Sarah Palin's looks hurt Republicans last November

So says a recent study, Sarah Palin - Objectification - Reaction - Situation

Two researchers at the University of South Florida have developed a study that suggests . . . that a random group of Republicans and independents asked to focus on Palin’s attractiveness felt less likely to vote for the GOP ticket in last November’s elections.

“The idea is that when you focus on a woman’s appearance, this objectifies her, or turns her into an object in your eyes,” said Jamie L. Goldenberg, an associate professor of psychology at USF and co-author of the study, titled “Objectifying Sarah Palin: Evidence that Objectification Causes Women to be Perceived as Less Competent and Fully Human.” “What we found is these perceptions influenced people’s likelihood of voting.”

In their experiment, Goldenberg and graduate student Nathan A. Heflick assembled a group of 133 undergraduates at the school a month before the election. After noting their characteristics — 27 percent were male, 45 percent were Democrats, 24 percent were Republicans and the rest were independents — they were randomly separated into four groups.

Two groups were asked to write about Palin and two groups were asked to write about actor Angelina Jolie. Within each pair, one group was asked to write their thoughts and feelings about the subject’s appearance, and the other was asked to write about the person. They then asked respondents how they would vote in the coming election.

Goldenberg said that, after factoring out Democratic respondents (who solidly supported Obama), the Republicans and independents asked to write about Palin’s appearance said they were less likely to vote GOP than those who simply considered Palin as a person.

“There was an overall tendency to perceive Sarah Palin as less competent than Angelina Jolie,” said Goldenberg, noting their results fell in line with previous studies indicating that, in high status and political jobs, attractive women were perceived as less competent in ways attractive men and women in other jobs were not.

. . . .Goldenberg said the study, which is to be published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, may spark more questions than it answers.

Posted via web from jimnichols's posterous

This is important...

How to improve group decision making

When it operates efficiently, a group's decision making will nearly always outperform the ability of any one of its members working on their own. This is especially the case if the group is formed of diverse members. One problem: groups rarely work efficiently.

A new meta-analysis (pdf) of 72 studies, involving 4,795 groups and over 17,000 individuals has shown that groups tend to spend most of their time discussing the information shared by members, which is therefore redundant, rather than discussing information known only to one or a minority of members. This is important because those groups that do share unique information tend to make better decisions...

I was just pondering something to this effect today. I'm working slowly through the idea of a GOTNV (Get out the Non-Voter) effort. My quandry is how to get nonvoters to vote. I think there is a long term dialougue and discussion that must go on between non voters and activists. We activists have to do a lot of listening. We also have to work on our ability to discuss issue that are important to non voters in a way that they feel like they understand.

I remember one day after I was on local tv talking politics with a conservative tv host (who happens to be running for govoner now) and one of my coworkers said, "I saw you on TV."

Oh yeah... how'd I do. Did I do alright?

"I dunno man I had no clue what you guys were talking about," he said with a shrug. Which blew my mind... he totally shut us out and just watched cause he knew me I guess. But it wasn't that complex to me.

We have to rengage nonvoters and I think creating productive discussions is one way that we must begin this process. I'm going to be trying to work through this idea and do something on this issue via DFA. I'm not sure what its going to look like but if you have thoughts or feedback email me at Jim.Nichols@gmail.com.

I digress... we have to start talking outside of our circle...

"...teams who talk more amongst themselves aren’t necessarily sharing useful information. Therefore, they’re not actually coming to a better result. Rather, it’s more important what the teams are talking about, than how much they are talking," said Mesmer-Magnus.

"Teams typically possess an informational advantage over individuals, enabling diverse personal experiences, cultural viewpoints, areas of specialization, and educational backgrounds to bring forth a rich pool of information on which to base decision alternatives and relevant criteria," the researchers concluded. "However, the current findings confirm that although sharing information is important to team outcomes, teams fail to share information when they most need to do so."

This is a side note, but important for Jim as he tends to be disorganized...

Another important factor was discussion structure. Groups particularly benefited from sharing unique information when they employed a highly structured, more focused method of discussion.

One of my biggest problems as Chair of the Henry County Democrats last year was my effectiveness. Part of the trouble was how scattered I can be, I do better with structure... and when it comes to decision making structure is key...

Ah shucks, democracy shemockracy...

District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2009 - Vote Passed (61-37, 1 Not Voting)

Ah yes, the citizens of D.C. want to be able to, you know, represent(yo!). And my Senators vote no.

Just a shout out to Chambliss and Isackson--I'm sure you had great reasons to vote against people having a voice in their government. Just not sure what those reasons might be.

highest voter turnout in decades!

One slight snag: 38.4 percent of eligible voters didn't cast a ballot for president in 2008

I support IRV... you should too!

Sometimes a blog quote is just golden...

"This opinion is based on an empirically sound foundation of absolutely nothing." --Ezra Klein

this was on the question in regards to October polling numbers and the vote on election day.

ASK A POLITICAL SCIENTIST!

You're seeing a lot of talk lately about how closely October's polls correlate with November's results. Princeton political scientist Larry Bartels e-mails:

Historically (since 1948), about 75-80% of the margin in a typical October poll has lasted until Election Day. If that holds true this year, the current best forecast of the popular vote based on the polls is that Sen. Obama will win by about 6 points.