Shannon C Houck
Biographic Data
| ID | 177475 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Shannon C Houck |
| GIVEN NAMES | Shannon C |
| FAMILY NAME | Houck |
| SIGNATURE | HOUCK S C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Syracuse University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8967-9317 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 180 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
From Steppe to City: Reaching Chinese and Mongolian Voices Using a Novel Survey Methodology
Objective The primary purpose of this study was to examine Chinese and Mongolian attitudes on cultural and socio‐political issues important to China–Mongolia relations across geospatial and demographic data. Method To investigate, this research leveraged Random Domain Intercept Technology (RDIT) to collect anonymous opt‐in survey responses from people in all 34 regions of China ( N = 5028) and in all 21 Aimags (provinces) in Mongolia ( N = 2003).…
Validating automated integrative complexity: Natural language processing and the Donald Trump Test
Computer algorithms that analyze language (natural language processing systems) have seen a great increase in usage recently. While use of these systems to score key constructs in social and political psychology has many advantages, it is also dangerous if we do not fully evaluate the validity of these systems. In the present article, we evaluate a natural language processing system for one particular construct that has implications for solving k…
Strategic Communication and the Integrative Complexity‐Ideology Relationship: Meta‐Analytic Findings Reveal Differences Between Public Politicians and Private Citizens in Their Use of Simple Rhetoric
Research on the relationship between political conservatism and integrative complexity has yielded contradictory results, and little effort has been made to place these mixed results in a theoretical context. The present article considers this issue through a strategic model of language that suggests different psychological processes apply to public politicians versus private citizens. We use a methodologically precise meta‐analytic test of the r…
When Beliefs Lead to (Im)Moral Action: How Believing in Torture's Effectiveness Shapes the Endorsement of Its Use
Does believing in torture's effectiveness shape the endorsements of its use? Using a multimethod approach across six studies, we provide converging evidence that efficacy beliefs can help increase understanding of individual differences and situational influences on torture support. Studies 1a and 1b found that torture opinions contained more efficacy‐based language than other types of harm and that people relied more on torture efficacy than tor…
An Integrative Complexity Analysis of Religious and Irreligious Thinking
Stereotypical views cast religious believers as closed-minded, unthinking individuals, and irreligious persons as comparatively more intellectual and complex. But are these perceptions accurate? To investigate, three studies assessed differences between religious and irreligious thinking on Integrative Complexity (IC). In Study 1, six atheist-Christian opponents were selected for IC. Findings revealed that Christians were significantly more compl…
The Strategic Manipulation of Linguistic Complexity: A Test of Two Models of Lying
To what degree is complex language driven by personal cognitive factors versus strategic self-presentation? Studies teasing apart these two influences on complexity are hard to design and evidence bearing on the question is not abundant. To fill this gap, the present studies explored two models relevant to a form of communication full of strategic implications: deception. The cognitive strain model suggests that because lies are cognitively drain…
Donald Trump as a cultural revolt against perceived communication restriction: Priming political correctness norms causes more Trump support
Donald Trump has consistently performed better politically than his negative polling indicators suggested he would. Although there is a tendency to think of Trump support as reflecting ideological conservatism, we argue that part of his support during the election came from a non-ideological source: The preponderant salience of norms restricting communication (Political Correctness – or PC – norms). This perspective suggests that these norms, whi…
Finding the Loch Ness Monster: Left-Wing Authoritarianism in the United States
Although past research suggests authoritarianism may be a uniquely right-wing phenomenon, the present two studies tested the hypothesis that authoritarianism exists in both right-wing and left-wing contexts in essentially equal degrees. Across two studies, university (n = 475) and Mechanical Turk (n = 298) participants completed either the RWA (right-wing authoritarianism) scale or a newly developed (and parallel) LWA (left-wing authoritarianism)…
Psychological Spacetime: Implications of Relativity Theory for Time Perception
