Word Association Tests for Political Science
Han, Z., N. Liu, & R. Truex. (2022). “Word Association Tests for Political Science." Working Paper.
The standard practice to measuring political attitudes is to ask survey respondents to map their feelings onto a quantitative scale determined by the researcher. This approach, while widespread, suffers from a number of well-known problems. Such questions can be cognitively demanding, scales are different across cultures and even individuals of the same culture, and complex attitudes are reduced to a single number. In this paper, we advance the use of Word Association Tests (WATs), where respondents are presented a series of cue words and asked to provide other words that come to mind as quickly as possible. This approach more directly maps to how attitudes actually operate in the human mind, and it provides a richer set of data than a standard survey question. The paper develops and demonstrates the utility of WATs through an analysis of Chinese citizens’ attitudes towards the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Donald Trump and the Lie
Arceneaux, K., & Truex, R. (2021). Donald Trump and the Lie. Perspectives on Politics, 1-17.
The legitimacy of democratically elected governments rests in part on widespread acceptance of the outcome of elections, especially among those who lost. This “losers’ consent” allows the winners to govern, and when the incumbent is the losing party, it allows for a peaceful transition of power. What happens in a democratic system when one side not only refuses to concede but also actively perpetuates lies about the outcome? This article studies the evolution of public opinion about Donald Trump’s “big lie” using a rolling cross-sectional daily tracking survey, yielding 40 days of polls and more than 20,000 responses from US voters from October 27, 2020, through January 29, 2021. We find that the lie is pervasive and sticky: the number of Republicans and independents saying that they believe the election was fraudulent is substantial, and this proportion did not change appreciably over time or shift after important political developments. Belief in the lie may have buoyed some of Trump supporters’ self-esteem. In reaction to the lie and the threat it brought to the transition of power, there was a significant rise in support for violent political activism among Democrats, which only waned after efforts to overturn the election clearly failed. Even if these findings merely reflect partisan cheerleading, we nonetheless find significant and potentially long-term consequences of the lie. A conjoint experiment shows that Republican voters reward politicians who perpetuate the lie, giving Republican candidates an incentive to continue to do so in the next electoral cycle. These findings raise concerns about the fragility of American democracy.
Political Discontent in China is Associated with Isolating Personality Traits
Truex, R. 2022. “Political Discontent in China is Associated with Isolating Personality Traits." The Journal of Politics 84(4): 2172-2186.
Our personalities affect how we understand the political world, but research to date has focused almost exclusively on democratic contexts. How is personality related to political attitudes and behavior in authoritarian systems? Three original surveys of Chinese citizens show that discontented citizens in contemporary China are more fearful, disagreeable, and introverted, lacking close emotional attachments to others. Conversely, Chinese Communist Party members show high levels of extraversion and other traits associated with personal and professional success. These findings suggest a social element to regime support. China’s most dissatisfied citizens operate at the fringes of society, which may contribute to the durability of authoritarian rule in the country.
In Search of Self-Censorship
Shen, X., & R. Truex (2021). “In Search of Self-censorship.” British Journal of Political Science 51(4): 1672-1684.
Item nonresponse rates across regime assessment questions and nonsensitive items are used to create a self-censorship index, which can be compared across countries, over time and across population subgroups. For many authoritarian systems, citizens do not display higher rates of item nonresponse on regime assessment questions than their counterparts in democracies. This result suggests such questions may not be that sensitive in many places, which in turn raises doubts that authoritarian citizens are widely feigning positive attitudes towards regimes they secretly despise. Higher levels of self-censorship are found under regimes without electoral competition for the executive.
Implicit Attitudes Toward an Authoritarian Regime
Truex, R. & D. L. Tavana. (2019). “Implicit Attitudes toward an Authoritarian Regime.” The Journal of Politics 81(3): 1014-1027.
Existing research on public opinion under authoritarianism focuses on the deliberative half of cognition. Yet in psychology, implicit attitudes and subconscious associations are often viewed as foundational, the basis for explicit attitudes and behavior. This article adapts the well-known Implicit Association Test to study Egyptian citizens’ attitudes toward President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. Roughly 58% of respondents hold positive implicit attitudes toward Sisi. The data also allow for an investigation of attitude dissociation, whereby individuals hold distinct implicit and explicit attitudes toward a target object. Government employees and Coptic Christians are more likely to hold positive explicit attitudes toward Sisi but negative or neutral implicit attitudes. The correlation between explicit and implicit attitudes toward Sisi is weaker than found in comparable studies of democratic leaders, which provides evidence that self-presentational concerns are at work.
Public Opinion Towards Return Migration
Tai, Q. & R. Truex (2015). “Public Opinion towards Return Migration: A Survey Experiment of Chinese Netizens.” The China Quarterly 223: 770-786.
China has adopted preferential measures in hopes of luring back overseas talent, but what determines individual attitudes towards returning migrants and policies promoting return migration? This paper addresses this question using an original survey experiment of Chinese netizens. We argue that attitudes towards return migration are driven by two competing perceptions: on one hand, skilled migrants are widely thought to have beneficial effects on the local economy; on the other, domestic citizens may be wary of policies that offer elite returnees excessive benefits. The findings imply that the CCP may face a delicate trade-off between the economic benefits of return migration and the social costs of increasing inequality.