Politics, revenge and society

This topic submitted by Regan, Nancy, Zach and Geoff (Rmzio@aol.com) at 10:45 pm on 10/8/01. Additions were last made on Friday, April 19, 2002. Section: Myers

Regan Ziobro
Zach Baker
Nancy Wiegand
Geoff Malia
Politics, Revenge and Society:
A student generated lab report

Abstract
Miami University is widely criticized to have a homogenous and highly conservative student population. However, as students living on the Western campus, we have noticed a focused pull towards liberalism. The two different ideologies address many interesting questions regarding society and psychology. We have also noticed that after the disastrous terrorist attacks of September 11th, the reactions of the two ideologies are drastically different. The students’ concepts of retaliation are so dissimilar; we hope to find some correlation between the students’ reactions, political association and general thoughts. Through distributing the political survey that is attached, we will determine the political ideologies of each student. We will then have the students answer a series of questions regarding the terrorist attacks. Following the survey, we will hold a brief interview with each student participant. It is our hypothesis that, if fifty students are surveyed and interviewed, then we will be able to match more conservative ideas to a greater degree of anger against the terrorists. Thereby attempting to prove that the general thoughts of conservative minded individuals are revengeful than liberal minded individuals.

Introduction
The majority of the references we have used for our lab are web sites or articles from a periodical. The reason for the limited use of media is due to the specific focus of our lab. It is only within short descriptions that we were able to find useful information for our proposal. The following resources have been compiled over the last few weeks.

Politics - Liberalism
http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/chris.holt/home.informal/lounge/politics.liberalism.html
“The Eye of the Spider” website contains valuable facts about liberalist ideologies. The site answers many questions regarding the political profile of liberal minded individuals. From this web site, we are able to organize a standard process to determine what is, and what is not liberal. The identification of liberals is necessary to successfully categorize the students being surveyed.

Politics - Liberal
http://www.tripod.wm/~GOPcapitalist/liberalism.html
This site gave our group an overview of liberal beliefs. The site answers many questions regarding the political profile of liberal minded individuals. From this web site, we are able to organize a standard process to determine what is, and what is not liberal. The identification of liberals is necessary to successfully categorize the students being surveyed.

Politics – Conservativism
http://counterrevolution.net/consfaq.html#
Conservative FAQ website is similar to the “The Eye of the Spider” web site, in terms of its use for the lab. Conservative FAQ is a forum in which the political platform and ideology of conservative individuals is displayed. Through identifying the characteristics of a conservative minded individual, we are better prepared to categorize the students taking the survey.

Politics – Conservative
http://www.members.tripod.com/~GOPcapitalist/conservativism.html
This web site provided a definition of the conservative political platform and ideology. Through identifying the characteristics of a conservative minded individual, we are better prepared to categorize the students taking the survey.

Political Survey
http://www.uta.edu/english/daver/1301/#
“Political Quiz: Are you a Liberal or Conservative” was taken from this web site and selected portions of it were included into our political survey. The web site gives this quiz for individuals to determine their association between political parties and ideas. With this and other quizzes, we have compiled a more directed political survey for the purpose of this experiment. Many of the questions in our survey were taken from this web site.

Political Survey
http://www.bakalis2002.com/quiz.html
“The Quiz: Are you a Liberal or Conservative” was taken from this web site and selected portions of it were included into our political survey. The web site gives this quiz for individuals to determine their association between political parties and ideas. With this and other quizzes, we have compiled a more directed political survey for the purpose of this experiment. Many of the questions in our survey were taken from this web site.

Social Groups
Vogler, Carolyn, Social Identity and Emotion: the meeting of psychoanalysis and sociology The Sociological Review v.48 Feb. 2000 p. 19-42
Carolyn Vogler’s paper, Social Identity and Emotion: the meeting of psychoanalysis and sociology, she attempts to organize a way in which society can better understand social identities. She combines the two areas of sociology and psychoanalysis to explain the social formation of individuals. She argues that social identification has a largely emotional basis. It is not simply an ideology that draws individuals to associate with, she argues. But an inter relationship between the group and strong emotions such as love, hate, shame and anger. Through analyzing the behaviors of British trade unions, she concluded that the “unconscious psychological processes and strong feelings may now be articulating with sociological processes to form a mutually reinforcing loop which is strengthening and reinforcing nationalism in a sociological context.” Therefore, Vogler has found that the association with a specific group can unconsciously raise feelings within an individual. Thus her studies help to prove that identifying with more conservative with individuals, it is possible feelings, such as anger or vengeance, can unconsciously surface.

Social Groups
Zinni, Frank P., The Structure of Attitudes Toward Groups: a comparison of experts and novices, Political Research Quarterly v. 50 September 1997 p.597-626
Zinni questions the force that can transform an entire groups attitudes and ideologies. He explains, “Groups are important symbols that structure political reasoning.” In his study he discovered, “that with decreasing levels of political sophistication comes a greater reliance on emotion as a guide in the political world.”
It is with Zinni’s study that we can better explain and compare the two political groups and their emotional relevance.

Ideology
De St. Aubin, Ed., Personal Ideology Polarity: its emotional foundation and its manifestation in individual value systems, religiosity, political orientation, and assumptions concerning human nature, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
v. 71 July 1996 p. 152-65
The article defines personal ideology as “an individual’s philosophy of how life should be lived and of what forces influence human living.” Through a sociological study, it found evidence that an associated group may serve as the foundation for personal ideology. Participants in the study were found to be more joyful, distress, fear and shame when their personalities were more humanistic. The normative personalities identified more with anger. This study is surprisingly similar to our proposed lab. Its conclusions are highly useful for comparison to our own.

Politics – Emotion
Crawford, Neta C., The Passion of World Politics: propositions on emotion and emotional relationships, International Security v. 24 Spring 2000 p. 116-56
Crawford argues that emotions play a significant role in world politics. She believes emotions have the power to drive groups and nations. Through establishing the direct connection between emotions and politics we are able to better prove the correlation between political affiliation and emotions.

Methods
The data sheet will simply have the participants’ number, their political association score, their revenge score and if their scores correlate with one another.
For the class experience we will have the students divide into two groups. These two groups will then take the survey, collect and process the data to determine the success of our original hypothesis. They will be asked to graph both groups and total results on a scatter plot. Finally we will host a class discussion in order to assess the class results.

Results
Using a numeric scale we will compare the results of the political portion of the survey to the revenge portion of the survey. For every question there is a weighted point system that is tallied upon competition of the survey. The number students obtain after taking the first portion, should directly correlate to their political ideology. The revenge portion of the survey will be calculated separately and analyzed to determine a numerical grade of vengefulness. The interview will be used to tie up loose ends and provide quotes from the participants. These three studies of the ideology of students will provide a more in depth view of the participants. We hope the numerical results will help to prove our original hypothesis. Through contrast and comparison we will calculate the results and display them with scientific tables and scatter point graphs.

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