A sociocultural approach to voting: Construing voting as a duty to others predicts political interest and engagement.

A representative democracy requires citizens to be politically engaged; however, a substantial portion of eligible United States voters do not vote. While structural (e.g., ease or difficulty of voting) and individual (e.g., political efficacy, civic knowledge) factors contribute to (a lack of) turnout, the present work adopts a sociocultural perspective to investigate an additional contributor: how people construe-or make sense of-the duty to vote. We examine whether, and for whom, construing voting as interdependent (i.e., voting as a duty to others), compared to independent (i.e., voting as a duty to self), is associated with increased perceived duty and political engagement. Archival analysis (n[Formula: see text] 10,185) documents how perceived duty to vote relates to voter turnout in a nationally representative sample of Americans (Study 1). Two preregistered studies (total n[Formula: see text] 1,256) provide evidence that naturalistically construing one's duty to vote as interdependent (Study 2) and experimentally reflecting on interdependence (Study 3) both predict increases in perceived voting duty. Perceived duty to vote, in turn, is associated with heightened political engagement intentions. Taken together, the present work suggests that how voting is construed-as an independent duty to the self or an interdependent duty to others-may meaningfully influence political engagement, with implications for voter turnout interventions.

Silence on injustices speaks volumes: When and how silence impacts perceptions of managers.

Speaking up on social injustices may help create more just and inclusive organizations. Yet, many people choose to remain silent. In this article, we test how managerial silence on injustices can shape impressions of a manager's lack of support for an outgroup. In Study 1, we surveyed employees and found that many noticed their managers' silence and recounted that such silence influenced how they perceived their managers. We then conducted nine experimental studies (Studies 2-6, Supplemental Studies 1-4) to test how observers' perceptions of managers who engage in silence on an outgroup injustice depend on whether managers have spoken up or remained silent in the past. We demonstrate that when a manager engages in selective silence by previously speaking up on an ingroup injustice but remains silent on an outgroup injustice, observers perceive the manager as harboring greater bias and as less supportive of the outgroup than if they remained totally silent on both issues. In contrast, when a manager engages in selective silence by previously speaking up on an outgroup injustice but then remains silent on a second outgroup injustice, observers perceive the manager as generally supportive of social justice and as more supportive of the second outgroup than if they remained totally silent on both issues. We discuss implications for speaking up and remaining silent on injustices in the workplace. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Personal harm from the Covid-19 pandemic predicts advocacy for equality.

The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare the vast amount of economic inequality in the U.S. Yet, has it influenced Americans' attitudes and behaviors toward equality? With a three-wave longitudinal survey, the current research provides evidence that experiencing personal harm (e.g., contracting Covid-19, losing jobs, or psychological distress) from the pandemic predicts an increase in people's attitudinal and behavioral advocacy for equality. Specifically, we find that experiencing greater personal harm in the early stages of the pandemic (i.e., May 2020) is associated with increased advocacy for equality one year later (i.e., May 2021; e.g., contacting a public official to express support for reducing inequality). Furthermore, we find that this increase in advocacy for equality is explained, in part, by people's greater endorsement of the external factors (e.g., bad luck, discrimination, etc.) that contribute to inequality. Our work provides evidence that the extent to which people experience harm from the Covid-19 pandemic predicts both their increased understanding of external sources of inequality, as well as their efforts to combat this inequality (e.g., by advocating for policies that combat structural contributors to inequality).