Page 4

red counties, blue counties

With the presidential season upon us, many Americans are wondering whether the nation will go red or blue. Sociologists have studied how voting patterns are linked to social class, but Rory McVeigh and Juliana M. Sobo­lew­ski (American Journal of Sociology, September 2007) offer a new explanation of voting tendencies.

Using 2000 Census data, the authors found the number of women and racial minorities in the workforce is related to whether a county votes for a Democratic or Republican president.

Even after controlling for political partisanship and income, counties with occupations that are completely segregated by sex see an 11 percent higher rate of Republican voting. The GOP vote is even higher when women and racial minorities are better positioned to compete for jobs—like when a large proportion of women and non-whites hold bachelor’s degrees. The authors argue this pattern emerges because white males prefer more conservative candidates when women and racial minorities are perceived as a threat to their occupational niche.

So if the 2008 presidential election turns out to be a nail-biter, look around your office. Your coworkers may hold the key to the White House. H.M.

gender and posture

In experiments where people perform tasks like identifying matching shapes or completing simple math problems, they tend to score higher and feel more confident when they’re sitting in an upright position.

However, Tomi-Ann Roberts and Yousef Arefi-Afshar (Cognition & Emotion, June 2007) found that good posture may actually make women perform worse and instill less confidence.

In their study, men provided more accurate answers to math problems when seated upright than when slouching. The opposite was true for women. Likewise, when asked to evaluate their performance on a task, women who slouched felt better about their performance than those who sat straight, and the opposite was true for men.

The authors speculate that an upright posture, which is often an indication of high status and dominance, may feel less natural and comfortable to women. Another possibility is that women rely more heavily on their environment to interpret their behavior than men (who rely more on internal thoughts and feelings). The authors also suggest women may feel like they’re in a sexually inviting, and therefore more vulnerable, position when sitting upright. J.S.

is the personal(ity) political?

Liberals are generous, conservatives are stingy. Conservatives are conscientious, liberals are disorganized and unrealistic.

These popular stereotypes, along with some prominent social theories, suggest a strong connection between personality and political viewpoints. John R. Alford and John R. Hibbing (The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2007), though, argue there’s actually little relationship among politics, behavior, and personality.

The authors tested for interpersonal temperament by having people play trust games—they gave subjects the options to be cooperative and trusting by giving money to a public fund or selfish freeriders by keeping their money to themselves. Perhaps surprisingly, self-proclaimed bleeding-heart liberals were no more likely to play nice than their anti-tax, conservative counterparts.

The authors also found that how people actually behave around others doesn’t necessarily coincide with their views about how social life should be structured and organized on a larger scale.

They conclude personality, interpersonal temperament, and political temperament are three distinct, often disconnected, attributes. J.S.