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Correct Voting in Deutschland: Eine Analyse der Qualität individueller Wahlentscheidungen bei der Bundestagswahl 2009. [Correct Voting in Germany: An Analysis of the Quality of Individual Voting Decisions in the 2009 German Federal Election.] Permalink

Published in Working Paper of the Mannheim Center for European Social Research, 2012

Recommended citation: Kraft, Patrick (2012). "Correct Voting in Deutschland: Eine Analyse der Qualität individueller Wahlentscheidungen bei der Bundestagswahl 2009. [Correct Voting in Germany: An Analysis of the Quality of Individual Voting Decisions in the 2009 German Federal Election.]" Working Paper of the Mannheim Center for European Social Research 148.

Helfen politische Gespräche, ‘korrekt’ zu wählen? Eine Analyse zur Bundestagswahl 2009. [Do Political Conversations Facilitate ‘Correct’ Voting? An Analysis of the 2009 German Federal Election.]

Published in Zivile Bürgergesellschaft und Demokratie, 2013

Recommended citation: Kraft, Patrick and Rüdiger Schmitt-Beck. (2013). "Helfen politische Gespräche, 'korrekt' zu wählen? Eine Analyse zur Bundestagswahl 2009. [Do Political Conversations Facilitate 'Correct' Voting? An Analysis of the 2009 German Federal Election.]" In: Zivile Bürgergesellschaft und Demokratie ed. Silke I. Keil and S. Isabell Thaidigsmann. Wiesbaden: Springer VS: 117-138.

Political Information Flows and Consistent Voting: Personal Conversations, Mass Media, Party Campaigns and the Quality of Voting Decisions at the 2009 German Federal Election

Published in Voters on the Move or on the Run? Information-processing and Vote Choice in a Complex World, 2014

Recommended citation: Schmitt-Beck, Rüdiger and Patrick Kraft. (2014). "Political Information Flows and Consistent Voting: Personal Conversations, Mass Media, Party Campaigns and the Quality of Voting Decisions at the 2009 German Federal Election." In: Voters on the Move or on the Run? Information-processing and Vote Choice in a Complex World. ed. Bernhard Weßels, Hans Rattinger, Sigrid Roßteutscher, and Rüdiger Schmitt-Beck. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 193-216.

Why People ‘Don’t Trust the Evidence’: Motivated Reasoning and Scientific Beliefs Permalink

Published in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2017

In this commentary, we embed the volume’s contributions on public beliefs about science in a broader theoretical discussion of motivated political reasoning. The studies presented in the preceding section of the volume consistently find evidence for hyperskepticism toward scientific evidence among ideologues, no matter the domain or context — and this skepticism seems to be stronger among conservatives than liberals. here, we show that these patterns can be understood as part of a general tendency among individuals to defend their prior attitudes and actively challenge attitudinally incongruent arguments, a tendency that appears to be evident among liberals and conservatives alike. We integrate the empirical results reported in this volume into a broader theoretical discussion of the John Q. Public model of information processing and motivated reasoning, which posits that both affective and cognitive reactions to events are triggered unconsciously. We find that the work in this volume is largely consistent with our theories of affect-driven motivated reasoning and biased attitude formation.

Recommended citation: Kraft, Patrick, Milton Lodge, and Charles S. Taber. (2015). "Why People 'Don't Trust the Evidence': Motivated Reasoning and Scientific Beliefs." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 658(1): 121-133.

The General Error Correction Model in Practice Permalink

Published in Research and Politics, 2017

Enns et al. respond to recent work by Grant and Lebo and Lebo and Grant that raises a number of concerns with political scientists’ use of the general error correction model (GECM). While agreeing with the particular rules one should apply when using unit root data in the GECM, Enns et al. still advocate procedures that will lead researchers astray. Most especially, they fail to recognize the difficulty in interpreting the GECM’s ‘error correction coefficient.’ Without being certain of the univariate properties of one’s data it is extremely difficult (or perhaps impossible) to know whether or not cointegration exists and error correction is occurring. We demonstrate the crucial differences for the GECM between having evidence of a unit root (from Dickey-Fuller tests) versus actually having a unit root. Looking at simulations and two applied examples we show how overblown findings of error correction await the uncareful researcher.

