a political party.
The phenomenon of identifying as a partisan primarily through negative association with the other party. Has helped with straight ticket voting. Does not mean Americans are no longer positively associated with their political party. Evidence of such negative partisanship was clearly on display during the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections, including that partisans' negative views of the other party were linked to a greater tendency to vote and, among voters, to vote only for candidates of one's party.
Be able to define Big Five and list/describe each of the 5 personality traits.
There are five traits, the Big Five, that personality researchers have identified as fundamental to understanding individuals' attitudes and behaviors. Openness to experience: Individuals with this trait respond positively to a wide range of experiences; they appreciate complexity and novelty. Conscientiousness: Individuals with this trait. Agreeableness: Individuals with this trait are kind and communal; they are not antagonistic toward others. Extraversion: Individuals with this trait are active and energetic; they are sociable and outgoing. Emotional stability: Individuals with this trait are steady and resilient; they are not nervous and anxious.
Why are the racial differences in support for egalitarianism extremely important for understanding differences in policy opinions between Black-White Americans?
These racial differences in support for egalitarianism are extremely important because they translate into differences in policy opinions between Blacks and whites. Greater egalitarianism among Blacks leads them to be more supportive than whites of a wide variety of racial and social programs, including government programs that assist Blacks as well as federal spending on education, aid for college students, the poor, the homeless, and the unemployed.
Explain what is meant by authoritarianism in terms of public opinion/personality.
They defined authoritarianism as a set of personality traits, including submissiveness to authority, a desire for a strong leader, general hostility and cynicism toward people, strict adherence to convention, and a belief that people should be roundly punished if they defy those conventions.6 These traits appear most often in people exposed to strict and rigid child-rearing practices. In other words, children whose parents dole out a "relatively harsh and threatening type of home discipline" are more likely to have authoritarian personalities as adults.
What do Kinder and Sanders find among white citizens who scored higher on racial resentment?
They found that white citizens who were more racially resentful were more opposed to a variety of race-targeted policies. For example, racially resentful whites were significantly more likely to oppose affirmative action in college admissions and employment than whites who did not hold such attitudes.
Know what happens when individuals are faced with normative threats. (p.189)
When citizens are faced with normative threats, authoritarianism becomes activated and thus has a stronger effect on intolerance of difference. In other words, those citizens with an authoritarian bent become even more intolerant when they are in a situation in which "diversity and freedom 'run amok.'
Use-of-Force Issues
When racialized considerations are activated in policy discussion.
Explain what Lee found in respect to what events activates mass opinion. Does it come from elites (top-down) or from grassroots (bottom-top)?
pG 204-205 Lee concludes that "ordinary citizens, under appropriately compelling circumstances, will take an active part in crafting politics rather than merely consuming the political outputs of elite actors." These are heartening words to the ears of participatory democratic theorists.
Know the 5 main factors that Donald Kinder believes makes up public opinion
personality, self-interest, values, historical events, and group attitudes. pg 186
Know where we actually do see polarization among the public and how affective polarization is related
pg 177-178 "Outside of the political realm, discomfort with interparty marriage is on the rise. In 1960, only 5 percent of partisans expressed displeasure at the thought of a child marrying someone affiliated with the other party. Fifty years later, one-third of Democratic parents indicated they would be somewhat or very unhappy if one of their children were to marry a Republican. Meanwhile, nearly one-half of Republicans would be unhappy to see their child marry a Democrat. Unhappiness with interparty marriage is especially likely if the hypothetical in-law is expected to discuss politics frequently. Feelings toward partisans may even crop up when reviewing résumés or selling tickets to a college football game. One experimental study asked participants to review the credentials of two (hypothetical) finalists for a college scholarship. Both of the finalists were high school seniors. One was the president of the Young Democrats, the other the president of the Young Republicans. Nearly 80 percent of the Democrats and Republicans in this study selected the finalist with the same partisanship as them, even when the finalist from their own party had a lower grade point average than the out-party finalist. As for college football tickets, participants in an experiment demonstrated a preference to (hypothetically) sell tickets to a game to a supporter of their political party rather than a partisan opponent. They were also willing to receive a lower price for the ticket if it was purchased by someone of their party versus the opposing party. Note that all of the study participants were fans of rival teams (e.g., Alabama and Auburn), the tickets were purportedly for the game between these rivals, and the hypothetical buyer was described as a fan of the other team.
Spillover of Racialization
when racialized considerations are activated in policy discussion Kneeling for the flag or Obama Healthcare reform.
