Suchergebnisse

This collection raises concerns over whether restrictive U.S. immigration policies are necessary and just. In addition to such concerns, I argue that more studies of a target perspective are needed in order to reveal undocumented immigrants' experiences and voices. By adopting a target perspective in undocumented immigrants research, the implicit assumption of restrictive U.S. immigration policies may be questioned, and divergent ways of dealing with illegal immigration and assisting undocumented immigrants may be proposed. Adapted from the source document.

This collection raises concerns over whether restrictive U.S. immigration policies are necessary and just. In addition to such concerns, I argue that more studies of a target perspective are needed in order to reveal undocumented immigrants' experiences and voices. By adopting a target perspective in undocumented immigrants research, the implicit assumption of restrictive U.S. immigration policies may be questioned, and divergent ways of dealing with illegal immigration and assisting undocumented immigrants may be proposed.

Democracy may contribute to friendly attitudes and positive attitudes toward outgroups (i.e., outgroup tolerance) because members of democratic societies learn to exercise their rights (i.e., cast a vote) and, in the process, listen to different opinions. Study 1 was a survey study with representative samples from 33 countries (N = 45,070, 53.6% female) and it showed a positive association between the levels of democracy and outgroup tolerance after controlling for gender, age and the rate of immigrants influx from 2010 to 2013. Study 1 demonstrated that members in countries with higher political participation and civil liberty showed greater tolerance toward immigrants. In Study 2, we conducted an experimental study in Taiwan (N = 93, 67.7% female) to further examine two potential mediators (opinion sharing and voting) of the effect of democratic system on tolerance toward outgroups (i.e., attitudes toward mental patients) after controlling for gender and age. We found that when individuals were allowed to share opinions and vote, they had the highest positive other-oriented emotions toward mental patients, which in turn led to greater tolerance toward outgroups compared to those who were not allowed to share opinions or vote. In general, these results demonstrated that the democratic system plays a critical role in increasing outgroup tolerance. Limitations of the two studies and implications regarding opinion sharing, voting, democratic systems, and effects on outgroup tolerance are discussed.

Social science research has contributed to the destigmatization of homosexuality which, in turn, has affected the topics researchers choose to study. We examined psychological research that focused on lesbians and bisexual women from 1975 to 2001 to determine if the frequency and content of this research reflect the increasingly positive view of sexual minorities in society. The results indicate that non-heterosexual people were included in less than 1 percent of published research, and lesbians and bisexual women were significantly less likely to be studied than gay and bisexual men. Content analysis of 533 abstracts followed by cluster analysis of 520 abstracts revealed four conceptual frameworks that characterized this body of research: Gender Identity, Attitudes towards Lesbians, Lesbians as Problems, and Life in Heterosexist Society. Together, changes over time in the quantity and emphasis of research shed light on how lesbianism and bisexuality have been constructed in psychological studies and highlight the politics of lesbian-bisexual visibility.

The decisions voters make—and whether those decisions are rational—have profound implications on the functionality of a democratic society. In this study, we delineated two criteria in evaluating voter rationality and weigh evidence of voter rationality versus irrationality. Furthermore, we compared models in two different elections in Taiwan to explore the reasons behind the irrational choices voters can make. Survey questions and an implicit association test (IAT) were administered prior to both elections among 197 voters in Taipei. These voters then reported their actual votes post-election. Model testing suggests that voters often are rational, but are more likely to make irrational choices in more important elections. Our findings indicate that voters generally aim to be diligent and to optimize their choices, even if they make less rational choices in the end. Further implications regarding elections and human rationality are discussed.