Beth Vonnahme, Ph.D.

vonnahmeb@umkc.edu


Associate Dean

University of Missouri-Kansas City

Year of PhD: 2006

Country: United States (Missouri)

About Me:

I am an Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences and an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. My research interests fall within the general categories of public opinion and political behavior. Specifically, I am interested in the importance of psychological processes relating to the formation and persistence of political choices.

Research Interests

Political Psychology

Elections, Election Administration, and Voting Behavior

Public Opinion

Research Methods & Research Design

Countries of Interest

United States

Publications:

Journal Articles:

(2015) Evaluating political candidates: Does weight matter?, Translational Issues in Psychological Science

We assessed the degree to which obesity affects political candidate evaluation using self-report and physiological assessments. Fifty-four participants were assigned to 1 of 4 experimental conditions that manipulated candidate body weight and sex. On the basis of participant self-report, male obese versus nonobese candidates were evaluated more positively (p < .01); in contrast, participants’ startle eyeblink responses when viewing males did not differ. No differences were noted for female candidates based on participant self-report, although significantly larger eyeblink responses (indicative of negative affect) were documented when viewing obese versus nonobese females (p < .01). Weight bias in political contexts exists, and bias against obese female candidates might be captured better by objective assessments. These findings suggest that the evaluation of political candidates, particularly female candidates, is likely influenced by voter perceptions about obesity in addition to the candidate’s political ideology.

(2014) SURVIVING SCANDAL: AN EXPLORATION OF THE IMMEDIATE AND LASTING EFFECTS OF SCANDAL ON CANDIDATE EVALUATION, Social Science Quarterly

Objective. This study explores the immediate and long-term effects of scandal on candidate evaluation. Because scandals involve politicians behaving in ways inconsistent with prevailing moral standards, an immediate negative reaction to such information is largely unavoidable. However, the present study examines whether there are any long-term effects of scandal. Methods. Results from a longitudinal experiment are presented. The nature of the design facilitated the exploration of the immediate and lasting effects of exposure to scandal and the consistency of these effects across individuals. Results. Exposure to scandalous information about a candidate had an immediate negative effect on evaluation, but the magnitude of this negative effect declined over time, especially among the candidate’s supporters. Conclusion. This research suggests that understanding the effects of scandal requires distinguishing between immediate and long-term effects.

Book Chapters:

(2019) ASSOCIATIVE MEMORY AND POLITICAL DECISION MAKING, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics

Citizens are continuously inundated with political information. How do citizens process that information for use in decision-making? Political psychologists have generally thought of information processing as proceeding through a series of stages: (1) exposure and attention; (2) comprehension; (3) encoding, interpretation, and elaboration; (4) organization and storage in memory; and (5) retrieval. This processing of information relies heavily on two key structures: working memory and long-term memory. Working memory actively processes incoming information whereas long-term memory is the storage structure of the brain. The most widely accepted organizational scheme for long-term memory is the associative network model. In this model, information stored in long-term memory is organized as a series of connected nodes. Each node in the network represents a concept with links connecting the various concepts. The links between nodes represent beliefs about the connection between concepts. These links facilitate retrieval of information through a process known as spreading activation. Spreading activation moves information from long-term memory to working memory. When cued nodes are retrieved from memory, they activate linked nodes thereby weakly activating further nodes and so forth. Repeatedly activated nodes are the most likely to be retrieved from long-term memory for use in political decision-making. The concept of an associative network model of memory has informed a variety of research avenues, but several areas of inquiry remain underdeveloped. Specifically, many researchers rely on an associative network model of memory without questioning the assumptions and implications of the model. Doing so might further inform our understanding of information processing in the political arena. Further, voters are continuously flooded with political and non-political information; thus, exploring the role that the larger information environment can play in information processing is likely to be a fruitful path for future inquiry. Finally, little attention has been devoted to the various ways a digital information environment alters the way citizens process political information. In particular, the instantaneous and social nature of digital information may short-circuit information processing.