Economic sociologists agree that economic rationality is constructed and that morality and economic interests often intersect. Yet we know little about how Americans organize their economic beliefs or assess the morality of markets. We distinguish position taking (how people respond to opinion items) from construal (how respondents understand and structure their attitudes within a domain). Usin...

Twin and family studies suggest that political attitudes are partially determined by an individual's genotype. The dopamine D4 receptor gene (DRD4) exon III repeat region that has been extensively studied in connection with human behaviour, is a plausible candidate to contribute to individual differences in political attitudes. A first United States study provisionally identified this gene with...

Measures of symbolic racism (SR) have often been used to tap racial prejudice toward Blacks. However, given the wording of questions used for this purpose, some of the apparent effects on attitudes toward policies to help Blacks may instead be due to political conservatism, attitudes toward government, and/or attitudes toward redistributive government policies in general. Using data from nation...

Using data from a national probability sample of heterosexual U.S. adults (N02,281), the present study describes the distribution and correlates of men’s and women’s attitudes toward transgender people. Feeling thermometer ratings of transgender people were strongly correlated with attitudes toward gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals, but were significantly less favorable. Attitudes toward transge...

CONTEXT Relatively little is known about the factors shaping public attitudes toward obesity as a policy concern. This study examines whether individuals' beliefs about the causes of obesity affect their support for policies aimed at stemming obesity rates. This article identifies a unique role of metaphor-based beliefs, as distinct from conventional political attitudes, in explaining support f...

In light of the increasing refusal of some parents to vaccinate children, public health strategies have focused on increasing knowledge and awareness based on a "knowledge-deficit" approach. However, decisions about vaccination are based on more than mere knowledge of risks, costs, and benefits. Individual decision making about vaccinating involves many other factors including those related to ...

The inconsistency of the beliefs citizens have about political issues is neither a new nor a surprising finding for political scientists (Converse 1964). Still at least from a normative point of view attitude constraint is a desideratum that is important for the quality of electoral decisions and ultimately for the quality of democracy (Friedman 2006). Under these circumstances it is not surpri...

Within the MMORPG World of Warcraft, attitudes towards warfare are expressed in conflicting ways. This is partly a result of the difficult relationship modern Western society has with warfare, and the various political agendas that surround this. Within World of Warcraft, this is expressed specifically in the minigames known as ‘Battlegrounds’, which allow players to fight against each other in...

A growing body of research in political science has uncovered evidence of a " split personality " among Americans when it comes to racial attitudes, whereby people express different attitudes in public than they personally hold. A common assumption is that people adjust their personal attitudes to conform to dominant social norms. At present, however, there is no theoretical model that could ac...