Ten
Examples of Abstracts
Example One
By allowing voters to choose
among candidates with competing policy orientations and by providing
incentives for incumbents to shape policy in the direction the
public desires, elections are thought to provide the foundation that
links government policy to the preferences of the governed. In this
article I examine the extent to which the preference/policy link is
biased toward the preferences of high-income Americans. Using an
original data set of almost two thousand survey questions on
proposed policy changes between 1981 and 2002, I find a moderately
strong relationship between what the public wants and what the
government does, albeit with a strong bias toward the status quo.
But I also find that when Americans with different income levels
differ in their policy preferences, actual policy outcomes strongly
reflect the preferences of the most affluent but bear virtually no
relationship to the preferences of poor or middle-income Americans.
The vast discrepancy I find in government responsiveness to citizens
with different incomes stands in stark contrast to the ideal of
political equality that Americans hold dear. Although perfect
political equality is an unrealistic goal, representational biases
of this magnitude call into question the very democratic character
of our society.
--Martin Gilens,
“Inequality and Democratic Responsiveness,” Public Opinion Quarterly 2005
69(5):778-796.
Example Two
We address the role of racial
antagonism in whites’ opposition to racially-targeted policies. The data come
from four surveys selected for their unusually rich measurement of both policy
preferences and other racial attitudes: the 1986 and 1992 National Election
Studies, the 1994 General Social Survey, and the 1995 Los Angeles County Social
Survey. They indicate that such opposition is more strongly rooted in racial
antagonism than in non-racial conservatism, that whites tend to respond to
quite different racial policies in similar fashion, that racial attitudes affect
evaluations of black and ethnocentric white presidential candidates, and that
their effects are just as strong among college graduates as among those with no
college education. Second, we present evidence that symbolic racism is
consistently more powerful than older forms of racial antagonism, and its
greater strength does not diminish with controls on non-racial ideology,
partisanship, and values. The origins of symbolic racism lie
partly in both anti-black antagonism and non-racial conservative attitudes and
values, and so mediates their effects on policy preferences, but it
explains substantial additional variance by itself, suggesting that it does
represent a new form of racism independent of older racial and political
attitudes. The findings are each replicated several times with different
measures, in different surveys conducted at different times. We also provide
new evidence in response to earlier critiques of research on symbolic racism.
--David O. Sears, Colette Van Laar, Mary Carrillo, and Rick Kosterman,
“Is It Really Racism? The Origins of White Americans` Opposition to
Race-Targeted Policies,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 1997; 61 (1): 15-63.
Example Three
A poorly devised exit poll
question undermined meaningful analysis of voters’ concerns in the
2004 presidential election. Twenty-two percent of voters picked
"moral values" from a list of "issues"
describing what mattered most in their vote, more than selected any
other item. Various commentators have misinterpreted this single
data point to conclude that moral values are an ascendant political
issue and to credit conservative Christian groups with turning
George W. Bush’s popular vote defeat in 2000 into his three
million–vote margin of victory in 2004. We suggest, rather,
that while morals and values are critical in informing political
judgments, they represent personal characteristics and ill-defined
policy preferences far more than any discrete political issue. First
by conflating morals and values and then by further conflating
characteristics and issues, the exit poll’s "issues" list
distorted our understanding of the 2004 election. In this article,
we examine the flaws in the 2004 National Election Pool exit poll’s
"most important issue" question and explore the presumed
rising electoral importance of moral values and the conservative
Christians who overwhelmingly selected this item. Using national
exit poll data from 1980 through 2004 and other national surveys, we
find that the moral values item on the issues list cannot properly
be viewed as a discrete issue or set of closely related issues; that
its importance to voters has not grown over time; and that when
controlled for other variables, it ranks low on the issues list in
predicting 2004 vote choices. The aggregated exit poll data also
show that the voting behavior of conservative Christians is
relatively stable over time, and these voters were not primarily responsible
for Bush’s improvement in 2004 over 2000.
--Gary Langer and Jon Cohen,
“Voters and Values in the 2004 Election,” Public Opinion Quarterly 2005 69(5):744-759
Example Four
In Racism Without Racists:
Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United
States, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva examines how whites use color-blindness as a
tool to perpetuate racial inequality without themselves sounding racist. He
asserts that white
Keith R. Walsh, “Color-Blind
Racism in Grutter and Gratz:
Racism without Racists,” 24
Example Five
This essay explores the ethics of how the
press covers presidential nomination campaigns. It considers the implications
of a predictive model that demonstrates how the nomination process limits
voters’ choices. Nominees may be predicted with a high degree of success before
voting begins. Horse-race press coverage of the pre-primary period dramatically
characterizes the process as unstable and up for grabs. By doing so, the press
paradoxically contributes to the stability and, therefore, is complicit in limiting
voter choice. The essay argues for telling the story of the impact of policy
and governance on citizens’ lives.
