Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper merges social movements and political science literature to understand how social movements can directly affect policy change. Through interviews with congressional staff and lobbyists, I find that persistent and consistent costly political action by educated grassroots signals to legislators a high level of voter concern on an issue, in effect simulating electoral mobilization. Legislators, whose primary concern is reelection, are likely to heed this voter concern, especially on valence issues were there is no significant opposition.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Gossip is regular social communicative practice, yet little is known about the effects that this act has on perception of the gossip source. This study attempts to clarify how the act of gossip and being perceived as a gossip influences source perceptions and message quality. It is argued that liking, trust, and suspicion of the source and message are influenced by relationship type (friend or stranger) and gossip valence (positive, negative, neutral). Using gossip as the manipulation in an experimental design, 120 confederates were enlisted to interact with either friends or strangers (participants) and, subsequently, engage in or avoid gossip. No significant results were found for gossip’s effect on message quality. Results, however, did determine that relationship type has a significant impact on gossip’s effect, such that friends were liked and trusted more than strangers regardless of gossip practices, and suspected less than strangers regardless of gossip practices. Results for analyses of gossip valence indicate significant effects of gossip on levels of suspicion regardless of relationship type. Additionally, these results indicate that negative gossip significantly decreases trust and dramatically increases suspicion of strangers, whereas, negative positive gossip increases trust of strangers. Results and implications are discussed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This research examined how valence of information affects relational outcomes in initial interaction. The relational outcomes of interest here are uncertainty reduction and the states of both cognitive trust and behavioral trust. Uncertainty level and the cognitive state of trust should act as the preconditions for behavioral trust, as behavioral trust involves actual risk in a vulnerable situation rather than simply a perception of the other individual. In order to examine the causal relationship between information valence and multi-dimensional aspects of trust, an experiment was conducted. Participants were randomly given either positively or negatively valenced information about a confederate and were asked to fill out questionnaires assessing their uncertainty level and cognitive state of trust toward the confederate. The Prisoner’s Dilemma game was used to operationalize the construct of behavioral trust. The results indicated that valence of information had a significant effect on the cognitive level of trust, especially, perceived trustworthiness. However, information valence did not have a significant effect on predicting behavioral trust, except for the positively valenced information condition. The path model indicated that both uncertainty reduction level and perceived trustworthiness were significant predictors for behavioral trust when the individual was exposed to a piece of positive information about the partner.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: An experiment was conducted to investigate the impact of the emotional context of an overall radio ad on cognitive and emotional responses to individual words within the ad.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Several recent spatial modeling studies incorporate valence issues – e.g., voters’ evaluations of the candidates’ competence, integrity, and charisma – that may give one of the candidates an electoral advantage that is independent of his policy positions. However to date all such models assume that while voters value positive valence characteristics, the candidates themselves do not. Building on empirical research by scholars such as Mondak, Stone, Maisel, and Maestas, we develop a spatial model where the candidates are valence-seeking, i.e. – like the voters – the candidates prefer that the winning candidate possess qualities, such as integrity and competence, which will enhance his job performance. We analyze a spatial model where the candidates value both the valence qualities and the policies of the winning candidate, and we show that the candidates’ optimal strategies typically diverge as the valence differential increases, and in particular that the valence-disadvantaged candidate normally has incentives to become more extreme as the valence advantage of her opponent increases – often in contrast to her incentives under standard policy-seeking models in which candidates do not value valence per se.