Recommended citation: Lebo, Matthew and Patrick Kraft. (2017). "The General Error Correction Model in Practice." Research and Politics 4(2): 2053168017713059. /files/articles/lebo2017general_accepted.pdf

Measuring Morality in Political Attitude Expression Permalink

Published in Journal of Politics, 2018

This study explores whether and how individuals evoke moral considerations when discussing their political beliefs. Analyzing open-ended responses in the 2012 American National Election Study (ANES) using a previously validated dictionary, I find systematic ideological differences in moral reasoning - even when respondents are not explicitly asked about morality. The study proceeds to show that the reliance on moral considerations in attitude expression is amplified by the moral content of individual media environments.

Recommended citation: Kraft, Patrick. (2018). "Measuring Morality in Political Attitude Expression." Journal of Politics 8(3): 1028-1033. /files/articles/kraft2018measuring_accepted.pdf

Personality and Prosocial Behavior: A Multilevel Meta-Analysis Permalink

Published in Political Science Research & Methods, 2019

We investigate the effect of personality on prosocial behavior in a Bayesian multilevel meta-analysis (MLMA) of 15 published, interdisciplinary experimental studies. With data from the 15 studies constituting nearly 2500 individual observations, we find that the Big Five traits of Agreeableness and Openness are significantly and positively associated with prosocial behavior, while none of the other three traits are. These results are robust to a number of different model specifications and operationalizations of prosociality, and they greatly clarify the contradictory findings in the literature on the relationship between personality and prosocial behavior. Though previous research has indicated that incentivized experiments result in reduced prosocial behavior, we find no evidence that monetary incentivization of participants affects prosocial tendencies. By leveraging individual observations from multiple studies and explicitly modeling the multi-level structure of the data, MLMA permits the simultaneous estimation of study- and individual-level effects. The Bayesian approach allows us to estimate study-level effects in an unbiased and efficient manner, even with a relatively small number of studies. We conclude by discussing the limitations of our study and the advantages and disadvantages of the MLMA method.

Recommended citation: Kline, Reuben, Alexa Bankert, Lindsey Levitan, and Patrick Kraft. (2019). "Personality and Prosocial Behavior: A Multilevel Meta-Analysis." Political Science Research & Methods 7(1): 125-142. /files/articles/kline2019personality_accepted.pdf

Social Media & the Changing Information Environment: Sentiment Differences in Read versus Re-Circulated News Content Permalink

Published in Public Opinion Quarterly, 2020

There is reason to believe that an increasing proportion of the news consumers receive is not from news producers directly but is recirculated through social network sites and email by ordinary citizens. This may produce some fundamental changes in the information environment, but the data to examine this possibility have thus far been relatively limited. In the current paper, we examine the changing in-formation environment by leveraging a body of data on the frequency of (a) views, and recirculations through (b) Twitter, (c) Facebook, and (d) email of New York Times stories. We expect that the distribution of sentiment (positive-negative) in news stories will shift in a positive direction as we move from (a) to (d), based in large part on the literatures on self-presentation and imagined audiences. Our findings support this expectation and have important implications for the information contexts increasingly shaping public opinion.

Recommended citation: Kraft, Patrick, Yanna Krupnikov, Kerri Milita, John B. Ryan, and Stuart Soroka. (2020). "Hypothesis Testing with Error Correction Models." Public Opinion Quarterly 84(S1): 195-215.

Reliable Sources? Correcting Misinformation in Polarized Media Environments Permalink

Published in American Politics Research, 2022

Providing corrective information can reduce factual misperceptions among the public but it tends to have little effect on people’s underlying attitudes. Our study examines how the impact of misinformation corrections is moderated by media choice. In our experiment, participants are asked to read a news article published by Fox News or MSNBC, each highlighting the positive economic impact of legal immigration in the United States. While the news content is held constant, our treatment manipulates whether participants are allowed to freely choose a media outlet or are randomly assigned. Our results demonstrate the importance of people’s ability to choose: While factual misperceptions are easily corrected regardless of how people gained access to information, subsequent opinion change is conditional on people’s prior willingness to seek out alternative sources. As such, encouraging people to broaden their media diet may be more effective to combat misinformation than disseminating fact-checks alone.

