Do disagreeable political discussion networks undermine attitude strength?

How attitudes change and affect behavior depends, in large part, on their strength. Strong attitudes are more resistant to persuasion and are more likely to produce attitude-consistent behavior. But what influences attitude strength? In this paper, we explore a widely discussed, but rarely investigated, factor: an individual’s political discussion network. What prior work exists offers a somewhat mixed picture, finding sometimes that disagreeable networks weaken attitudes and other times that they strengthen attitudes. We use a novel national representative dataset to explore the relationship between disagreeable networks and attitude strength. We find, perhaps surprisingly, no evidence that disagreements in networks affect political attitude strength. We conclude by discussing likely reasons for our findings, which, in turn, provide a research agenda for the study of networks and attitude strength

The generalizability of survey experiments

Survey experiments have become a central methodology across the social sciences. Researchers can combine experiments’ causal power with the generalizability of population-based samples. Yet, due to the expense of population-based samples, much research relies on convenience samples (e.g., students, online opt-in samples). The emergence of affordable, but non-representative online samples has reinvigorated debates about the external validity of experiments. We conduct two studies of how experimental treatment effects obtained from convenience samples compare to effects produced by population samples. In Study 1, we compare effect estimates from four different types of convenience samples and a population-based sample. In Study 2, we analyze treatment effects obtained from 20 experiments implemented on a population-based sample and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. The results reveal considerable similarity between many treatment effects obtained from convenience and nationally representative population-based samples. While the results thus bolster confidence in the utility of convenience samples, we conclude with guidance for the use of a multitude of samples for advancing scientific knowledge

An Experimental Investigation of Colonel Blotto Games

"This article examines behavior in the two-player, constant-sum Colonel Blotto game with asymmetric resources in which players maximize the expected number of battlefields won. The experimental results support all major theoretical predictions. In the auction treatment, where winning a battlefield is deterministic, disadvantaged players use a 'guerilla warfare' strategy which stochastically allocates zero resources to a subset of battlefields. Advantaged players employ a 'stochastic complete coverage' strategy, allocating random, but positive, resource levels across the battlefields. In the lottery treatment, where winning a battlefield is probabilistic, both players divide their resources equally across all battlefields." (author's abstract)"Dieser Artikel untersucht das Verhalten von Individuen in einem 'constant-sum Colonel Blotto'-Spiel zwischen zwei Spielern, bei dem die Spieler mit unterschiedlichen Ressourcen ausgestattet sind und die erwartete Anzahl gewonnener Schlachtfelder maximieren. Die experimentellen Ergebnisse bestätigen alle wichtigen theoretischen Vorhersagen. Im Durchgang, in dem wie in einer Auktion der Sieg in einem Schlachtfeld deterministisch ist, wenden die Spieler, die sich im Nachteil befinden, eine 'Guerillataktik' an, und verteilen ihre Ressourcen stochastisch auf eine Teilmenge der Schlachtfelder. Spieler mit einem Vorteil verwenden eine Strategie der 'stochastischen vollständigen Abdeckung', indem sie zufällig eine positive Ressourcenmenge auf allen Schlachtfeldern positionieren. Im Durchgang, in dem sich der Gewinn eines Schlachtfeldes probabilistisch wie in einer Lotterie bestimmt, teilen beide Spieler ihre Ressourcen gleichmäßig auf alle Schlachtfelder auf." (Autorenreferat

Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a massive global health crisis. Because the crisis requires large-scale behaviour change and places significant psychological burdens on individuals, insights from the social and behavioural sciences can be used to help align human behavior with the recommendations of epidemiologists and public health experts. Here we review experimental and correlational data from a selection of research topics relevant to pandemics, including work on navigating threats, social and cultural influences on behaviour, science communication, moral decision-making, leadership, and stress and coping. In each section, we note the nature and quality of prior research, including uncertainty and unsettled issues. We identify several insights for effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and also highlight important gaps researchers should move quickly to fill in the coming weeks and months

