No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Government Policy and Citizen Passion: A Study of Issue Publics in Contemporary America
Abstract
This article describes the findings of a program of research exploring the cognitive and behavioral consequences of passionate concern about government policy issues. American citizens vary a great deal in terms of the personal importance they attach to their attitudes on particular policy issues. Citizens whose policy attitudes are especially important to them are likely to think frequently about those attitudes, to perceive competing candidates as being relatively polarized on the issue, and to form presidential candidate preferences on the basis of those attitudes. Also, policy attitudes that citizens consider personally important are highly resistant to change and are therefore especially stable over long periods of time. The American public appears to be structured into many small issue publics, each composed of citizens who are passionately concerned about a single issue. Most Americans fall into very few issue publics, the particular ones being determined by each individual''s unique self-interests, social identifications, and cherished values. The implications of these findings for the workings of democracies are discussed.
... Research has identified a specific group of the electorate who are particularly concerned with defined issues, or a set of issues, as issue publics. The concept of issue publics was first introduced by (Converse, 2006) and developed by (Krosnick, 1990) to challenge the conventional view that the general public should be perceived as a homogenous group with static political preferences over time (Bartle, 2005;Krosnick, 1990). Different segments of the public, lower) than a value of 1, representing the average engagement of all topics taken in aggregate. ...
... Research has identified a specific group of the electorate who are particularly concerned with defined issues, or a set of issues, as issue publics. The concept of issue publics was first introduced by (Converse, 2006) and developed by (Krosnick, 1990) to challenge the conventional view that the general public should be perceived as a homogenous group with static political preferences over time (Bartle, 2005;Krosnick, 1990). Different segments of the public, lower) than a value of 1, representing the average engagement of all topics taken in aggregate. ...
... who are knowledgeable and interested in specific issues, can drive political discourse and increase social awareness of specific issues (Krosnick, 1990). The rapid progress in digital technology has facilitated issue publics' engagement with their areas of interest by allowing them to use various social media platforms to follow and engage with the political discourse of their interests (McKelvey et al., 2014). ...
Understanding successful politicians' communication strategies during elections is crucial for future political campaigns and can also provide insight into candidates' priorities once they are elected. Social media platforms like Twitter are popular for researching campaign messaging and surveying public opinion. The vast amount of political discourse on Twitter provides valuable insights into the opinions, attitudes, and behaviors of politicians and voters. This research proposal aims to utilize Twitter data from 804 candidates and their respective issue publics during the 2022 U.S. House of Representatives midterm elections to identify the most prevalent and engaging issues for both parties. In addition, this research also plans to use both computational and qualitative research methods to identify the most effective elements of political communication that are shared by winning candidates from each party. The preliminary data suggest that winning candidates of both parties are distinguished from losing candidates by their ability to engage their audiences significantly more when discussing global issues and immigration. These analyses may provide a complement to traditional polling in understanding the complex interplay between the political communication of candidates and their issue publics during the election season.
... The idea of issue salience follows the relatively persuasive idea that some issues matter more for individuals than others (RePass 1929;Krosnick 1990;Dennison 2019;Moniz and Wlezien 2020). According to the seminal work of Krosnick (1990), self-interest, social identification, and values can determine if an individual or a group of individuals perceive an issue to be salient or not. ...
... The idea of issue salience follows the relatively persuasive idea that some issues matter more for individuals than others (RePass 1929;Krosnick 1990;Dennison 2019;Moniz and Wlezien 2020). According to the seminal work of Krosnick (1990), self-interest, social identification, and values can determine if an individual or a group of individuals perceive an issue to be salient or not. When focusing on young voters, they fulfill at least two of those criteria: Young voters have different material interests that are a consequence of their position in the life cycle Busemeyer et al. (2009); Umeda (2022) and diverge in values as a result of cohort socialization (Inglehart 2008;Evans and Neundorf 2020). ...
... However, most people agree that issue salience refers to the degree or strength to which people engage with a certain political topic, making some issues more central than others for their decision-making and political thinking (Krosnick 1990;Moniz and Wlezien 2020). Broadly put, two main conceptualizations of salience have emerged in the literature; a socio-psychological understanding and one that understands salience purely as a weight of an individual's behavior. ...
Younger voters' attitudes and behavior are increasingly found to diverge from older voters. However, these differences have led to somewhat paradoxical patterns, with younger voters being more progressive when it comes to attitudes but not necessarily when looking at voting behavior. Hence, to understand political differences in behavior and attitudes between young and old voters, it might be necessary to understand whether they not only hold different attitudes but also if they care about other types of issues. In this paper, I argue that younger voters today perceive other issues to be more important than older voters. Specifically, I expect them to perceive cultural issues as more salient than older voters. To test this, the paper uses original experimental survey data from Germany and Switzerland (conducted in April 2024). By running a pairwise comparison experiment and applying Bradley-Terry models, I test whether age groups differ in the salience they assess to a selection of 42 relevant political issues. The results yield some age differences in salience - with issues related to gender and family policies being more salient for younger voters - but also show that, overall, all age groups prefer socioeconomic issues related to costs of living as the most pressing issues. This has broad implications for our understanding of political debates and electoral development, showing that young and old voters mostly agree about "what matters" in contemporary politics.
