BIO

Maegan Smarkusky is a Presidential Scholar pursuing a major in political science and a minor in philosophy of law from New Port Richey, Florida.

Learning From Personal and Impersonal Political Discussion

Abstract

The purpose of this research project is to better understand how social image plays a role in an individual's response to certain political issues. This research will fill a gap in second-order thinking research pertaining to political interaction and policy review. The overall study involves an individual's response to a relevant policy followed by a peer’s review of the response where the listener can decide to reward the respondent for their response. The most recent portion of the project involves reviewing responses and annotating them based on different interpersonal and political factors. The results are currently not conclusive, but they will be very useful to determine how to best structure political discussion in the future to minimize inaccuracies in public opinion due to second-order thinking.

Keywords: Political discussion, second-order thinking, policy