It has been an accepted scientific fact in physics for almost 100 years that time speeds up and slows down for an observer based on factors—such as motion and gravity—that affect space. Yet this fact, drawn from the theory of relativity, has not been widely integrated into the study of the psychology of time. The present article helps to fill in this gap between physics and psychology by reviewing evidence concerning what a psychological spacetim…
Are Conservatives Really More Simple‐Minded than Liberals? The Domain Specificity of Complex Thinking
Prior research suggests that liberals are more complex than conservatives. However, it may be that liberals are not more complex in general, but rather only more complex on certain topic domains (while conservatives are more complex in other domains). Four studies (comprised of over 2,500 participants) evaluated this idea. Study 1 involves the domain specificity of a self‐report questionnaire related to complexity (dogmatism). By making only smal…
Ideologically Motivated Perceptions of Complexity: Believing Those Who Agree With You Are More Complex Than They Are
While prior research has found linguistic complexity to be predictive across multiple domains, little research has examined how people perceive-or misperceive-linguistic complexity when they encounter it. Drawing from a model of the motivated ideological lens through which people view linguistic complexity, two studies examined the hypotheses that (a) participants are more likely to overestimate the complexity of political candidates when they be…
Personal closeness and perceived torture efficacy: If torture will save someone I’m close to, then it must work
Psychological research on the efficacy of torture frequently excludes an important question: What causes people to believe that torture is effective? We investigated whether a factor increasing persons’ desire for torture to be effective might lead them to perceive that it was more effective. Across 2 studies, participants evaluated hypothetical crisis scenarios that varied in the degree of personal closeness to the potential victim of the perpet…
Automated Integrative Complexity: Current Challenges and Future Directions
Automating integrative complexity is fraught with many challenges. To address these challenges, we discuss the tension between a specificity approach and a more flexible multiple‐pass approach, the multifaceted nature of the complexity construct, the gold standard for complexity measurement, the difficulty of human scoring and its consequences for automation, and some ways forward for creating the best complexity measurements. In so doing, we pre…
Automated Integrative Complexity
Integrative complexity is a conceptually unique and very popular measurement of the complexity of human thought. We believe, however, that it is currently being underutilized because it takes quite a bit of time to score. More time‐efficient computer‐based measurements of complexity that are currently available are correlated with integrative complexity at fairly low levels. To help fill in this gap, we developed a novelautomated integrative comp…
Does Complex or Simple Rhetoric Win Elections? An Integrative Complexity Analysis of U.S. Presidential Campaigns
Research suggests that the integrative complexity of political rhetoric tends to drop during election season, but little research to date directly addresses if this drop in complexity serves to increase or decrease electoral success. The two present studies help fill this gap. Study 1 demonstrates that, during the Democratic Party primary debates in 2003–2004, the eventual winners of the party nomination showed a steeper drop in integrative compl…
The hidden implications of radical group rhetoric: Integrative complexity and terrorism
We compared the public rhetoric of two terrorist groups to ideologically-similar non-terrorist groups on integrative complexity and its two sub-components (dialectical complexity and elaborative complexity). We further attempted to use these constructs to understand when the two focal terrorist groups engaged in violent acts. Results suggested that terrorist group rhetoric was uniformly simpler than non-terrorist rhetoric, and that this simplicit…
Finding the Loch Ness Monster: Left-Wing Authoritarianism in the United States
Although past research suggests authoritarianism may be a uniquely right-wing phenomenon, the present two studies tested the hypothesis that authoritarianism exists in both right-wing and left-wing contexts in essentially equal degrees. Across two studies, university (n = 475) and Mechanical Turk (n = 298) participants completed either the RWA (right-wing authoritarianism) scale or a newly developed (and parallel) LWA (left-wing authoritarianism)…
Does Complex or Simple Rhetoric Win Elections? An Integrative Complexity Analysis of U.S. Presidential Campaigns
Research suggests that the integrative complexity of political rhetoric tends to drop during election season, but little research to date directly addresses if this drop in complexity serves to increase or decrease electoral success. The two present studies help fill this gap. Study 1 demonstrates that, during the Democratic Party primary debates in 2003–2004, the eventual winners of the party nomination showed a steeper drop in integrative compl…
