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Topic Proposal

I'm hoping to do a experiment pertaining to political party prejudices and how people act based on preconceptions of not only parties, but those who explicitly identify as being supportive of one of the parties. In other words, how do act around those who are explicitly political vs. someone they see as neutral or indifferent? How do people respond, if at all, to those whose opinions can be presumed based on their party association? Is college truly as biased towards republicans as some suggest?

The general plan is to go somewhere with lots of bystanders, say the pentacrest or the front of one of the bigger dorms. Once there, I'll stop people by and ask if they'd answer a few questions. I'd try to ask 15 guys and 15 girls. The goal is to approach each person in the exact same way, so as to limit outside variables. If they agree to answer questions, I'll ask them on their opinions over various topics that are heavily split along the party lines. During this, I'll take notes over their tone, the length of their explanation, their language use, etc. Meanwhile, my partner will take notes over their actual answers for later analysis if necessary. I'll also note how many refuse to even answer the question, as that could be significant.

Now the interesting point, which is that the first run will just be me, dressed extremely neutrally to give off no feeling of political direction, and all my responses will be neutral or indifferent. However, the second time I'll repeat the experiment dressed in republican clothing, clearly signifying a certain political preference. Then I'll repeat the experiment again, now in all blue and democratic clothing, noting all the same variables as previously stated, as I'm hoping I can get a good sense of the subjects feelings, whether they respond in a hostile, defensive, indifferent, or otherwise fashion. From there, I can draw conclusions about peoples' feelings towards party representative people in comparison to a rather 'average joe,' interviewer. In the current, often polarized political atmosphere of today, I think this experiment could yield some very interesting results.

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