Publikationsliste KOPS

Pseudo-opinions refer to survey respondents giving answers to topics they are unfamiliar with. They are widespread but the reasons why respondents do not just admit they “don’t know” are not well-understood. We investigate the underlying mechanisms for pseudo-opinions in online surveys: do respondents satisfice and perform a “mental coin-flip,” or do they optimize and attempt to “impute a meaning” to the unknown question and answer accordingly? And can we reduce the prevalence of pseudo-opinions by expressing to respondents that it is okay not to have an opinion? To do so, we use fictitious issues. These are survey questions about nonexistent topics and things. We use response latencies as an indicator for the mode of responding, on a continuum from automatic-spontaneous to controlled-deliberate, to investigate whether pseudo-opinions are the result of satisficing or optimizing. We also conduct a survey experiment in which the presence of an explicit “don’t know” category is randomly assigned. The sample (n = 1288) consists of data collected in August 2019 from an online panel provider. The target population was defined as adults between 18–69 years old with internet access residing in Germany. Quotas were put in place for age and sex. We find pseudo-opinions are predicted by faster, automatic responses. This contradicts the widely-assumed imputed meaning model of pseudo-opinions. The presence of an explicit “don’t know” category reduces pseudo-opinions dramatically but does not moderate the effect of deliberate or automatic responding on pseudo-opinions.

Despite the recent and sharp rise in psychedelic research, few studies have investigated how classic psychedelic use relates to employees’ work-related outcomes. This is surprising given that the increased use, decriminalization, and legalization of classic psychedelics in the United States (U.S.) has the potential to impact both employees and their organizations. Addressing this gap, the current study explores how employees’ lifetime psilocybin use relates to the amount of overtime they work, thereby offering insight into what current trends in psilocybin use could mean for businesses. Using pooled, cross-sectional data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (2002–2014) on 217,963 adults employed in the U.S. full-time, this study tests whether lifetime psilocybin use is associated with employees’ number of overtime hours worked in the past week. After adjusting for sociodemographics and other substance use, a significant negative association is found between employees’ lifetime psilocybin use and the amount of overtime they reported working. Specifically, the findings suggest that lifetime psilocybin use in the U.S. full-time working population is associated with an estimated 44,348,400 fewer overtime hours worked per year and may help explain recent findings linking employees’ lifetime psilocybin use to a reduction in sick leave taken.

Angehörige der samischen Minderheiten in Norwegen und Schweden, die sich mit ihrer indigenen Kultur identifizieren, erfahren Diskriminierung, insbesondere wenn sie die samische Sprache in der Öffentlichkeit verwenden. Dies trifft zwar auf beide Länder zu, aber im Vergleich zeigt sich, dass die jeweilige Minderheitenpolitik das Ausmaß der Ungleichheit beeinflusst. Wenn – wie in Norwegen – mehr in die Förderung der samischen Sprache und Kultur investiert wird, führt dies zu einem höheren Maß an (Selbst-)Wertschätzung und Gleichheit.

Members of the Sámi minorities in Norway and Sweden who identify with their native culture experience discrimination, especially when they use the Sámi language in public. While this is true in both countries, a comparison shows that specific minority policies affect the level of inequality. Spending more on the enhancement of Sámi language and culture—as Norway does—leads to a higher level of (self)esteem and equality

A vast literature has examined how perceptions of mobility shape demand for redistribution. These studies generally refer to contemporaneous tax policies demanded by those directly impacted. But social mobility is often measured as changes across generations. To account for these intergenerational effects, our analysis focuses on educational policies. We examine how social mobility at the district level explains legislative support for inclusive education policies. We first develop an electoral competition model where voters are altruistic parents, politicians are office seeking and the future economic status of the children is affected both by the degree of income mobility and by public education policies. We then analyze a newly compiled dataset of roll-call votes on California education legislation matched with electoral district levels of income mobility. In line with the model, our analysis suggests that upward mobility in a district negatively predicts legislative support for redistributive education bills.

