17:45 - 20:00
Thursday-Panel
Chair/s:
Lior Sheffer
Discussant/s:
Miriam Sorace
Meeting Room U

Lior Sheffer, Eran Amsalem
Personality and the Policy Positions of Politicians

Matthew Rice, Jeffery Mondak, Megan Remmel
The Impact of Personality on Interest Group Ratings of U.S. Senators

Alessandro Nai, Loes Aaldering, Frederico Ferreira da Silva, Diego Garzia, Katjana Gattermann
The Dark Side of the Mood. Candidate Evaluation, Voter Perceptions, and the Driving Role of (Dark) Personality Traits

Mathilde Langgaard Sørensen
Does mindfulness training increase political tolerance? Reporting from a two-week field experiment

Dragana Vidovic, Gina Reinhardt
How Healthy is our Democracy: Public Health and Political Participation
How Healthy is our Democracy: Public Health and Political Participation
Dragana Vidovic 1, Gina Reinhardt 2
1 University of Essex
2 University of Essex

Though previous scholarship has investigated the impact of political structures on health, there has been a recent shift in focus to the impact of public health on politics. Most studies find that poor health diminishes an individual’s likelihood to vote, with less consistent findings on the relationship between health and other forms of political participation. The mechanisms underpinning these relations are unsettled, as health is considered to both, hinder and promote participation. We address this inconsistency in the literature by including a more nuanced measure of health, including physical and mental aspects. Using the Community Life Survey (CLS) we find that loneliness has a significant and negative impact on civic participation activities, that happiness is significantly and positively associated with voting, that increased anxiety tends to increase civic participation, and that feelings of worth are associated with changes in civic consultation activities. Contrary to our expectations, we also find that having long term health conditions that impact day-to-day activities does not significantly predict any civic or political participation, and that general health is a negative and significant predictor of civic activities, with no significant association with voting.