CHAPTER 2 FIRST STEPS TOWARD A DUAL-PROCESS ACCESSIBILITY MODEL OF POLITICAL BELIEFS, ATTITUDES, ... more CHAPTER 2 FIRST STEPS TOWARD A DUAL-PROCESS ACCESSIBILITY MODEL OF POLITICAL BELIEFS, ATTITUDES, AND BEHAVIOR Milton Lodge, Charles Taber, and Christopher Weber With the advent of the political behavior movement in political science in the 1950s, in ...
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
In this commentary, we embed the volume’s contributions on public beliefs about science in a broa... more In this commentary, we embed the volume’s contributions on public beliefs about science in a broader theoretical discussion of motivated political reasoning. The studies presented in the preceding section of the volume consistently find evidence for hyperskepticism toward scientific evidence among ideologues, no matter the domain or context—and this skepticism seems to be stronger among conservatives than liberals. Here, we show that these patterns can be understood as part of a general tendency among individuals to defend their prior attitudes and actively challenge attitudinally incongruent arguments, a tendency that appears to be evident among liberals and conservatives alike. We integrate the empirical results reported in this volume into a broader theoretical discussion of the John Q. Public model of information processing and motivated reasoning, which posits that both affective and cognitive reactions to events are triggered unconsciously. We find that the work in this volume...
We report the results of an experiment designed to replicate and extend recent findings on motiva... more We report the results of an experiment designed to replicate and extend recent findings on motivated political reasoning. In particular, we are interested in disconfirmation biases-the tendency to counter-argue or discount information with which one disagrees-in the processing of political arguments on policy issues. Our experiment examines 8 issues, including some of local relevance and some of national relevance, and manipulates the presentation format of the policy arguments. We find strong support for our basic disconfirmation hypothesis: people seem unable to ignore their prior beliefs when processing arguments or evidence. We also find that this bias is moderated by political sophistication and strength of prior attitude. We do not find, however, that argument type matters, suggesting that motivated biases are quite robust to changes in argument format. Finally, we find strong support for the polarization of attitudes as a consequence of biased processing. Keywords Motivated reasoning Á Bayes' rule Á Political beliefs Á Public opinion Á Attitude polarization Á Political information processing Research on the motivated processing of political arguments has shown that we should not expect citizens to approach political arguments or evidence evenhand
John Q. Public, a computational model of political cognition which incorporates both cognitive an... more John Q. Public, a computational model of political cognition which incorporates both cognitive and affective mechanisms, is employed as a voter facing political campaign information. A series of hypothetical, computational experiments show that the model successfully reproduces a set of well-known empirical phenomena found in electoral research and research on political cognition. Specifically, in response to issue and candidate information, the model reproduces 1) practice, recency, and spreading activation effects on recall, 2) cognitive and attitude priming effects, 3) question order and wording effects in survey research, and 4) both on-line and memory-based processing. Given the space limit, only some of axiomatic characterizations of the model and some of the simulation results were presented here. (For formal presentation and full discussion of the model and simulation results,
We advocate for an experimental approach to the study of personality and politics. In particular,... more We advocate for an experimental approach to the study of personality and politics. In particular, we propose an "interactionist" model of political behavior in which the cognitive and behavioral effects of dispositional variables are qualified by experimentally-induced contexts. Our operating assumption is that the political effects of personality do not occur in a contextual vacuum, but instead are magnified by the presence of key precipitating or "activating" features of the political environment. We illustrate the approach with four experimental studies of authoritarianism. Results indicate that the effects of authoritarianism depend critically on the presence of situationally-induced threat. More generally, we argue that interactions between personality variables and experimental treatments can lead to valuable insights about when and why personality will make a meaningful contribution to public opinion and political behavior. Finally, we close with a critique of the traditional skepticism toward experimentation in political science, and suggest that external validity is an overrated virtue when the research goal is the development of theory rather than the description of "real world" phenomena.
