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The article highlights important trends and court decisions related to employment and labor laws in the U.S. during 2021-2022. Topics include the rise of pay disclosure laws to combat gender and racial pay gaps such as the Crown Act that seeks to prohibit discrimination based on a person's hair texture or hairstyle, the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in an arbitration case Morgan v. Sundance Inc. and other laws that seek to prohibit the widening American pay gap such as the Equal Pay Act of 1963.

This study examines whether rising polarization in Americans' partisan judgments has positive implications for political participation. Drawing on cross-sectional and panel survey data, we find evidence that polarized judgments are related to pre-election intent to vote, as well as to post-election self-reported voter turnout. Polarized evaluations also predict greater reporting of participation in campaign activities beyond voting. Polarization in candidate evaluations consistently has more of an impact than affective polarization. However, our results suggest that polarization in evaluations of both parties and candidates includes an expressive component that does not necessarily translate into political action. Roughly one-quarter to one-third of the actual change in turnout can potentially be attributed to polarization in evaluations of Republican and Democratic presidential candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite their less vulnerable economic status, white individuals' attitudes toward overseas trade in the United States may have become more protectionist than those of economically disadvantaged minorities. We present results from five different studies examining two different ways in which trade may have become racialized. First, we examine the extent to which a person's racial identity is associated with levels of trade support. Second, we examine whether the predominant racial identity of a potential trading‐partner country influences people's willingness to trade with that country. Using various surveys and multiple survey experiments conducted over the past 12 years, we find that white individuals have become less supportive of trade than minorities and that whites are more likely than minorities to favor trade with highly similar countries. We suggest that minority support for trade is due to four well‐documented differences in the psychological predispositions of whites and minorities in the United States. Minorities have lower levels of racial prejudice, are lower in social dominance, and express less nationalism than whites. At the same time, there is evidence of rising ingroup racial consciousness among whites. Each of these characteristics has been independently linked to trade support in a direction encouraging greater support for trade among minorities. As the United States grows ever closer to becoming a "majority minority" nation, the racialization of trade attitudes may stimulate shifts in the likely future of America's trade relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opinions toward gay marriage, also known as same-sex marriage, have become dramatically more favorable in the last 20 years. Given the more accepting attitudes of younger Americans, generational replacement is one widely noted engine of change. However, the pace of shifts in public attitudes has been too rapid for this to be the sole explanation. Identifying other causes of increasing support has been difficult due to reliance on cross-sectional associations. Using nationally representative panel data from 2008 to 2016, we test three potential explanations for changes in public attitudes toward gay marriage. Our findings suggest that increased interpersonal contact with gays and lesbians, declining religiosity, and increasing levels of education in the U.S. all contributed to the rise in public support for same-sex marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Did the American public become more protectionist during the Great Recession of 2007–09? If so, why? During this period, many observers expressed concern that rising unemployment would stimulate protectionist pressures. The results of this study indicate that although increased unemployment did not affect the trade preferences of most Americans, individuals working in import-competing industries who lost their jobs during the Great Recession did grow more hostile to trade. However, even greater hostility to trade stemmed from a variety of non-material factors. Increasing ethnocentrism and opposition to involvement in world affairs between 2007 and 2009 help account for growing antipathy toward trade. But most importantly, increasing anxiety that foreign commerce would harm people in the future, even if it had not done so thus far, contributed to mounting opposition to trade among the American public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study evaluates evidence pertaining to popular narratives explaining the American public's support for Donald J. Trump in the 2016 presidential election. First, using unique representative probability samples of the American public, tracking the same individuals from 2012 to 2016, I examine the "left behind" thesis (that is, the theory that those who lost jobs or experienced stagnant wages due to the loss of manufacturing jobs punished the incumbent party for their economic misfortunes). Second, I consider the possibility that status threat felt by the dwindling proportion of traditionally high-status Americans (i.e., whites, Christians, and men) as well as by those who perceive America's global dominance as threatened combined to increase support for the candidate who emphasized reestablishing status hierarchies of the past. Results do not support an interpretation of the election based on pocketbook economic concerns. Instead, the shorter relative distance of people's own views from the Republican candidate on trade and China corresponded to greater mass support for Trump in 2016 relative to Mitt Romney in 2012. Candidate preferences in 2016 reflected increasing anxiety among high-status groups rather than complaints about past treatment among low-status groups. Both growing domestic racial diversity and globalization contributed to a sense that white Americans are under siege by these engines of change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The only long term trend data on trust in the American press comes from the General Social Survey (GSS). The erosion of trust in the press as measured by the GSS indicator is indisputable, but its implications for the functioning of American democracy depend on what, precisely, is being measured. In this study we use an experimental design embedded in a representative national probability sample to shed light on what people are thinking of when they say they trust or distrust the American press. Are they thinking about the sources they themselves use for news? The sources that are most popular with the population at large? An average of all possible media sources? We find that individuals express much greater trust in the press when they are asked to consider specific news sources than when they are asked to evaluate a generic news media. Our results suggest that an accessibility bias combined with the proliferation of news sources in recent years may lead individuals to think of distrusted sources when asked to answer generic media trust questions. We therefore argue that different measurement strategies are needed to successfully address trust in the press in the current news environment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we provide one of the first systematic analyses of gender's effect on trade attitudes. We draw on a unique representative national survey of American workers that allows us to evaluate a variety of potential explanations for gender differences in attitudes toward free trade and open markets more generally. We find that existing explanations for the gender gap, most notably differences between men and women in economic knowledge and differing material self-interests, do not explain the gap. Rather, the gender difference in trade preferences and attitudes about open markets is due to less favorable attitudes toward competition among women, less willingness to relocate for jobs among women, and more isolationist non-economic foreign policy attitudes among women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Synthesizing several theories about the likely impact of case reports in the news, we propose that the impact of featuring identified victims in a news story is contingent on the degree of similarity between the audience member and the identified victims. We execute a population-based survey experiment involving immigration policy to examine our theory. Our results suggest that featuring specific, identified victims in a news story will promote more supportive policy opinions than otherwise identical stories about unidentified victims, but only when the victim is highly similar to the audience member. Conversely, case reports featuring identified people who are dissimilar to the audience member will decrease the extent to which the story encourages victim-supportive policy attitudes. Overall, our experimental findings shed light on the conditions under which the inclusion of case reports increases versus decreases the policy relevance of news stories. Our findings also help explain previous inconsistencies in findings about the impact of case reports. Additional analyses allow us to speculate as to the reasons for the differential direction of effects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Economists have argued that outsourcing is another form of international trade. However, based on a representative national survey of Americans conducted in 2007 and 2009, the distribution of preferences on these two issues appears to be quite different. This article examines the origins of attitudes toward outsourcing, focusing on the extent to which it reflects (1) the economic vulnerabilities of individuals; (2) the information they receive about outsourcing, including their subjective understanding of what constitutes outsourcing; and (3) noneconomic attitudes toward foreign people and foreign countries. The findings emphasize the importance of variations in understandings of the term, as well as the highly symbolic nature of attitudes toward this issue. Individuals who believe the US should distance itself from international affairs more generally, who are nationalistic, or who feel that members of other ethnic and racial groups within the US are less praiseworthy than their own group tend to have particularly hostile reactions to outsourcing. The informational cues people receive are also important influences on their understanding of and attitudes toward outsourcing. Experimental results further emphasize the symbolic nature of attitudes toward outsourcing. Taken together, the results strongly suggest that attitudes are shaped less by the economic consequences of outsourcing than by a sense of "us" versus "them." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many research purposes, scholars need reliable and valid survey measures of the extent to which people have been exposed to various kinds of political content in mass media. Nonetheless, good measures of media exposure, and of exposure to political television in particular, have proven elusive. Increasingly fragmented audiences for political television have only made this problem more severe. To address these concerns, we propose a new way of measuring exposure to political television and evaluate its reliability and predictive validity using three waves of nationally representative panel data collected during the 2008 presidential campaign. We find that people can reliably report the specific television programs they watch regularly, and that these measures predict change over time in knowledge of candidate issue positions, a much higher standard of predictive validity than any other measure has met to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three central themes that have persisted throughout the history of research on communication and public opinion are examined in light of past, present, and future research. These themes include (1) ongoing concerns surrounding the political diversity of the communication environment; (2) selective exposure to political communication; and (3) the interrelationship between mass and interpersonal political communication. We explore the importance of these themes with an emphasis on how technological changes have made them, if anything, more relevant today than they were when first identified as central concerns of the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Focuses on the design and operation of the automated mission planning system computer software for the Modified Antarctic Mapping Mission in the U.S. Provision of critical information about the geologic forces for geoscientists; Usability of the plan database records; Evaluation of alternative mission designs.

