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Principal investigators:
Nicole Huffman
Stony Brook University
Email: nicole.huffman@stonybrook.edu
Homepage: https://www.huffmannicole.com/
Lauren Palladino
University of Pennsylvania
Email: lrpall@sas.upenn.edu
Homepage: https://www.laurenpalladino.com/
Sample size: 1607
Field period: 08/04/2022-11/22/2022
RQ: How does news coverage describing the diversity of Congress affect the perceived procedural legitimacy of Congress and desire for Congress to have power?
H1: Highlighting the diversity of Congress will decrease its perceived legitimacy
H2: Highlighting the diversity of Congress will increase support for a strong executive
H3: The relationship described in H1 and H2 will be stronger for Republicans than Democrats
Procedural Legitimacy
1. Congress can be trusted make decisions that are right for citizens (Agree strongly to Disagree strongly scale)
2. Thinking about the racial and gender composition of Congress, how fair will decision
making processes be on important issues? (Very fair to Very unfair scale)
Strong Executive
1. When the country is in great danger, it is often necessary for Presidents to act boldly, even if this means overstepping the usual processes of government decision-making (Agree strongly to Disagree strongly scale)
2. U.S. presidents should work on the country’s problems without paying attention to what Congress and the courts say (Agree strongly to Disagree strongly scale)
3. The executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government should keep one another from having too much power (Agree strongly to Disagree strongly scale)
H1: Contrary to expectations, highlighting the diversity of Congress increased its legitimacy (p<0.01)
H2: There was no treatment effect on support for a strong executive at the expense of other branches.
H3: The effect in H1 is driven by Democrats. The effect is null for Republicans. The null effect for H2 is consistent across parties.