CAN ZENGIN
Work in Progress
Dissertation
The Role of Self-Conscious Emotions in Polarized Societies
In modern times, there is an increasing tendency to use "us versus them" rhetoric in the political realm. Motivated reasoning literature offers a solution as to how group conflict contributes to outgroup bias. People may develop negative feelings towards outgroups in order to reduce cognitive dissonance and feel better about their judgments. Nevertheless, this is not the situation for everyone. My research aims to understand how peoples’ predisposed tendencies may affect the level of their out-group bias. Drawing from the distinction between shame (a negative sense of identity) and guilt (a response to a specific behavior) in psychology, I hypothesized that self-conscious emotions would moderate the relationship between information about in-group transgressions and out-group bias. To test this, I conducted a survey experiment with three different groups: Men/Women, White/Black people, and Democrats/Republicans. Participants were randomly assigned to watch videos depicting misbehavior from their respective group. Results showed that the proneness to self-conscious emotions did moderate the relationship to some extent, although the connection between shame and guilt proneness was more complex than anticipated. Criticizing one's in-group generally caused people to experience cognitive dissonance and reinforced out-group bias, particularly among those who were highly prone to both shame and guilt. The three-way interaction between treatment, shame proneness, and guilt proneness varied across and within the different identity categories, suggesting that there is no single theory that can entirely explain the degree of out-group bias.
chapter_1_-_the_role_of_self-conscious_emotions_in_polarized_societies.pdf | |
File Size: | 580 kb |
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Other Projects
From Shame to Populism: The Role of Pride in Political Attitude
Research on the role of emotions in populist movements is a rising trend, yet one type of set of emotions has been understudied: Self-Conscious Emotions. ‘Cooley-Scheff conjecture’ states that “adults are virtually always in a state of either pride or shame, usually of a quite unostentatious kind” to monitor social bonds (Scheff, 1988; p:399). So, how would this phenomenon pertain to individual’s political behavior in terms of their group identity? In this paper, I investigate (1) whether exposure to populist messages will elicit pride more among shame-prone individuals, and (2) the role of pride as a mediator for an explanation for populist attitudes through 3-sample survey experiment (Gender, Race, and Party Identity) in the United States.
chapter_2_-_from_shame_to_populism_the_role_of_pride_in_political_attitude.pdf | |
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Incentivizing Good Digital Governance: Toward a Healthier and More Ethical Online Public Sphere
Democracy is retreating around the world. Over the past decade, the decline in democracy has been notable not only in countries that have just recently transitioned to democracy but also in advanced, stable democratic systems in Europe and North America (Diamond 2021). Political polarization and the spread of misinformation are often cited as culprits in the rise of contested democracy (Finkel et al. 2020; Kingzette et al. 2021; Osmundsen 2021; Vosoughi et al. 2018). In turn, the Online Public Sphere and more specifically the online media sphere has been implicated in both the growth of polarization and the spread of misinformation. The goal of our project is to understand the breadth and contours of the Online Public Sphere (both positive and negative) as well as investigate how it could be structured in ways that encourage more healthy behaviors and support good digital governance.
incentivizing_good_digital_governance__toward_a_healthier_and_more_ethical_online_public_sphere_-_pre-analysis_plan.pdf | |
File Size: | 537 kb |
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How Does Identity Verification on Social Media Influence Political and Social Behavior?
The spread of misinformation, rumors, or conspiracies on social media is not new, and is particularly intense in periods of crisis everywhere regardless of the country being a stable democracy or not. Social media platforms have tried different options to constrain the spread of fake news, however these methods approach the problem from the detection angle rather than prevention. In parallel, much of the existing literature has focused on the detection of fake news after it has been shared and few studies have explored how to create an information system to address the issue prior to its emergence. In this research, we rely on a mock social media platform similar to X where participants spend a certain amount of time and answered a questionnaire. We intended to understand how people react to the information in their feed, faced with messages that vary in content, tone, and veracity. We expose them to different treatment conditions: providing information about which messages stem from verified profiles; labelling certain messages as verified or suspicious; giving a general warning about the presence of non-verified profiles/messages. We assess how these conditions influence participants’ evaluations of (mis)information, their social media behaviour (liking or sharing messages), and their political attitudes.