Are Conservatives Really More Simple‐Minded than Liberals? The Domain Specificity of Complex Thinking
Prior research suggests that liberals are more complex than conservatives. However, it may be that liberals are not more complex in general, but rather only more complex on certain topic domains (while conservatives are more complex in other domains). Four studies (comprised of over 2,500 participants) evaluated this idea. Study 1 involves the domain specificity of a self‐report questionnaire related to complexity (dogmatism). By making only smal…
Automated Integrative Complexity
Integrative complexity is a conceptually unique and very popular measurement of the complexity of human thought. We believe, however, that it is currently being underutilized because it takes quite a bit of time to score. More time‐efficient computer‐based measurements of complexity that are currently available are correlated with integrative complexity at fairly low levels. To help fill in this gap, we developed a novelautomated integrative comp…
Automated Integrative Complexity: Current Challenges and Future Directions
Automating integrative complexity is fraught with many challenges. To address these challenges, we discuss the tension between a specificity approach and a more flexible multiple‐pass approach, the multifaceted nature of the complexity construct, the gold standard for complexity measurement, the difficulty of human scoring and its consequences for automation, and some ways forward for creating the best complexity measurements. In so doing, we pre…
Donald Trump as a cultural revolt against perceived communication restriction: Priming political correctness norms causes more Trump support
Donald Trump has consistently performed better politically than his negative polling indicators suggested he would. Although there is a tendency to think of Trump support as reflecting ideological conservatism, we argue that part of his support during the election came from a non-ideological source: The preponderant salience of norms restricting communication (Political Correctness – or PC – norms). This perspective suggests that these norms, whi…
The hidden implications of radical group rhetoric: Integrative complexity and terrorism
We compared the public rhetoric of two terrorist groups to ideologically-similar non-terrorist groups on integrative complexity and its two sub-components (dialectical complexity and elaborative complexity). We further attempted to use these constructs to understand when the two focal terrorist groups engaged in violent acts. Results suggested that terrorist group rhetoric was uniformly simpler than non-terrorist rhetoric, and that this simplicit…
Strategic Communication and the Integrative Complexity‐Ideology Relationship: Meta‐Analytic Findings Reveal Differences Between Public Politicians and Private Citizens in Their Use of Simple Rhetoric
Research on the relationship between political conservatism and integrative complexity has yielded contradictory results, and little effort has been made to place these mixed results in a theoretical context. The present article considers this issue through a strategic model of language that suggests different psychological processes apply to public politicians versus private citizens. We use a methodologically precise meta‐analytic test of the r…
Ideologically Motivated Perceptions of Complexity: Believing Those Who Agree With You Are More Complex Than They Are
While prior research has found linguistic complexity to be predictive across multiple domains, little research has examined how people perceive-or misperceive-linguistic complexity when they encounter it. Drawing from a model of the motivated ideological lens through which people view linguistic complexity, two studies examined the hypotheses that (a) participants are more likely to overestimate the complexity of political candidates when they be…
When Beliefs Lead to (Im)Moral Action: How Believing in Torture's Effectiveness Shapes the Endorsement of Its Use
Does believing in torture's effectiveness shape the endorsements of its use? Using a multimethod approach across six studies, we provide converging evidence that efficacy beliefs can help increase understanding of individual differences and situational influences on torture support. Studies 1a and 1b found that torture opinions contained more efficacy‐based language than other types of harm and that people relied more on torture efficacy than tor…
The Strategic Manipulation of Linguistic Complexity: A Test of Two Models of Lying
To what degree is complex language driven by personal cognitive factors versus strategic self-presentation? Studies teasing apart these two influences on complexity are hard to design and evidence bearing on the question is not abundant. To fill this gap, the present studies explored two models relevant to a form of communication full of strategic implications: deception. The cognitive strain model suggests that because lies are cognitively drain…
Validating automated integrative complexity: Natural language processing and the Donald Trump Test