... Beyond Simplicity: Focused Realism and Computational Modeling in International Relations ... ... more ... Beyond Simplicity: Focused Realism and Computational Modeling in International Relations ... 42 Beyond Simplicity: Focused Realism and Computational Modeling in International Relations scholars should not quickly dismiss the central points raised by their critics (see, for ...
... Consider a hypothetical citizen -John Q. Public (JQP)-making judgments about presidential can... more ... Consider a hypothetical citizen -John Q. Public (JQP)-making judgments about presidential candi-dates ... The alternative position in this debate (Miller and Ross, 1975; Nisbett and Ross, 1980) draws on the cognitive mechanisms underlying processing, proposing that individuals ...
We review and evaluate a growing literature in social and political psychology on the ubiquity of... more We review and evaluate a growing literature in social and political psychology on the ubiquity of unconscious thought processes and present a theoretical model, called John Q. Public (JQP), which seeks to explain how citizens form and express their political beliefs, attitudes, and choices. Our most revolutionary claims are that people are generally unable to reliably report their political beliefs, attitudes, and behavioral intentions; that unconscious thought underlies all political deliberation, introducing important systematic biases, but paradoxically also providing the capacity for rational action in the face of severe cognitive limitations; and that conscious deliberation is typically more rationalizing than rational. Under review at Perspectives on Politics.
This chapter reviews recent work on implicit political attitudes, detailing how, when, and why un... more This chapter reviews recent work on implicit political attitudes, detailing how, when, and why unconscious processes impact the explicit expression of political beliefs, attitudes, and preferences. The authors begin by discussing thresholds of awareness, defining implicit attitudes and how the circumstances under which they reach conscious awareness. The ubiquity of unconscious effects in everyday life is considered, and two research paradigms for measuring implicit attitudes are discussed. The resulting dual-process model, in which influences can be either conscious or subconscious, allows us to understand how sensory input works its way through the mind to influence attitudes and behaviors in ways that are rarely evident to the individual. These influences often include factors that the individual would never consider as being important, but nevertheless hold enormous power over effortful decision-making.
CHAPTER 2 FIRST STEPS TOWARD A DUAL-PROCESS ACCESSIBILITY MODEL OF POLITICAL BELIEFS, ATTITUDES, ... more CHAPTER 2 FIRST STEPS TOWARD A DUAL-PROCESS ACCESSIBILITY MODEL OF POLITICAL BELIEFS, ATTITUDES, AND BEHAVIOR Milton Lodge, Charles Taber, and Christopher Weber With the advent of the political behavior movement in political science in the 1950s, in ...
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
In this commentary, we embed the volume’s contributions on public beliefs about science in a broa... more In this commentary, we embed the volume’s contributions on public beliefs about science in a broader theoretical discussion of motivated political reasoning. The studies presented in the preceding section of the volume consistently find evidence for hyperskepticism toward scientific evidence among ideologues, no matter the domain or context—and this skepticism seems to be stronger among conservatives than liberals. Here, we show that these patterns can be understood as part of a general tendency among individuals to defend their prior attitudes and actively challenge attitudinally incongruent arguments, a tendency that appears to be evident among liberals and conservatives alike. We integrate the empirical results reported in this volume into a broader theoretical discussion of the John Q. Public model of information processing and motivated reasoning, which posits that both affective and cognitive reactions to events are triggered unconsciously. We find that the work in this volume...
