Locus of Control and Anti‐Immigrant Sentiment in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136464/1/pops12338_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136464/2/pops12338.pd

Race, prejudice and attitudes toward redistribution: A comparative experimental approach

Past work suggests that support for welfare in the United States is heavily influenced by citizens’ racial attitudes. Indeed, the idea that many Americans think of welfare recipients as poor Blacks (and especially as poor Black women) has been a common explanation for Americans’ lukewarm support for redistribution. This article draws on a new online survey experiment conducted with national samples in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, designed to extend research on how racialised portrayals of policy beneficiaries affect attitudes toward redistribution. A series of innovative survey vignettes has been designed that experimentally manipulate the ethno‐racial background of beneficiaries for various redistributive programmes. The findings provide, for the first time, cross‐national, cross‐domain and cross‐ethno‐racial extensions of the American literature on the impact of racial cues on support for redistributive policy. The results also demonstrate that race clearly matters for policy support, although its impact varies by context and by the racial group under consideration.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134286/1/ejpr12158.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134286/2/ejpr12158_am.pd

To follow or not to follow: Social norms and civic duty during a pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to widespread calls from government officials for people to drastically change their behaviour to slow the spread of the disease. From self-quarantining to maintaining physical distance from others, these measures only work if there is widespread adherence. In this article, we explore how one\u27s sense of duty and one\u27s perception of other people\u27s behaviour shape who follows health recommendations. Drawing on the 2020 Democracy Checkup survey, we show that one\u27s own sense of duty and a belief that most other Canadians are adhering to the rules decrease how often people report breaking the rules. Furthermore, among those who lack a sense of duty, a belief that others are following the rules is particularly important. We conclude by discussing how collective action in a pandemic depends on ensuring a broad sense that Canadians are in the crisis together, with everyone doing their part

Measuring Preferences and Behaviours in the 2019 Canadian Election Study

The 2019 Canadian Election Study (CES) consists of two separate surveys with campaign-period rolling cross-sections and post-election follow-ups. The parallel studies were conducted online and through an RDD-telephone survey. Both continue the long tradition of gathering information about the attitudes, opinions, preferences, and behaviours of the Canadian public. The online survey especially introduces some important innovations that open up the potential for exciting new research on subgroups in the electorate

Valuing Liberty or Equality? Empathetic Personality and Political Intolerance of Harmful Speech

Political tolerance is a core democratic value, yet a long-standing research agenda suggests that citizens are unwilling to put this value into practice when confronted by groups that they dislike. One of the most disliked groups, especially in recent times, are those promoting racist ideologies. Racist speech poses a challenge to the ideal of political tolerance because it challenges another core tenet of democratic politics – the value of equality. How do citizens deal with threats to equality when making decisions about what speech they believe should be allowed in their communities? In this article, we contribute to the rich literature on political tolerance, but focus on empathy as a key, and understudied, personality trait that should be central to how – and when – citizens reject certain types of speech. Empathy as a cognitive trait relates to one’s capacity to accurately perceive the feeling state of another person. Some people are more prone to worry and care about the feelings of other people, and such empathetic people should be most likely to reject speech that causes harm. Using a comparative online survey in Canada (n = 1,555) and the United States (n = 1627) conducted in 2017, we examine whether empathetic personalities - as measured by a modified version of the Toronto Empathy Scale - predict the tolerance of political activities by “least-liked” as well as prejudicially motivated groups. Using both a standard least-liked political tolerance battery, as well as a vignette experiment that manipulates group type, we test whether higher levels of trait empathy negatively correlate with tolerance of racist speech. Our findings show that empathy powerfully moderates the ways in which citizens react to different forms of objectionable speech