Elites
Lauren Cohen & Christopher Malloy
NBER Working Paper, October 2010
Abstract:
In this paper we demonstrate that personal connections amongst politicians, and between politicians and firms, have a significant impact on the voting behavior of U.S. politicians. We exploit a unique database linking politicians to other politicians, and linking politicians to firms, and find both channels to be influential. Networks based on alumni connections between politicians, as well as common seat locations on the chamber floor, are consistent predictors of voting behavior. For the former, we estimate sharp measures that control for common characteristics of the network, as well as heterogeneous impacts of a common network characteristic across votes. For common seat locations, we identify a set of plausibly exogenously assigned seats (e.g., Freshman Senators), and find a strong impact of seat location networks on voting. Further, we show that connections between firms and politicians influence Congressional votes on bills that affect these firms. These network effects are stronger for more tightly linked networks, and at times when votes are most valuable.
---------------------
Who Likes Political Science?: Determinants of Senators' Votes on the Coburn Amendment
Joseph Uscinski & Casey Klofstad
PS: Political Science & Politics, October 2010, Pages 701-706
Abstract:
In October 2009, political scientists learned of a Senate amendment sponsored by Tom Coburn (R-OK) that would eliminate political science funding from the National Science Foundation budget. The American Political Science Association condemned the proposed amendment, and concerned political scientists contacted their senators to urge the amendment's defeat. On November 5, 2009, the amendment was defeated 36-62 after little debate. This article examines the vote on the Coburn Amendment to understand the role that senators' personal, constituency, and institutional characteristics played in their votes. Logit analysis reveals that even after controlling for party, several factors significantly predict the vote, including the number of top-tier political science Ph.D. programs in the senator's state and whether the senator graduated with a bachelor's degree in political science.
---------------------
Nicole Stephens, Stephanie Fryberg & Hazel Rose Markus
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The psychological literature indicates that people prefer to choose for themselves, but this finding largely represents a middle-class American perspective. The three studies reported here test the hypothesis that, given the material and social demands of working-class contexts, a concern for others can be normative and take precedence over individual choice. Study 1 found that, compared to middle-class participants, working-class participants, who reported fewer choices at work, more often accepted a gift from an experimenter than asked to choose for themselves. In Study 2, working-class participants' descriptions of choice included fewer associations with freedom and more associations with negative affect and difficulty than middle-class participants. Finally, Study 3 found that, reflecting greater negative affect toward choice, working-class observers preferred a shirt that a confederate accepted from someone else, rather than chose for herself. Together, these studies reveal that focusing on and attending to others is often normative in working-class contexts.
---------------------
Income Inequality, Party Polarization, and Roll-Call Voting in the U.S. Senate
James Garand
Journal of Politics, October 2010, Pages 1109-1128
Abstract:
McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal (2006) demonstrate that political parties - both in the electorate and in government - become more ideologically polarized during periods of high income inequality, while differences between the parties wane during periods of relative equality of incomes. I suggest that the processes described by McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal at the national level are applicable to the American state electorates and their elected representatives. Using data on individual attitudes, state-level income inequality, state mass polarization, and U.S. senators' roll-call behavior, I consider the possible effects of state-level income inequality on mass attitudes and the roll-call behavior of U.S. senators since the early 1960s. I hypothesize that (1) Democratic and Republican identifiers in the mass public should be more polarized in states with high income inequality, and (2) state mass polarization and state income inequality should be translated into polarized behavior by U.S. senators representing different political parties. My findings are generally consistent with these polarization hypotheses. Specifically, Democratic and Republican identifiers stake out divergent ideological positions as a function of state income inequality, and U.S. senators from states with high levels of income inequality are more polarized than other senators, primarily in response to state income inequality and greater constituency polarization that results from high income inequality.
---------------------
Pamela Jakiela, Edward Miguel & Vera te Velde
NBER Working Paper, October 2010
Abstract:
We combine data from a field experiment and a laboratory experiment to measure the causal impact of human capital on respect for earned property rights, a component of social preferences with important implications for economic growth and development. We find that higher academic achievement reduces the willingness of young Kenyan women to appropriate others' labor income, and shifts players toward a 50-50 split norm in the dictator game. This study demonstrates that education may have long-run impacts on social preferences, norms and institutions beyond the human capital directly produced. It also shows that randomized field experiments can be successfully combined with laboratory experiment data to measure causal impacts on individual values, norms, and preferences which cannot be readily captured in survey data.
