Studying Contextual Effects on Political Behavior

Abstract

The study of contextual effects on political behavior has expanded dramatically in the last two decades. In this article we review the recent progress of the field in an attempt to develop a coherent framework for categorizing and analyzing contextual effects. We note that some types of effects have been understudied and that the processes by which context affects individuals have not received sufficient attention. Taking an information approach, we argue that context works through individual perceptions of contextual phenomena and that many sources of and reactions to information condition contextual effects. Finally, we suggest profitable future research efforts based on previous research and our preferred approach to the field.

Religion and Volunteering in Context

“…Regnerus (2003:527) further develops this notion and argues that religious context is not simply a set of personal relationships, but also an emergent group property "that can affect individuals regardless of their status as immediate group members." It is also plausible that aggregated religiosity is a proxy for global or institutional contextual factors, such as legal and cultural institutions, rather than for social interaction or macro network structure, especially when the contextual unit in question is a country or large region (Books and Prysby 1988;Finke and Adamczyk 2008). From this perspective, aggregated religiosity or affiliation would represent structural features of networks in a contextual unit rather than serving as a proxy for individuals' ego-centric networks.…”

“Geo-Ethnicity” and Neighborhood Engagement: A Communication Infrastructure Perspective

“…More recent studies on ethnicity and civic participation specifically focused on contextual factors (Abowitz, 1990;Anderson, 1996;Books & Prysby, 1988;Giles & Dantico, 1982;Kenny, 1992;Stoll, 2001). For example, Stoll (2001) found an interaction between neighborhood-level poverty and ethnicity.…”

Context Matters: Effects of the Proportion of Fundamentalists on Gender Attitudes

“…Though we do not have the data to investigate exactly how this fundamentalist context influences individuals' gender attitudes, there are several possible vehicles of a contextual effect. Books and Prysby (1988) identify three sources of contextual effects: (1) social interaction with more like-minded others, (2) conformity to prevailing norms, and (3) information flow patterns. Certainly, the repetitious process of day-to-day interactions could result in fundamentalists relaying conservative gender attitudes to nonfundamentalists through a variety of social structures like work, neighborhoods, and voluntary organizations (Huckfeldt & Sprague 1987).…”