... [31,[36][37][38][39]) as they constitute the "glue" that makes coalitions stable [38]. In contrast, other established explanations, such as individual-level issue salience as a potential channel through which beliefs and preferences may influence support (which features prominently in electoral theories) [40][41][42][43][44][45], is of relatively weak predictive power compared to beliefs and preferences. A promising avenue for future research is examining the extent to which political campaigns may enable changes in beliefs -for instance, through the strategic ordering of climate policies into sequences [46][47][48][49] that initially create positive beliefs and subsequently foster the introduction of increasingly ambitious policies over time. ...
... At the individual level, research shows that voting behaviour is driven by the importance ascribed to issues [42]. Voters evaluate politicians' performance more vigorously in relation to issues that they perceive as important [43]. ...
... Research on individual-level issue salience has used 'most-important-problem' or 'most-important-issue' questions in public opinion surveys [60,93]. Explanatory research shows that greater issue salience often fosters policy change [42][43][44], including in the domain of climate policies [94]. Although survey respondents may conflate most-important-issue and most-important-problem questions and thus there may be conceptual differences between the two question types [60], results do not vary substantially between operationalizations. ...
Public support and political mobilization are two crucial factors for the adoption of ambitious climate policies in line with the international greenhouse gas reduction targets of the Paris Agreement. Despite their compound importance, they are mainly studied separately. Using a random forest machine-learning model, this article investigates the relative predictive power of key established explanations for public support and mobilization for climate policies. Predictive models may shape future research priorities and contribute to theoretical advancement by showing which predictors are the most and least important. The analysis is based on a pre-election conjoint survey experiment on the Swiss CO2 Act in 2021. Results indicate that beliefs (such as the perceived effectiveness of policies) and policy design preferences (such as for subsidies or tax-related policies) are the most important predictors while other established explanations, such as socio-demographics, issue salience (the relative importance of issues) or political variables (such as the party affiliation) have relatively weak predictive power. Thus, beliefs are an essential factor to consider in addition to explanations that emphasize issue salience and preferences driven by voters' cost-benefit considerations.
... Our study investigates how issue importance, or the subjective sense of caring about a topic (Krosnick, 1990a), affects a person's willingness to revise false beliefs. Important issues are central to a person's self-concept (Lavine et al., 2000), and it is well-established that this kind of "involvement" influences how people process new information. ...
... Important issues are central to a person's self-concept (Lavine et al., 2000), and it is well-established that this kind of "involvement" influences how people process new information. For example, important attitudes are highly stable over time (e.g., Krosnick, 1990a) and resistant to persuasion (e.g., Zuwernick & Devine, 1996). One might suppose, then, that misinformation would be difficult to correct when someone has false beliefs on a personally important issue. ...
... In these situations, partisan political identity signals what is important. Yet people can perceive an issue as personally important for reasons that have little to do with partisan attachments (Krosnick, 1990a). Issue motivations also may conflict with partisanship, such as when one's stance on an important issue is different from the position held by their party (Hillygus & Shields, 2014;Mullinix, 2016). ...
The study of misinformation – and its correction – has proliferated in recent years. Yet the empirical record includes instances where corrective messages do and do not work, even on similar issues. Despite intense scholarly attention to this topic, it remains unclear when people will revise false beliefs. Our study examines a factor with a long history in the study of public opinion: the importance a person attaches to an issue. The subjective state of issue importance has complex effects. It can increase an individual’s motivation to engage in effortful information processing while also leading them to defend existing beliefs and opinions. In a series of experiments administered in national surveys, we examine whether issue importance is implicated in the failure to correct false beliefs. The analyses show that on the topic of GM foods, the effects of a corrective message are smallest among misinformed people who rated the issue as personally important. By contrast, framing GM foods in terms of partisan identity engendered little resistance to a corrective message. Our findings illustrate the value of adopting a broader perspective on misinformation because people may resist corrections for reasons that are unrelated to their partisanship.
... Framing studies seem at least to point to such effects (Wenzelburger & Hörisch, 2016) and the literature on issue publics (Converse 2006, p. 52, Soroka & Wlezien 2012) also argues that the expected effects of mass media reporting are only relevant for those persons that have an incentive to actually be concerned about pension changes. In order for an issue to affect vote intentions, it is not only relevant that it is accessible and available in the voter's mind, but also that it is of importance to her personally (Boninger et al. 1995;Krosnick 1990;Miller et al. 2016). In the welfare state literature, several studies have provided evidence that looking at issue publics may deliver a more nuanced picture. ...
