Research
Research
In its research and teaching, the Department of Government primarily focuses on comparative and Austrian politics. Its research is concerned with political behaviour, political actors, such as political parties and politicians, political institutions, the processes governed by these institutions, as well as their outcomes. It includes work on political participation, voting behaviour, parties and party competition, coalition politics and Austrian politics in general and is mostly based on rationalist and behavioural approaches.
Our goal is to conduct high-level, internationally competitive research in the area of Comparative Politics with the collaboration of international project partners and research networks. At the Faculty of Social Sciences the department is mainly engaged in the key research area ''Political Competition and Communication: Democratic Representation in Changing Societies'.
The department’s approach places it in the discipline’s empirical-analytical core and is mostly based on quantitative social science methods. To map empirical phenomena accurately, researcher in the department focus on the continuous development of survey design, as well as on the analysis of empirical data by applying the best suited statistical model. The department aims to achieve the best work on Austrian politics and to make important contributions to the international academic literature on Comparative Government and Politics.
An overview of current publications and activities at the department can be found below and on the personal websites of our team.
Political Institutions
Institutions play a key role in political systems, as they define the framework conditions for political decisions...
Political Representation
Political representation describes the institutional and social processes and practices that connect citizens and voters to...
Party Competition
Party competition is an essential component of democratic systems and describes the competition between political parties for votes...
Infrastructural Projects
Infrastructural projects are an essential component of scientific research, as they create the basis for long-term data collection...
Political Behaviour
Political behaviour deals with the individual and collective attitudes and actions of citizens in a political context...
Cooperations
Cooperations are a central component of scientific research, as they promote the exchange of knowledge, resources and...
Publications
Biased but moderate voters: How information depolarizes political attitudes
- Author(s)
- Davide Morisi
- Abstract
Common predictions of motivated political reasoning assume that biased voters should polarize after exposure to mixed arguments. However, despite extensive evidence of biased information processing, evidence of attitude polarization is surprisingly rare. This study contributes to
explaining this apparent puzzle by showing that Bayesian voters can simultaneously evaluate information in line with predictions of motivated reasoning and moderate pre-existing attitudes. Experimental evidence from two studies conducted during high-stake referendum campaigns in the
UK confirms that exposure to a balanced set of arguments leads to depolarization of attitudes, despite the presence of a confirmation bias in the
evaluation of evidence. In addition, both studies reveal that moderation of attitudes occurs especially among those with strong prior attitudes. By
showing that even motivated voters can moderate their attitudes in response to evidence, this study invites to reconsider negative evaluations of motivated reasoning, and indicates that information can actually smooth the extreme fringes of the electorate during intense political campaigns.- Organisation(s)
- Department of Government
- Volume
- CVAP WP 3/2017
- No. of pages
- 42
- Publication date
- 2017
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 501013 Motivational psychology, 501021 Social psychology, 506014 Comparative politics
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/a399168b-8785-4a8b-a590-6413bb5a3732