Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 1994, Vol 39(2), 225. Reviews the book, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion by John Zaller (1992). The author's commendable effort to specify a model of mass opinion formation offers readers an introduction to the prevailing vi

The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.

Advances in Experimental Social Psychology continues to be one of the most sought after and most often cited series in this field. Containing contributions of major empirical and theoretical interest, this series represents the best and the brightest in new research, theory, and practice in social psychology. This serial is part of the Social Sciences package on ScienceDirect. Visit info.sciencedirect.com for more information. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology is available online on ScienceDirect - full-text online of volume 32 onward. Elsevier book series on ScienceDirect gives multiple users throughout an institution simultaneous online access to an important complement to primary research. Digital delivery ensures users reliable, 24-hour access to the latest peer-reviewed content. The Elsevier book series are compiled and written by the most highly regarded authors in their fields and are selected from across the globe using Elsevier's extensive researcher network. For more information about the Elsevier Book Series on ScienceDirect Program, please visit store.elsevier.com. * One of the most sought after and most often cited series in this field* Contains contributions of major empirical and theoretical interest* Represents the best and the brightest in new research, theory, and practice in social psychology

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Advances in experimental social psychology

The course is focused on historical texts, most of them philosophical. Context for understanding the texts and the course of democratic development will be provided in lecture and discussions, and by some background readings (Dunn). We begin with the remarkable Athenian democracy, and its frequent enemy the Spartan oligarchy. In Athens legislation was passed directly by an assembly of all citizens, and executive officials were selected by lot rather than by competitive election. Athenian oligarchs such as Plato more admired Sparta, and their disdain for the democracy became the judgment of the ages, until well after the modern democratic revolutions. Marsilius of Padua in the early Middle Ages argued for popular sovereignty. The Italian citystates of the Middle Ages did without kings, and looked back to Rome and Greece for republican models. During the English Civil War republicans debated whether the few or the many should be full citizens of the regime. The English, French, and American revolutions struggled with justifying and establishing a representative democracy suitable for a large state, and relied on election rather than lot to select officials. The English established a constitutional monarchy, admired in Europe, and adapted by the Americans in their republican constitution. The American Revolution helped inspire the French, and the French inspired republican and democratic revolution throughout Europe during the 19 century.

/pdf/democracy-and-its-critics-2zxg086s7q.pdf

Democracy and Its Critics

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion Jonathan Haidt Pantheon Books, 2012One has likely heard that, for the sake of decorum, religion and politics should never be topics of conversation with strangers. Even amongst friends or even when it is known that others hold opposing political or religious views, why is it that discussion of religion and politics leads to visceral-level acrimony and that one's views are right and the other's views are wrong? Professor Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia examines the psychological basis of our "righteous minds" without resorting to any of the pejorative labeling that is usually found in a book on politics and religion and eschews a purely comparative approach. Haidt proposes the intriguing hypothesis that our visceral reaction to competing ideologies is a subconscious, rather than leaned, reaction that evolved over human evolution to innate senses of suffering, fairness, cheating and disease, and that moral foundations facilitated intra-group cooperation which in turn conferred survival advantages over other groups. These psychological mechanisms are genetic in origin and not necessarily amenable to rational and voluntary control - this is in part the reason debating one's ideological opposite more often leads to frustration rather than understanding. Haidt also suggests that morality is based on six "psychological systems" or foundations (Moral Foundations Theory), similar to the hypothesized adaptive mental modules which evolved to solve specific problems of survival in the human ancestral environment.While decorum pleads for more civility, it would be better, as Haidt suggests, dragging the issue of partisan politics out into the open in order to understand it and work around our righteous minds. Haidt suggests a few methods by which the level of rhetoric in American politics can be reduced, such that the political parties can at least be cordial as they have been in the past and work together to solve truly pressing social problems.There are a number of fascinating points raised in the current book, but most intriguing is the one that morality, ideology and religion are products of group selection, as adaptations that increased individual cooperation and suppressed selfishness, thereby increasing individual loyalty to the group. That morality, political ideology and religion buttress group survival is probably highly intuitive. However, given the contemporary focus on the individual as the source of adaptations, to the exclusion of all else, to suggest that adaptations such as religion and political ideology arose to enhance survival of groups is heresy or, as Haidt recounts, "foolishness". While previous rejection of group selection itself was due in part to conceptual issues, one could also point out the prevailing individualist social sentiment, "selfish gene" mentality and unrelenting hostility against those who supported the view that group selection did indeed apply to humans and not just to insects. Haidt gives a lengthy and convincing defense of group selection, his main point being that humans can pursue self- interest at the same time they promote self-interest within a group setting - humans are "90 percent chimp, 10 percent bees". One can readily observe in the news and entertainment mediate that religion is a frequent target of derision, even within the scientific community - Haidt points to the strident contempt that the "New Atheists" hold for religion. They claim that religion is purely a by-product of an adaptive psychological trait and as a mere by-product religion serves no useful purpose. However, the religious "sense" has somehow managed to persist in the human psyche. One explanation by the New Atheists of how religion propagated itself is that it is a "parasite" or "virus" which latches onto a susceptible host and induces the host to "infect" others. As a "virus" or "parasite" that is merely interested in its own survival, religion causes people to perform behaviors that do not increase their own reproductive fitness and may even be detrimental to survival, but religion spreads nonetheless. …

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age

A competent citizenry is the key to the legitimacy of direct democratic decisions, but just how competent are citizens in direct democracy? Understanding how citizens reason and how they make their decisions is ever more important as the use of direct democratic instruments is growing throughout the world. I propose a concept of citizen competence based on reasongiving. A competent citizen is one who bases his or her decisions on substantive, policy-related arguments, and who considers a diversity of arguments before taking a decision. In this thesis I use a multi-method approach, combining three different datasets to analyze citizen competence in direct democracy: cross-sectional post-ballot surveys from 34 popular votes in Switzerland; a panel dataset covering two referendum campaigns in Switzerland; and a lab experiment conducted in Scotland during the Scottish independence referendum in 2014. I found, that citizens have a surprisingly accurate knowledge of the policy-related arguments of the debate. Furthermore, arguments are significantly associated with vote intention, even when controlling for party preference. This first results highlight the importance of meaningful arguments in political opinion formation. However, a second finding of my project is that citizens tend to process arguments in a biased way, preferring arguments compatible with their prior beliefs and partisan attachments, and disregarding or devaluing incompatible information. Yet this tendency for directional, motivated reasoning can be discouraged by holding individuals accountable for their views, that is, by making them justify their position to others. The conclusions I draw for the legitimacy of direct democratic decisions are mixed. While citizens are not as uninformed and minimalist as they are often depicted in public opinion research, they are still partisan and find it difficult to process information impartially. Therefore, in order to enhance the legitimacy of direct democratic procedure, providing citizens with diverse and balanced information is necessary, but not sufficient. They need to encounter an environment where they are motivated to be accurate, for example, by being expected to justify themselves to others in cross-cutting discussions.

Partisan, not ignorant : citizens' use of arguments and justifications in direct democracy

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Partisan, not ignorant : citizens' use of arguments and justifications in direct democracy