Although theories of prejudice have been extensively catalogued, empirical confrontations between competing theories are surprisingly rare. The primary goal of the present research was to test two major theoretical approaches to prejudice by whites against blacks: realistic group conflict theory, which emphasizes the tangible threats blacks might pose to whites' private lives; and a sociocultural theory of prejudice termed symbolic racism, which emphasizes abstract, moralistic resentments of blacks, presumably traceable to preadult socialization. The main dependent variable in our analysis is suburban whites' voting behavior in two mayoral elections in Los Angeles, both strongly influenced by racial issues, that matched the same two candidates, one black and one white. In both elections, symbolic racism (sociocultural prejudice) was the major determinant of voting against the black candidate for people removed from possible personal threats posed by blacks as well as for those at risk. Direct racial threats to whites' private lives (to their jobs, their neighborhoods, their children's schooling, their families' safety) had little effect on either antiblack voting behavior or symbolic racism. The article closes by developing the implications of these results for theories of prejudice and, more speculatively, for interpretations of the effects of voters' private lives on their political behavior. Theories of racial prejudice suffer from benign neglect. Although the theories themselves have been extensively and ably catalogued (most notably, by Allport, 1954; Ashmore & DelBoca, 1976; LeVine & Campbell, 1972), empirical confrontations between alternative theories occupy surprisingly little Portions of this material were originally presented by Sears and Kinder to the Western Psychological Association, Los Angeles, 1970. A more elaborate version of this article won the 1978 Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize from the Society for Psychological Study of Social Issues. The data were collected as part of a larger project on black mayoral candidates under the direction of Thomas Pettigrew, to whom we owe deep thanks. Robert Riley was an invaluable collaborator in early stages of the project. John Morgan, Andrew Walker, and Richard E. Whitney also contributed valuable assistance. Comments on earlier drafts by

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American elections depend substantially on the vitality of the national economy. Prosperity benefits candidates for the House of Representatives from the incumbent party (defined as the party that controls the presidency at the time of the election), whereas economic downturns enhance the electoral fortunes of opposition candidates. Short-term fluctuations in economic conditions also appear to affect the electorate's presidential choice, as well as the level of public approval conferred upon the president during his term. By this evidence, the political consequences of macroeconomic conditions are both pervasive and powerful. But just how do citizens know whether the incumbent party has succeeded or failed? What kinds of economic evidence do people weigh in their political appraisals? The purpose of our paper is to examine two contrasting depictions of individual citizens – one emphasizing the political significance of citizens' own economic predicaments, the other stressing the political importance of citizens' assessments of the nation's economic predicament – that might underlie the aggregate entwining of economics and politics. Ours is an inquiry into the political economy of individual citizens.

Recibido: 1 de noviembre de 2015 Aceptado: 16 de febrero de 2016 Resumen La comunicación de crisis es un apartado que cuenta con bastante literatura al respecto. Existen nume rosos manuales en los que se desgranan las principales indicaciones para afrontar con garantías crisis de comunicación (Alcat, 2005, Benoit, 1997 así como artículos sobre casos concretos (Nespereira, 2014, Blaney y Benoit 2001. Sin embargo, la mayor parte de las veces estas indicaciones se aplican al ámbito de la empresa (Abeler, 2010) y el número de publicaciones disminuye considerablemente a la hora de tra tar la comunicación de crisis en política (Gaspar e Ibeas, 2015) y menos aún sobre casos en los que se ha empleado el perdón como herramienta para la restauración de la imagen en política (Harris 2006) y todo pese a los que tal y como consideran diversos autores (Krauze, 1998) podría considerarse que vivi mos en la "era del perdón" con una proliferación de demandas de perdón por parte de los ciudadanos par ticularmente hacia los políticos (Harris et al. 2006:716). Así trataremos de hacer una aproximación a este campo y a sus posibilidades a la hora de afrontar este tipo de situaciones. Palabras clave: Perdón, comunicación de crisis, comunicación política. Crisis communication in politics: forgiveness as image restoration tool AbstractCrisis communication is a widely treated field. There are lot of works and guides which provide helpful information in order to face crisis situations successfully (Alcat, 2005, Benoit, 1997 and articles about case studies (Nespereira, 2014, Blaney y Benoit 2001. Nonetheless, most of times, these guides are fo cused on business or corporations (Abeler, 2010) and there are not such information about crisis com munications in politics (Gaspar e Ibeas, 2015). The field is smaller if we speak about forgiveness as restoration image tool in politics (Harris 2006). Despite all, we live in "forgiveness era" as Krauze said (1998) where people demand to politicians to apologize when they have mistakes (Harris et al. 2006:716). So, we will try to make an approach to forgiveness in politics as a image restoration tool and analyze its capabilities in order to face crisis management.

According to the new conventional wisdom, social psychology has become captured by cognition; it should pay greater attention to affect. In that spirit, our article explores comparisons between conventional semantic judgments and affective reports. In two national surveys respondents were invited to ascribe personality traits to prominent national politicians as well as to report the feelings that the politicians elicited. We find first that summary scores of good feelings and bad feelings are nearly independent of each other, much more so than are good and bad trait judgments. Affective registrations, in short, seem less semantically filtered, less subject to consistency pressures. We also find that summary scores of affect strongly predict political preference. This effect is independent of and more powerful than that for personality judgments. Thus, affective registrations are not at all redundant with semantic judgments. Overall, these results should encourage the quickening interest in human emotion.Suddenly it is fashionable to write about emotion. According to a newly emerging conventional wisdom, social psychology has become too exclusively cognitive, and it is time to reexamine the role of affect (