Societal Implications of Individual Differences in Response to Turbulence
Principal Investigator, University of California, Irvine
Co-Principal Investigator, University of California, Irvine
Co-Principal Investigator, Georgetown University
Research Team
Scott Blum, University of California, Irvine
Dana Garfin, University of California, Irvine
Bryan McDonald, University of California, Irvine
Michael Poulin, SUNY Buffalo
This research project is funded by the National Science Foundation (Project #0624165).
About this Project
The final decades of the twentieth century witnessed a dramatic upsurge in the pace and scale of technological innovation, economic globalization, environmental change and political transformation. The impacts of these processes are varied and complex. On many fronts-from literacy to life expectancy-humankind has experienced remarkable and well-documented gains. But our interconnected and rapidly changing world is also being challenged by an expanding list of transnational threats such as climate change, infectious disease and global terrorism.
Political scientists are working to understand how these global threats are affecting democratic values, institutions, and practices. Social psychologists are studying the range of responses traumatic events elicit among individuals within a society. We believe it is important to weave these two strands of research together to investigate the extent to which traumatic events and perceptions of global threats may evoke different political responses that in aggregate can influence democratic values, institutions and practices. Building on research that we, and others, have undertaken, we are bringing our two fields together by studying how an individual's age and age cohort influences his or her responses to terrorism and other security threats and the perceived likelihood of future threats. Because the United States is aging at a time of great turbulence in the global security landscape, it is important to consider how this fact impacts our country's support for the use of force, conscription, and many other security-related issues. It also raises important general questions about issues such as trust in government, agenda setting and policy formulation in an aging democracy.
We are collecting data from a nationally representative, web-enabled longitudinal panel of 1500 adults at three waves over the course of the project period. The specific aims of this research are to explore the relationships among (a) aging and age cohorts; (b) individual interpretations of and responses to security-relevant forms of global turbulence and transformation; and (c) social and political outcomes such as changes in support for or protest against the use of force abroad, attitudes towards surveillance at home, and one's level of trust in government. We will use the threat of transnational terrorism as the primary example of global turbulence and transformation, but we believe the findings generated by our research are equally relevant to issues such as infectious disease, severe weather events, and transnational crime.
Publications
Matthew, Richard, Bryan McDonald and George Shambaugh. (2008). "Post-9/11 America: Conventional Wisdom Versus Popular Pragmatism." Democracy & Society, Vol. 5 No. 2 (Spring 2008).
Silver, R. C., and Matthew, R. (2008). Terrorism. In V. N. Parrillo (Ed.), Encyclopedia of social problems (Vol. 2, pp. 926-929). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Presentations
Shambaugh, George, Richard Matthew and Bryan McDonald (2009, September). “Perceptions of Threat, Trust in Government, and Policy Support in Democratic Societies.” Presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Toronto, ON, Canada, September 3-6, 2009.
Shambaugh, George (2009, May). "Perceptions of Threat, Trust in Government, and Policy Support in Democratic Societies." Presented to Political Economy Working Group, Mortara Center, Georgetown University, Washington, DC.
Shambaugh, George (2009, April). "National Threat in Democratic Conditions."Presented to Threat in Democratic Societies Conference sponsored by the Elliott School of International Affairs, the Institute for Global and International Security, and the Department of Political Science, George Washington University. George Washington University, Washington, DC.
McDonald, Bryan (2009, February). "New Threats to World Security: Terrorism and other Transnational Threats."Presented to Palmia Men's Issues Group, Mission Viejo, California, February 12, 2009."
McDonald, Bryan (2008, October). "A Portrait of America in Turbulent Times: Finding Solutions to 21st Century Security Challenges." Presented to Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Irvine, California, October 21, 2008.
Shambaugh, George (2008, September). "A Portrait of America in Turbulent Times: Public Perceptions and the Political Salience of Terrorism and Other Traumatic Events." Presented to Institute for Global and International Studies, Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C., September 25, 2008.
McDonald, Bryan. (2008, April). "Food Security in Turbulent Times: Challenges from Nutrition, Safety and Environmental Change." Presented to the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Irvine, California.
Matthew, Richard, Bryan McDonald and George Shambaugh (2008, March). "Global Change and U.S. Public Opinion: Challenging Common Assumptions about the Impact of Terrorism." Presented at the 49th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, San Francisco, California, March 26th - March 29th, 2008.
Poulin, Michael J. Roxane Cohen Silver, and Scott Blum (2008, March). "How Does Terrorism Affect Policy? The Salience of 9/11, Terrorism Risk Perceptions, and Support for Terrorism-related Policies." Presented at the 49th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, San Francisco, California, March 26th - March 29th, 2008.
Shambaugh, George (2008, March). "Post-9/11 America: Conventional Wisdom versus Popular Pragmatism." Presented to the International Politics Series at St. Andrews University, Scotland, UK, on March 3, 2008
Shambaugh, George (2008, February). "Post-9/11 America: Conventional Wisdom versus Popular Pragmatism." Frank Wright Memorial Lecture, Queen's University, Belfast, NI, on February 28, 2008.
McDonald, Bryan. (2008, January). "Navigating the Changing Security Landscape."Presented to the UC, Irvine Chancellor's Club, Irvine, CA.
Shambaugh, George (2008, January). "Post 9/11 America: Popular Pragmatism in Turbulent Times." Presented to School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University, Washington, D.C.
Matthew, Richard. (2007, December). "Think Again: 9/11 Transformed America." Presented to Center for Unconventional Security Affairs Advisory Board, Irvine, CA.
Silver, Roxane Cohen (2007, January). "Coping with Life's Tragedies: From Research to Policy." Plenary Speaker, Society for Personality and Social Psychology's Annual Presidential Symposium, Memphis, TN.