IU Indianapolis ScholarWorks :: Browsing by Author "Friesen, Amanda"

Browsing by Author "Friesen, Amanda"

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Beyond Survey Self-Reports: Using Physiology to Tap Political Orientations
(Oxford, 2015) Wagner, Michael W.; Deppe, Kristen D.; Jacobs, Carly M.; Friesen, Amanda; Smith, Kevin B.; Hibbing, John R.; Department of Political Science, School of Liberal Arts
Some aspects of our attitudes are composed of things outside of our consciousness. However, traditional survey research does not use measurements that are able to tap into these aspects of public opinion. We describe, recommend, and demonstrate a procedure by which non-self-reported responses can be measured in order to test whether these responses have independent effects on individuals’ preferences. We use one of the better-known physiological measures—electrodermal activity or skin conductance—and illustrate its potential by reporting our own study of attitudes toward President Barack Obama. We find that both self-reported emotional responses and physiological responses to Obama’s image independently correlate with variation in the intensity of attitudes regarding his job approval and his central policy proposal: health-care reform.
Beyond the Three “Bs” How American Christians Approach Faith and Politics
(2012-08) Friesen, Amanda; Wagner, Michael W
While it is well known that religiosity measures inform modern political alignments and voting behavior, less is known about how people of various religious orthodoxies think about the role of religion in society. To learn more about this veritable “black box” with respect to whether and why people connect their spiritual life to the political world, we conducted several focus groups in randomly selected Christian congregations in a mid-sized Midwestern city. Our analysis offers confirmatory, amplifying, and challenging evidence with respect to the “Three Bs” (believing, behaving, and belonging) perspective on how religion affects politics. Specifically, we show that while contemporary measures of religious traditionalism accurately reflect individuals’ partisan, ideological, and issue preferences, attitudes regarding the broad intersection of faith and politics are perhaps best understood via the presence (or absence) of denominational guidance on questions of the role of religion in society. We conclude by offering suggestions for future survey research seeking to explain the relationship between religion and politics.
Conscientious Women: The Dispositional Conditions of Institutional Treatment on Civic Involvement
(Cambridge UP, 2016) Friesen, Amanda; Djupe, Paul A.; Department of Political Science, School of Liberal Arts
Current thinking about the effect of religion on civic engagement centers on “institutional treatment”—the development of resources, social pathways to recruitment, and motivation that occurs in small groups and activities of congregations. None of this work has yet incorporated the personality traits that may shape the uptake of institutional treatment. Following a growing line of research articulating how individual predispositions condition political involvement, we argue that gendered personality differences may moderate civic skill development. With new data, we find that women do not develop skills from religious involvement at the same rate as men and that this pattern is largely attributable to their distinctive personality profile. The results shift the balance between individuals and institutional influences by augmenting the cognitive bases for acquiring church-gained experiences and linking them to the public square.
Digital Segregation: Gender, Occupation, and Access to Politics
(SAGE, 2019-05-26) Friesen, Amanda; Burge, Ryan; Britzman, Kylee; Political Science, School of Liberal Arts
In the United States, women often show less interest in politics, and under some conditions, perform worse than men on political knowledge tests. In an age where education levels have reached parity, we suggest one of the explanations for gender differences in political engagement might be due to selection of occupation. Past research has shown women and men segregate into different occupations due to early gender socialization, differences in interest, and structural barriers. It is possible that due to these segregation effects, women in traditional female occupations (e.g., education, health care, service work) may have less access to personal Internet use and news sources during their work days. Using the 2014 General Social Survey, we create a new occupational typology based on access to the Internet to explore whether individuals in certain sectors differ in their political engagement and how these occupations are also divided by gender. Then, we apply the technology use measure to the 2016 American National Election Study and find that technology access on the job does not seem to be related to political knowledge, once we account for education, which offers some insight into the mechanisms by which individuals gain this knowledge. In addition, the interaction between total media consumption and tech use suggests that the gap in political knowledge between men and women is stubbornly persistent.
Do Political Attitudes and Religiosity Share a Genetic Path?
(Springer, 2014-10) Friesen, Amanda; Ksiazkiewicz, Aleksander
Social scientists have long recognized and sought to explain a connection between religious and political beliefs. Our research challenges the prevalent view that religion and politics constitute separate but related belief sets with a conceptual model that suggests the correlation between the two may be partially explained by an underlying psychological construct reflecting first principle beliefs on social organization. Moreover, we also push this challenge further by considering whether part of the relationship between political and religious beliefs is the result of shared genetic influences, which would suggest that a shared biological predisposition, or set of biological predispositions, underlies these attitudes. Using a classic twin design on a sample of American adults, we demonstrate that certain religious, political, and first principle beliefs can be explained by genetic and unique environmental components, and that the correlation between these three trait structures is primarily due to a common genetic path. As predicted, this relationship is found to hold for social ideology, but not for economic ideology. These findings provide evidence that the overlap between the religious and the political in the American context may in part be due to underlying principles regarding how to understand and organize society and that these principles may be adopted to satisfy biologically-influenced psychological needs.
The Effect of Personal Economic Values on Economic Policy Preferences
(Wiley, 2016) Friesen, Amanda; Hibbing, Matthew V.; Department of Political Science, School of Liberal Arts
