AbstractThe use of digital technology has become an increasingly prominent feature of election campaigns. While many of those using online tools are familiar partisan actors, many others are not. As concerns about electoral transparency have grown, policy makers have moved to implement regulation designed to help citizens recognize the identity of campaigners. In this paper, we test the rationale behind such regulations by asking how disclosures on online adverts—both informal badging and formal imprints—affect evaluation by UK voters. Using experimental survey design, we test the reactions of participants to real Facebook adverts, labeled as originating from both partisan and apparently non‐partisan sources. Across three experiments, we consistently find evidence to support concerns about what we term “clandestine campaigning”; a phenomenon whereby apparently non‐partisan groups can receive a more favorable reception for incongruous partisan advert content than overtly incongruous partisan‐badged campaign material.

AbstractWe use four surveys from Ukraine asking respondents to name at most three emotions that describe their feelings toward Russian citizens to assess how and why responses have changed since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. We find that 76% of Ukrainians now feel anger, hatred, or contempt toward Russian citizens compared to about 15% before the invasion. Respondents who agreed that Russian citizens supported the war to build an empire were especially more likely to feel either hatred, anger, or contempt. Perceived public desire for conquest speaks to perceived responsibility associated with anger and failure to meet an important standard associated with contempt. Additionally, anger, hatred, and contempt toward Russian citizens especially increased among respondents who mixed the use of Russian and Ukrainian or were from Eastern Ukraine, suggesting the invasion shifted attitudes toward Russian citizens among previously more pro‐Russian Ukrainians. Anger, hatred, and contempt toward both Russian citizens and the Russian government also have distinct action tendencies, cumulatively reducing support for a peaceful settlement.

AbstractAs more women enter politics, public and scholarly narratives about the extent and nature of gender bias in mediated campaigning environments diversify. Yet there is still little understanding of how voters substantively think about gender in their evaluations of women and men candidates and how voters' thoughts are affected by different types of media coverage. Drawing on literature on gender stereotyping and rationalization, this paper distinguishes two roles in which gender manifests in the candidate evaluation process—as a heuristic and as a rationalization. We empirically investigate these different ways in which gender affects voters' thoughts following neutral and contextually rich candidate stimuli by means of a mixed methods think aloud study. The results show that voters think less—but more positively—about substantive aspects of women's political profiles. These favorable thoughts include heuristic inferences of communal traits for women but not men candidates. Moreover, we find that voter rationalizations involve gender as ex post vote justifications and socially desirable drivers of candidate evaluations. Together, the findings not only showcase the complex roles of gender in voters' candidate evaluations but also the importance of considering the normative context in which vote decisions take place.

AbstractAlthough scholars have long understood the importance of psychology in international affairs, morality has often been overlooked as a factor in world leaders' decision‐making. This article seeks to fill this gap by introducing a new analytical tool: the moral portrait, a descriptive summary of a leader's moral values. The tool is built on the five cross‐cultural values of Moral Foundations Theory (Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity) and the methodological approach of operational code. As a case study, the moral portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin is inferred from his rhetoric, policies, and decisions. Putin's moral portrait, specifically his interpretations of the Fairness, Loyalty, and Authority values, can help explain many of his views and actions, including his decision to launch a full‐scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

AbstractA central aspect of political conservatism is the notion that the system is fair. Political conservatives tend to defend the system more than do liberals. Here we test whether the link between political orientation and this system justification tendency depends on the comparisons people make across time. Across five studies, we found that the typically observed link between conservative (vs. liberal) political orientation and system justification is only observed when no temporal comparisons are made, or when the status quo is compared to a future alternative. However, this association is not observed when the status quo is compared to the past. Instead, when comparing the present to the past, the link between political orientation and system justification was blocked (Studies 1, 2, and 4) or even reversed (Study 3). Theoretically, these results connect the system justification literature to literature on temporal comparison and suggest that system justification is meaningfully influenced by comparisons processes.

AbstractWe conducted two studies to analyze the relations between dissatisfaction with experiences with the national healthcare system and trust in political (political parties and parliament), super partes (judiciary and police), and international (European Union [EU] and United Nations [UN]) institutions via the mediation of trust in the national healthcare system. Study 1 (longitudinal study on a quota sample of the Italian adult population, N = 689, surveyed in April 2021, T1, and in April 2022, T2) showed that dissatisfaction with experiences with the national healthcare system was negatively associated with trust in the national healthcare system, which, in turn, was positively associated with an increase in trust in political, super partes, and international institutions. Study 2 (between‐participant experimental design, N = 285) showed that priming a negative versus a positive experience with the national healthcare system decreased trust in this system, which, in turn, was positively associated with trust in political, super partes, and international institutions. The strengths, limitations, and possible development of this research are discussed.

AbstractThis article explores the post‐Brexit increase in applications for Irish passports through descent, and in so doing, seeks to develop a social/political psychology of diasporic citizenship. It draws on a focus group and 10 individual interviews, all conducted in 2018–19; participants were all based in England and had applied, or were in the process of applying, for Irish passports through descent in the aftermath of Brexit. Analysis, using perspectives from discursive psychology, attended to both rhetoric and narratives of citizenship in participants' talk about the application process and identification with Ireland and Irishness. Participants draw on discourses of both effortfulness and essentialism in working up claims to Irish identity, with effortfulness in acquiring transnational knowledge being particularly central in rhetorically legitimizing less secure claims. The analysis thus builds on previous political psychological work highlighting the centrality of “effortfulness” to contemporary constructions of citizenship, particularly in the United Kingdom (Anderson & Gibson, 2020; Gibson, 2009). It is furthermore suggested that explicitly labeled “noneffortfulness” can act as a rhetorical marker of belonging. The implications of these findings for concepts of diasporic citizenship and debates around jus soli versus jus sanguinis citizenship in both Ireland and Britain are discussed.

AbstractThe “integration paradox” posits that seemingly well‐established immigrants and their descendants tend to report more discrimination compared to their more marginalized peers. This study investigates one potential mechanism for this paradox, namely, the increasing awareness of their group's enduring ethno‐racial minority status. Through a survey experiment with approximately 1000 randomly sampled immigrants and their descendants in Germany, this study provides the first causal evidence for this awareness mechanism. Participants were randomly assigned to read either a news article highlighting ethno‐racial hiring discrimination in the German labor market or an unrelated news article on astrophysics. Our findings demonstrate that exposure to the discrimination‐related article elicits a significant increase in reports of discrimination experienced by members of the groups with whom minorities identify, but also in self‐reported personal experiences of discrimination. This suggests that increased awareness can alter how minorities frame their personal experiences or encourage them to disclose instances of discrimination that they would have previously kept private. The study further reveals that heightened awareness does not translate into a corresponding increase in political demands for improved antidiscrimination policy. Finally, a third experimental condition dispels concerns that news reports downplaying ethno‐racial labor market penalties could stifle minorities' propensity to report discrimination experiences.