Poli Sci Exam 1: Attitudes, Socialization, and Personality

Explain the Lavine et al. (2000) attitude model:

Starts from self-interests, social identity, and value-relevance to all go into attitude involvement. That is, from our own self-interests, identity, and value-relevance, we come up with an attitude. From there, the processing of it is affected by motivations and we go into selective information processing. After selective info processing, we consider either the extremity or ambivalence to result in attitude expression.

What is an electoral authoritarianism regime?

Has an institution of electoral democracy but systematically favors incumbent such that it is very difficult for opposition to win election.

Give brief overview of the Tertytechnaya study about Russia and the protests in response to election fraud rumors. Key findings?

Authors used Russia as a case study for how protests affect political attitudes. Key findings are that the protests early on generate rapid support for the demands of the protest movement, but with time, this dies down. Also, coverage of protests on media and the use of repression against protesters dampens support for the protest movement.

Define socialization:

Learning of social patterns corresponding to [the individual’s] societal positions as mediated through various agencies of society

What are some socialization environments?

Family, school, community spaces, political environments, etc

What are the mechanisms of socialization?

Observation, political talk, participation, and transmission of collective memories

In Bos et al.’s (2022) study of children’s political aspirations and conceptions, how does socialization affect children by gender and age?

Both boys and girls perceive politics as male dominated, and among girls, that is where the change across childhood is really observed. With increase in age, girls are more likely to draw men as political leaders and less likely to describe political leaders as possessing feminine traits. In essence due to socialization, girls are learning to believe that political leaders should possess masculine traits or be men, which also decreases their own interests in politics (since they are not men).

What are key moments? Give some examples.

Periods of time in which an individual undergoes major changes that may open possibilities to change attitudes. Examples include entry into young adulthood, having children, any life-altering experience.

How can life cycle affect changes in religious identity? (the study mentioned)

The key moment of having young children leads to the opportunity to observe previous patterns reverse (shifting social ID to shift religious ID)

What are the big 5 personality traits? Briefly explain each.

O - Openness to experience = imaginative/creative vs. conventional

C - Conscientiousness = concerns the way in which we control, regulate, and direct our impulses

E - Extraversion = pronounced engagement with the external world/level of want to socialize

A - Agreeableness = individual differences in concern with cooperation and social harmony

N - Neuroticism = tendency to experience negative feelings

What are dispositional traits?

Also known as personality traits, observable and labelled based on what we assign

What are characteristic adaptations?

Individual-level differences contextualized in time, situations, and social roles. - influenced by personality and more contextual based

Consistent results with personality and political behavior? Inconsistent?

High in extraversion = higher political participation

High in openness to experiences = liberalism

Higher in conscientiousness = conservatism

Neuroticism and agreeableness are inconsistent.

What is the Mondak model of how personality affects/leads to political behavior?

Start off with biological factors that feed into environment, personality, and additional mediating factors. From environment + personality you get to contingent effects of personality. Political behavior arises from combo of personality, environment, additional, and contingent.

Altemeyer vs. Feldman views on Right-wing Authoritarianism?

Altemeyer says it is about aggression towards outgroups/submission to authority - based on social learning theories

Feldman says it is about conflict of values in context to threat perception

What myths promote hierarchy?

Hierarchy-Enhancing Legitimizing Myths

What myths promote equality?

Hierarchy-Attenuating Legitimizing Myths

RWA vs. SDO?

RWA is about adherence to norms, while SDO is about hierarchy