Fair governance and interaction with government bothencourage voters to participate

Why do so many people in advanced democracies choose not to vote? While many scholars focus on electoral systems as an explanation for this trend, Matthew R. Miles argues that citizens’ experience with bureaucracy may be equally important. In new research which examines government and institutions in 35 countries, he finds that when people perceive that the courts, civil service, and other bureaucratic institutions are unfair, the less they are likely to vote

Appeals to voters’ moral foundations can be an effective rhetorical strategy for presidents.

One challenge a president faces is convincing those on the other side of the aisle to support their policies. But can presidents convince people from the opposite party by framing issues consistently with their moral values? To investigate, Matthew R. Miles analyzes voters’ reactions to President Obama’s rhetoric when it is framed to appeal to their moral foundations. He finds that such appeals can be convincing and persuasive, trumping voters’ political ideology

Public Messages, Private Support: Base Reaction to Presidential Rhetoric

President George W. Bush's attempt to reform Social Security in 2005 provides an opportunity to test the effects of presidential rhetoric on public support. I analyze survey data taken before and after President Bush's public campaign and I utilize a survey experiment conducted in May 2005 to measure the effects of his public campaign on support for his Social Security proposal. My analysis separates members of President Bush's core constituents from the general public. My findings show that, in general, support for the proposal declined after the public campaign, but that the public campaign successfully increased support for the Social Security proposal among President Bush's core constituents. I argue that modern presidents use the `bully pulpit' to speak to their core supporters

The Public Presidency: Increasing Return on Investment

Despite greater access to the media, greater resources to craft the perfect message and greater knowledge of the contours of public opinion (Heith 2000), presidents seem to be less persuasive (Edwards 2003, 2007, 2009). Paradoxically, modern presidents are more likely to take their message to the public than their predecessors. This paradox motivates continued exploration of the persuasive capacity of modern presidents, despite the flaws in the original "going public" paradigm. This dissertation explores several aspects of this paradox and in some instances clarifies and in others innovates on the existing literature. The focus of the existing literature on speech content and the tone of news coverage neglects individual level causal mechanisms that influence public acceptance of presidential messages. Sometimes persuasion is less a matter of the content of the message and more related to psychological motivations that influence how individuals respond to the person presenting the message. This dissertation adds both breadth and precision to the existing literature by exploring the influence of these psychological mechanisms on individual acceptance of presidential messages. In addition, this dissertation shows that sometimes our myopic focus on presidential persuasion is misplaced. Under certain conditions, presidents may use a public campaign for policy as a diversion, rather than an attempt to persuade the public. Thus, modern presidents may use the bully pulpit to exercise negative control of the public agenda rather than to persuade potential political converts

Imputing Risk Tolerance from Survey Responses

Economic theory assigns a central role to risk preferences. This paper develops a measure of relative risk tolerance using responses to hypothetical income gambles in the Health and Retirement Study. In contrast to most survey measures that produce an ordinal metric, this paper shows how to construct a cardinal proxy for the risk tolerance of each survey respondent. The paper also shows how to account for measurement error in estimating this proxy and how to obtain consistent regression estimates despite the measurement error. The risk tolerance proxy is shown to explain differences in asset allocation across households.

Risk Preferences in the PSID: Individual Imputations and Family Covariation

Survey measures of preference parameters provide a means for accounting for otherwise unobserved heterogeneity.This paper presents measures of relative risk tolerance based on responses to survey questions about hypothetical gambles over lifetime income.It discusses how to impute estimates of utility function parameters from the survey responses using a statistical model that accounts for survey response error. There is substantial heterogeneity in true preference parameters even after survey response error is taken into account.The paper discusses how to use the preference parameters imputed from the survey responses in regression models as a control for differences in preferences across individuals. This paper focuses on imputations for respondents in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID).It also studies the covariation of risk preferences among members of households.It finds fairly strong covariation in attitudes about risk -- between parents and children and especially between siblings and between spouses.

Alcohol Perceptions and Behavior in a Residential Peer Social Network

Personalized normative feedback is a recommended component of alcohol interventions targeting college students. However, normative data are commonly collected through campus-based surveys, not through actual participant-referent relationships. In the present investigation, we examined how misperceptions of residence hall peers, both overall using a global question and those designated as important peers using person-specific questions, were related to students’ personal drinking behaviors. Participants were 108 students (88% freshman, 54% White, 51% female) residing in a single campus residence hall. Participants completed an online baseline survey in which they reported their own alcohol use and perceptions of peer alcohol use using both an individual peer network measure and a global peer perception measure of their residential peers. We employed network autocorrelation models, which account for the inherent correlation between observations, to test hypotheses. Overall, participants accurately perceived the drinking of nominated friends but overestimated the drinking of residential peers. Consistent with hypotheses, overestimating nominated friend and global residential peer drinking predicted higher personal drinking, although perception of nominated peers was a stronger predictor. Interaction analyses showed that the relationship between global misperception and participant self-reported drinking was significant for heavy drinkers, but not non-heavy drinkers. The current findings explicate how student perceptions of peer drinking within an established social network influence drinking behaviors, which may be used to enhance the effectiveness of normative feedback interventions

