Satisfaction with public policy decisions is dependent on the racial composition of decision-makers, not only on the decisions themselves

When a lack of diversity in decision-making bodies signals to citizens that the policymaking process is inherently unfair, then it increases the likelihood that any outcomes detrimental to minorities are perceived as the result of systematic bias rather than unfortunate circumstances. Research by Matthew Hayes and Matthew Hibbing finds that Americans’ satisfaction with public policy decisions is dependent on the racial composition of decision-makers, not only on the decisions themselves, suggesting that governments work to ensure their decision-making bodies are more inclusive

Friends, relatives, sanity, and health: The costs of politics

Political scientists have long known that political involvement exacts costs but they have typically defined these costs in relatively narrow, largely economic terms. Though anecdotal evidence suggests that the costs of politics may in fact extend beyond economics to frayed personal relationships, compromised emotional stability, and even physical problems, no systematic evidence on these broader costs exists. We construct and validate batteries of survey items that delineate the physical, social, and emotional costs of political engagement and administer these items to a demographically representative sample of U.S. adults. The results suggest that a large number of Americans believe their physical health has been harmed by their exposure to politics and even more report that politics has resulted in emotional costs and lost friendships

Friends, relatives, sanity, and health: The costs of politics

Political scientists have long known that political involvement exacts costs but they have typically defined these costs in relatively narrow, largely economic terms. Though anecdotal evidence suggests that the costs of politics may in fact extend beyond economics to frayed personal relationships, compromised emotional stability, and even physical problems, no systematic evidence on these broader costs exists. We construct and validate batteries of survey items that delineate the physical, social, and emotional costs of political engagement and administer these items to a demographically representative sample of U.S. adults. The results suggest that a large number of Americans believe their physical health has been harmed by their exposure to politics and even more report that politics has resulted in emotional costs and lost friendships

The Effect of Personal Economic Values on Economic Policy Preferences

Objectives Citizens often express that the government should be run like a business or household in the way that money is saved and spent, though individuals vary in their personal financial preferences and attitudes toward money. To explore the relationship between the personal and political, we draw upon research in psychology, economics, and consumer science on personal economic values, such as materialism and the importance of saving money. Methods Using a survey of 340 adults, we test connections between political ideology, the Big Five personality traits, and money conservation and material values. Results Our data suggest that values regarding personal money conservation are unrelated to economic policy attitudes like welfare spending and wealth redistribution, but the value individuals place on material items is predictive of these political preferences. Conclusion By showing the political significance of personal (and nonpolitical) materialism values, we contribute to a rapidly growing literature showing that political attitudes and behaviors are best understood in the context of the larger social world

Disgust Sensitivity and the Neurophysiology of Left- Right Political Orientations

Disgust has been described as the most primitive and central of emotions. Thus, it is not surprising that it shapes behaviors in a variety of organisms and in a variety of contexts—including homo sapien politics. People who believe they would be bothered by a range of hypothetical disgusting situations display an increased likelihood of displaying right-of-center rather than left-of-center political orientations. Given its primal nature and essential value in avoiding pathogens disgust likely has an effect even without registering in conscious beliefs. In this article, we demonstrate that individuals with marked involuntary physiological responses to disgusting images, such as of a man eating a large mouthful of writhing worms, are more likely to self-identify as conservative and, especially, to oppose gay marriage than are individuals with more muted physiological responses to the same images. This relationship holds even when controlling for the degree to which respondents believe themselves to be disgust sensitive and suggests that people’s physiological predispositions help to shape their political orientations

The Relevance of Marine Chemical Ecology to Plankton and Ecosystem Function: An Emerging Field

Marine chemical ecology comprises the study of the production and interaction of bioactive molecules affecting organism behavior and function. Here we focus on bioactive compounds and interactions associated with phytoplankton, particularly bloom-forming diatoms, prymnesiophytes and dinoflagellates. Planktonic bioactive metabolites are structurally and functionally diverse and some may have multiple simultaneous functions including roles in chemical defense (antipredator, allelopathic and antibacterial compounds), and/or cell-to-cell signaling (e.g., polyunsaturated aldehydes (PUAs) of diatoms). Among inducible chemical defenses in response to grazing, there is high species-specific variability in the effects on grazers, ranging from severe physical incapacitation and/or death to no apparent physiological response, depending on predator susceptibility and detoxification capability. Most bioactive compounds are present in very low concentrations, in both the producing organism and the surrounding aqueous medium. Furthermore, bioactivity may be subject to synergistic interactions with other natural and anthropogenic environmental toxicants. Most, if not all phycotoxins are classic secondary metabolites, but many other bioactive metabolites are simple molecules derived from primary metabolism (e.g., PUAs in diatoms, dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP) in prymnesiophytes). Producing cells do not seem to suffer physiological impact due to their synthesis. Functional genome sequence data and gene expression analysis will provide insights into regulatory and metabolic pathways in producer organisms, as well as identification of mechanisms of action in target organisms. Understanding chemical ecological responses to environmental triggers and chemically-mediated species interactions will help define crucial chemical and molecular processes that help maintain biodiversity and ecosystem functionality

Twitter language use reflects psychological differences between Democrats and Republicans

Previous research has shown that political leanings correlate with various psychological factors. While surveys and experiments provide a rich source of information for political psychology, data from social networks can offer more naturalistic and robust material for analysis. This research investigates psychological differences between individuals of different political orientations on a social networking platform, Twitter. Based on previous findings, we hypothesized that the language used by liberals emphasizes their perception of uniqueness, contains more swear words, more anxiety-related words and more feeling-related words than conservatives' language. Conversely, we predicted that the language of conservatives emphasizes group membership, contains more certainty and more references to achievement and religion than liberals' language. We analysed Twitter timelines of 5,373 followers of three Twitter accounts of the American Democratic and 5,386 followers of three accounts of the Republican parties' Congressional Organizations. The results support most of the predictions and previous findings, confirming that Twitter behaviour offers valid insights to offline behaviour

Unifying behavioral inquiry: integrating personality traits and situational effects in the study of political behavior

We have developed a remarkable understanding of how the political environment influences individual political thought and action, but we have not made as much progress in developing our knowledge of the individual predispositions that citizens bring with them into the political world. In recent years, a novel research agenda has highlighted the role biological factors play in shaping political behavior. At the same time, there has been a resurgence of interest in personality traits in political behavior research, made possible by the rise of the Big Five in trait psychology. Though these streams (traditional environmental research, biology and politics, and personality and political behavior) have generally been viewed separately, the crucial next step for political behavior researchers will be to think about how they all fit together. In this dissertation I develop a framework for placing personality effects into a broader context. I argue that personality traits are stable, biologically-based dispositions and I demonstrate empirically that a substantial amount of the variance shared between traits and political behavior is heritable. These findings comport well with a theory of influence in which personality traits act as a mediator between genes and politics. Moving forward from this insight, we can use personality dispositions to form a better understanding of heterogeneous environmental effects. Personality traits interact with environmental stimuli to shape political behavior. People experience the political world differently and the richest and most satisfying theories going forward will account for these individual differences without losing sight of the crucial role played by the environment. Here, I show that personality traits play an important role in shaping political discussion behavior, but that role is subtle and conditional. I also find that personality traits play an important role in influencing individual decision making, but that the environment activates considerations that differ based on the personality characteristics of the individual. Taken together, the theoretical and empirical advances outlined here demonstrate the importance of devising models of human behavior that take individual differences seriously without forgetting about the important role played by the environment. By integrating the biological, with the environmental, the immediate with the long-term, and the political with the general psychological, we can forge a much stronger understanding of how humans behave in the political world