Objective. This study explores the immediate and long-term effects of scandal on candidate evaluation. Because scandals involve politicians behaving in ways inconsistent with prevailing moral standards, an immediate negative reaction to such information is largely unavoidable. However, the present study examines whether there are any long-term effects of scandal. Methods. Results from a longitudinal experiment are presented. The nature of the design facilitated the exploration of the immediate and lasting effects of exposure to scandal and the consistency of these effects across individuals. Results. Exposure to scandalous information about a candidate had an immediate negative effect on evaluation, but the magnitude of this negative effect declined over time, especially among the candidate's supporters. Conclusion. This research suggests that understanding the effects of scandal requires distinguishing between immediate and long-term effects.To political observers, political scandals appear abundant in American politics. 1 Over the last few years, a number of members of the U.S. Congress have resigned amid allegations of sexual misconduct (e.g., Representative Anthony Weiner [NY] resigned after inappropriate photographs surfaced along with revelations of inappropriate online relationships).

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This study investigates the degree to which social connections and social context shape attitudes and behaviors surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Methods: In April and August 2020, we surveyed Americans about their social context and asked a range of questions related to the coronavirus and social distancing. Results: Social crowding, social networks, and social context are related to support for social distancing policies and compliance with those policies. Conclusion:The coronavirus pandemic created hardships; hardships made more difficult by the inability to physically interact with extended family and friends and the inability to find space away from immediate family. This research suggests that understanding compliance with public policies requires attention to interpersonal connections.

Citizens are continuously inundated with political information. How do citizens process that information for use in decision-making? Political psychologists have generally thought of information processing as proceeding through a series of stages: (1) exposure and attention; (2) comprehension; (3) encoding, interpretation, and elaboration; (4) organization and storage in memory; and (5) retrieval. This processing of information relies heavily on two key structures: working memory and long-term memory. Working memory actively processes incoming information whereas long-term memory is the storage structure of the brain. The most widely accepted organizational scheme for long-term memory is the associative network model. In this model, information stored in long-term memory is organized as a series of connected nodes. Each node in the network represents a concept with links connecting the various concepts. The links between nodes represent beliefs about the connection between concepts. These links facilitate retrieval of information through a process known as spreading activation. Spreading activation moves information from long-term memory to working memory. When cued nodes are retrieved from memory, they activate linked nodes thereby weakly activating further nodes and so forth. Repeatedly activated nodes are the most likely to be retrieved from long-term memory for use in political decision-making. The concept of an associative network model of memory has informed a variety of research avenues, but several areas of inquiry remain underdeveloped. Specifically, many researchers rely on an associative network model of memory without questioning the assumptions and implications of the model. Doing so might further inform our understanding of information processing in the political arena. Further, voters are continuously flooded with political and non-political information; thus, exploring the role that the larger information environment can play in information processing is likely to be a fruitful path for future inquiry. Finally, little attention has been devoted to the various ways a digital information environment alters the way citizens process political information. In particular, the instantaneous and social nature of digital information may short-circuit information processing.

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