Voters frequently misjudge the positions of parties in European Parliament elections on the basis of non-political factors

Voters are generally assumed to support parties in elections on the basis of their policy positions, but what factors affect how accurately voters can judge these positions? Peter Grand and Guido Tiemann assess the influence of so called ‘projection effects’ in European Parliament elections, whereby voters who like a particular party for non-political reasons are more likely to assume that the party is closer to their political views than may be the case in reality (and vice versa). Using data from the 2009 European Parliament elections, they illustrate that this phenomenon can play a significant role in voters’ judgement of parties

ESS10 – Kommentierter Tabellenband. Wichtige Ergebnisse ESS Welle 10 in Österreich

Die Europäische Sozialstudie (ESS) ist eine länderübergreifende, wissenschaftlich geleitete Umfrage der empirischen Sozialforschung, die Einstellungen und Verhaltensmuster der europäischen Bevölkerung erfasst. In der zehnten Welle, die 2021 erhoben wurde, waren 32 europäische Länder beteiligt. In der elften Welle, deren Feldarbeit voraussichtlich 2023 stattfindet, wird die Durchführung in bis zu 33 Ländern erwartet. Der ESS ist langfristig angelegt, wird zweijährig seit dem Jahr 2002 durchgeführt und folgt höchsten wissenschaftlichen Qualitätskriterien. Der vorliegende Bericht stellt detaillierte Ergebnisse der ESS Welle 10 in Österreich in Tabellenform mit kurzen deskriptiven Beschreibungen der Daten dar. Im Tabellenband sind die beiden Schwerpunktthemen („rotating modules“) der 10. Befragungswelle „Verständnisse und Beurteilungen der Demokratie“ und „Digitale soziale Kontakte im Arbeits- und Familienleben“ sowie ein extra Covid-19-Modul neben den Kernfragen des ESS enthalten. Die Ergebnisse werden jeweils differenziert nach soziodemographischen Merkmalen der Befragten (Geschlecht, Alter, formaler Bildungsabschluss, Erwerbsstatus und Nationalität) dargestellt

Deservingness als Heuristik oder als Automatismus?

Previous contributions have cogently addressed the effect of individual-specific and context-related features, preferences, and values on welfare attitudes. Imminent studies have also reviewed their collective impact on the construction and reform of social security systems. This article proceeds from subject- to object-related arguments and explores the effect, robustness, and stability of deservingness attributions on the willingness to enforce active labor market policies. We utilize a comprehensive survey experiment embedded with the European Social Survey (Round 8, fieldwork in 2016/17). Across twenty-three different countries, respondents were randomly assigned vignettes that characterize diverse levels of control, need, and reciprocity of benefit claimants. The empirical findings demonstrate that deservingness cues provide consistent and robust causal effects on the willingness to enforce active labor market policies. These findings are of scientific and political relevance because they enable self-interested political actors to frame benefit claimants and thus to impact political opinion on the welfare state more directly

Large-angle scattered light measurements for quantum-noise filter cavity design studies

Optical loss from scattered light could limit the performance of quantum-noise filter cavities being considered for an upgrade to the Advanced LIGO gravitational-wave detectors. This paper describes imaging scatterometer measurements of the large-angle scattered light from two high-quality sample optics, a high reflector and a beam splitter. These optics are each superpolished fused silica substrates with silica:tantala dielectric coatings. They represent the current state-of-the art optical technology for use in filter cavities. We present angle-resolved scatter values and integrate these to estimate the total scatter over the measured angles. We find that the total integrated light scattered into larger angles can be as small as 4 ppm.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figure

Welfare solidarities in the age of mass migration: evidence from European Social Survey 2016

Welfare opinion research has traditionally viewed migration as a potential hazard for welfare solidarity. In this article, we argue that while increased presence of foreigners can indeed make some people less supportive of public welfare provision in general or trigger opposition to migrants’ social rights, the link between migration and solidarity is not universally a negative one. Instead, many people can combine support for migration with high preferences for comprehensive social protection; others can endorse migration while they are not particularly supportive of an all-encompassing welfare state. Based on this line of reasoning we construct a taxonomy of four ideal types of welfare solidarity that are present in contemporary European welfare states. To illustrate the usefulness of this heuristic tool, we apply Latent Class Factor Analysis to European Social Survey round 8 data. We find that the majority of Europeans (56%) combine strong support for both migration and the welfare state (extended solidarity). However, exclusive solidarity is also widely spread as over a quarter of respondents (28%) oppose migration while expressing strong support for the welfare state. People who oppose migration and have relatively low preference for the welfare state (diminished solidarity) represent a small minority (5%). A little more than a tenth (11%) of Europeans endorse migration, but express relatively low support for the welfare state, which we assume to be a reflection of cosmopolitan solidarity. Despite considerable variation in the incidence of the four solidarities across countries, the preference structure is the same for all. Further, we find that at the individual level, the propensity to hold one of these types of solidarities is influenced by social trust, citizenship and country of birth, financial situation, education, and residence type. However, the extent of migration and social spending do not appear to be related with the propensity of holding either type of solidarity as the liberal’s dilemma and the welfare chauvinism theories would predict

Is memory enhanced by the context or survival threats? A quantitative and qualitative review on the survival processing paradigm

Consistent with an evolutionary perspective, memory may be enhanced when people are in precarious situations. Particularly, a survival processing effect (SPE) has been found whereby people have better memory for a list of items when the items are rated for their relevance in a grassland context that contains survival threats including predators, and the lack of food and water. In this article, we systematically review research that investigated the SPE to disentangle the contextual effects (e.g., grassland) from survival effects (e.g., presence of predators) on memory. A total of 56 articles (106 experiments) that reported findings relating to the SPE before January 2016 were identified and reviewed. Ten experiments assessed the contextual effect and 5 experiments assessed survival effects. Meta-analysis showed that both contextual and survival effects made medium contributions to improved memory, with survival effect having a greater overall effect compared to contextual effect. Based on a further qualitative review on the scenarios used in the experiments, we concluded that grassland contexts per se may have a weaker effect relative to the presence of survival threat in generating mnemonic advantage. The remaining articles consist of experiments that did not examine contextual or survival effects specifically. These set of findings support the notion that the improved memory for SPE largely stems from survival threat because of the lack of survival threat in the control conditions