... Although it makes sense to start from an inspection of direct relationships between media reporting on government approval, it is important to consider that the effect of media reporting on individual vote intentions may also be different for individual persons. Drawing on the literatures about personal issue importance (Krosnick 1990, Boninger et al. 1995 and partisan politics of the welfare state (Allan & Scruggs, 2004;Huber & Stephens, 2001; . Table 2. ...
The question to what extent voters punish governments for cutting the welfare state is an unsettled issue in social policy research. Our contribution addresses this shortcoming by systematically analyzing how media reporting about legislative changes to the welfare state affects the public agenda and citizens’ vote intentions while controlling for the influence of actual cutbacks and expansions. In our analysis we examine the case of Germany from 1994 to 2014; a period where major cutbacks but also significant expansions to the German welfare state occurred. We find that mass media reporting about pension cutbacks is associated with a drop in government approval, whereas the reaction to expansive legislative changes is muted. We also find that the relationship of media reporting and government approval strongly depends on who is in government with the social democrats being punished harder than the Christian democrats.
... This could be likened to issue salience, a central concept in political science, which scholars use to illustrate that any given policy issue may be important to some citizens while ignored by others at the same time (Miller et al. 2016). According to Krosnick (1990), salience can be defined as 'the degree to which a person is passionately concerned about and personally invested in an attitude'. If we view issue salience in terms of distance, we maintain that more salient issues are perceived as being nearer, while less salient issues appear to be further away. ...
Voter myopia, the inability and unwillingness of citizens to accept policies whose benefits only materialise over a long period, is often considered an almost inevitable feature of representative democracy. Recent studies have subjected this assumption to empirical scrutiny, but the extent to which variation in political future orientation of citizens is associated with support for alternative policies, with differing temporal profiles of benefits and costs, has remained largely uncharted. Utilising survey data from Finland ( n = 1049), we study the associations spatial proximity to a regionally relevant problem, flooding and political future orientation have with choices between policy alternatives that distribute benefits differently between generations. We found that, while levels of political future orientation are not a significant determinant of the willingness to invest in the future wellbeing, heightened issue salience linked to geographic proximity to the potential event plays a role in shaping policy preferences.
... Attitude strength also varies between objects, and someone might hold stronger and weaker attitudes about different objects [16]. Furthermore, groups of people (i.e., issue publics; [35]) may be characterized by equally strong attitudes towards the same object [36], attitude strength fluctuates collectively in line with the political climate and public attention on certain issues. ...
Previous research has demonstrated that exposure to outgroup descriptions that use person-first, as compared to identity-first, language can attenuate negative stereotypes or prejudice and enhance support for policies that seek to advance outgroup rights. However, those benefits of person-first language may not apply to all social groups equally. The present study examines a boundary condition of the effects of person-first language. Specifically, we postulate that person-first language reduces the stigmatization of outgroups to a lesser degree if individuals hold more important negative attitudes towards the respective communities. We will test this hypothesis in a two-factorial 2 (target group) x 2 (descriptor) online experiment that includes a control group and for which we will recruit a general-population sample ( N = 681). Stereotyping, dehumanization, as well as negative affect and behavioral intentions towards two outgroups will be compared: people with a physical disability/the physically disabled (i.e., negative attitudes are expected to be less important) and people who have committed a violent crime/violent criminals (i.e., negative attitudes are expected to be more important). Our findings will bear implications for understanding when language use could influence public opinion of different social groups. Additionally, the research can inform the development of more effective communication policies to promote inclusion and reduce stigma.
... In the right context (e.g. motivation matched with opportunities for deliberation), average citizens have proven able to become knowledgeable on a given topic (Colombo, 2016;Esterling et al., 2011;Warren & Gastil, 2015), which seems to be the crucial type of knowledge for direct democracy processes (Gilens, 2001;Krosnick, 1990;Price & Zaller, 1993;Shaker, 2012). In other cases, citizen initiatives are explicitly oriented to reveal preferences to the legislature as much as to be passed (Gerber, 1999, Chapter 5). ...
This chapter outlines a vision of a radically democratic society. It begins presenting Decidim as an infrastructure for participatory democracy and technopolitical democratisation, rather than as a tool for digital democracy. To unfold the argument, we assess four models of democracy: representative, direct, deliberative and participatory, and suggest the latter is a model of a radically democratic society that incorporates and transforms the previous three. Then we explore the transformation of representative government that such a model of society may imply, arguing that it points beyond open government towards a model of common government. This requires a form of participatory governance and technoacracy radically distinct from technocratic neoliberal governance, and we outline a systemic-functionalist view of it. It also requires a form of (self-)governmentality to which Decidim tries to contribute through new forms of collective subjectivation, collective intelligence and collective action. We close with its final goal: nurturing flourishing personal and collective lives.
