Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Effect of Empathy on Public Opinion on Immigration

本项目研究移情对个人信息处理和移民政策意见形成的影响。研究人员专注于移情和移民有三个原因。 首先，移民作为一个政策领域尚未得到解决，这一问题极为突出，影响着数百万人的生活和生活质量。 第二，关于移民的大部分公众意见是沿着党派路线划分的，这是一个学习和意见改变的艰难考验。 如果共情影响移民意见的动机，学习和意见改变过程，其潜在影响可能在不那么分裂的政策领域更大。第三，这个项目填补了情感和移民意见学术工作的主要空白。 迄今为止，学术界只探讨了焦虑、威胁、愤怒和热情对政治观点的影响。 该项目通过提供对移民意见的同情心的影响的第一手研究来推进知识。此外，这项研究探讨了同理心如何不仅影响移民政策偏好，而且影响移民政策的考虑因素（例如，关于移民的信仰），人们利用这些信仰来形成政策意见。 该项目解决了三个主要的研究问题。对移民的同情如何影响信息寻求，政治学习和意见改变？这些影响是否受到种族和党派的影响？这些共情效应能持续多久，持续到什么程度？ 为了评估这些问题，研究人员进行了一项实验，以衡量对无证移民的同情心增加对个人学习，推理和移民政策意见的影响。 该项目使用真实世界的新闻文章，以增加主题的同理心和调查自我报告的问题，以提供一个全面的了解这种未充分研究的情绪对移民问题的影响。 我们的期望是，同理心会激发人们寻求信息的行为，增强政治学习的前景，最终甚至会改变人们对移民等问题的强硬观点。 也有人认为，共情的效果取决于一个人的种族和党派。 该项目的创新之处在于，在实验的基础上进行调查，以估计特定情绪对观点的直接影响是暂时的还是具有更持久的影响。这项研究做出了一些更广泛的贡献。该项目揭示了公民如何看待分裂问题。此外，该项目提高了对情绪对公众舆论影响的理解。

This project studies the impact of empathy on individual information processing and opinion formation on immigration policy. The researcher focuses on empathy and immigration for three reasons. First, immigration as a policy area is unresolved, is extremely salient, and influences the lives and quality of life of millions of people. Second, much of public opinion on immigration is divided along party lines, which presents a difficult test case for learning and opinion change. If empathy affects the motivational, learning, and opinion change processes on immigration opinion, its potential impact may be even greater in policy arenas that are not as divisive. Third, this project fills major gaps in scholarly work on emotion and immigration opinion. To date, scholarship has only explored the effects of anxiety, threat, anger, and enthusiasm on political opinions. This project advances knowledge by providing first-cut research into the impact of empathy on immigration opinion. In addition, this research explores how empathy affects not only immigration policy preferences but also the considerations (e.g., beliefs about immigrants) that people draw upon to form policy opinions. The project addresses three chief research questions. How does empathy towards immigrants affect information seeking, political learning, and opinion change? Are these effects moderated by ethnicity and partisanship? How long and to what extent do these empathic effects endure? To assess these questions, the researcher conducts an experiment to measure the effects of increased feelings of empathy toward undocumented immigrants on individual learning, reason giving, and immigration policy opinion. The project uses real-world news articles to increase subject empathy and survey self-report questions to provide a comprehensive understanding of the effects of this understudied emotion on the issue of immigration. The expectation is that that empathy motivates information-seeking behavior, enhances the prospects for political learning, and ultimately changes even hardened opinions such as those on immigration. It is also posited that the effects of empathy depend on a person's race and partisanship. This project innovates by using a survey to follow up on its experiments in order to estimate whether the immediate impact of specific emotions on opinion are temporary or has more lasting effects. This research makes several broader contributions. The project sheds light on how citizens think about divisive issues. Moreover, the project enhances understanding of the impact of emotion on public opinion.