---------------------
Political Awareness and Partisan Realignment: Are the Unaware Unevolved?
Ryan Claassen
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many attribute the demise of the solid South, and changes in party attachments outside the South, to elite-level changes in the parties' positions on racial issues and an issue evolution of the party system. Support is also growing for the notion that, as the Republican Party became an acceptable alternative to the Democratic Party for racial issues in the South, a resurgence of class-based partisanship further fueled the exodus. By investigating whether political awareness mediates responsiveness to changes in the political environment, evidence that partisan evolution is concentrated among more aware citizens is uncovered, and the implications are examined.
---------------------
Get smarty pants: Cognitive ability, personality, and victimization
Eugene Kim & Theresa Glomb
Journal of Applied Psychology, September 2010, Pages 889-901
Abstract:
Drawing on the victim precipitation model, this study provides an empirical investigation of the relationship between cognitive ability and victimization at work. We propose that people high in cognitive ability are more prone to victimization. In this study, we also examine the direct and moderating effects of victims' personality traits, specifically the 2 interpersonally oriented personality dimensions of agency and communion. Results support the direct positive relationship of cognitive ability and victimization. The positive relationship between high cognitive ability and victimization is moderated by the victims' personality traits; agency personality traits strengthen the relationship of cognitive ability and victimization, whereas communion personality traits weaken this relationship.
---------------------
Social Class, Culture, and Cognition
Igor Grossmann & Michael Varnum
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
There are competing accounts of the relationship among social class, culture, and cognition. An interactive hypothesis suggests the relationship between social class and cognitive tendencies varies inasmuch as societies differ in their endorsement of those cognitive tendencies. An alternative additive hypothesis suggests that class-related environments promote differences in cognition. The authors addressed the validity of these accounts by simultaneously examining the effects of class among Americans (an independent society) and Russians (an interdependent society). Consistent with the additive hypothesis, lower social class was associated with more holistic cognition and more interdependent self-views in both countries. In Study 1, people from lower social class backgrounds and Russians displayed less dispositional bias. In Study 2, people from lower social class backgrounds and Russians demonstrated more contextual attention, more nonlinear reasoning about change, and more interdependent self-views (less self-inflation). Furthermore, in Study 2 differences in self-views mediated country and class effects on cognitive tendencies.
---------------------
Black Is, Black Ain't: Biracials, Middle-Class Blacks, and the Social Construction of Blackness
Cherise Harris & Nikki Khanna
Sociological Spectrum, November 2010, Pages 639-670
Abstract:
Several scholars claim that group cohesion among black Americans is necessary for black advancement. Our research examines the extent to which group cohesion is possible given the increasing diversity of Black America, particularly with regard to race and class. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 33 middle-class blacks and 40 black-white biracials, we explore (1) the similarities and differences in the experiences of both groups, (2) their encounters with marginalization, (3) how they negotiate perceived marginalization, and (4) the extent to which all of the above are shaped by socially constructed ideas of blackness. We find that narrow notions of "authentic" blackness challenge group cohesion and threaten to splinter the black community along class and ethnic/racial lines. However, we find evidence of greater tolerance for the community's racial diversity than its class diversity. Nevertheless, the data presented here suggest that the increasing heterogeneity of Black America poses significant challenges to group cohesion.
---------------------
Does education engender cultural values that matter for economic growth?
Prosper Bangwayo-Skeete, Afaf Rahim & Precious Zikhali
Journal of Socio-Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Empirical research has shown that cultural values matter for economic growth and has specifically identified the achievement motivation as an aspect of culture that engenders economic growth. If specific cultural values engender economic growth, how then can societies promote them? This paper attempts to answer this question using the 2005 wave of the World Values Survey data for 43 countries. We test the contention that education significantly impacts the relative importance an individual places on economic achievement vis-à-vis traditional social norms. Results suggest that individuals with higher education levels attach higher importance to values related to autonomy and economic achievement as compared to conformity to traditional social norms. The results have an important implication for efforts to promote economic development; institutions and specifically public policy on education could be used to encourage people to adopt values that are considered important for economic development.
