Events

Kal Munis, Utah Valley University
Which Details Matter for How Americans Evaluate Political Violence?

What factors do Americans find most important when evaluating acts of political violence? We employ two pre-registered conjoint experiments to answer this question. Normatively, details regarding the violent act (e.g., the target and violence severity) should determine the punishment for political violence. However, Social Identity Theory suggests evaluations of political violence may depend on the perpetrator’s characteristics and the relationship between the social identities of perpetrators and evaluators. Through varying both perpetrator characteristics and features of the violent act, we discern the relative weight of act-centric and perpetrator-centric considerations. We find that even though the perpetrator’s characteristics (e.g., partisanship, race) do influence people’s excusal of violence, the features of the act matter much more for citizen evaluations of political violence, on average. Though these findings can be interpreted as normatively negative given that perpetrator’s identities do influence punishment, the disproportionate effect of the violent act’s target and severity are normatively encouraging.

Zoom link

The Tuesday Talks Series is scheduled throughout each semester with speakers invited to discuss cutting-edge topics. Occasionally talks are given on subjects relevant to students such as career management and research. CGU and Claremont Colleges Consortium faculty, students, staff, and alumni are encouraged to attend.

Unless otherwise announced, all seminars are scheduled from 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm. The format for the talks this semester is hybrid, with the option to attend in person at Burkle 12 or online via Zoom. Please use the Zoom links below to register for that talk. For those attending in person, a light lunch will be provided!