POLSCI 240 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Motivation, Joe Biden, United States Agency For International Development
10 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Political Psychology
9.12.16 Lecture Notes – Political Knowledge
Finkel (2002) – Studies impact of civic education programs sponsored by USAID in the Dominican
Republic and South Africa in the 1990s
o Compares participants to non-participants in terms of a variety of political acts undertaken
at a fairly local level
o Substantial increases in political participation as a function of receiving civic education
Bryan et al. (2011) – manipulate perception of voting as indicative of a person’s character and
identity or as simply a behavior and 2) compare turnout between these conditions
o Being a voter = to claim a desired and socially valued identity
Bond et al. (2012) – the Facebook study – tested value of extrinsic motivation for people who vote
o Can voting spread through online social networks due to social pressure
▪ Direct effects: does turnout increase among those who receive a message on social
network sites
▪ Indirect effects: does turnout increase among those connected to those who receive
a message on social network sites?
o Field experiment: three, randomly assigned conditions for people’s Facebook profiles
▪ Control: no message
▪ Information only: GoTV message, polling places, social signaling button (pressing
the ) Voted button
▪ Social pressure + information: same as above + 6 pictures of friends who voted
o Results:
▪ Comparing the social message condition and the information only condition, the
difference in the voting rates was 0.4%
▪ Comparing the social message and control group, the difference in the voting rates
was 0.4%
▪ Comparing the information only condition and the control, the difference in the
voting rates was 0%
▪ .% increase in the number of people who clicked ) Voted in the social message
versus the informational message
• People feel enough pressure to engage in this low-cost signaling mechanism
▪ The person receiving the treatment will spillover the effect to their friends/family
• The person, one step removed from the experiment, will also be effected
strongly the closer they are to the person who received the treatment
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Document Summary
Finkel (2002) studies impact of civic education programs sponsored by usaid in the dominican. Bryan et al. (2011) (cid:883)(cid:524) manipulate perception of voting as indicative of a person"s character and. Indirect effects: does turnout increase among those connected to those who receive a message on social network sites: direct effects: does turnout increase among those who receive a message on social. Participation conclusions participation: close elections and divergent options increase the instrumental utility of participation. Types of political knowledge: general, textbook, or civic knowledge: institutions and their role in government; how the political system works; important historical information, surveillance or current events: knowledge of contemporary political actors, events, and issues. Correlation of increasing political knowledge with willingness to do away with the supreme court. 80: on what does the federal government spend on the least, foreign aid, correct answer, 40% knew john boehner, over 80% knew joe biden, 20% knew david cameron, 35% knew john roberts.