... 12 Responses within 1% of the actual unemployment rate were marked as correct. 13 Focusing on issue publics (e.g., Krosnick 1990), half of the sample was asked whether these issues were the most important to them when voting for their state representative. I do not find meaningful differences between the full sample and those respondents who indicated that gun control, abortion, or taxes were their most important issues (Supplementary Figure A-1, light gray bars). ...
Political scientists have largely come to a consensus that “most citizens are politically uninformed” (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1997), but even with increased attention to state-level representation and electoral behavior, political scientists know surprisingly little themselves regarding what Americans know about state politics. Past studies of state political knowledge examine narrow domains of knowledge and make few comparisons between individuals’ understanding of national and state politics. To provide a more comprehensive account of Americans’ state political knowledge, I conducted a novel national survey that included over 30 political knowledge questions. In a descriptive and exploratory analysis, I show Americans demonstrated more knowledge about who their Governor is but less knowledge about who represents them in the state legislature, state government institutions, and the state economy, particularly compared to their knowledge of federal politics. The different levels of political knowledge across different domains and levels of government raise concerns for statehouse democracy and should be considered before testing theories at the state level. To guide future research and surveys, I identify political knowledge questions that discriminate well between those who know little, some, and a lot about state politics across different domains of political knowledge.
... But while the economy and resource royalties were prominent during the campaign, they were not necessarily meaningful in determining vote choice. The impact of issues on vote choice depends on at least two factors: the degree of personal salience voters attach to an issue and the ability of voters to link an issue to a party (Krosnick, 1990;Fournier et al., 2003). In order to gauge which kinds of issues were most salient, and which parties Saskatchewan voters favoured on those issues, the SKES asked respondents "what was the most important issue to you personally in the recent provincial election?" ...
This article seeks to provide an understanding of the historic success of the Saskatchewan Party and the historic failure of the NDP in the 2011 Saskatchewan provincial election. Drawing on telephone survey data from the 2011 Saskatchewan Election Study, we argue that leadership, partisan loyalty, and issue salience best explain the Saskatchewan Party’s dominance over the NDP. On election day, the Saskatchewan Party benefitted from the carefully cultivated popularity of Brad Wall, the development of a loyal base of voters who believed in the party’s vision of a ‘New Saskatchewan’, and the confidence of the electorate with the party’s handling of key issues. The NDP’s loss of seats and the drop in its popular vote can be attributed to the unpopularity of the party’s leader, its overreliance on a relatively small base of party loyalists, and its inability to connect with voters on issues that were of most importance to them.
... The mechanism that accounts for this relation is that salient issues become more cognitively accessible for voters and, thus, more prone to come to mind when evaluating government performance. Issue salience also increases incentives to gather information about party positions and government performance on these topics (Krosnick, 1990;Krosnick et al., 1993). ¹ However, it is important to point out that they measure popularity using vote intention instead of a more direct measure of executive approval. ...
Representative democracy requires the consent of the governed. But what drives public support for government? This book provides the most comprehensive treatment of approval dynamics in the advanced democracies to date. Drawing on data from the Executive Approval Project (EAP), a cross-nationally comparable data set on leader popularity, authors examine the dynamics of government support in advanced industrial democracies. Eleven country-specific chapters, each written by experts in the politics of the country, examine the role of economic performance in generating leader support in each country. Chapter authors show that the economy matters for popularity. However, the economy–popularity link is stronger in some countries than others. Further, chapters leverage EAP series to highlight changes in this relationship within countries over time. Pooled analyses extend these findings, highlighting how the public’s responses to the economy are reduced when political campaigns shift to non-economic issues and when parties are polarized on non-economic issues. Collectively, the volume highlights how evolving issue agendas are changing the nature of political accountability in advanced industrialized democracies. While the economy remains important, the book calls on students of political accountability to give greater attention to how non-economic issues and political dispositions shape the dynamics of government popularity.
... In order for citizens to arrive at a strong belief on a given political issue, the issue must be cognitively accessible (Krosnick, 1990). Those with high levels of political interest should have an easier time accessing relevant 'nodes' about the EU in their associative memory network (Steenbergen and Lodge, 2003). ...
How do citizens understand political authority within multi-level systems? We use original survey data from six European Union member states to assess the roles of political identity and interest in shaping citizen attitudes towards political authority in the European Union. We find that citizens with a greater interest in politics are more likely to express views on the authority of the European Union. These individuals are less likely to be uninformed. Interest does not necessarily mean that individuals hold correct perceptions. A substantive amount of voters are misinformed about the power of Brussels. We find that citizens with an exclusively national identity are more likely to hold misperceptions than those who think of themselves as both members of their nation and as Europeans.
