2,483 research outputs found

    Moral Realism and the Search for Ideological Truth: A Philosophical-Psychological Collaboration

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    Scholars of ideology in social-scientific disciplines, including psychology, sociology, and political science, stand to benefit from taking seriously the philosophical contributions of Professor Peter Railton. This is because Railton provides much-needed conceptual precision—and a rare sense of epistemological and moral clarity—to a topic that is notoriously slippery and prone to relativistic musing and the drawing of false equivalences. In an essay entitled “Morality, Ideology, and Reflection: Or, the Duck Sits Yet,” Railton (2000/2003) aptly identified the purpose of ideological analysis as the unmasking of “nonepistemic” interests—that is, interests other than truth-seeking, accuracy, or warrant —that contribute to the development, adoption, and dissemination of political and religious belief systems

    Is There an Ideological Asymmetry in the Incumbency Effect? : Evidence From U.S. Congressional Elections

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    The electoral advantage that incumbent legislators enjoy over challengers in the U.S. Congress has been investigated extensively in political science. Very few studies, however, have considered the role of individual differences when it comes to incumbency preferences among voters. Based on theory and research in political psychology, we hypothesized that political conservatives would exhibit stronger preferences than liberals for incumbents over challengers from the same party. Extensive analyses based on more than 150,000 voters from seven election cycles in the United States from 2006 to 2018 support this hypothesis. A significant effect of conservatism on incumbency preferences was observed in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, and it was not attributable to Republican Party identification. This ideological asymmetry is consistent with system justification theory and prior research linking conservatism to risk aversion and status quo bias. Practical implications and directions for future research are discussed.Peer reviewe

    Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Antipathy Toward Immigrants and Sexual Minorities in the Early Days of the Coronavirus Pandemic in Italy

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    Theory and research in social, evolutionary, and political psychology indicates that subjective feelings of threat and exposure to objectively threatening circumstances—including pandemic diseases—may contribute to increased affinities for political conservatism, right-wing authoritarianism, and prejudice against out-group members. We investigated these possibilities in the context of Italy, which was the first Western country to be severely affected by the spread of COVID-19. Early on in the pandemic, from March 3–8, 2020, we surveyed 757 Italian adults ranging in age from 18 to 78 years. Results revealed that antipathy toward immigrants and sexual minorities was predicted by (male) sex, COVID-19 anxiety, RWA, and political distrust. Furthermore, COVID-19 anxiety magnified the effect of RWA on disliking of immigrants and sexual minorities (but not obese or disabled people). Contrary to prediction, political trust failed to attenuate the effects of COVID-19 anxiety or RWA on out-group antipathy. Implications for the theories of right-wing authoritarianism and political ideology as motivated social cognition, as well as the state of contemporary Italian politics are discussed

    Of Echo Chambers and Contrarian Clubs:Exposure to Political Disagreement Among German and Italian Users of Twitter

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    Scholars have debated whether social media platforms, by allowing users to select the information to which they are exposed, may lead people to isolate themselves from viewpoints with which they disagree, thereby serving as political “echo chambers.” We investigate hypotheses concerning the circumstances under which Twitter users who communicate about elections would engage with (a) supportive, (b) oppositional, and (c) mixed political networks. Based on online surveys of representative samples of Italian and German individuals who posted at least one Twitter message about elections in 2013, we find substantial differences in the extent to which social media facilitates exposure to similar versus dissimilar political views. Our results suggest that exposure to supportive, oppositional, or mixed political networks on social media can be explained by broader patterns of political conversation (i.e., structure of offline networks) and specific habits in the political use of social media (i.e., the intensity of political discussion). These findings suggest that disagreement persists on social media even when ideological homophily is the modal outcome, and that scholars should pay more attention to specific situational and dispositional factors when evaluating the implications of social media for political communication

    On Estimation of Fully Entangled Fraction

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    We study the fully entangled fraction (FEF) of arbitrary mixed states. New upper bounds of FEF are derived. These upper bounds make complements on the estimation of the value of FEF. For weakly mixed quantum states, an upper bound is shown to be very tight to the exact value of FEF.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure

    Of echo chambers and contrarian clubs: Exposure to political disagreement among German and Italian users of Twitter

    Get PDF
    Scholars have debated whether social media platforms, by allowing users to select the information to which they are exposed, may lead people to isolate themselves from viewpoints with which they disagree, thereby serving as political “echo chambers.” We investigate hypotheses concerning the circumstances under which Twitter users who communicate about elections would engage with (a) supportive, (b) oppositional, and (c) mixed political networks. Based on online surveys of representative samples of Italian and German individuals who posted at least one Twitter message about elections in 2013, we find substantial differences in the extent to which social media facilitates exposure to similar versus dissimilar political views. Our results suggest that exposure to supportive, oppositional, or mixed political networks on social media can be explained by broader patterns of political conversation (i.e., structure of offline networks) and specific habits in the political use of social media (i.e., the intensity of political discussion). These findings suggest that disagreement persists on social media even when ideological homophily is the modal outcome, and that scholars should pay more attention to specific situational and dispositional factors when evaluating the implications of social media for political communication

    Adaptive Response Enzyme AlkB Preferentially Repairs 1-Methylguanine and 3-Methylthymine Adducts in Double-Stranded DNA

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    The AlkB protein is a repair enzyme that uses an α-ketoglutarate/Fe(II)-dependent mechanism to repair alkyl DNA adducts. AlkB has been reported to repair highly susceptible substrates, such as 1-methyladenine and 3-methylcytosine, more efficiently in ss-DNA than in ds-DNA. Here, we tested the repair of weaker AlkB substrates 1-methylguanine and 3-methylthymine and found that AlkB prefers to repair them in ds-DNA. We also discovered that AlkB and its human homologues, ABH2 and ABH3, are able to repair the aforementioned adducts when the adduct is present in a mismatched base pair. These observations demonstrate the strong adaptability of AlkB toward repairing various adducts in different environments. (Chemical Equation Presented)
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