The left, elections, and the political party system in the Philippines

Elections in the Philippines have long been the turf of trapos - traditional politicians identified with the country's oligarchic elite. At the same time, elections have been one of the weakest spots on the left. This is so not only because the trapos have always seen to it that there is no level playing field, but also because for some time, a large section of the left rejected elections as "bourgeois" exercises and chose to boycott them and fight in other arenas. This article examines the electoral challenge of the left - communists and the Communist Party-aligned "national democrats," as well as social democrats and independent socialists - to the trapos and traditional parties in the Philippines. The author argues that the left has not made much progress in breaking trapo domination over the post-Marcos political party and electoral systems not so much because of its long-held aversion to electoral politics, as some scholars contend, but more because of the persistence of an instrumental view of democratic processes and institutions - at least within a sizeable part of the left. But this is changing. The author observes that some emergent left parties have adopted or are moving toward an integral view of democracy. These emergent forces have made vital breakthroughs in the congressional party-list vote and are now more methodically entering other electoral contests, particularly at the barangay (village) and municipal levels

Implicit bias and experience influence overall but not relative trustworthiness judgment of other-race faces

Impressions of trustworthiness are formed quickly from faces. To what extent are these impressions shared among observers of the same or different races? Although high consensus of trustworthiness evaluation has been consistently reported, recent studies suggested substantial individual differences. For instance, negative implicit racial bias and low contact experience towards individuals of the other race have been shown to be related to low trustworthiness judgments for other-race faces. This pre-registered study further examined the effects of implicit social bias and experience on trustworthiness judgments of other-race faces. A relatively large sample of White (N=338) and Black (N=299) participants completed three tasks: a trustworthiness rating task of faces, a race implicit association test, and a questionnaire of experience. Each participant rated trustworthiness of 100 White faces and 100 Black faces. We found that the overall trustworthiness ratings for other-race faces were influenced by both implicit bias and experience with individuals of the other-race. Nonetheless, when comparing to the own-race baseline ratings, high correlations were observed for the relative differences in trustworthiness ratings of other-race faces for participants with varied levels of implicit bias and experience. These results suggest differential impact of social concepts (e.g., implicit bias, experience) vs. instinct (e.g., decision of approach-vs-avoid) on trustworthiness impressions, as revealed by overall vs. relative ratings on other-race faces

The Dark Tetrad Personality Traits Moderate the Relationship Between Ideological Passion and Violent Activism

Objective: This research examines the interface between ideological passion and the dark tetrad personality traits to predict violent (vs. peaceful) political activism. Meta-analytic research shows that ideological obsessive passion (OP) is one of the strongest psychological factors associated with violent activism. Here, we examine whether this relationship is magnified by the dark tetrad (i.e., Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism), which have often been associated with antisocial behavior. Method: In Studies 1A–C, the interaction between ideological passion and the dark tetrad was tested cross-sectionally with three distinct ideological groups, namely, Democrats (N = 566), Republicans (N = 479), and Black Lives Matter supporters (N = 204). In Study 2, we tested the same model using an experimental manipulation of obsessive (vs. harmonious) passion in a sample of environmentalists (N = 233). Results: In Studies 1A–C, the relationship between OP and violent activism was systematically accentuated by sadism. Of note, these effects were specific to violent activism and unrelated to peaceful activism. In Study 2, we replicated these findings and showed that the relationship between sadism and violent activism was significant when individuals were in an obsessively (but not harmoniously) passionate mindset.</p