... In such instances, public connection might yield attention that translates into engagement in several arenas-or just in one. Empirical political science literature on "issue publics" highlights how such selectivity is widespread across different social groups, yet the same literature is strikingly void of discussion of what the "public" entails beyond being a collection of individual citizens (Bolsen & Leeper, 2013;Krosnick, 1990). Operationalizing distribution means adding a normative expectation of such segmentation: ...
This article takes issue with public sphere theories’ lack of focus on the consequences of social inequality. Citizens divide the work of following politics between them, and we need a cohesive conceptualization of such divisions, through and beyond today’s intrusive media and with attention to social inequalities. Instead of ideals of fully informed individual citizens, I propose we take the empirical fact of distribution of citizens’ public connection as a starting point and anchor our theoretical ideals in the social world with an “ethnographic sensibility.” Doing so facilitates an operationalized concept of distribution of citizens’ public connection into four elements: issues, arenas, and communicative modes, which citizens variously rely on over time. With such an operationalization, we can assess when and for whom the distribution of public connection goes too far and disfavors certain citizens. This helps bring public sphere theory beyond the conundrum of our societies’ paradoxically uninformed citizens.
... Although most people are quite inattentive to political issue debates, there are segments of the population that follow particular issue debates closely, so-called issue publics (Converse, 1964;Krosnick, 1990;Price et al., 2006). An issue public comprises people with high levels of concern about and attention to a specific issue (Chen, 2013;Price et al., 2006). ...
Contributing to the study of curated news flows, we investigated how conflicting participants in an issue public fed mainstream news into their Twitter networks. In a quasi-experimental field study in the context of the 2018 European Court of Justice's ruling on genome editing, we combined standardized manual content analyses of a universe of legacy media news items (N = 165), users' tweets ("feeds") linking these news items (N = 2014), and users' profiles (N = 1070). Confirming existing knowledge, opponents and proponents of genetically modified organisms largely fed news items confirming their issue attitudes. Extending existing knowledge, we show that counter-attitudinal news feeding became more likely when users had a political disadvantage rather than a political advantage in the controversy. However, this was only true for the more active but not for the more inactive news feeders.
... How important an individual perceives an issue to be serves as a good indicator of the level of cognitive and affective resources they invest in issue engagement (Li et al., 2017). Scholarly discussions of perceived issue importance began with social psychologists' inquiry of attitude strength and change (e.g., Boninger et al., 1995;Krosnick, 1989Krosnick, , 1990. Boninger et al. (1995) defined attitude importance as "an individual's subjective sense of the concern, caring, and significance he or she attaches to an attitude" (p. ...
... It is reasonable to assume that voters who identify with Jewish or Muslim communities are likely to care more about the government's position on the Israeli question than are members of other ethnic or religious groups. Members of these two religious communities are more likely to form what is called an "issue public" based on that particular issue (Krosnick, 1990;Soroka, 2002). This does not mean that all members of those two ethnic groups care about the issue nor that all non-members do not care. ...
This article investigates the relationship between partisan foreign policy positions on Israel and the voting behavior of religious minorities in Canada. It discusses Stephen Harper's strong pro-Israeli stance in foreign policy when the Conservatives were in power and focuses on two main explanations accounting for such politicization of Israel, namely moral obligations and political clientelism. These hypotheses are tested using the 1968–2015 Canadian Election Study (CES) surveys and the 2011–2015 Vox Pop Labs election data. The results suggest that the Israeli issue had an impact on the support for the Conservatives among voters from religious minorities. Considering the effect of this foreign policy positions, Jewish Canadians are shown to be more supportive of the Conservatives, while the opposite pattern is observed among Muslim Canadians. The implications of these findings are then discussed.
... In the empirical world, polity publics, topic publics, and group publics may overlap and form hybrid publics. For instance, the so-called "issue publics," which have been extensively studied in the field of political communication (Bennett et al., 2015;Bolsen & Leeper, 2013;Krosnick, 1990), represent a combination of characteristics of polity publics and topic publics. When current issues of public concern prove to be particularly relevant and secular, such as the COVID-19 pandemic (Merten et al., 2022b), a specific issue public emerges from the general polity public; as long as the issue is unresolved, the issue public includes members of the local, regional, national, and global polity publics who develop a specific interest in the topic, and members of existing topic publics who were already interested in the scientific, social, economic, and political details of pandemics in general. ...
As public sphere(s) have been ascribed core functions for democratic societies, correlating theories have a long tradition in communications research. Yet they often fail to bridge the conceptual gap between the macro level of public sphere(s) and the micro level of individual citizens. In this article, we propose a conceptual approach that helps to describe and explain the contribution of individuals to the construction of publics. Following Elias' figurational approach, we propose a framework for the analysis of different kinds of publics as communicative figurations. To capture individuals' contribution to these publics, we introduce the concept of public connection repertoires which represent individuals' struc-tured patterns of connection to different publics. This results in the figurational analysis of publics, based on the public repertoires of all individuals who connect to that public. We discuss implications of this approach for theoretical work on public spheres in changing media environments.
