GVPT309C Week 1 PDF

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Notes on readings and lecture from week 1...

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Flip Flops, Lies and Foreign Policy: How Citizens Evaluate Leaders and Why it Matters Presenter: Sarah Croco from UMD I.

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Main Questions to Address A. Is flip-flopping as big a deal as people think it is? B. What are the domestic consequences of flip-flopping? C. What happens to public opinion when leaders lie? D. What can we do about it? Flip Flops and High Heels A. Motivation 1. Pundits and scholars think flip-flopping is a huge deal a) Domestic & international consequences 2. Hillary Clinton in 2008 Dem Primary B. Basic set-up 1. Senator positions on Iraq War (based on gender) C. Takeaway Points 1. Final agreement is what matters most, not consistency a) You can only call someone a flip-flopper if you disagree with their final position 2. Gender only matters in predicting if respondents saw the senator as a strong leader (females seen as weaker) 3. Gender does NOT matter in predicting approval Teflon Don or Politics as Usual? A. Motivations 1. Trump has an old tweet about EVERYTHING a) This makes it easy to see when he changes opinions...but do people actually care? B. Questions 1. Do citizens care if Trump changes positions on foreign policy decisions? 2. Does issue salience matter? 3. How does polarization factor in here? C. Issues 1. Syria 2. EU Tariffs D. Takeaways 1. Situational approval is all over the map 2. Baked-in notions are hard to sway a) Where you start in your evaluation of both the leader and the issue at hand matters b) Flipping only really hurts a leader if the people hate him anyway, so the leader shouldn’t really care about this

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c) Pretty tough to move job approval compared to situational approval Making Them Pay: Norm of Honesty to Generate Costs for Political Lies A. Motivation 1. People like to talk about how Trump lies a lot 2. Polarization B. Question C. Setup D. Priming Honesty - Manipulation 1. Activity prime 2. Honesty prime E. Takeaway points 1. Priming honesty kind of works a) The honesty prime made respondents overall more willing to acknowledge a lie occurred 2. Republicans are willing to lower their approval of Trump F. Can the results from these studies be applied to leaders/citizens in other countries, or would cultural and political-structure differences potentially change public opinion dynamics? G. In your opinion, do you believe that polarization and his lies will be Trump’s downfall in this year’s election if Republicans really are willing to lower their approval of Trump? H. Based on all of the research you have compiled on Trump and public opinion, has the US political atmosphere become more polarized because of Trump’s administration, or was Trump’s election actually the result of a preexisting atmosphere of polarization?

Week 1 Reaction In general, I thought that Dr. Croco’s lecture was super interesting, well presented, and easy to follow; instead of using a lot of boring, technical language, she was more casual and helped us to

understand her studies and findings effectively. I found her research on Trump’s lies to be the most intriguing, particularly the finding that Republicans are, in fact, willing and able to lower their approval of Trump; in a way, it gave me a little hope for a more...favorable result for the election in November. I do wish that the professor had taken a little bit more time to explain the statistics behind the studies’ takeaways and results, as I had some trouble following (though that may be just because I tend to struggle to analyze multi-faceted graphs and translate them into complete findings. In particular, I struggled to follow all the different variables/scenarios/treatments involved. From my point of view, it seems that flip-flopping has done very little to influence who millennials choose to support. For example, Joe Biden did in fact have a history of racist, homophobic, pro-life, and anti-global environmental policymaking in 1980s-90s. However, as did most of the Democratic Party, Biden has publicly flip-flopped on these stances (despite the fact that his actions haven’t necessarily reflected his words). Despite the fact that the data from the studies showed that when politicians flip-flop in people’s favor, their approval ratings go up or at least stay the same, in my own experience from everyday life, it always seemed to me that Biden’s flip-flop made him even more unlikeable to young, liberal voters.Thus, the studies, presentation and seminar both changed my outlook on the subject based on more diverse, compiled data, rather than the limited unofficial data that I perceived through social media and my direct peers. I was confused about a few of the questions on the quiz, and would be really interested in an explanation of why my answers were wrong; the first question I was confused about was “based on the research you read, what were the circumstances under which Republican respondents would disapprove of Trump?” The second was “In the paper that used both a fictional and real leader, the fictional leader…” I was under the impression that the point of including a fictional leader in this case would be to present respondents with a politician that they would definitely be unfamiliar with. All in all, I really enjoyed Dr. Croco’s lecture, and am excited to see what the rest of this course’s lectures will bring!...