Difference and democracy : encountering difference in democratic dialogues
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The collection of essays in this dissertation explores the impact of interacting with different others on people's attitudes. In the first chapter, I drew from intergroup contact theory (Allport, 1954; Pettigrew, 1998; Brown & Hewstone, 2005) to study the effect of deliberating with racial and religious minorities in samples of Australians, Bulgarians, and the Northern Irish. My analyses showed that: (1) prior contact was positively associated with greater support for outgroup policies; (2) contact with the outgroup during deliberation increased support for outgroup policies; and (3) the positive effect of deliberative contact was stronger for those who have had negative contact experiences in the past. I also found that perspective taking and argument quality were significant mediators of contact effects, while learning about the outgroup was not. In the second chapter, I focused on another form of difference -- opinion difference -- in the context of face-to-face group discussions. Based on theories of social influence (Asch, 1951; Bassili, 2003; Huge & Glynn, 2012), it was hypothesized that those who hold different opinions from the majority of the group would report greater feelings of constraint and change their opinions more after deliberation. It was also posited that opinion support -- having more people on "your side" of the opinion spectrum -- would moderate the effect of opinion difference and opinion change. Data from the 2011 Deliberative Poll in Korea lent support to these hypotheses. Results showed that opinion minorities were more likely to feel inhibited during deliberation and changed their opinions more to the other side compared to opinion majorities. This effect was mitigated when they had a greater number of people on their side in the group. The results also suggested that the three measures of opinion difference seemed to measure slightly different constructs. In the third chapter, I broadened my perspective to examine the effect of race during the telephone survey interview process that involved an African American candidate. Using data from hundreds of thousands of telephone interviews conducted during the 2008 U.S. Presidential election campaign by major survey organizations (ABC News/Washington Post, CBS News/New York Times, and the Gallup Organization), I found that Africa-American interviewers were indeed more likely to elicit statements of the intent to vote for Mr. Obama than were White interviewers. This effect occurred because African-American interviewers were more likely than White interviewers to elicit participation in the survey by African-American respondents and/or that White interviewers were more likely than African-American interviewers to elicit participation by White respondents. Together, these three studies illuminate different pieces of the puzzle regarding the influence of minorities in different communication contexts.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2013 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Kim, Nu Ri |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Communication. |
| Primary advisor | Fishkin, James S |
| Thesis advisor | Fishkin, James S |
| Thesis advisor | Iyengar, Shanto |
| Thesis advisor | Krosnick, Jon A |
| Thesis advisor | Luskin, Robert C |
| Advisor | Iyengar, Shanto |
| Advisor | Krosnick, Jon A |
| Advisor | Luskin, Robert C |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Nu Ri Kim. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Communication. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2013. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2013 by Nu Ri Kim
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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