---------------------
Status Distinctions in Interaction: Social Selection and Exclusion at an Elite Nightclub
Lauren Rivera
Qualitative Sociology, September 2010, Pages 229-255
Abstract:
Although social status plays a crucial role in the generation and maintenance of social inequalities, how status processes operate in naturalistic social contexts remains less clear. In the following article, I provide a case study of doormen-individuals who simultaneously represent status experts and status judges-at a highly exclusive nightclub to investigate how people draw status distinctions in micro-social settings. Using interview and ethnographic data, I analyze on what bases doormen evaluate the relative worth of patrons and confer the status prize of admission. I find that in making such decisions, doormen drew from a constellation of competence and esteem cues, which were informed by contextually specific status schemas about the relative material, moral, and symbolic worth of particular client groups. Moreover, the ways in which doormen used these cues and schema depended on the identity of the specific patron being evaluated. As such, I argue that processes of interpersonal evaluation and status conferral are contextually specific, culturally embedded, and interpersonally variable. Despite such variations, a patron's perceived social connections seemed to outweigh other types of cues in admissions decisions. I conclude by discussing these findings in light of both status characteristics theory and Bourdieu's work on the transubstantiation of capital to suggest that social capital is a powerful status cue that can, under certain conditions, be a more potent source of social distinction and status advantage, or hold a greater conversion value, in systems of stratification than other types of qualities.
---------------------
Relative status and satisfaction
Stefan Boes, Kevin Staub & Rainer Winkelmann
Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper studies the effect of income rank on satisfaction. We hypothesize that a person's satisfaction depend on a comparison of own rank and rank of one's parents. Estimates using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel support the relative rank hypothesis.
---------------------
Happiness Adaptation to Income and to Status in an Individual Panel
Rafael Di Tella, John Haisken-De New & Robert MacCulloch
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study adaptation to income and to status using individual panel data on the happiness of 7,812 people living in Germany from 1984 to 2000. Specifically, we estimate a "happiness equation" defined over several lags of income and status and compare the long-run effects. We can (cannot) reject the hypothesis of no adaptation to income (status) during the four years following an income (status) change. In the short-run (current year) a one standard deviation increase in status and 52% of one standard deviation in income are associated with similar increases in happiness. In the long-run (five year average) a one standard deviation increase in status has a similar effect to an increase of 285% of a standard deviation in income. We also present different estimates of adaptation across sub-groups. For example, we find that those on the right (left) of the political spectrum adapt to status (income) but not to income (status). We can reject equal relative adaptation (to income versus status) for these two sub groups.
---------------------
Ideological Influences on Decision Making in the Federal Judicial Hierarchy: An Empirical Assessment
Christopher Zorn & Jennifer Barnes Bowie
Journal of Politics, October 2010, Pages 1212-1221
Abstract:
Scholars of judicial politics have long speculated that the factors influencing judicial decision making operate to varying degrees at different levels of the judicial hierarchy. We investigate what we term the "hierarchy postulate": that the effect of judges' policy preferences on their decisions increases as one moves up the judicial hierarchy. Using original data on cases decided at each level of U.S. federal courts, which allow us to evaluate the impact of policy preferences on judicial decision making while holding constant the influence of case-specific factors, we find robust support for the contention that ideological and policy-related influences on federal judges' decisions are larger at higher levels of the judicial hierarchy.
---------------------
Winters, Summers, and Destructive Leadership Cultures in Rich Regions
Evert Van de Vliert et al.
Cross-Cultural Research, November 2010, Pages 315-340
Abstract:
Van de Vliert's (2009) climato-economic theory of culture proposes that the impact of climatic demands on culture is influenced by wealth resources. In rich regions, much cold and heat in conjunction with relatively little wealth (undermatching) and little cold and heat in conjunction with relatively much wealth ( overmatching) both are thought to produce less destructive leadership cultures than do approximations of just enough wealth to successfully cope with thermal climate (optimal matching). Avoiding confounding influences of numerous cross-national differences, we tested this tenet using employee survey data gathered in a sample of 191 Norwegian municipalities. Destructive leadership culture is less prevalent in less wealthy regions with more demanding winters and more demanding summers (undermatching) and in more wealthy regions with milder winters and milder summers (overmatching) than in more or less wealthy regions with either more demanding winters and milder summers or more demanding summers and milder winters (optimal matching). Disconfirmative tests could not obscure or destroy these findings.