The Political Uses and Abuses of Civility and Incivility

After exploring the challenges involved in defining incivility, this chapter addresses the evolution of the concept, notes the dispute over trend lines, and précises work on its psychological effects. It then outlines some functions that civility and incivility serve, such as the functions of differentiating and mobilizing, marginalizing the powerless, expressing, and deliberating. The use of calls for civility as a means of social control is discussed, and then the chapter flags questions worthy of additional attention

Focus Group Discussions as Sites for Public Deliberation and Sensemaking Following Shared Political Documentary Viewing

This study examines the potential that shared political documentary viewing coupled with public deliberation via focus group discussion has for political sensemaking and civic engagement. Specifically, we examine college students’ perceptions of sensemaking, future civic engagement, and benefits of participating in group discussion following the shared viewing of D’Souza’s political documentary 2016: Obama’s America. Focus group participants reported that engaging in discussion served to clarify, affirm, and reinforce some initial impressions while opening their eyes to new insights and information. Focus group participation triggered a desire to seek out and hear additional diverse points of view and offered participants the opportunity to diffuse negative emotions and reflect upon media content. Participants reported that they enjoyed participating in this form of guided discussion, reported increased confidence in their abilities to engage in public political deliberation, and reported feeling a call to future civic action. Our findings show that political documentary viewing coupled with focus group discussions can be a productive site for public deliberation that can lead to enhanced sensemaking and positive future civic behaviors including intentions to extend discussions to personal networks and to research issues raised in the discussion or documentary. We address implications for deliberative pedagogy and focus groups as public deliberation

TRACE: A Stigmergic Crowdsourcing Platform for Intelligence Analysis

Crowdsourcing has become a frequently adopted approach to solving various tasks from conducting surveys to designing products. In the field of reasoning-support, however, crowdsourcing-related research and application have not been extensively implemented. Reasoning-support is essential in intelligence analysis to help analysts mitigate various cognitive biases, enhance deliberation, and improve report writing. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to designing a crowdsourcing platform that facilitates stigmergic coordination, awareness, and communication for intelligence analysis. We have partly materialized our proposal in the form of a crowdsourcing system which supports intelligence analysis: TRACE (Trackable Reasoning and Analysis for Collaboration and Evaluation). We introduce several stigmergic approaches integrated into TRACE and discuss the potential experimentation of these approaches. We also explain the design implications for further development of TRACE and similar crowdsourcing systems to support reasoning

Effective Mitigation of Anchoring Bias, Projection Bias, and Representativeness Bias from Serious Game-based Training

AbstractAlthough human use of heuristics can result in ‘fast and frugal’ decision-making, those prepotent tendencies can also impair our ability to make optimal choices. Previous work had suggested such cognitive biases are resistant to mitigation training. Serious games offer a method to incorporate desirable elements into a training experience, and allow the use of mechanisms that enhance learning and retention. We developed a game to train recognition and mitigation of three forms of cognitive bias: anchoring, a tendency to be inordinately influenced by one piece of information; projection, an implicit assumption that others think or know what you do; and representativeness, judging the likelihood of a hypothesis by how much the available data resembles it. Participants were randomly assigned to play the training game once, twice spaced by 10 to 12 days, or a control condition that used a training video. External questionnaire-based assessments were given immediately post-training and 12 weeks later. Superior training was seen from the game. An independent group using our training game with their own novel bias assessment instruments (to which the researchers and game-developers had no access or content information) validated the key finding. These results demonstrate the viability and high value of using serious computer games to train mitigation of cognitive biases

The gender gap in political knowledge: Do women know less than men about politics?

Gender gaps in political knowledge have been found persistently in the social science literature. The central argument of this dissertation is that the gender gap in political knowledge is the product of a complex set of political, social, and psychological factors. Gender, although seemingly easy to measure as male or female, represents more than one\u27s anatomy. Gender encompasses one\u27s political, social, and psychological disposition as well. Eighteen hypotheses about the gender gap in political knowledge are tested in this dissertation. The data used to test these hypotheses come from seven national and local surveys, drawing heavily from the 2000 and 2004 National Annenberg Election Surveys. Evidence from this dissertation shows that the gender gap in political knowledge results from men\u27s greater propensity to guess at questions, higher incomes, higher levels of political interest, higher levels of political efficacy and perceived learning, and higher levels of debate viewing. To further complicate the matter, the culture of the state in which one resides differentially affects men\u27s and women\u27s knowledge levels. Women living in states with high proportions of female representation in state legislatures are more likely to hold information about presidential candidates than those living in states with fewer female state representatives. These effects are not as strong for men. The complexity of the gender gap in political knowledge is important because it suggests that a multifaceted approach is needed to address women\u27s differential engagement in the political process. The results of my research underscore that the effects of socialization are pervasive and are difficult to override. Consequently, changes in political structure are slow to occur

The gender gap in political knowledge: Do women know less than men about politics?

Gender gaps in political knowledge have been found persistently in the social science literature. The central argument of this dissertation is that the gender gap in political knowledge is the product of a complex set of political, social, and psychological factors. Gender, although seemingly easy to measure as male or female, represents more than one\u27s anatomy. Gender encompasses one\u27s political, social, and psychological disposition as well. Eighteen hypotheses about the gender gap in political knowledge are tested in this dissertation. The data used to test these hypotheses come from seven national and local surveys, drawing heavily from the 2000 and 2004 National Annenberg Election Surveys. Evidence from this dissertation shows that the gender gap in political knowledge results from men\u27s greater propensity to guess at questions, higher incomes, higher levels of political interest, higher levels of political efficacy and perceived learning, and higher levels of debate viewing. To further complicate the matter, the culture of the state in which one resides differentially affects men\u27s and women\u27s knowledge levels. Women living in states with high proportions of female representation in state legislatures are more likely to hold information about presidential candidates than those living in states with fewer female state representatives. These effects are not as strong for men. The complexity of the gender gap in political knowledge is important because it suggests that a multifaceted approach is needed to address women\u27s differential engagement in the political process. The results of my research underscore that the effects of socialization are pervasive and are difficult to override. Consequently, changes in political structure are slow to occur

The gender gap in political knowledge: Do women know less than men about politics?

Gender gaps in political knowledge have been found persistently in the social science literature. The central argument of this dissertation is that the gender gap in political knowledge is the product of a complex set of political, social, and psychological factors. Gender, although seemingly easy to measure as male or female, represents more than one\u27s anatomy. Gender encompasses one\u27s political, social, and psychological disposition as well. Eighteen hypotheses about the gender gap in political knowledge are tested in this dissertation. The data used to test these hypotheses come from seven national and local surveys, drawing heavily from the 2000 and 2004 National Annenberg Election Surveys. Evidence from this dissertation shows that the gender gap in political knowledge results from men\u27s greater propensity to guess at questions, higher incomes, higher levels of political interest, higher levels of political efficacy and perceived learning, and higher levels of debate viewing. To further complicate the matter, the culture of the state in which one resides differentially affects men\u27s and women\u27s knowledge levels. Women living in states with high proportions of female representation in state legislatures are more likely to hold information about presidential candidates than those living in states with fewer female state representatives. These effects are not as strong for men. The complexity of the gender gap in political knowledge is important because it suggests that a multifaceted approach is needed to address women\u27s differential engagement in the political process. The results of my research underscore that the effects of socialization are pervasive and are difficult to override. Consequently, changes in political structure are slow to occur