... Thus far, we have shown that (1) Christian nationalist attitudes were present among religious elites (SBC clergy) as far back as three decades ago (providing messaging/connections), (2) Christian nationalists are concentrating in the Republican Party, (3) this worldview has become effectively synonymous with stands taken by the Republican Party on "easy" issues, and (4) that followers have dispositions that reinforce elite influence. Resonance between elite rhetoric and citizen worldviews should boost the public's political engagement, not dissimilarly from the effects of attitude salience (e.g., Krosnick 1990). ...
Academic research on Christian nationalism has revealed a considerable amount about the scope of its relationships to public policy views in the US. However, work thus far has not addressed an essential question: why now? Research by the authors of this Element advances answers, showcasing how deeper engagement with 'the 3Ms' – measurement, mechanisms and mobilization – can help unpack how and why Christian nationalism has entered our politics as a partisan project. Indeed, it is difficult to understand the dynamics of Christian nationalism without reference to the parties, as it has been a worldview used to mobilize Republicans while simultaneously recruiting and demobilizing Democrats. The mechanisms of these efforts hinge on a deep desire for social dominance that is ordained by God – an order elites suggest is threatened by Democrats and 'the left.' These elite appeals can have sweeping consequences for opinion and action, including the public's support for democratic processes.
... Additionally, Edelman (1964) remarked that policies can intimidate or comfort, foster beliefs or evoke mass collective participation. In a similar spectrum, Feldman & Conover (1983), Kinder &Sears 1985 andKrosnick (1990) investigated the effect of favourable policies on citizens in stimulating votes; according to their summary, government targets the population with policies that it deems relevant to them, and subsequently, citizens acquire a sense that these policies attribute great importance to their cause, thus proceed to vote to the candidate with the most suitable policy. ...
During the past years, environmental protection and adopting countermeasures against climate change have been on the agenda of many East African countries, as well as western nations, although a common challenge confronted by policymakers is directing young people’s interest toward the environment. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of certain factors that can be adopted by government bodies as a strategy to make youth more engaged in environmental activities. An electronic questionnaire was completed by Djiboutian young people from February 2022 to late June 2022. We retrieved 440 out of 500 questionnaires; a structural equation model was subsequently employed to assess the effects of government rewards, interactions, capacity building and favourable policies on youth engagement. According to the results, all the factors demonstrated a positive impact on youth engagement; consequently, we conclude that young people have tendencies to engage in activities that revolve around environmental issues when there is a reward system in place. Likewise, establishing an interactive platform that accommodates young people’s opinions while the government provides reasonable feedback will stimulate engagement. Reasonably, embracing policies in favour of the environment will depict the government as an effective, responsible leader, retroactively influencing young people’s perceptions. On the other hand, allowing youths to participate in the process of policies formulation will guarantee a long-term societal engagement, since, pragmatically speaking, these adopted policies will eventually influence their future; at the same time, we conclude that providing proper training and building young people’s capacity will provide them with fundamental personal skills, while simultaneously enhancing their sustainable attitude to respond adequately to environmental challenges consequently assisting the national government with their environmental endeavours. Finally, the following paper contributes to the relevant existing body of literature, by providing empirical evidence on different types of government initiatives that could make young people more engaged and inclined in environmental issues.
... Even though partisanship has been identified in the literature as the main source of politically driven biases (Iyengar et al., 2019), some scholars suggest that affective polarization originates in ideological disagreements over issues (Bougher, 2017;Lelkes, 2021;Orr and Huber, 2020;Rogowski and Sutherland, 2016;Webster and Abramowitz, 2017). People evaluate others based on their attitudes towards salient issues and they are more attracted to and associate more with those who agree with them on such issues (Krosnick, 1990). Issues which are perceived as salient have strong polarizing effects even when the actual distance between groups' opinions is relatively small (Hetherington and Weiler, 2009). ...
We demonstrate effects of political preferences on interpersonal interactions in the environment of the highly unstable and volatile party system of the Czech Republic. The effects of partisanship on interpersonal relations are compared to the effects of attitudes on a salient issue. Two experiments confirm the potential of political partisanship to affect the in-dividual's ingroup preferences and outgroup biases, which can influence willingness to converse with others in the context of an unstable party system. In a conjoint experiment, dis/agreement on immigration has comparable effects on interpersonal interactions. Avoidance of interactions with out-partisans is amplified when out-partisans talk about politics often. The patterns of ingroup preferences and outgroup biases are replicated in a trust game experiment. Both partisanship and immigration attitudes influence how subjects interact with others. Given the political context, the study provides a hard test of politically motivated ingroup and outgroup biases stemming both from party and policy preferences.
