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

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

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

Political Attitudes Vary with Physiological Traits

Although political views have been thought to arise largely from individuals’ experiences, recent research suggests that they may have a biological basis. We present evidence that variations in political attitudes correlate with physiological traits. In a group of 46 adult participants with strong political beliefs, individuals with measurably lower physical sensitivities to sudden noises and threatening visual images were more likely to support foreign aid, liberal immigration policies, pacifism, and gun control, whereas individuals displaying measurably higher physiological reactions to those same stimuli were more likely to favor defense spending, capital punishment, patriotism, and the Iraq War. Thus, the degree to which individuals are physiologically responsive to threat appears to indicate the degree to which they advocate policies that protect the existing social structure from both external (outgroup) and internal (norm-violator) threats. Includes Supporting Materials

appendix – Supplemental material for The Trump Draw: Voter Personality and Support for Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican Nomination Campaign

<p>Supplemental material, appendix for The Trump Draw: Voter Personality and Support for Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican Nomination Campaign by David Fortunato, Matthew V. Hibbing, and Jeffery Mondak in American Politics Research</p

Trends in Skin Conductance and Heart Rate during Exposure to Disgusting Stimuli.

<p>The lines represent second by second readings (smoothed into three-second moving averages) of skin conductance levels or SCL (top line) and heart rate or HR (bottom line) during disgust image exposure as a proportion of these same physiological readings during the preceding inter-stimulus interval (ISI). For ease of interpretation, baselines have been standardized to equal 0. Positive numbers indicate an increase in the physiological response during viewing of the disgusting image relative to that existing during viewing of the ISI; negative numbers indicate a decrease.</p