We report the results of an experiment designed to replicate and extend recent findings on motiva... more We report the results of an experiment designed to replicate and extend recent findings on motivated political reasoning. In particular, we are interested in disconfirmation biases-the tendency to counter-argue or discount information with which one disagrees-in the processing of political arguments on policy issues. Our experiment examines 8 issues, including some of local relevance and some of national relevance, and manipulates the presentation format of the policy arguments. We find strong support for our basic disconfirmation hypothesis: people seem unable to ignore their prior beliefs when processing arguments or evidence. We also find that this bias is moderated by political sophistication and strength of prior attitude. We do not find, however, that argument type matters, suggesting that motivated biases are quite robust to changes in argument format. Finally, we find strong support for the polarization of attitudes as a consequence of biased processing. Keywords Motivated reasoning Á Bayes' rule Á Political beliefs Á Public opinion Á Attitude polarization Á Political information processing Research on the motivated processing of political arguments has shown that we should not expect citizens to approach political arguments or evidence evenhand
John Q. Public, a computational model of political cognition which incorporates both cognitive an... more John Q. Public, a computational model of political cognition which incorporates both cognitive and affective mechanisms, is employed as a voter facing political campaign information. A series of hypothetical, computational experiments show that the model successfully reproduces a set of well-known empirical phenomena found in electoral research and research on political cognition. Specifically, in response to issue and candidate information, the model reproduces 1) practice, recency, and spreading activation effects on recall, 2) cognitive and attitude priming effects, 3) question order and wording effects in survey research, and 4) both on-line and memory-based processing. Given the space limit, only some of axiomatic characterizations of the model and some of the simulation results were presented here. (For formal presentation and full discussion of the model and simulation results,
We advocate for an experimental approach to the study of personality and politics. In particular,... more We advocate for an experimental approach to the study of personality and politics. In particular, we propose an "interactionist" model of political behavior in which the cognitive and behavioral effects of dispositional variables are qualified by experimentally-induced contexts. Our operating assumption is that the political effects of personality do not occur in a contextual vacuum, but instead are magnified by the presence of key precipitating or "activating" features of the political environment. We illustrate the approach with four experimental studies of authoritarianism. Results indicate that the effects of authoritarianism depend critically on the presence of situationally-induced threat. More generally, we argue that interactions between personality variables and experimental treatments can lead to valuable insights about when and why personality will make a meaningful contribution to public opinion and political behavior. Finally, we close with a critique of the traditional skepticism toward experimentation in political science, and suggest that external validity is an overrated virtue when the research goal is the development of theory rather than the description of "real world" phenomena.
... Beyond Simplicity: Focused Realism and Computational Modeling in International Relations ... ... more ... Beyond Simplicity: Focused Realism and Computational Modeling in International Relations ... 42 Beyond Simplicity: Focused Realism and Computational Modeling in International Relations scholars should not quickly dismiss the central points raised by their critics (see, for ...
... Consider a hypothetical citizen -John Q. Public (JQP)-making judgments about presidential can... more ... Consider a hypothetical citizen -John Q. Public (JQP)-making judgments about presidential candi-dates ... The alternative position in this debate (Miller and Ross, 1975; Nisbett and Ross, 1980) draws on the cognitive mechanisms underlying processing, proposing that individuals ...
We review and evaluate a growing literature in social and political psychology on the ubiquity of... more We review and evaluate a growing literature in social and political psychology on the ubiquity of unconscious thought processes and present a theoretical model, called John Q. Public (JQP), which seeks to explain how citizens form and express their political beliefs, attitudes, and choices. Our most revolutionary claims are that people are generally unable to reliably report their political beliefs, attitudes, and behavioral intentions; that unconscious thought underlies all political deliberation, introducing important systematic biases, but paradoxically also providing the capacity for rational action in the face of severe cognitive limitations; and that conscious deliberation is typically more rationalizing than rational. Under review at Perspectives on Politics.
This chapter reviews recent work on implicit political attitudes, detailing how, when, and why un... more This chapter reviews recent work on implicit political attitudes, detailing how, when, and why unconscious processes impact the explicit expression of political beliefs, attitudes, and preferences. The authors begin by discussing thresholds of awareness, defining implicit attitudes and how the circumstances under which they reach conscious awareness. The ubiquity of unconscious effects in everyday life is considered, and two research paradigms for measuring implicit attitudes are discussed. The resulting dual-process model, in which influences can be either conscious or subconscious, allows us to understand how sensory input works its way through the mind to influence attitudes and behaviors in ways that are rarely evident to the individual. These influences often include factors that the individual would never consider as being important, but nevertheless hold enormous power over effortful decision-making.
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