Examining the relationship between childhood animal cruelty motives and recurrent adult violent crimes toward humans

Few researchers have studied the predictive ability of childhood animal cruelty motives as they are associated with later recurrent violence toward humans. Based on a sample of 180 inmates at one medium- and one maximum-security prison in a Southern state, the present study examines the relationship among several retrospectively identified motives (fun, out of anger, hate for the animal, and imitation) for childhood animal cruelty and the later commission of violent crimes (murder, rape, assault, and robbery) against humans. Almost two thirds of the inmates reported engaging in childhood animal cruelty for fun, whereas almost one fourth reported being motivated either out of anger or imitation. Only one fifth of the respondents reported they had committed acts of animal cruelty because they hated the animal. Regression analyses revealed that recurrent animal cruelty was the only statistically significant variable in the model. Respondents who had committed recurrent childhood animal cruelty were more likely to have had committed recurrent adult violence toward humans. None of the motives for committing childhood animal cruelty had any effect on later violence against humans.     

Religion and Misconduct in “Angola” Prison: Conversion,Congregational Participation,Religiosity, and Self-Identities*

Prior research tends to find an inverse relationship between inmates’ religion and misconduct in prison, but this relationship has lacked empirical explanation. We therefore propose the religion-misconduct relationship is mediated by inmates’ identity transformation on existential, cognitive, and emotional dimensions. To test the mediation, we conducted a survey of inmates at the Louisiana State Penitentiary (a.k.a. “Angola”). Controlling for inmates’ sociodemographic and criminal backgrounds, we estimated a latent-variable structural equation model of disciplinary convictions. Results showed that inmates’ religious conversion and, to a lesser extent, religiosity itself were positively related to existential and cognitive transformations as well as a “crystallization of discontent,” which were in turn associated with two types of emotional transformation in the expected direction. The crystallization of discontent and transformation in negative affect were related to disciplinary convictions as hypothesized, and their mediation of the effects of conversion and religiosity on misconduct were found to be significant.     

Rally ’round which flag? Terrorism’s effect on (intra)national identity

Public Choice - Exploiting a unique panel of student respondents surveyed both shortly before and after the March 2016 bombings in Brussels, this paper analyzes the effects of terrorism on social...     

Examining media markets’ influence on the diffusion of antismoking legislation in US counties

This article assesses the role of mass media markets in the diffusion of antismoking legislation in the state of Missouri in the US. Testing multiple diffusion theories, this study finds that media markets can facilitate the diffusion of policies among local jurisdictions by exacerbating intercounty competition. More attention should be given to media markets when assessing policy diffusion mechanisms at the local level. Media markets can be an important source for policy information conveyance among counties over a large geographic area. Furthermore, traditional diffusion studies that rely on geographical contiguity measures may not be completely capturing the existence of diffusion by excluding media markets.     

The Role of Elite Accounts in Mitigating the Negative Effects of Repositioning

Repositioning by political elites plays a key role in a variety of political phenomena, including legislative policymaking and campaigning. While previous studies suggest that repositioning will lead to negative evaluations, these studies have not explored the role of elite communications in structuring mass responses. We argue that this omission is problematic because elite explanations for their actions may limit the costs associated with ‘flip-flopping’ by persuading some citizens to update their attitudes so that they agree with the elite’s new stance and also by molding beliefs about the motives of the elite when repositioning. We present evidence supportive of this argument obtained from two large experiments conducted on samples of American adults. Ultimately, we show that elites offering a satisfactory justification for their change can avoid most, if not all, of the evaluative costs that would otherwise occur. This study thus has important implications not just for this particular element of elite behavior, but also related questions concerning governmental accountability and representation.     

A Bottom‐Up Theory of Public Opinion about Foreign Policy

If public opinion about foreign policy is such an elite‐driven process, why does the public often disagree with what elites have to say? We argue here that elite cue‐taking models in International Relations are both overly pessimistic and unnecessarily restrictive. Members of the public may lack information about the world around them, but they do not lack principles, and information need not only cascade from the top down. We present the results from five survey experiments where we show that cues from social peers are at least as strong as those from political elites. Our theory and results build on a growing number of findings that individuals are embedded in a social context that combines with their general orientations toward foreign policy in shaping responses toward the world around them. Thus, we suggest the public is perhaps better equipped for espousing judgments in foreign affairs than many of our top‐down models claim.     

Why Do Regulatory Agencies Punish? The Impact of Political Principals,Agency Culture,and Transaction Costs in Predicting Environmental Criminal Prosecution Outcomes in the United States

Studies of administrative behavior are keen to examine the internal dynamics of agency decision making, as well the impact of external political actors on agency actions. Yet few studies apply these findings to the question of why agencies use their most punitive enforcement powers. Contrasting principal–agent, transaction costs, and organizational culture models of agency behavior, this study examines why regulatory agencies punish. Through content analysis of nearly one thousand of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's criminal investigations and subsequent prosecutions, 2001–11, findings suggest that punishment severity in environmental criminal cases is based less on transaction costs and political pressure and more on professional norms that value strong enforcement. These findings have important implications for explaining regulatory outcomes and administrative behavior.     

Social Networks and Protest Participation: Evidence from 130 Million Twitter Users

Pinning down the role of social ties in the decision to protest has been notoriously elusive, largely due to data limitations. Social media and their global use by protesters offer an unprecedented opportunity to observe real‐time social ties and online behavior, though often without an attendant measure of real‐world behavior. We collect data on Twitter activity during the 2015 Charlie Hebdo protest in Paris, which, unusually, record real‐world protest attendance and network structure measured beyond egocentric networks. We devise a test of social theories of protest that hold that participation depends on exposure to others' intentions and network position determines exposure. Our findings are strongly consistent with these theories, showing that protesters are significantly more connected to one another via direct, indirect, triadic, and reciprocated ties than comparable nonprotesters. These results offer the first large‐scale empirical support for the claim that social network structure has consequences for protest participation.