... Issue publics are groups of individuals who associate themselves with a particular issue, often out of personal interest in that issue (Krosnick, 1990). Selectivity is associated with issue public membership, issue knowledge, and importance (Kim, 2009). ...
In the age of the high-choice media environment, there is less and less consensus over America's most important problem. Over the last two decades, several studies have demonstrated that agenda diversity—the degree of disagreement over the most important issue—has grown drastically in the U.S. Despite the importance of public consensus in the policy process and for representation, we lack a causal understanding of the mechanisms underpinning changes in agenda diversity. This paper hypothesizes that selective exposure causes greater agenda diversity, as individuals avoid news on issues they are less interested in. This study leverages an experiment (N = 433) to investigate the effect of varying levels of selectivity in the media environment on individual-level agenda diversity. Results support the notion that a media environment that allows for selective exposure compared to forced exposure more typical of the broadcast-era results in higher agenda diversity. These findings support the theory that rising levels of media selectivity contribute to a rise in agenda diversity. The implications of an increasingly diverse national agenda are discussed.
... A sizable proportion of American voters also hold incongruent symbolic and operational ideological preferences (Ellis and Stimson 2012). The diversity of issue publics in the American electorate provides yet another source of tension in the multidimensional lattice of voters' policy attitudes (Klar 2014;Krosnick 1990). ...
Theory has long suggested that swing voting is a response to cross-pressures arising from a mix of individual attributes and contextual factors. Unfortunately, existing regression-based approaches are ill-suited to explore the complex combinations of demographic, policy, and political factors that produce swing voters in American elections. This gap between theory and practice motivates our use of an ensemble of supervised machine learning methods to predict swing voters in the 2012, 2016, and 2020 U.S. presidential elections. The results from the learning ensemble substantiate the existence of swing voters in contemporary American elections. Specifically, we demonstrate that the learning ensemble produces well-calibrated and externally valid predictions of swing voter propensity in later elections and for related behaviors such as split-ticket voting. Although interpreting black-box models is more challenging, they can nonetheless provide meaningful substantive insights meriting further exploration. Here, we use flexible model-agnostic tools to perturb the ensemble and demonstrate that cross-pressures (particularly those involving ideological and policy-related considerations) are essential to accurately predict swing voters.
Why do firms take positions on divisive social issues? In this article, I draw on theories of stigma by association to explain why firms’ mere proximity to controversial political actors may lead stakeholders to presume that firms silent on social issues are misaligned with the stakeholders’ sociopolitical preferences. Firms, in turn, countervail these presumptions of misalignment by eschewing silence and claiming sociopolitical positions. Substantiating this theory in the context of employee recruitment following the 2017 Unite the Right White supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, I show that Charlottesville’s employers combated presumptions that they shared demonstrators’ anti-diversity positions by making countervailing pro-diversity claims in their online job postings. In supplementary analysis, I show that the rally was associated with a newfound wage premium in job postings by Charlottesville’s employers but that this premium was lower when employers made pro-diversity claims. This study advances understanding of strategic sociopolitical positioning whereby firms make calculated appeals to stakeholders. It contrasts with related research showing that firms use social claims to combat negative evaluations resulting from their own actions or to differentiate from competitors. In doing so, it suggests opportunities for further research investigating, for example, additional motivations for firms’ sociopolitical positioning, how positioning might evolve in the context of growing political polarization, and how positioning might relate to workplace inequality and diversity.
Public support and political mobilization are two crucial factors for the adoption of ambitious climate policies in line with the international greenhouse gas reduction targets of the Paris Agreement. Despite their compound importance, they are mainly studied separately. Using a random forest machine-learning model, this article investigates the relative predictive power of key established explanations for public support and mobilization for climate policies. Predictive models may shape future research priorities and contribute to theoretical advancement by showing which predictors are the most and least important. The analysis is based on a pre-election conjoint survey experiment on the Swiss CO 2 Act in 2021. Results indicate that beliefs (such as the perceived effectiveness of policies) and policy design preferences (such as for subsidies or tax-related policies) are the most important predictors while other established explanations, such as socio-demographics, issue salience (the relative importance of issues) or political variables (such as the party affiliation) have relatively weak predictive power. Thus, beliefs are an essential factor to consider in addition to explanations that emphasize issue salience and preferences driven by voters’ cost-benefit considerations.
