Influence Of Colleagues Research Articles

政党支持と投票行動におよぼすソーシャル・ネットワークとマスメディアの影響

This article examines the influence of personal communication and the media on partisanship and voting behavior in the 1996 general election based on an analysis of the JEDS96 survey data.Among the main constituents of social network including spouses, other family members, colleagues, and friends, the study finds that spouses' influence is by far the greatest. The influence of colleagues and friends is negligible unless they have a frequent political conversation with voters. In contrast, spouses and other family members influence on the voters regardless of the frequency of political talks.As for the role of the media, the main source of influence for the Liberal Democratic Party supporters came from television news, whereas those who supported the New Frontier Party were influenced by TV commercials. This implies that the LDP was unable to make effective use of mass media campaigns through election broadcasts or commercials, while the New Frontier Party's reliance on commercials means that substantial political messages were overshadowed by the presentation of superficial images.Lastly, even if voters got something good impression about a party from mass media, voters without political talks would not come to support the party.

Participation and investment decisions in a retirement plan: the influence of colleagues’ choices

This paper investigates whether peer effects play an important role in retirement savings decisions. We use individual data from employees of a large university to study whether individual decisions to enroll in a Tax Deferred Account plan sponsored by the university, and the choice of the mutual fund vendor for people who choose to enroll, are affected by the decisions of other employees in the same department. To overcome the identification problems, we divide the departments into sub-groups (along gender, status, age, and tenure lines) and we instrument the average participation of each peer group by the salary or tenure structure in this group. Our results suggest that peer effects may be an important determinant of savings decisions.

Participation And Investment Decisions In A Retirement Plan: The Influence Of Colleagues' Choices

This paper investigates whether peer effects play an important role in retirement savings decisions. We use individual data from the staff of a university to study whether individual decisions to enroll in a Tax Deferred Account plan sponsored by the university (and the choice of the mutual fund vendor for people who choose to enroll) are affected by the decisions of other employees in the same department. To overcome the identification problems, we separate the departments into sub-groups (along gender, status, age, and tenure lines) and we instrument the average participation of each peer group by the salary or tenure structure in this group. Our results suggest that peer effects are important. We find significant own-group peer effects on participation and on vendor's choice, but no cross-group peer effects.

The Voting Behavior of American Political Scientists: the 1980 Presidential Election

A SMALL FRACTION of the voting studies conducted during the past three decades focused on the electoral behavior of American political scientists. In 1959, Henry Turner, Charles McClintock, and Charles Spaulding used survey methods to explore the partisan orientations of a random sample of members of the American Political Science Association (APSA). Their findings (Turner, McClintock, and Spaulding, 1963: 650-65) sustained the conventional wisdom that their subjects were (74 percent) Democrats and led them to discount the influence of family and other customary explanatory variables of partisan choice. Instead, they concluded that the partisan preference of political scientists was largely and upon their evaluations of the policies and leadership of the party and on the information and attitudes gained in the political science profession (ibid., 665). A decade later (1970), Turner and Carl Hetrick replicated and extended the 1959 study. As before, the Association proved to be largely a 'one-party' organization (ibid., 374). Seventy-three percent of their respondents were Democrats (virtually the same percentage as before). These were also more politically active than Republican colleagues who, in turn, were more involved than independents. Turner and Hetrick presented additional evidence that adult socialization was more important than childhood socialization in the formation of partisan loyalties and political attitudes. In particular, they pointed to the influence of professional knowledge and the influence of colleagues. They concluded that political scientists perceived marked differences in the policies of the two parties and exercised conscious value judgments in making partisan choices (ibid., 374). In short, the political behavior of political scientists appeared more rational to them than did that of the general electorate. Articles by Everett Carll Ladd and Seymour Martin Lipset added depth to these findings. Two were based upon the 1969 Carnegie Commission Survey of students, faculty, and administrators. Responding to charges of conservatism within the discipline, they demonstrated that American political scientists were pervasively liberal in comparison with the general electorate and other academic groups (Ladd and Lipset, 1971: 135-44). In a subsequent essay, they argued that the belief systems of