Recommended citation: Kraft, Patrick, Nicholas R. Davis, Taraleigh Davis, Amanda Heideman, Jason T. Neumeyer, and Shin Young Park. (2022). "Reliable Sources? Correcting Misinformation in Polarized Media Environments." American Politics Research 50(1): 17-29. /files/articles/kraft2021reliable_accepted.pdf

Hypothesis Testing with Error Correction Models Permalink

Published in Political Science Research and Methods, 2022

Grant and Lebo (2016) and Keele et al. (2016) clarify the conditions under which the popular general error correction model (GECM) can be used and interpreted easily: In a bivariate GECM the data must be integrated in order to rely on the error correction coefficient, alpha^{*}_{1}, to test cointegration and measure the rate of error correction between a single exogenous $x$ and a dependent variable, $y$. Here we demonstrate that even if the data are all integrated, the test on alpha^{*}_{1} is misunderstood when there is more than a single independent variable. The null hypothesis is that there is no cointegration between $y$ and any $x$ but the correct alternative hypothesis is that $y$ is cointegrated with at least one—but not necessarily more than one—of the $x$’s. A significant can occur when some $I(1)$ regressors are not cointegrated and the equation is not balanced. Thus, the correct limiting distributions of the right-hand-side long-run coefficients may be unknown. We use simulations to demonstrate the problem and then discuss implications for applied examples.

Recommended citation: Kraft, Patrick, Ellen M. Key, and Matthew J. Lebo. (2022). "Hypothesis Testing with Error Correction Models." Political Science Research and Methods 10(4): 870-878. /files/articles/kraft2021hypothesis_accepted.pdf

Glass Half-Full or Half Empty: Does Optimism about Women’s Representation in Elected Office Matter? Permalink

Published in Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, 2023

Recent years have seen an unprecedented number of women candidates running for public office. Does the resulting potential for greater gender equality in political representation have downstream effects on individual-level political attitudes, particularly among women voters? Given the partisan imbalance in women’s candidacies, do Republican and Democratic voters experience the growing gender parity in political representation differently? We explore these questions by employing a survey experiment in the 2018 Cooperative Election Study (CES) that manipulates the perceived trajectory of women’s representation in politics. Our results suggest that priming future optimism as compared to pessimism in women’s representation has little overall effect on the gender gap in political efficacy and interest, but that party affiliation can be a moderator in this context. We discuss the broader implications of our findings for women’s engagement in politics.

Recommended citation: Kraft, Patrick and Kathleen Dolan. (2023). "Glass Half-Full or Half Empty: Does Optimism about Women’s Representation in Elected Office Matter?" Journal of Women, Politics & Policy 44(2):139-151.

Asking the Right Questions: A Framework for Developing Gender-Balanced Knowledge Batteries Permalink

Published in Political Research Quarterly, 2023

Gender differences in political knowledge are a well-known empirical finding in public opinion research. Scholars working in this area have proposed various explanations for this phenomenon, often focusing on issues regarding the format and content of factual knowledge batteries. Yet, there are surprisingly few works that focus on how scholars might diversify the content of political knowledge measures to develop items that are less biased toward male areas of expertise. In this paper, we propose an inductive framework to develop more gender-balanced knowledge batteries by including political issues that are of particular relevance to women and women’s lives.

Recommended citation: Kraft, Patrick and Kathleen Dolan. (2023). "Asking the Right Questions: A Framework to Develop Gender-Balanced Knowledge Batteries." Political Research Quarterly 76(1): 393-406.

Change My View: Do Moral Appeals Facilitate Compromise? Permalink

Published in Informationsflüsse, Wahlen und Demokratie. Festschrift für Rüdiger Schmitt‑Beck., 2023

Politics is becoming increasingly polarized in many democracies. According to research in moral psychology, these growing disagreements between liberals and conservatives can be attributed to fundamental differences in the moral frameworks that shape individual ideology. Indeed, scholars suggest that ideologues would be more likely to reach compromise if both sides spoke the same ‘moral language.’ While this implicit assumption has intuitive appeal, it remains largely untested empirically. Drawing on a unique dataset from the online discussion board Reddit, this paper examines how moral appeals can affect individual persuasion and the likelihood of compromise.