For more than two decades, the work of Blank and Schmidt has greatly influenced empirical research on national attachment. Distinguishing between nationalism, patriotism, and national identity, it rests on a set of item batteries that have since been taken up by numerous researchers. In this contribution, we argue that the categorization of most of these items is inconsistent with the perception of a nonexpert sample and, in some cases, even in direct opposition to it. To substantiate this claim, we present the results of an online survey of German university students ( N  = 424) who were tasked with assigning all items from Blank and Schmidt’s 1997 article to one of the three categories. As hypothesized, the majority of respondents assigned only a few items correctly—so few that their overall agreement with Blank and Schmidt was even lower than what would normally be expected from a random distribution. We also asked about item understandability and found that while some items were considered relatively difficult to understand, there was no obvious correlation between these and the miscategorized ones. Taking this discrepancy between academic and nonacademic concept use into account can further our understanding of national attachment and help us refine existing survey techniques.

Nach dem Bachelorstudium müssen sich Studierende entscheiden, ob sie ein Masterstudium anschließen oder in den Arbeitsmarkt einsteigen. Welche Gründe sprechen subjektiv für oder gegen ein Masterstudium? Welche Rolle spielt die Bildungsherkunft der Studierenden bei dieser Entscheidung? Welche Merkmale von Masterstudiengängen sprechen Studierende besonders an oder schrecken sie ab? Im Artkel werden ausgewählte Ergebnisse einer bundesweiten Erhebung von Studierenden in Deutschland ("Studierendenbefragung in Deutschland") vorgestellt.

For decades, Indigenous peoples and their movements have fought for the recognition of their rights. Since the multiculturalist turn, these demands are – at least partially – a legal reality in many countries in Latin America. Indigenous group rights can be attributed to individual group members or in a collective way to the group as such. Here, I investigate how these contrasting approaches impact on Indigenous citizens’ satisfaction with democracy. From normative theory, I derive the expectation that incorporating collective Indigenous rights increases satisfaction with democracy, because they address the historical loss of Indigenous sovereignty and open new spaces for the participation of previously marginalized groups. In contrast, the individualization of Indigenous group rights can be seen as a form of assimilation. The empirics show that collective rights increase the satisfaction with democracy among Indigenous peoples – and among the wider public. Thus, recognizing collective minority rights does not seem to stir division but sends a message that democracy is working well.

Generations of research have incrementally identified the circumstances under which electoral campaigns matter. Direct interpersonal contact within local networks is commonly seen as conducive to campaign impact, but empirical evidence is scarce because of demanding data requirements. We advance the literature by studying the Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S), an important challenger party in Italy, which followed the unusual practice of coordinating political activities on a public online platform. We web scraped the entire history of the movement’s more than 1,000 local branches with over 200,000 geocoded political activities, to study the effect and mechanisms of their no campaign in the 2016 constitutional referendum. Relying on regression, matching, and instrumental variable models, we demonstrate that local M5S mobilization had substantial campaign effects. Our results have important implications, as they highlight the effectiveness of locally rooted campaigns and the particular potency of place-based political mobilization.

Recent studies take increasingly refined views of how socioeconomic conditions influence political behaviour. We add to this literature by exploring how voters' prospective evaluations of long-term economic and social opportunities relate to electoral contestation versus the stabilization of the political-economic system underpinning the knowledge society. Using survey data from eight West European countries, we show that positive prospects are associated with higher support for mainstream parties (incumbents and opposition) and lower support for radical parties on all levels of material well-being. Our results support the idea that ‘aspirational voters’ with positive evaluations of opportunities (for themselves or their children) represent an important stabilizing force in advanced democratic capitalism. However, we also highlight the importance of radical party support among ‘apprehensive voters’, who are economically secure but perceive a lack of long-term opportunities. To assess the implications of these findings, we discuss the relative importance of these groups across different countries.

Does migration pose a threat to welfare state legitimacy? We address thisprominent question with a multilevel analysis of novel survey data, the ‘Inequality Barometer’, which includes individual and local-level context data in Germany (6208 individuals, up to 401 local districts). Our results suggest that the public is more reluctant to support welfare where the proportion of migrants at the local level is larger. This effect even persists when welfare is directed at groups that are perceived as more deserving of welfare support (like children, sick or older individuals) and when we examine the levels of employed migrants (that pay into the welfare state). We also find that these effects are moderated by economic risk. Particularly, we find that individuals facing higher economic risk support welfare less than their counterparts when exposed to migration. Future research should expand the local-level approach and investigate the causal mechanisms that the welfare-migration nexus is based on in more detail.

