Detecting children's false allegations and recantations of a crime

This study examined adults’ abilities to detect the veracity of children's (ages 6–11) initial disclosures and their later recantations about a crime. Children (N?=?32) were asked to make a false denial or a false accusation of an alleged theft, while some were asked to tell the truth. Afterwards, children recanted their initial statements in a second interview; thus, children who initially denied the theft accused a researcher of the transgression in the second interview, and vice-versa. Adult raters (ages 18–25; N?=?108) watched both interviews and completed a questionnaire that required them to determine the veracity (i.e. whether the report was true or false) and credibility of the disclosure. Adults accurately detected the veracity of children's reports 53% of the time (55% of original reports, 50% of recantations). Raters were more accurate when detecting false denials than false accusations in the children's original and recanted reports. Despite being more difficult to detect, children's recanted denials that became accusations were rated as the least credible. Furthermore, self-reported level of experience with children and ratings confidence were not significant predictors of truth/lie detection accuracy.     

Presidential coattails, incumbency advantage, and open seats: A district-level analysis of the 1976–2000 U.S. House elections

This study extends the analysis of presidential coattails to the most recent U.S. House elections. Building upon previous research on this subject, it draws a clear distinction between open and incumbent-held seats and presents evidence about several measures of presidential coattails. In particular, the analysis attempts to estimate, controlling for incumbency, the strength of presidential coattails (the proportion of the vote received by a congressional candidate that is due to the presence of the presidential nominee on the ballot) and the effectiveness of a president's coattails (the number of districts gained or retained by a party because of the net influence of presidential candidates). The results show that, contrary to earlier findings and trends, the unique impact of presidential coattails in open seat races did not decline. The results also suggest that several representatives who played a very prominent role in crafting the Republican strategy to win back control of the House in 1994 were the beneficiaries of the coattail effect.     

Books in review

He is author of Reversing Language Shift; Yiddish: Turning to Life;and most recently, The Earliest Stage of Language Planning.     

Do Policy Makers Use Academic Research? Reexamining the “Two Communities” Theory of Research Utilization

Academics and policy makers in many Western countries are perceived as occupying separate communities, with distinct languages, values, and reward systems. However, data from a survey of more than 2,000 policy officials and 126 in‐depth interviews with public servants in Australia suggest that the “two communities” conceptualization may be misleading and flawed. More realistically, there is a range of interaction between policy and academia, with some individuals valuing and using academic research more than others. Furthermore, this relationship is complicated by the internal division between the political and administrative components of the public policy process.     

Elite Polarization and Public Opinion: How Polarization Is Communicated and Its Effects

Elite polarization has reshaped American politics and is an increasingly salient aspect of news coverage within the United States. As a consequence, a burgeoning body of research attempts to unravel the effects of elite polarization on the mass public. However, we know very little about how polarization is communicated to the public by news media. We report the results of one of the first content analyses to delve into the nature of news coverage of elite polarization. We show that such coverage is predominantly critical of polarization. Moreover, we show that unlike coverage of politics focused on individual politicians, coverage of elite polarization principally frames partisan divisions as rooted in the values of the parties rather than strategic concerns. We build on these novel findings with two survey experiments exploring the influence of these features of polarization news coverage on public attitudes. In our first study, we show that criticism of polarization leads partisans to more positively evaluate the argument offered by their non-preferred party, increases support for bi-partisanship, but ultimately does not change the extent to which partisans follow their party’s policy endorsements. In our second study, we show that Independents report significantly less political interest, trust, and efficacy when polarization is made salient and this is particularly evident when a cause of polarization is mentioned. These studies have important implications for our understanding of the consequences of elite polarization—and how polarization is communicated—for public opinion and political behavior in democratic politics.     

Presence to Press: How Campaigns EarnLocal Media

Today’s campaigns have ample resources with which to influence the media, while plummeting revenue, readership, and reporting staffs make local newspapers more vulnerable than ever. This imbalance raises an important question: if a campaign invests more resources in an area, can it earn positive media coverage? In this article, I propose a strategic relationship between campaigns and local media. Newspapers offer campaigns credibility and exposure, while campaigns offer local newspapers easy-to-report stories that will appeal to their readers. Campaign messages are more impactful when communicated through the local press, so campaigns will try to influence local news coverage (when they have the resources to do so) by establishing a local presence. When newspapers are vulnerable, they should be more likely to accept campaign prompting and provide campaigns with positive earned media. I employ an original data set of newspaper content and campaign investment from the 2004 and 2008 elections. I utilize a within-state matched-pairs design of newspapers from the state of Florida and a detailed content analysis of stories from 21 randomly selected days from each election cycle. I find that regional campaign presence generates positive earned media, but only in smaller newspapers. This article contributes to the fields of campaign and media effects by demonstrating how campaigns’ calculated decisions influence the construction of local political news. It is the first study to describe the connection between the voter contact and campaigns’ earned local media strategy.     

Past is still present: Micro-level comparisons of conventional vs. transitional economic voting in three Polish elections

Using survey data from three Polish parliamentary elections, we provide the first systematic micro-level test contrasting a standard incumbency-based model of economic voting with a transitional economic voting model in the post-communist context. To do so, we introduce a novel temporal component to micro-level studies of economic voting that supplements standard short-term retrospective economic evaluations (e.g., “do you feel the economy has improved in the past 12 months?”) with longer “transitional” retrospective economic evaluations (e.g., “do you feel the economy has improved since the collapse of communism?”). Our analyses reveal a nuanced picture suggesting multiple paths for economic influences on voting in Poland. We find evidence consistent with the standard incumbency-based approach, but only for the specific set of evaluations to which the theory is most appropriately applied: short-term retrospective economic evaluations and the vote for incumbent parties. By contrast, the transitional model is strongly supported by evidence that evaluations of changes in economic conditions since the collapse of communism (“long-term economic evaluations”) have an effect on the vote for a range of parties. We demonstrate as well that these results are robust to model specification and generational effects.     

Waldron, Waluchow and the Merits of Constitutionalism

In this article, I critically evaluate the positions of ProfessorsJeremy Waldron and W.J. Waluchow on the right-based merits ofentrenched constitutions and strong judicial review. I supportWaluchow in arguing that (i) prohibitions on the constitutionalentrenchment of rights and resultant prohibitions of strongjudicial review may be only superficially fair or democratic,since fair procedure alone can neither eliminate pre-existinginequalities nor ultimately take the autonomy vital to self-governanceseriously (whether individual or collective). Secondly, (ii)if deep dissensus fails to exist on all substantive mattersof rights, the constitutional entrenchment of rights combinedwith strong judicial review can indeed be achieved fairly. Ithen propose that (iii) the anti-constitutionalist concern aboutbeing governed by the ‘dead hand of the past’ isself-refuting, for the alternative is simply another constrainton autonomy. While this is largely consistent with Waluchow'sposition vis-à-vis Waldron's majoritarianism, I end byexpressing serious concerns regarding whether the common law(and the ‘constitutional morality’ that Waluchowclaims can be derived from it) can act as a sufficiently robustbasis for the protection of liberal and egalitarian rights.