Recommended citation: Kraft, Patrick. (2023). "Change My View: Do Moral Appeals Facilitate Compromise?" In: Informationsflüsse, Wahlen und Demokratie. Festschrift für Rüdiger Schmitt‑Beck. Ed. Thorsten Faas, Sascha Huber, Mona Krewel, Sigrid Roßteutscher. Baden‑Baden: Nomos: 169-198.

When Information Is Not Enough for Strategic Voting Permalink

Published in Electoral Studies, 2023

Voters frequently have to decide between supporting their preferred candidate or choosing a less appealing but more viable alternative. Previous research argues that different aspects of political sophistication, but especially political information, permit citizens to navigate these strategic trade-offs. In this research note, we disentangle the effect of political information from the effect of cognitive capacity on strategic voting in an experimental study. We find that especially the combination of information and cognitive resources increases strategic voting if people have sufficient incentives to vote strategically. Thus, our findings suggest that a narrow focus on individual levels of information to facilitate strategic voting and improve democratic representation is incomplete.

Recommended citation: Schlegel, Benjamin, Lukas Stoetzer, and Patrick Kraft. (2023). "When Information Is Not Enough for Strategic Voting." Electoral Studies 86(102692): 1-6.

Lexical Ambiguity in Political Rhetoric: Why Morality Doesn’t Fit in a Bag of Words Permalink

Published in British Journal of Political Science, 2024

How do politicians use moral appeals in their rhetoric? Previous research suggests that morality plays an important role in elite communication and that the endorsement of specific values varies systematically across the ideological spectrum. We argue that this view is incomplete since it only focuses on whether certain values are endorsed and not how they are contextualized by politicians. Using a novel sentence embedding approach, we show that although liberal and conservative politicians use the same moral terms, they attach diverging meanings to these values. Accordingly, the politics of morality is not about the promotion of specific moral values per se but, rather, a competition over their respective meaning. Our results highlight that simple dictionary-based methods to measure moral rhetoric may be insufficient since they fail to account for the semantic contexts in which words are used and, therefore, risk overlooking important features of political communication and party competition.

Recommended citation: Kraft, Patrick and Robert Klemmensen. (2024). "Lexical Ambiguity in Political Rhetoric: Why Morality Doesn’t Fit in a Bag of Words." British Journal of Political Science 54(1): 201-219.

Women Also Know Stuff: Challenging the Gender Gap in Political Sophistication Permalink

Published in American Political Science Review, 2024

This article proposes a simple but powerful framework to measure political sophistication based on open-ended survey responses. Discursive sophistication uses automated text analysis methods to capture the complexity of individual attitude expression. I validate the approach by comparing it to conventional political knowledge metrics using different batteries of open-ended items across five surveys spanning four languages (total N = 35,000). The new measure casts doubt on the oft-cited gender gap in political knowledge: women might know fewer facts about institutions and elites, but they do not differ substantively in the sophistication of their expressed political attitudes.

Recommended citation: Kraft, Patrick. (2024). "Women Also Know Stuff: Challenging the Gender Gap in Political Sophistication." American Political Science Review 188(2): 903-921.

Complaints About Police Misconduct Have Adverse Effects for Black Citizens Permalink

Published in Political Science Research and Methods, 2025

Existing literature examines the effectiveness of civilian oversight in reducing police misconduct. However, little-to-no quantitative research explores possible adverse consequences of this accountability mechanism. Utilizing time series analysis of administrative data on aggregate monthly civilian complaints and police behavior in the largest American city, this article offers evidence of racial inequality in police response to civilian complaints. For White civilians, complaint against the police abates subsequent police stops. For Black civilians, complaint is associated with subsequent intensification of police stops. This intensification only follows complaints against White officers, is conditional upon officer knowledge of the complaint, is confined to stops involving greater officer discretion to perform the stop, and is only observed in police precincts with large Black populations.

Recommended citation: Kraft, Patrick and Benjamin J. Newman. (forthcoming). "Complaints About Police Misconduct Have Adverse Effects for Black Citizens." Political Science Research and Methods.

Patrick W. Kraft