Computer algorithms that analyze language (natural language processing systems) have seen a great increase in usage recently. While use of these systems to score key constructs in social and political psychology has many advantages, it is also dangerous if we do not fully evaluate the validity of these systems. In the present article, we evaluate a natural language processing system for one particular construct that has implications for solving k…
An Integrative Complexity Analysis of Religious and Irreligious Thinking
Stereotypical views cast religious believers as closed-minded, unthinking individuals, and irreligious persons as comparatively more intellectual and complex. But are these perceptions accurate? To investigate, three studies assessed differences between religious and irreligious thinking on Integrative Complexity (IC). In Study 1, six atheist-Christian opponents were selected for IC. Findings revealed that Christians were significantly more compl…
Personal closeness and perceived torture efficacy: If torture will save someone I’m close to, then it must work
Psychological research on the efficacy of torture frequently excludes an important question: What causes people to believe that torture is effective? We investigated whether a factor increasing persons’ desire for torture to be effective might lead them to perceive that it was more effective. Across 2 studies, participants evaluated hypothetical crisis scenarios that varied in the degree of personal closeness to the potential victim of the perpet…
The hidden implications of radical group rhetoric: Integrative complexity and terrorism
We compared the public rhetoric of two terrorist groups to ideologically-similar non-terrorist groups on integrative complexity and its two sub-components (dialectical complexity and elaborative complexity). We further attempted to use these constructs to understand when the two focal terrorist groups engaged in violent acts. Results suggested that terrorist group rhetoric was uniformly simpler than non-terrorist rhetoric, and that this simplicit…
Does Complex or Simple Rhetoric Win Elections? An Integrative Complexity Analysis of U.S. Presidential Campaigns
Research suggests that the integrative complexity of political rhetoric tends to drop during election season, but little research to date directly addresses if this drop in complexity serves to increase or decrease electoral success. The two present studies help fill this gap. Study 1 demonstrates that, during the Democratic Party primary debates in 2003–2004, the eventual winners of the party nomination showed a steeper drop in integrative compl…
Personal closeness and perceived torture efficacy: If torture will save someone I’m close to, then it must work
Psychological research on the efficacy of torture frequently excludes an important question: What causes people to believe that torture is effective? We investigated whether a factor increasing persons’ desire for torture to be effective might lead them to perceive that it was more effective. Across 2 studies, participants evaluated hypothetical crisis scenarios that varied in the degree of personal closeness to the potential victim of the perpet…
Automated Integrative Complexity: Current Challenges and Future Directions
Automating integrative complexity is fraught with many challenges. To address these challenges, we discuss the tension between a specificity approach and a more flexible multiple‐pass approach, the multifaceted nature of the complexity construct, the gold standard for complexity measurement, the difficulty of human scoring and its consequences for automation, and some ways forward for creating the best complexity measurements. In so doing, we pre…
Automated Integrative Complexity
Integrative complexity is a conceptually unique and very popular measurement of the complexity of human thought. We believe, however, that it is currently being underutilized because it takes quite a bit of time to score. More time‐efficient computer‐based measurements of complexity that are currently available are correlated with integrative complexity at fairly low levels. To help fill in this gap, we developed a novelautomated integrative comp…
Psychological Spacetime: Implications of Relativity Theory for Time Perception
It has been an accepted scientific fact in physics for almost 100 years that time speeds up and slows down for an observer based on factors—such as motion and gravity—that affect space. Yet this fact, drawn from the theory of relativity, has not been widely integrated into the study of the psychology of time. The present article helps to fill in this gap between physics and psychology by reviewing evidence concerning what a psychological spacetim…
Are Conservatives Really More Simple‐Minded than Liberals? The Domain Specificity of Complex Thinking
Prior research suggests that liberals are more complex than conservatives. However, it may be that liberals are not more complex in general, but rather only more complex on certain topic domains (while conservatives are more complex in other domains). Four studies (comprised of over 2,500 participants) evaluated this idea. Study 1 involves the domain specificity of a self‐report questionnaire related to complexity (dogmatism). By making only smal…
