Department of Political Science

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    Personality, Policies, and Partisanship: The Effect of Big Five Personality Traits on State-level Politics
    (Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2014-04-11) Ankenbruck, Mary; Dusso, Aaron
    Personality has always been viewed as an individual metric; however, ground-breaking research has changed that mentality. When examined in the aggregate, the personality scores of inhabitants create geographical psychological profiles that impact a multitude of political, economic, social, and health factors. These findings invite questions about what other regional differences are affected by the personalities of the inhabitants of the region, especially in the area of policy. This is especially interesting as other research has shown that on the individual level there are statistically significant correlations between personality traits and beliefs and behaviors that influence policy outcomes, such as religiosity and prejudice. Thus, in this paper e explore if these correlations extend to the state level. We do so by testing newly available state-wide Big Five personality t-scores for the 48 contiguous US states alongside state by state analysis of policy areas including marriage equality, abortion rights, death penalty, and gun rights. Preliminary results suggest that, when controlling for other factors such as demographics and partisanship, the personality profile of a state does indeed have an effect on the policies enacted within that state’s borders. The completion of this project will add to the growing body of political psychology research and may address important issues such as the polarization of politics and the overall importance of personality as both an individual and societal level metric.
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    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.
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    The Politics of Denying Communion to Catholic Elected Officials
    (De Gruyter, 2013-12) Blake, William D; Friesen, Amanda
    In his 2004 presidential campaign, John Kerry, a Catholic, was threatened with being denied Holy Communion because of his pro-choice voting record. This article investigates the extent to which communion denial impacted Catholic elected officials and analyzes public attitudes regarding communion denial for Kerry. The results of our analysis suggest that, despite heavy media coverage, few bishops endorsed the communion denial and few pro-choice Catholic officials were threatened. While the data also indicate there are meaningful political implications for public attitudes on communion denial, the tactic does not command support from many Catholics.
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    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.
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    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.
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    Religion, Politics and the Social Capital of Children
    (2013-07) Friesen, Amanda
    Using a national data set, this study demonstrates that religious traditionalism and political conservatism are positively related to family size and the interactions between these measures result in increased political participation. Combining the social capital of children and religiosity, these findings suggest that choosing to have more children may be based on beliefs about traditional gender roles and the importance of family in society, which in turn result in political engagement around these issues.
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    The Physiology of Political Participation
    (2013-03) Gruszczynski, Michael W; Friesen, Amanda; Jacobs, Carly M; Smith, Kevin B; Hibbing, John R
    Political involvement varies markedly across people. Traditional explanations for this variation tend to rely on demographic variables and self-reported, overtly political concepts. In this article, we expand the range of possible explanatory variables by hypothesizing that a correlation exists between political involvement and physiological predispositions. We measure physiology by computing the degree to which electrodermal activity changes on average when a participant sequentially views a full range of differentially valenced stimuli. Our findings indicate that individuals with higher electrodermal responsiveness are also more likely to participate actively in politics. This relationship holds even after the effects of traditional demographic variables are taken into account, suggesting that physiological responsiveness independently contributes to a fuller understanding of the underlying sources of variation in political involvement.
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    The Filibuster, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers
    (2003-04) Blake, William D
    The filibuster is inconsistent with the vision of the Senate expressed by the Framers in the Constitution, the Federalist Papers and early congressional history.