Orientations toward Conflict and the Conditional Effects of Political Disagreement

Personality, Interpersonal Disagreement, and Electoral Information

“…At the same time, to the extent we see more agreeable individuals exposed to disagreement, we might expect to see less information seeking and exchange-the latter example might be thought of as being compatible with a more partisan public seeking more representation in politics. More generally, our work joins recent efforts (e.g., Testa et al 2014) in calling attention to heterogeneity; this suggests that disagreement should not be seen as something that has mixed consequences for all individuals-it may hold negative consequences for some, but it may hold positive (or mixed, or effectively no real) consequences for others. Such a view of disagreement points away from clear societal trade-offs and toward the expectation that we should observe a blend of representational, deliberative and participatory democracy.…”

“…As information seeking is perhaps the most important characteristic in assessing the quality of political behavior (Lau and Redlawk 2006), it is important to understand the conditions that trigger the process. Recent work finds that individual traits such as orientations toward conflict condition the effects of disagreement (Testa et al 2014); here we speak to these efforts, exploring different outcomes and individual moderators. To what degree do personality traits exaggerate (mute) social pressures when it comes to information seeking?…”

“…While the literature has noted that social influence works differently based on the interplay of individual choice and constraint (Klofstad et al 2013;McClurg 2006b;Sokhey and Djupe 2011), much of the work in this vein focuses on the construction of social "barriers" with respect to coercive environments, such as those in majority/minority contexts (Finifter 1974;Huckfeldt and Sprague 1995;McClurg 2006a). We advance a conditional approach that stresses the contribution of individual traits in moderating interpersonal disagreement (see Testa, Hibbing, and Ritchie [2014] for complementary work using conflict avoidance). Such a perspective can help us make sense of mixed findings regarding disagreement, for it points not toward uniformly positive or negative effects in the electorate.…”

“…Personality is a relatively static trait within individuals that potentially guides a host of political attitudes and behaviors (Mondak 2010;Winter and Barembaum 1999), including political discussion (Gerber et al 2012;Hibbing, Ritchie, and Anderson 2011;Mondak 2010;Mondak et al 2010). Scholars have long recognized the potential for heterogeneity in responses to disagreement (for a discussion, see Ahn, Huckfeldt, and Ryan 2014) and considered treatments of conflict avoidance (e.g., Mutz 2006), including recent examinations of positive orientations to conflict (Testa et al 2014). However, we know less about how personality traits affect the relative impact of disagreement, even if scholars have linked certain personality types to exposure to it (e.g., Mondak et al 2010).…”

Presidential Appointments and Public Trust

“…It should be noted that, while MTurk has been increasingly used in political science (e.g., Ahler ; Arceneaux ; Berinsky, Huber, and Lenz ; Crawford and Pilanski ; Doherty ; Eriksson and Funcke ; Fausey and Matlock ; Glynn ; Grimmer, Messing, and Westwood ; Grose, Malhotra, and Van Houweling ; Huber, Hill, and Lenz ; Huber and Paris ; Kriner and Shen ; Kriner and Shen ; Lawson et al ; Montgomery and Cutler ; Testa, Hibbing, and Ritchie ; Thibodeau et al ) and has been validated in other disciplines insofar as providing results similar to those of more conventional surveys and laboratory experiments (e.g., Buhrmester, Kwang, and Gosling ; Casler, Bickel, and Hackett ; Horton, Rand, and Zeckhauser ; Mason and Suri ; Paolacci, Chandler, and Ipeirotos ; Sprouse ), the usage of MTurk does remain somewhat controversial. Frequently targeted are the facts that the demographics of MTurk—and thus the demographics of samples recruited from the service—differ from national demographics in important ways (e.g., Casler, Bickel, and Hackett ), that it is often too easy for respondents in foreign countries to circumvent limitations requiring respondents be from the United States (e.g., Shapiro, Chandler, and Mueller ), that respondents respond to the financial incentives provided by each task by paying insufficient attention to the tasks at hand (e.g., Crump, McConnell, and Gureckis ), and that respondents may repeat the same or similar studies, thus reducing the effectiveness of experimental manipulations (e.g., Chandler, Mueller, and Paolacci ).…”