Emotions, Beliefs, and Political Behavior in Pluralistic Societies

Session Submission Type: In-Person Created Panel

Session Description

In pluralistic societies, citizens are surrounded by other people who have different perspectives than their own, and/or have different information than they do. How do citizens understand and respond to the world around them in light of this? These papers explore these fundamental questions with a series of novel theories that push the boundaries of "traditional" formal theory. Schnakenberg and Wayne integrate non-standard assumptions derived from psychology to study the role of emotions in a model of political conflict. Serra studies how a political party comprised of "sincere" (and thus irrational) voters will be dominated by extremists, and that this extremism can spill over and induce a party dominated by strategic (and thus rational) voters to become more extreme too. Kocak and Horz study why some societies are more prone to anti-government protest than others, focusing on the way that leaders can exploit and distort citizens' subjective beliefs about the effects of protest. Fariss and Tyson demonstrate how the production of information ("data") is a byproduct of strategic dynamics induced by institutions, which often distorts the relationship between substantive concepts and measured data. In addition to shedding theoretical light on the role of pluralism in political contexts, these papers also underscore the promise of methodological cross-pollenation.

Sub Unit

• Theme Panel

Individual Presentations

• Anger and Political Conflict Dynamics - Keith E. Schnakenberg, Washington University; Carly Nicole Wayne, Washington University in St. Louis

• How To Keep Citizens Disengaged: Propaganda and Causal Misperceptions (Pre-Recorded) - Korhan Kocak, New York University Abu Dhabi; Carlo Matthias Horz, Texas A&M University

• Sincere vs Strategic Voting: Is Irrationality Contagious? - Gilles Serra, CIDE (Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas)

• How Data Comes to Be - Christopher J. Fariss, University of Michigan; Scott Tyson, University of Rochester

Chair

• Ryan Hubert University of California, Davis

Discussant

• Andrew Little University of California-Berkeley