Objectives Citizens often express that the government should be run like a business or household in the way that money is saved and spent, though individuals vary in their personal financial preferences and attitudes toward money. To explore the relationship between the personal and political, we draw upon research in psychology, economics, and consumer science on personal economic values, such as materialism and the importance of saving money. Methods Using a survey of 340 adults, we test connections between political ideology, the Big Five personality traits, and money conservation and material values. Results Our data suggest that values regarding personal money conservation are unrelated to economic policy attitudes like welfare spending and wealth redistribution, but the value individuals place on material items is predictive of these political preferences. Conclusion By showing the political significance of personal (and nonpolitical) materialism values, we contribute to a rapidly growing literature showing that political attitudes and behaviors are best understood in the context of the larger social world.
Final Report of IUPUI Public Access to Research Data Working Group
(2022-04) Baich, Tina; Ben Miled, Zina; Berbari, Nick; Chu, Gabe; Coates, Heather; Erkins, Esther; Friesen, Amanda; Guiliano, Jen; Han, Jiali; Organ, Jason; Yoon, Ayoung
In light of the movement towards greater access to and transparency in research, the Association of American Universities (AAU) and Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) convened gatherings in October 2018 and February 2020 to provide a venue for learning, sharing, and planning (campus roadmaps) to support research universities in creating and implementing strategies and systems to provide public access to research data. At the request of Vice Chancellor of Research Janice Blum, Heather Coates and Tina Baich attended the February 2020 gathering. The primary goals of the 2020 convening were to identify best practices, where they exist, to develop a Guide to Accelerating Public Access to Research Data at Academic Institutions (now available here), and to develop a strategic plan for AAU and APLU to drive future actions. As a result, Coates and Baich proposed that the Vice Chancellor for Research convene a working group to further this work on the IUPUI campus. Vice Chancellor Blum charged the Public Access to Research Data Working Group (PARDWG) with investigating the current landscape of data sharing at IUPUI and creating a plan to increase awareness and provide education of campus stakeholders around public access to research data. Working Group members were invited to ensure broad representation of disciplines, acknowledging that data sharing happens differently in different disciplines.
Gender and Physiological Effects in Connecting Disgust to Political Preferences
(2011-12) Friesen, Amanda; Jacobs, Carly M
Sensitivity to disgust predicts social attitudes, but this relationship can shift depending on gender and whether response to disgust is measured through surveys or physiological tests. We are interested in exploring the relationship between gender, political preferences, and different measures of disgust. Methods We systematically evaluate these interrelationships by comparing self-reported disgust sensitivity and changes in skin conductance while viewing disgusting images, accounting for gender and attitudes toward gay marriage. Results We find that although there is no physiological difference between genders, opponents of gay marriage conform to gender-role expectations in self-reports, with women reporting higher levels of disgust than males. For males, physiological response better predicts attitudes on gay marriage because there are physiological, but not self-reported, differences between supporters and opponents. Self-report and physiology both predict gay marriage attitudes for females. Conclusion Our findings suggest that combining traditional survey and physiological measures provides leverage in exploring questions related to social behaviors and their origins.
Generational Change? The Effects of Family, Age, and Time on Moral Foundations
(DeGruyter, 2019) Friesen, Amanda; Political Science, School of Liberal Arts
One way to uncover the persistent role of religion across generations is to look past traditional understandings of religious belief and denominational belonging and examine the presence of bedrock principles that could influence political beliefs in families. The Moral Foundations framework was developed for this purpose – to describe human behavior and attitudes in the moral realm without relying upon country, culture, or time specific labels. In an original and rare three-generation dataset, college students, their parents, and their grandparents were asked about political attitudes and preferences for the Moral Foundations of Harm/Care, Fairness/Reciprocity, Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity. The Foundations are not equally shared across generations as preferences for each Foundation increase with the age of the cohorts in this sample, with especially large differences on Authority and Purity. A follow-up survey reveals that Moral Foundations may not be stable across even short periods of time. These findings suggest that the political appeals that may work on older Americans may be less effective on the younger generations. If individuals indeed make moral decisions based on these types of bedrock principles, understanding which of these principles or Foundations drive particular age groups can help us better understand shifts in public opinion.
The Higher Power of Religiosity Over Personality on Political Ideology
(Springer, 2019) Ksiazkiewicz, Aleksander; Friesen, Amanda; Political Science, School of Liberal Arts
Two streams of research, culture war and system justification, have proposed that religious orientations and personality, respectively, play critical roles in political orientations. There has been only limited work integrating these two streams. This integration is now of increased importance given the introduction of behavior-genetic frameworks into our understanding of why people differ politically. Extant research has largely considered the influence of personality as heritable and religiosity as social, but this view needs reconsideration as religiosity is also genetically influenced. Here we integrate these domains and conduct multivariate analyses on twin samples in the U.S. and Australia to identify the relative importance of genetic, environmental, and cultural influences. First, we find that religiosity’s role on political attitudes is more heritable than social. Second, religiosity accounts for more genetic influence on political attitudes than personality. When including religiosity, personality’s influence is greatly reduced. Our results suggest religion scholars and political psychologists are partially correct in their assessment of the “culture wars”—religiosity and ideology are closely linked, but their connection is grounded in genetic predispositions.

Browsing by Author "Friesen, Amanda"

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