Enrollment and Assessment of a First-Year College Class Social Network for a Controlled Trial of the Indirect Effect of a Brief Motivational Intervention

Heavy drinking and its consequences among college students represent a serious public health problem, and peer social networks are a robust predictor of drinking-related risk behaviors. In a recent trial, we administered a Brief Motivational Intervention (BMI) to a small number of first-year college students to assess the indirect effects of the intervention on peers not receiving the intervention. Objectives: To present the research design, describe the methods used to successfully enroll a high proportion of a first-year college class network, and document participant characteristics. Methods: Prior to study enrollment, we consulted with a student advisory group and campus stakeholders to aid in the development of study-related procedures. Enrollment and baseline procedures were completed in the first six weeks of the academic semester. Surveys assessed demographics, alcohol use, and social network ties. Individuals were assigned to a BMI or control group according to their dormitory location. Results: The majority of incoming first-year students (1342/1660; 81%) were enrolled (55% female, 52% nonwhite, mean age 18.6 [SD = 0.51]). Differences between the intervention and control group were noted in alcohol use, but were in large part a function of there being more substance-free dormitory floors in the control group. Conclusions: The current study was successful in enrolling a large proportion of a first-year college class and can serve as a template for social network investigations

Do Misperceptions of Peer Drinking Influence Personal Drinking Behavior? Results From a Complete Social Network of First-Year College Students

This study considered the influence of misperceptions of typical versus self-identified important peers\u27 heavy drinking on personal heavy drinking intentions and frequency utilizing data from a complete social network of college students. The study sample included data from 1,313 students (44% male, 57% White, 15% Hispanic/Latinx) collected during the fall and spring semesters of their freshman year. Students provided perceived heavy drinking frequency for a typical student peer and up to 10 identified important peers. Personal past-month heavy drinking frequency was assessed for all participants at both time points. By comparing actual with perceived heavy drinking frequencies, measures of misperceptions of heavy drinking (accurately estimate, overestimate, underestimate) were constructed for both general and important peers. These misperceptions were then used as predictors of concurrent and prospective personal heavy drinking frequency and intentions using network autocorrelation analyses. The majority of students (84.8%) overestimated, 11.3% accurately estimated, and 3.9% underestimated heavy drinking among their general peers, whereas 42.0% accurately estimated, 36.9% overestimated, and 21.1% underestimated important peers\u27 heavy drinking. For both referents, overestimation of peer heavy drinking was associated with more frequent heavy drinking and higher drinking intentions at both time points. Importantly, the effects of underestimating and overestimating close peers\u27 drinking on personal alcohol use were significant after controlling for the influence of misperceptions of general peers\u27 heavy drinking. Close peers are a critical referent group in assessments related to social norms for young adult alcohol use. Implications for prevention and intervention are discussed

Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortices Differentially Lateralize Prediction Errors and Outcome Valence in a Decision-Making Task.

The dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) is proposed to facilitate learning by signaling mismatches between the expected outcome of decisions and the actual outcomes in the form of prediction errors. The dACC is also proposed to discriminate outcome valence—whether a result has positive (either expected or desirable) or negative (either unexpected or undesirable) value. However, direct electrophysiological recordings from human dACC to validate these separate, but integrated, dimensions have not been previously performed. We hypothesized that local field potentials (LFPs) would reveal changes in the dACC related to prediction error and valence and used the unique opportunity offered by deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery in the dACC of three human subjects to test this hypothesis. We used a cognitive task that involved the presentation of object pairs, a motor response, and audiovisual feedback to guide future object selection choices. The dACC displayed distinctly lateralized theta frequency (3–8 Hz) event-related potential responses—the left hemisphere dACC signaled outcome valence and prediction errors while the right hemisphere dACC was involved in prediction formation. Multivariate analyses provided evidence that the human dACC response to decision outcomes reflects two spatiotemporally distinct early and late systems that are consistent with both our lateralized electrophysiological results and the involvement of the theta frequency oscillatory activity in dACC cognitive processing. Further findings suggested that dACC does not respond to other phases of action-outcome-feedback tasks such as the motor response which supports the notion that dACC primarily signals information that is crucial for behavioral monitoring and not for motor control