Ideologically Motivated Perceptions of Complexity: Believing Those Who Agree With You Are More Complex Than They Are
While prior research has found linguistic complexity to be predictive across multiple domains, little research has examined how people perceive-or misperceive-linguistic complexity when they encounter it. Drawing from a model of the motivated ideological lens through which people view linguistic complexity, two studies examined the hypotheses that (a) participants are more likely to overestimate the complexity of political candidates when they be…
Donald Trump as a cultural revolt against perceived communication restriction: Priming political correctness norms causes more Trump support
Donald Trump has consistently performed better politically than his negative polling indicators suggested he would. Although there is a tendency to think of Trump support as reflecting ideological conservatism, we argue that part of his support during the election came from a non-ideological source: The preponderant salience of norms restricting communication (Political Correctness – or PC – norms). This perspective suggests that these norms, whi…
Finding the Loch Ness Monster: Left-Wing Authoritarianism in the United States
Although past research suggests authoritarianism may be a uniquely right-wing phenomenon, the present two studies tested the hypothesis that authoritarianism exists in both right-wing and left-wing contexts in essentially equal degrees. Across two studies, university (n = 475) and Mechanical Turk (n = 298) participants completed either the RWA (right-wing authoritarianism) scale or a newly developed (and parallel) LWA (left-wing authoritarianism)…
An Integrative Complexity Analysis of Religious and Irreligious Thinking
Stereotypical views cast religious believers as closed-minded, unthinking individuals, and irreligious persons as comparatively more intellectual and complex. But are these perceptions accurate? To investigate, three studies assessed differences between religious and irreligious thinking on Integrative Complexity (IC). In Study 1, six atheist-Christian opponents were selected for IC. Findings revealed that Christians were significantly more compl…
The Strategic Manipulation of Linguistic Complexity: A Test of Two Models of Lying
To what degree is complex language driven by personal cognitive factors versus strategic self-presentation? Studies teasing apart these two influences on complexity are hard to design and evidence bearing on the question is not abundant. To fill this gap, the present studies explored two models relevant to a form of communication full of strategic implications: deception. The cognitive strain model suggests that because lies are cognitively drain…
Strategic Communication and the Integrative Complexity‐Ideology Relationship: Meta‐Analytic Findings Reveal Differences Between Public Politicians and Private Citizens in Their Use of Simple Rhetoric
Research on the relationship between political conservatism and integrative complexity has yielded contradictory results, and little effort has been made to place these mixed results in a theoretical context. The present article considers this issue through a strategic model of language that suggests different psychological processes apply to public politicians versus private citizens. We use a methodologically precise meta‐analytic test of the r…
When Beliefs Lead to (Im)Moral Action: How Believing in Torture's Effectiveness Shapes the Endorsement of Its Use
Does believing in torture's effectiveness shape the endorsements of its use? Using a multimethod approach across six studies, we provide converging evidence that efficacy beliefs can help increase understanding of individual differences and situational influences on torture support. Studies 1a and 1b found that torture opinions contained more efficacy‐based language than other types of harm and that people relied more on torture efficacy than tor…
Validating automated integrative complexity: Natural language processing and the Donald Trump Test
Computer algorithms that analyze language (natural language processing systems) have seen a great increase in usage recently. While use of these systems to score key constructs in social and political psychology has many advantages, it is also dangerous if we do not fully evaluate the validity of these systems. In the present article, we evaluate a natural language processing system for one particular construct that has implications for solving k…
From Steppe to City: Reaching Chinese and Mongolian Voices Using a Novel Survey Methodology
Objective The primary purpose of this study was to examine Chinese and Mongolian attitudes on cultural and socio‐political issues important to China–Mongolia relations across geospatial and demographic data. Method To investigate, this research leveraged Random Domain Intercept Technology (RDIT) to collect anonymous opt‐in survey responses from people in all 34 regions of China ( N = 5028) and in all 21 Aimags (provinces) in Mongolia ( N = 2003).…
Psychology (14 works) · Political science (11 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (6 works)