Uncovering Blind Spots in Urban Carbon Management: The Role of Consumption-Based Carbon Accounting in Bristol, UK

The rapid urbanisation of the twentieth century, along with the spread of high-consumption urban lifestyles, has led to cities becoming the dominant drivers of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing these impacts is crucial, but production-based frameworks of carbon measurement and mitigation—which encompass only a limited part of cities’ carbon footprints—are much more developed and widely applied than consumption-based approaches that consider the embedded carbon effectively imported into a city. Frequently, therefore, cities are left blind to the importance of their wider consumption-related climate impacts, while at the same time left lacking effective tools to reduce them. To explore the relevance of these issues, we implement methodologies for assessing production- and consumption-based emissions at the city-level and estimate the associated emissions trajectories for Bristol, a major UK city, from 2000 to 2035. We develop mitigation scenarios targeted at reducing the former, considering potential energy, carbon and financial savings in each case. We then compare these mitigation potentials with local government ambitions and Bristol’s consumption-based emissions trajectory. Our results suggest that the city’s consumption-based emissions are three times the production-based emissions, largely due to the impacts of imported food and drink. We find that low-carbon investments of circa £3 billion could reduce production-based emissions by 25% in 2035. However, we also find that this represents <10% of Bristol’s forecast consumption-based emissions for 2035 and is approximately equal to the mitigation achievable by eliminating the city’s current levels of food waste. Such observations suggest that incorporating consumption-based emission statistics into cities’ accounting and decision-making processes could uncover largely unrecognised opportunities for mitigation that are likely to be essential for achieving deep decarbonisation

Can burglary prevention be low-carbon and effective? Investigating the environmental performance of burglary prevention measures

There has been limited study to date on the environmental impacts of crime prevention measures. We address this shortfall by estimating the carbon footprint associated with the most widely used burglary prevention measures: door locks, window locks, burglar alarms, lighting and CCTV cameras. We compare these footprints with a measure of their effectiveness, the security protection factor, allowing us to identify those measures that are both low-carbon and effective in preventing burglary. Window locks are found to be the most effective and low-carbon measure available individually. Combinations of window locks, door locks, external and indoor lightings are also shown to be effective and low-carbon. Burglar alarms and CCTV do not perform as strongly, with low security against burglary and higher carbon footprints. This information can be used to help inform more sustainable choices of burglary prevention within households as well as for crime prevention product design

Coalition governance and foreign policy decision making

This article explores processes of coalition governance in foreign policy. Specifically, it argues that such processes are shaped by two interrelated dimensions of coalition set-up: first, the allocation of the foreign ministry to the senior or a junior coalition partner and, second, the degree of policy discretion which is delegated to that ministry. Bringing these two dimensions together, the article distinguishes four types of coalition arrangement for the making of foreign policy, which are expected to have predictable implications for the process of foreign policy-making and, ultimately, for the foreign policy outputs of multi-party coalitions and their quality

Justice from an interdisciplinary perspective: the impact of the revolution in Human Sciences on Peace Research and International Relations

Peace and justice have been a preferred couple in theoretical writings - but what do we know about their empirical relationship? Insights from other disciplines suggest that humans are highly sensitive to violations of justice and that justice concerns permeate social relations. Neuroscientists have located the parts of the brain responsible for negative reactions to violation of claims for justice. Evolutionary biologists have identified rules of distribution and retribution not only in early human societies but among other socially living species as well. Psychologists have observed the emergence of a sense of justice in very early childhood, while behavioral economists have identified behavior of average persons in experiments that deviated significantly from the model of the "economic man" and could only be explained by a sense of justice. The chapter summarizes these findings and outlines their implications for peace research. It highlights the ambivalent nature of justice for social relations. Justice concerns can exacerbate conflicts between individuals and groups but justice can also provide standards for arriving at durable peaceful solutions to conflicts. Understanding these ambivalences and their repercussions for international and intrastate relations provides a promising path towards understanding conflict dynamics