Due to the legacy of apartheid segregation South Africa remains a divided society where most voters live in politically homogenous social environments. This paper argues that political discussion within one’s social context plays a primary role in shaping political attitudes and vote choice. Using data from the Comparative National Elections Project 2004 and 2009 South African post-election sur...

It is clear that generational replacement is one of the main driving forces for social and political change in liberal democracies. While there is considerable consensus about the observation that the political attitudes and behaviors of young people differ significantly from those of earlier cohorts, there is disagreement about how this observation should be interpreted. Some authors worry abo...

Abstract: Do voters really hold their political attitudes so firmly that they are unreceptive to persuasion? We asked our participants to state their voter intention, and presented them with a political survey of wedge issues between the two coalitions. Using a sleight-of-hand we then altered their replies to place them in the opposite political camp, and invited them to reason about their atti...

A variety of sources indicate decision makers use social media, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, to make decisions regarding potential employees. Unfortunately, there is scant academic research on the implications of this practice. To shed light on the relationship between social media and selection, we investigate whether applicants’ political attitudes and individuating information (i.e., job-r...

People typically process information to confirm their prior held attitudes and stereotypes. As the political relations between NATO and Russia have distinctively drifted apart in recent years, we were interested in how far old-established color depictions referring to the Cold War's demarcations (USSR = red; NATO = blue) might reinforce people's political perception of an East versus West antag...

Over the past decades it has been claimed that young people have become less engaged in political parties and that youth sections of political parties are declining. However, there is little comparative international evidence about the extent to which students in junior secondary school form preferences for political parties and intend to align with parties as adults. The International Civic an...

Older adults are not only lagging behind in terms of physical access to the Internet but also in engaging in political activities in the online environment. The findings from two independent studies bridging the USA and China suggest that older adults, even when they have access to the Internet, have ambivalent or negative attitudes toward political activities online. As political participation...

Cognitive scientists, behavior geneticists, and political scientists have identified several ways in which emotions influence political attitudes, and psychologists have shown that emotion regulation can have an important causal effect on physiology, cognition, and subjective experience. However, no work to date explores the possibility that emotion regulation may shape political ideology and a...

Background Stigmatizing attitudes toward persons with mental disorders is a well-established and global phenomenon often leading to discrimination and social exclusion. Although previous research in the United States showed that conservative ideology has been related to stigmatizing attitudes toward mental disorders, there is reason to believe that this mechanism plays a different role in...

This paper examines heterosexual adults attitudes toward bisexual men and women using data from a 1999 national RDD survey (N = 1,335). Ratings on 101-point feeling thermometers were lower (less favorable) for bisexual men and bisexual women than for all other groups assessed--including religious, racial, ethnic, and political groups--except injecting drug users. More negative attitudes toward...