Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Two experiments tested the hypothesis that disruption of processing fluency, by employing unconventional symbols in threatening news stories' headlines, would prime the rational system and reduce negative emotions and estimates of problem seriousness and victimization risk in response to threatening anecdotal news reports. In Experiment 1, among individuals who listed emotions experienced by story victims, those exposed to unconventional font headlines reported more intense negative emotions and elevated estimates of problem seriousness and risk than do those exposed to convention headlines. No significant font effects were found among those not listing emotions. In Experiment 2, individuals who made rationally-oriented probative value judgments of the stories after reading them manifested lower estimates of seriousness and risk than those not making the judgments; however, the font manipulation yielded no significant effects. Disruption of processing fluency may induce individuals to be more attentive to story details, but not necessarily induce more rational calculation when making story judgments, thus suggesting the possibility of both analytic intuition and intuitive rationality.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In a series of experiments, Sunstein et al (2002) have shown how jurors might make irrational judgments about corporate responsibility. For example, Viscusi told jury-eligible subjects about an airline which did not do minor repairs because the expected cost of an accident was smaller than the cost of repairs. After a crash, however, subjects awarded punitive damages even though, in Viscusi's view, the airline's decision had been rational and lawful. The present paper reports a pair of experiments which replicate Viscusi but also add new conditions. Contrasts between damage allocations by subjects in conditions in which the airline either did, or did not tell its pilots or passengers about the decision not to do repairs suggest that the punitive attitudes of Viscusi's subjects were justified by an implicit cost/benefit analysis more rational than Viscusi's. The results are explained in terms of social psychology's attribution theory, and are used to critique the "law and economics" critique of punitive damages generally.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: A number of game-theoretically informed scholars (Morrow 1999, Gartzke Li and Boehmer 2001, Gartzke 2003, Levy 2003) have argued that increased costs of war lead to an indeterminate or no change in the probability of conflict. These scholars reason that as one actor faces larger costs of war, the other actor, knowing this, will bargain more aggressively. Though the claim is correct that actors should bargain strategically by pushing harder on more pacific opponents, it does not follow that there is an indeterminate or no change in the probability of conflict. After discussing the precedents in the game-theoretic literature for such an opportunity cost argument for peace, I extend one such model (Reed 2003) that shows that the probability of conflict decreases with increasing costs; I provide more general proofs for Reed’s findings, clarify some of his claims, prove the precise relationship between costs, the variance of uncertainty, and the probability of war for two representative distributions of uncertainty, and show that by endogenizing uncertainty as a function of costs and/or by allowing uncertainty on the other parameters in the model the set of conditions under which the classical liberal argument holds becomes even broader. I then discuss a hybrid model in which both ex ante and ex post costs exist, and show the relevant impact of each on the probability of war. Finally, I discuss a set of strategic conditions under which ex ante costly signals are less effective at averting conflict.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The Catholic Church has been vocal in its opposition to policies intended to thwart, identify and deport illegal immigrants. While not the only religious organization on the pro-immigrant side of the debate, the Catholic Church has been the most united religious voice of resistance. In this way, the Catholic Church serves as an alternate source of authority in opposition to the state. It has provided a conflicting view of law and justice and has helped to frame the debate in terms of human rights, higher law, and connections among people that go beyond the borders of nation states. In questioning the government’s position, the Church has legitimated civil disobedience and resistance to the state, going as far as calling for parishes to break certain laws. In framing the argument in terms of human rights and connections, the church appeals to moral intuitions over strictly religious beliefs and opens the door to individual assessment of both state and church law. I use the Church’s role in the immigration movement as a way of exploring public articulations of justice and justifications for breaking the laws of the state. I use church documents, official statements and interviews with priests involved in the immigration movement to look at the way the church crafts arguments intended to shape public opinion both within and outside of its own membership. I then explore the views of the parishioners – collected through in-depth interviews - to see if the church’s arguments have impacted their beliefs in terms of immigration law and challenges to state authority. I am not only interested in what they think but how they think about law and justice, state and religious authority and their own individual moral intuitions in justifying civil disobedience

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Existing models of vetoes and veto threats are single-shot models. Incomplete information is generally the driving force, otherwise these models predict vetoes will not occur if there is a potential point of agreement. However, assumptions of incomplete information are generally not realistic. In fact, Congress and the president interact on numerous issues, including veto/veto threat confrontations, over the course of a presidency. Yet, veto threats and vetoes happen throughout a presidency.
This preliminary work explores possibilities for extending existing models of veto threats to account for past interactions. While the coordination model of Matthews (1989) and Cameron (2000) seems to offer the most potential as an iterative game, no model seems to fully address the interesting situation of what happens when a president fails to carry out a veto threat.