Degree Type
Honors Capstone Project
Date of Submission
Spring 5-1-2018
Capstone Advisor
Anne Mosher
Honors Reader
Peter Wilcoxen
Capstone College
Arts and Science
Audio/Visual Component
no
Capstone Prize Winner
no
Won Capstone Funding
no
Honors Categories
Social Sciences
Subject Categories
American Politics | Arts and Humanities | Other Political Science | Political Science | Social and Behavioral Sciences
Abstract
During the terms of the last two presidents, the term ‘government shutdown’ has become a familiar one, as the parties work right up to the deadline trying to find a compromise on bills like budget and healthcare. This is reflective of America’s voter base, where people are entrenching themselves more and more firmly with a party, rather than remaining moderate voters. As America’s current college base is more polarized than ever before, this situation will only worsen over time as these students become the country’s primary voter base.
If a democratic voter base usually looks like a bell curve, political polarization means that the center of the curve is slowly splitting and moving to the edges of the curve as more voters begin to identify with more extreme ideological positions. This phenomenon is particularly present among college students, with fewer incoming freshmen identifying as moderate each successive year, with the most recent year showing the highest recorded prevalence.
In order to combat this, I ran a simulation in which participants play a civic game with learning outcomes that will help to combat polarization, including active listening and communication. In order to gauge the effectiveness of this, I conducted entrance and exit surveys with answers coded to numbers that allowed for data analysis.
Following the simulation, I determined that there may be basis for my claims, but it was overall inconclusive due to low attendance.
Recommended Citation
Coccoluto, Meredith, "Combatting Political Polarization Through the Use of Civic Games" (2018). Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All. 1235.
https://surface.syr.edu/honors_capstone/1235
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