The vocational identity of trainees is one component of their professional competence and is considered to be a central goal of vocational education and training (VET) programs. From the numerous identity constructs and conceptualizations, this study focuses on the organizational identification of trainees, that is, the extent to which trainees internalize the values and goals of their training company and perceive themselves as part of this company. We are specifically interested in the development, predictors, and effects of trainees’ organizational identification, as well as the interrelations between organizational identification and social integration. We use longitudinal data of n  = 250 trainees in dual VET programs in Germany at the very beginning of their VET program (t1), after 3 months (t2), and after 9 months (t3). A structural equation model was used to analyze the development, predictors, and effects of organizational identification for the first 9 months of training and the cross-lagged effects between organizational identification and social integration. The results showed a high stability of trainees’ organizational identification over the first 9 months. Regarding the predictors, the results indicated positive direct and indirect effects of the formal socialization tactics implemented by the training company, as well as of support by the trainer at the beginning of the training. However, collegial support at the beginning of the training did not seem to play a significant role in organizational identification. Moreover, organizational identification positively affected trainees’ emotional engagement and self-perceived competence while negatively predicting dropout intentions after 9 months of training. Finally, the cross-lagged effects between organizational identification and social integration were not significant, and only at t3 were these constructs positively correlated. However, regarding the development, predictors, and effects, very similar results were found for organizational identification and social integration. The results underline the positive significance of organizational identification for the individual, the company, and society, even at this early stage of training. The results are discussed regarding both their scientific and practical implications.

How do the impacts of acute crises influence citizens’ willingness to support different types of climate measures? An acute crisis can be understood either as an impediment or as an opportunity for climate change mitigation. In the first perspective, crisis impacts would create negative spill-overs and dampen citizens’ willingness to support climate action, while in the second perspective, the opposite would occur. Based on a survey experiment fielded in Germany in 2022 ( n  = 5438), we find that the economic implications of the Russo-Ukrainian War do not decrease behavioral willingness, while restrictions of civil liberties to combat the COVID-19 pandemic lead to higher climate support, underpinning the crisis-as-opportunity perspective. Willingness to support climate measures is strongest among (1) those most concerned about climate change, and (2) those who trust the government. We conclude that individuals do not wish climate change mitigation to be deprioritized on the back of other crises.

In 2020, the German government supported the COVID-19 recovery fund ‘Next Generation EU’, which according to many observers is breaking with the taboo of joint EU debt liability. In this article, we analyse whether this decision marks a programmatic shift towards fiscal integration, taken in isolation by the Chancellor, or whether it can be reconciled with higher-level principles that guided the Chancellor’s previous European policies? Our analysis builds on a synthetic framework combining a multi-level principal-agent account with ideational components. The empirical analysis of Bundestag debates and original public opinion data reveal that the support for ‘Next Generation EU’ neither breaks with the Chancellor’s established ‘conservational-pragmatic’ approach to EU policy-making, nor separates the Chancellor from the preferences of the Bundestag and the public. Content analyses show how the government and its supporting camp in the Bundestag justified the apparent policy shift, underlining a strong agreement towards strengthening the EU in times of an unseen crisis, while at the same time revealing some noteworthy partisan differences.

This study examines whether transitioning from cellular offices to an activity-based flexible office (A-FO) impacts employee absenteeism over time. Based on privacy theory, we hypothesized that changing from cell offices to an A-FO setting would lead to increased employee absenteeism. We further assumed that longer-tenured and female employees would experience greater difficulty with the transition, leading to more absenteeism among these groups. Using a sample of 2,017 white-collar workers tracked over 8 years, we quasi-experimentally investigated if absenteeism in the group with the office design intervention (1,035 individuals) differed from the control group (982 individuals). In the difference-in-difference (DiD) framework, nested negative binomial regression showed no difference in absenteeism between the intervention and control groups. However, a three-way interaction revealed that long-term employees showed higher absenteeism when switching to an A-FO. We discuss our contributions and the implications for corporate leadership, human resources, and change management.

Using new data from a three-wave panel survey administered in Germany between May 2020 and May 2021, this paper studies the impact of a negative shock affecting all strata of the population, such as the development of COVID-19, on preferences for redistribution. Exploiting the plausibly exogenous change in the severity of the infection rate at the county level, we show that, contrary to some theoretical expectations, the worse the crisis, the less our respondents expressed support for redistribution. We provide further evidence that this is not driven by a decrease in inequality aversion but might be driven by the individuals’ level of trust.