--Andrew R. Cline, “Primary Instability
Paradox: The Ethics of Media Coverage in Presidential Nominations,” The Forum Volume 3, Issue 4 (2006)
Article 5.
Example Six
This article reports the results of several field experiments designed
to measure campaign effects in partisan contests. The findings suggest
incumbent campaigns failed to increase incumbent vote share, whereas the
challenger campaign was effective. To understand these and other results, the
incumbent’s optimal spending strategy was analyzed theoretically. The analysis
reveals that if incumbents maximize their probability of victory rather than
vote share, campaigns by typical incumbents are expected to produce only minimal improvement in
incumbent vote share. The analysis also explains how returns to campaign
spending vary with the competitiveness of the election, how incumbent spending
can improve the incumbent’s probability of victory yet have only minimal effect
on incumbent vote share, and why rational spending plans might decrease the sponsor’s expected vote. This article
demonstrates the wide scope of application for field experiments and provides an
example of how experimental findings can serve as a catalyst for generating
theories.
--Alan S. Gerber, “Does Campaign Spending Work? Field
Experiments Provide Evidence and Suggest New Theory,” American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 47
No. 5, January 2004 541-574
Example Seven
Analyses of the persuasive
effects of media exposure outside the laboratory have generally produced
negative results. I attribute such nonfindings in part to carelessness regarding the
inferential consequences of measurement error and in part to limitations of
research design. In an analysis of
opinion change during the 1980 presidential campaign, adjusting for measurement
error produces several strong media exposure effects, especially for network
television news. Adjusting for
measurement error also makes preexisting opinions look much more stable,
suggesting that the new information absorbed via media exposure must be about
three times as distinctive as has generally been supposed in order to account
for observed patterns of opinion change.
--Larry M. Bartels, “Messages
Received: The Political Impact of Media Exposure,” APSR 87 (June 1993) 2: 267-285.
Example Eight
There is a burgeoning literature
on the aetiology, performance and consequences of
violence. Research straddles a variety
of disciplines including law, sociology, psychology, anthropology, criminology,
military history, and theology. The ‘violentization theory’ of Lonnie Athens is seldom
encountered in the literature, although it provides an interesting way of
re-framing traditional questions about violence as a process. This article serves as a critical
introduction to violentization and draws on a range
of source material not usually found in criminological research to test the
limits of Athen’s approach.
--Ian O’Donnel,
“A New Paradigm for Understanding Violence? Testing the Limits of Lonnie Athen’s Theory,” Brit.
J. Criminol. (2003) 43, 750-771.
Example Nine
Longitudinal
studies suggest that law school has a corrosive effect on the well-being,
values, and motivation of students, ostensibly because of its problematic
institutional culture. In a 3-year study of two different law schools, the
authors applied self-determination theory’s (SDT) dynamic process model of
thriving to explain such findings. Students at both schools declined in
psychological need satisfaction and well-being over the 3 years. However,
student reports of greater perceived autonomy support by faculty predicted less
radical declines in need satisfaction, which in turn predicted better well-being
in the 3rd year and also a higher grade point average, better bar exam results,
and more selfdetermined motivation for the first job
after graduation. Institution-level analyses showed that although students at
both schools suffered, one school was perceived as more controlling than the
other, predicting greater difficulties for its students. Implications for SDT
and for legal education are discussed.
--Kennon M. Sheldon and
Example Ten
Most people are caring and will exert great effort to rescue
individual victims whose needy plight comes to their attention. These same good
people, however, often become numbly indifferent to the plight of individuals
who are “one of many” in a much greater problem. Why does this occur? The
answer to this question will help us answer a related question that is the
topic of this paper: Why, over the past century, have good people repeatedly
ignored mass murder and genocide? Every episode of mass murder is unique and
raises unique obstacles to intervention. But the repetitiveness of such
atrocities, ignored by powerful people and na-tions,
and by the general public, calls for explanations that may reflect some
fundamental deficiency in our humanity—a deficiency that, once
identified, might possibly be overcome. One fundamental mechanism that may play
a role in many, if not all, episodes of mass-murder neglect involves the
capacity to experience affect, the positive and negative feelings that
combine with reasoned analysis to guide our judgments, decisions, and actions.
I shall draw from psychological research to show how the statistics of mass
murder or genocide, no matter how large the numbers, fail to convey the true
meaning of such atrocities. The reported numbers of deaths represent dry
statistics, “human beings with the tears dried off,” that fail to spark emotion
or feeling and thus fail to motivate action. Recognizing that we cannot rely
only upon our moral feelings to motivate proper action against genocide, we
must look to moral argument and international law. The 1948 Genocide Convention
was supposed to meet this need, but it has not been effective. It is time to
examine this failure in light of the psychological deficiencies described here
and design legal and institutional mechanisms that will enforce proper response
to genocide and other forms of mass murder.
--Paul Slovic , “If I Look at the
Mass I Will Never Act”: Psychic Numbing and Genocide,” Judgment and Decision
Making, 2, 79-95.