Although the coexistence of conflicting opinions in society is the very core of democracy, people's tendency to avoid conflict could keep them away from political discussion and participation. On the other hand, being exposed to diverse political views could motivate citizens to participate. We conducted secondary analyses on two 2013 ITANES (Italian National Election Studies) probability samples in order to test the hypotheses that perceived network disagreement (between an individual and her/his discussion partners) and heterogeneity (among discussants holding different political opinions) exert independent and opposite effects on political participation through motivation and knowledge. Results converged in showing that disagreement dampened, while heterogeneity encouraged, political participation (voting, propensity to abstain in future, offline and online activism, and timing of vote decision) by decreasing or increasing, respectively, political interest and, in turn, knowledge.
Two studies were conducted to investigate adolescents' tendency to associate healthy food with family and junk food with friends, at both an explicit and implicit level. Study 2 also explored whether family and peer influences on food attitudes and consumption can be exerted through these mere associations, testing the moderating effect of social identity.overall, results confirmed that our participants tended to associate healthy food with family and junk food with friends, both deliberatively (at the explicit level) and automatically (at the implicit level). in addition, these mere associations predicted food consumption frequency, either directly (fruit-family) or indirectly through attitude (snacks-friends), for participants highly identified with the corresponding reference group.The present research contributes to a deeper understanding of the social meaning of food by focusing on the associations of different food types with different social contexts and provides suggestions for improving health education and prevention programs.
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