Search

Although the American public's increasingly cynical views about human nature have drawn considerable attention from scholars, existing research says little about how interpersonal trust shapes mass foreign policy opinions. This study analyzes survey data to test the claim that citizens use their beliefs about human nature to reason about international affairs. The results indicate that cynical citizens are more likely than trusting citizens to endorse the principle of isolationism and to oppose cooperative forms of intervention in other nations' problems. Citizens' use of interpersonal trust as an information shortcut helps them to make inferences regarding a topic about which they typically know little, but such inferences are not necessarily realistic ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the modeling multilevel data structures use by political scientists in the U.S. Association of statistical modeling with the analysis of multilevel data; Discussion on the educational statistics and sociology for multilevel analysis;Importance of statistical motivation for explicit accounting for multilevel data structures.

Explores the impact of prosocial orientation on a domain of public opinion in the United States. Attitudes toward social welfare policies; Orientation of humanitarianism; Importance of humanitarianism to the American sociopolitical ethos; Contrast between humanitarianism and egalitarianism; Sets of policies that constitute different types of welfare state.

Shows how campaign information affects voting behavior. Contrast between an on-line model and memory-based models of candidate evaluation process; Responsiveness of citizens to campaign information; Recall of campaign messages.