DOI: 10.11587/uahxtf
title: PUMA Survey 6.2. Insights in societal changes in Austria

description: Full edition for scientific use. PUMA Surveys consist of separate modules designed and prepared by different principle investigators. This PUMA Survey consists of three modules: MODULE 1 "High performing doctors or cold-hearted bureaucrats? A study on the electoral consequences of academic titles in Austria", MODULE 2 "Identity-based motivated reasoning: polarizing news effects of gender identity cues", MODULE 3 "Towards a Multidimensional Understanding of Free Movement Attitudes". Fieldwork was conducted by MARKETAGENT.
description: &lt;br/&gt; MODULE 1: High performing doctors or cold-hearted bureaucrats? A study on the electoral consequences of academic titles in Austria (Nico F. Büttner, Carolina Plescia) &lt;br&gt;
Our proposal aims at testing the impact of a political candidate’s academic degree on the candidate’s electoral chances – investigating simultaneously the mediating effect of populist attitudes. In Austria – like in most democracies – highly educated people are numerically overrepresented in political institutions by several orders of magnitude. However, this relationship has only scarcely been studied in the academic literature so far. Drawing on the theoretical notion that voters use academic degrees as heuristics in situations with imperfect information, we propose a conjoint experiment, in which we display short overviews of characteristics from two fictitious political candidates – here, the candidates’ academic degree is the central varying characteristic of interest. Candidate choice experiments have recently started receiving increasing attention and use in the social sciences. By applying this methodological approach, we address important limitations in the literature that has tried to examine related questions in other countries. While the focus of the existing literature has thus far been on the characteristics of elected officials, we further argue that one needs to simultaneously examine whether certain voters value titles more than others. In particular, we argue that populist attitudes play a decisive role in this regard. In populist discourses, the political elite is presented as a separate, distant group accused of not acknowledging, understanding or caring about the needs people have. More precisely, the belief that political elites and the people have contrasting and incompatible interests is at the heart of the discussion concerning populism in the scientific literature. Thus, it is likely that the effect of an academic title is mediated by populist attitudes. Austria is an ideal setting for carrying out this study, because of the country’s historically high fondness of academic titles as well as the presence of a strong populist rhetoric. &lt;br/&gt;
description: MODULE 2:
Identity-based motivated reasoning: polarizing news effects of gender identity cues (Ming Boyer, Loes Aaldering) &lt;br&gt;
Scholars have found that biased processing of news leads to polarized audiences. Indeed, partisan-motivated reasoning leads to partisan polarization. But we are not just partisans, and news media highlight many group identities. Does motivated reasoning also occur in light of other group identities, like one’s gender? In light of relevant literature, I believe that news that threatens or bolsters one’s gender identity, causes similar motivations and biases as do articles that pose a partisan threat or bolstering. Drawing on both motivated reasoning theory and social identity theory, this online survey experiment uses a 2 by 2 between subjects design to examine to what extent such identity-based motivated reasoning effects exist and to what extent they are dependent on one’s identity strength and the type of the news. Overall, this project shows how men and women use motivated reasoning to protect their gender identity and how this leads to polarization along gender lines. Moreover, it suggests that journalists can prevent such identity-motivated reasoning and polarization by employing episodic frames. &lt;br/&gt;
description: MODULE 3:
Towards a Multidimensional Understanding of Free Movement Attitudes (Jakob-Moritz Eberl, Hajo Boomgaarden, Christina Meltzer) &lt;br&gt;
Freedom of movement is a fundamental right for EU-citizens. This right is essentially related to immigration and emigration, as EU citizens are allowed to travel, work, and reside in any part of the Schengen area. However, with the so-called “refugee crisis” in 2015 and the 2016 Brexit referendum, freedom of movement is under debate, with several EU members now seriously questioning the future of the free movement of persons.
While immigration and general EU attitudes have been in the focus of political science in the past decade, attitudes towards freedom of movement have been largely neglected. This is why this study aims for a conceptual and empirical development of a free movement attitude scale. It further aims to explore that scales construct validity via examining its possible strongest correlates such as impact perceptions of intra-European immigration, impact perceptions of immigration from outside of Europe, and emigration attitudes.
The present study is thus among the first to systematically develop and analyse the measurement of free movement attitudes. Given the increasing discussion about the future or restructuring of free movement in the European Union – among others happening in Austria as well –, the importance of this study is self-evident in that the current proposal is expected to shed important and unique insights on how different aspects of immigration and emigration discourses may affect citizen’s attitudes towards free movement. &lt;br/&gt;
description: PUMA Survey