Fit for the Job: Candidate Qualifications and Vote Choice in Low Information Elections

Cues and heuristics—like party, gender, and race/ethnicity—help voters choose among a set of candidates. We consider candidate professional experience—signaled through occupation—as a cue that voters can use to evaluate candidates’ functional competence for office. We outline and test one condition under which citizens are most likely to use such cues: when there is a clear connection between candidate qualifications and the particular elected office. We further argue that voters in these contexts are likely to make subtle distinctions between candidates, and to vote accordingly. We test our account in the context of local school board elections, and show—through both observational analyses of California election results and a conjoint experiment—that (1) voters favor candidates who work in education; (2) that voters discriminate even among candidates associated with education by only favoring those with strong ties to students; and (3) that the effects are not muted by partisanship. Voters appear to value functional competence for office in and of itself, and use cues in the form of candidate occupation to assess who is and who is not fit for the job.

     

Class War in the Voting Booth: Bias Against High-Income Congressional Candidates

Do Americans care how much money congressional candidates earn? We conducted three experiments to examine how candidates' incomes affect voters' perceptions of the candidates' traits and ultimately their vote intention. Subjects evaluated otherwise identical candidates with annual incomes randomly varying between $75,000, $3 million, and a candidate with no income information provided. Results from the three experiments are remarkably similar. Subjects viewed the $3 million earner as significantly more intelligent than the candidate with no income information provided, but this benefit of high income was overshadowed by significant biases against the $3 million candidate. Subjects consistently viewed the $3 million earner as less honest, less caring, and less representative of them than the other candidates. Ultimately, subjects were less likely to say they would vote for the $3 million candidate. These findings demonstrate that the campaign advantages that high-income candidates enjoy are somewhat offset by voters' initial bias against them.     

Enough and as Good: A Formal Model of Lockean First Appropriation

In developing a theory of the first appropriation of natural resources from the state of nature, John Locke tells us that persons must leave “enough and as good” for others. Detailing exactly what this restriction requires divides right and left libertarians. Briefly, right libertarians interpret “enough and as good” as requiring no or very minimal restrictions on the first appropriation of natural resources, whereas left libertarians interpret “enough and as good” as requiring everyone to be entitled to an equal share of unappropriated resources, able to claim no more beyond this equal share. This article approaches the right versus left libertarian debate by developing a formal model that examines the welfare properties of different interpretations of the Lockean proviso. The model shows that underlying philosophical justifications for left libertarianism, when plausible assumptions hold, will actually be better served by a right libertarian proviso rather than a left libertarian one.     

Coercive Interrogation of Eyewitnesses Can Produce False Accusations

In the current study we hypothesized – and found – that coercive interviewing increased the incidences of false accusations made by eyewitnesses. Fifty-nine university students participated in a laboratory study in participant-confederate pairs and were later interviewed about whether the confederate stole a research assistant’s cell phone. Participants interviewed using a Coercive Interview were significantly more likely to falsely accuse the confederate of stealing a cell phone than were participants interviewed using a non-coercive, Control Interview. Our findings raise questions regarding why participants gave false accusations and whether coercive methods could result in more accurate testimony from reluctant witnesses. We suggest the need for potential safeguards, such as the electronic recording of interviews of non-suspect witnesses to prevent or document the use of coercive methods.     

Climate Change Sceptical Frames: The Case of Seven Australian Sceptics

Climate change sceptics are known for their resistance to proactive climate response policies, especially policies aimed at restricting greenhouse gas emissions. It is often assumed that scepticism about the science behind climate change would lead directly to outright rejection of all proactive climate policies aimed at mitigating emissions and adapting to climate‐induced changes already under way. This article demonstrates the variability among the climate policy views of seven well‐known Australian climate change sceptics in the period 2007–2012. Using the lens of frame‐analysis, we unpack some key sceptic rationales and narratives. The analysis shows that sceptics share a master frame that privileges individualist‐libertarian‐progress‐social order values, which are thus likely to conflict with the values implicit in conventional climate policy remedies. The analysis also shows that sceptical pre‐occupations diverge at more detailed framing levels, with various practical concerns and fears often at the centre of sceptical argumentation