Economic Threats, Political and National Identification Predict Affective Polarization:Longitudinal Evidence From Spain

Economic threats, along with political identities and ideologies, are associated with affective polarization. However, there is still a need to learn more about the consequences of different economic threats and identities fueling polarization. We take a longitudinal perspective in testing the influence of these phenomena on affective polarization. Specifically, we tested the effect of subjective personal and collective economic threats and political, national, regional, and European identities on affective polarization towards politicians and partisans in Spain. We use four waves of the E-DEM panel study from Spain (N = 2,501) collected between 2018 and 2019. We conducted longitudinal multilevel analyses to determine the growth in affective polarization and included predictors at the between- and within-person levels. Consistent with our hypotheses, we found that collective economic threats, such as perceiving more unfairness in the distribution of wealth and being dissatisfied with the Spanish economy, positively predict affective polarization. Contrary to our expectations, personal economic threats did not predict affective polarization. Furthermore, political and national identities positively predicted affective polarization towards politicians and partisans. Interestingly, exploratory analyses suggested that the associations between economic threats, identities, and affective polarization are moderated by political ideology. We discuss how economic threats and identities may exacerbate animosities toward political actors.</p

Question-answer sequences in survey interviews

Interaction analysis was used to analyze a total of 14,265 question-answer sequences of (Q-A Sequences) 80 questions that originated from two face-to-face and three telephone surveys. The analysis was directed towards the causes and effects of particular interactional problems. Our results showed that problematic respondent behavior is affected by the questionnaire design, whereas inadequate interviewer behavior is affected by respondent behavior, rather than directly by the questionnaire design. Two surveys used questions for which validating information was available. It appeared that the occurrence of such irregularities of interviewer and respondent behavior was related to the validity of the eventual responses. Explanations for the occurrence of problematic respondent behavior were proposed, concerning both cognitive and conversational factors, related to the wording of questions and response alternatives. © Springer 2006

Cosmology with clusters of galaxies

In this Chapter I review the role that galaxy clusters play as tools to constrain cosmological parameters. I will concentrate mostly on the application of the mass function of galaxy clusters, while other methods, such as that based on the baryon fraction, are covered by other Chapters of the book. Since most of the cosmological applications of galaxy clusters rely on precise measurements of their masses, a substantial part of my Lectures concentrates on the different methods that have been applied so far to weight galaxy clusters. I provide in Section 2 a short introduction to the basics of cosmic structure formation. In Section 3 I describe the Press--Schechter (PS) formalism to derive the cosmological mass function, then discussing extensions of the PS approach and the most recent calibrations from N--body simulations. In Section 4 I review the methods to build samples of galaxy clusters at different wavelengths. Section 5 is devoted to the discussion of different methods to derive cluster masses. In Section 6 I describe the cosmological constraints, which have been obtained so far by tracing the cluster mass function with a variety of methods. Finally, I describe in Section 7 the future perspectives for cosmology with galaxy clusters and the challenges for clusters to keep playing an important role in the era of precision cosmology.Comment: 49 pages, 19 figures, Lectures for 2005 Guillermo Haro Summer School on Clusters, to appear in "Lecture notes in Physics" (Springer

Conversion to drip irrigated agriculture may offset historic anthropogenic and wildfire contributions to sediment production

This study is an investigation into the roles of wildfire and changing agricultural practices in controlling the inter-decadal scale trends of suspended sediment production from semi-arid mountainous rivers. In the test case, a decreasing trend in suspended sediment concentrations was found in the lower Salinas River, California between 1967 and 2011. Event to decadal scale patterns in sediment production in the Salinas River have been found to be largely controlled by antecedent hydrologic conditions. Decreasing suspended sediment concentrations over the last 15years of the record departed from those expected from climatic/hydrologic forcing. Sediment production from the mountainous headwaters of the central California Coast Ranges is known to be dominated by the interaction of wildfire and large rainfall/runoff events, including the Arroyo Seco, an ~700km(2) subbasin of the Salinas River. However, the decreasing trend in Salinas River suspended sediment concentrations run contrary to increases in the watershed's effective burn area over time. The sediment source area of the Salinas River is an order of magnitude larger than that of the Arroyo Seco, and includes a more complicated mosaic of land cover and land use. The departure from hydrologic forcings on suspended sediment concentration patterns was found to coincide with a rapid conversion of irrigation practices from sprinkler and furrow to subsurface drip irrigation. Changes in agricultural operations appear to have decreased sediment supply to the Salinas River over the late 20th to early 21st centuries, obscuring the influence of wildfire on suspended sediment production

Comparative Molecular Analysis of Gastrointestinal Adenocarcinomas

We analyzed 921 adenocarcinomas of the esophagus, stomach, colon, and rectum to examine shared and distinguishing molecular characteristics of gastrointestinal tract adenocarcinomas (GIACs). Hypermutated tumors were distinct regardless of cancer type and comprised those enriched for insertions/deletions, representing microsatellite instability cases with epigenetic silencing of MLH1 in the context of CpG island methylator phenotype, plus tumors with elevated single-nucleotide variants associated with mutations in POLE. Tumors with chromosomal instability were diverse, with gastroesophageal adenocarcinomas harboring fragmented genomes associated with genomic doubling and distinct mutational signatures. We identified a group of tumors in the colon and rectum lacking hypermutation and aneuploidy termed genome stable and enriched in DNA hypermethylation and mutations in KRAS, SOX9, and PCBP1. Liu et al. analyze 921 gastrointestinal (GI) tract adenocarcinomas and find that hypermutated tumors are enriched for insertions/deletions, upper GI tumors with chromosomal instability harbor fragmented genomes, and a group of genome-stable colorectal tumors are enriched in mutations in SOX9 and PCBP1

Powerless people don't yell but tell: The effects of social power on direct and indirect expression of anger

Expressing anger can engender desired change, but it can also backfire. In the present research we examined how power shapes the expression of anger. In Study 1, we found that powerless individuals were less inclined to express their anger directly but more inclined to express it indirectly by sharing it with others. Powerless participants’ reluctance to express anger directly was mediated by negative social appraisals. In Study 2, we replicated the effect of power on direct anger expression in a situation in which participants had actual power (or not). Anger was evoked in the laboratory using an ecologically valid procedure, and participants were given an opportunity to express anger. Study 3 showed that powerless participants expected direct anger expression to arouse more anger than fear in the target, whereas the opposite was true for indirect anger expression. Powerful participants always expected to elicit more fear than anger in the target

The Vicious Cycle of Economic Inequality: The Role of Ideology in Shaping the Relationship Between “What Is” and “What Ought to Be” in 41 Countries

People’s desired levels of inequality are informed by the levels of inequality they perceive to exist. Perceived economic inequality is used as a reference point in determining people’s ideal level of inequality. However, recent research has suggested that the strength of this relationship depends on people’s endorsement of system-justifying beliefs. The current article extends this body of research by replicating these findings across 41 countries (N = 42,078), showing the impact of system-justifying beliefs at both the individual and the societal levels. We conducted a multilevel analysis and found that the higher the endorsement of equality of opportunity beliefs—both at the individual and the societal levels—and meritocratic beliefs—at the individual level—the stronger the relationship between perceived and ideal economic inequality. These findings are in support of a motivated account of the perceived legitimacy of economic inequality.</p