Posts by Collection

Can Values Pull Us Together? The effects of value rhetoric on reducing polarization (Dissertation Chapter)

Can Basic Human Values be utilized to reduce affective polarization? While focusing on shared values and common goals is a well-known component of the optimal conditions for mitigating intergroup tensions (Allport 1954; Pettigrew and Tropp 2006), study of values as the medium to reduce prejudice and affective polarization remains surprisingly unexplored. According to existing research, 10 Basic Human Values form a value structure that is universally found across all human cultures (Schwartz 1994). In the United States, despite partisan polarization, Democrats and Republicans both rate Basic Human Values equally highly. Therefore, even though values might not seem so potent amidst heavy social cleavages and partisan biases, I argue that highlighting the shared basic human values will help reduce the intergroup animosity and draw greater tolerance regarding controversial issues and personalities.

The Political Is Personal: Basic Human Values and Partisan Cues (Dissertation Chapter)

Revise and Resubmit at American Politics Research

Are human values durable in a polarized political world? Scholars have long believed that humans hold durable and universal value structure, called the Basic Human Values that not only shape personal preferences, but also constrains and shapes political preferences at the same time. However, scholars have yet to test the reciprocal effects of politics on basic human values. This paper tests the conventional wisdom on human values’ durability for the first time, using partisan cues. Using survey experiments, I find that partisans adjust their value expressions when they receive party cues more favorably when given in-party cues and refrain from values that are prompted with out-party cues. Moreover, I show that Democrats and Republicans value positions almost flip flop depending on whether they receive in-party cue or out-party cue. Thus, this paper gives the first evidence that partisan cues in the polarized American context, can even shift human value positions, and suggest the possibility of a more genuine change in value if people are consistently exposed to such party cues.

Download here

Race, Ethnicity, and Moral Values

Reject and Resubmit at Political Behavior

Coauthored by Paul Goren, Emily Kurtz, Caitlyn Barrett, and Minyoung Kim

In the United States, the language of traditional family values took root in the Religious Right movement of the 1970s. Conservative white religious leaders constructed a specific moral language and introduced it to American politics. The Republican Party used the language of traditional values to appeal to mobilize conservative Christians and appeal to culturally conservative whites more broadly. By contrast, conservative Christian leaders and Republican politicians did not use the language of traditional family values to appeal to Black or Hispanic Americans. We posit that in response whites alone have developed fully crystallized beliefs about traditional family values. By contrast, basic human values (Schwartz 1992) emerge in response to universal needs that confront all individuals in all groups and societies. Human values express these needs in the form of cognitive goals. Schwartz’s theory suggests that members of different racial and ethnic groups have developed universal moral values that are exogenous to politics. We test these claims with data from four national surveys. We apply measurement modeling techniques to the ANES moral traditionalism and Schwartz conservation items in samples of whites, Blacks, and Hispanics. We find that whites alone express fully structured beliefs about traditional family values; and that whites, Blacks, and Hispanics express fully structured beliefs about tradition, conformity, and social change that transcend politics. Reject and Resubmit at Political Behavior