Summary 1Genetic differences among populations of a keystone species may affect ecosystem functional properties. We tested this by planting Spartina alterniflora from different geographical regions in a newly created salt marsh in Delaware, USA. 2 Spartina alterniflora plants from morphologically distinct short-form (back marsh) populations were originally collected from Massachusetts (41°34′ N), Delaware (38°47′ N), and Georgia (31°25′ N) in the USA and vegetatively propagated for 6 years in a salt water-irrigated common garden in Delaware before transfer to a newly created salt marsh. 3The magnitude of the expression of marsh functions in the created marsh, measured over 5 years, remained distinct in patches of each ecotype. End of season aerial biomass, below-ground biomass, root and rhizome distribution, canopy height, stem density, and carbohydrate reserves were closer to values reported for the plants’ native sites than to those typical of Delaware. Thus, many of the plant features characteristic of particular latitudes appear to be under genetic control. Such ecotypic differentiation influences ecosystem function through keystone resource and keystone modifier activities. 4Respiration of the microbial community associated with either dead shoots or the soil varied with plant ecotype in the created wetland and the patterns reflected those reported for their native sites. High edaphic respiration under the Massachusetts ecotype was correlated with the high percentage of sugar in the rhizomes. Edaphic chlorophyll was greater under the canopies of the Massachusetts and Delaware ecotypes than under the Georgia canopy and exhibited a relationship similar to that of algal production rates reported for the native sites. Larval fish were most abundant in pit traps in the Massachusetts ecotype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the role of mass media in facilitating communication across people with dissimilar political views in the United States. Factor in determining the exposure of an individual to dissimilar ideas; Complaints against the news media; Comparison between the political views acquired through news media and interpersonal political discussants.

Examines the effects of media portrayals of public support for candidates on the behavior of potential campaign contributors in the United States. Extent of media coverage suggesting a candidate is gaining or losing political support; Suggestion that strategic considerations weigh heavily in decisions to donate money to political candidates.

Discusses the decline in reporting of events in American journalism. Reference to previous studies conducted on journalism; Methodology used in the study; Changes made in news coverage during the 20th century; Possible reasons for changes made in reporting.