Το συγκεκριμένο εγχείρημα εδράζεται στο γεγονός ότι ο ψηφοφόρος καταναλώνει την επικοινωνία, άρα και το ιδεολογικό προϊόν που παράγεται από το πολιτικό σύστημα. Επομένως, το ευρύτερο ερευνητικό διακύβευμα βασίζεται εν μέρει στο γεγονός ότι η εκλογική συμπεριφορά είναι πρακτική καταναλωτικής συμπεριφοράς και κατά συνέπεια ο ψηφοφόρος είναι ο εν δυνάμει καταναλωτής της «πολιτικής αγοράς». Κατ’ αυτόν τον τρόπο, ο απώτερος ερευνητικός στόχος του παρόντος βιβλίου είναι να αντιμετωπίσει την παραγωγή και κατανάλωση της εκλογικής επικοινωνίας και συνεπώς να προσπαθήσει να αποσαφηνίσει τη συσχέτιση μεταξύ των ιδεολογικών θέσεων που διαμορφώνουν τα κόμματα και των ιδεολογικών επιθυμιών που αντιλαμβάνονται και καταναλώνουν οι ψηφοφόροι. Επιπλέον, ο κύριος στόχος της σχετικής έρευνας ήταν να προσδιορίσει την κυκλική συσχέτιση μεταξύ της πολιτικής επικοινωνίας, της πολιτικής συμπεριφοράς και της εμπλοκής στις εκλογικές διαδικασίες, εστιάζοντας στον αντίκτυπο που έχει η αντίληψη στους θεσμούς, σε κάθε στάδιο της κυκλικής αυτής διαδικασίας.
Through analysis of the dynamics of decision-making on migration in Sicily, this paper shows how party elites define strategies to politicise (or not) the migration issue. Conventional explanations of the politicization of immigration have largely neglected decision-making processes and explicitly ignored the reasoning of political actors, assuming that cognitive factors and strategic considerations are less relevant in the migration policy domain than in others. They conversely assume that party elites politicise migration in reaction to pressures caused by increasing flows or issue salience, anti-migrant public attitudes and/or far right propaganda. In contrast, this paper shows how actors’ understandings of migration flows and of public reactions are formed, and how they shape or influence the dynamics of politicisation. By doing so, the paper develops three key arguments. First, it is not self-evident that increases in migration flows, issue salience and/or social mobilisations lead to political contestation of migration or initiate reactive responses by political elites. Second, party elites’ decisions to politicise migration or not are shaped by their understandings of the effects of migration on underlying social systems rather than by objective evidence about public attitudes or social mobilisations. Third, these understandings are embedded in narratives, influenced by inherited traditions, and reinforced by the outputs of the very decision-making dynamics that they contribute to shape. To develop these arguments, the paper adopts an actor-centred constructivist approach and investigates decision-making dynamics by applying insights from framing theories and sensemaking approaches.
What happens when a crisis such as COVID-19 fully occupies the political and media agenda? Do previous political concerns, such as those on migration, remain salient? Here, I propose and validate a model of issue survival during times of crisis. I argue that issues remain salient when individuals are able to cognitively link “displaced” issues with the ongoing crisis. Such connections between displaced issues and the crisis can be influenced by the media, who, through a process of networked agenda setting, help establish connections between issues. I test this model on the salience of migration during the COVID-19 pandemic in Switzerland and Germany. Leveraging panel surveys administered before and during lockdowns, I show that the issue of migration was displaced during the crisis. Nevertheless, as proposed by the model, this decline in issue salience did not occur for individuals connecting migration to the pandemic. Combining panels with individual-level media consumption data obtained through webtracking, I provide evidence that issue survival was significantly related to the consumption of news stories linking migration to the COVID-19 crisis. The study raises questions about the flow of public opinion during moments of mass uncertainty and highlights the key role media consumption can play in understanding previous issues in new a light.
An often-forgotten passage of Philip Converse's classic essay on mass belief systems introduced the concept of an issue public – a segment of voters that has crystallized attitudes about a particular topic. Some people deeply care about particular topics, and they might be equipped to reach judgments on these topics. This simple idea could provide an important corrective to work that casts citizens' political competence in a negative light. But, previous attempts to evaluate the issue publics hypothesis have been unsatisfying. This Element proposes and tests a new measurement approach for identifying issue publics. The evidence gathered leads to the conclusion that issue publics exist, but are smaller and more particularistic than existing scholarship presumes them to be. As such, researchers underappreciate the significance of issue opinions in electoral politics.
Organizational ecology has attracted growing interest in global governance research in recent years. As a structural theory, however, organizational ecology has overlooked how organizations may shape the organizational environment by their own choices. Bridging the insights of organizational ecology and the study of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), I argue that the organizational choice of specialism (as opposed to generalism) increases the power of NGOs to influence an environmental condition—issue salience—by targeting a small but engaged segment of the public. Focusing on wildlife conservation governance, I collected new comprehensive data on NGOs and issue characteristics (2008–2015). My empirical analysis shows that specialist NGO density is strongly associated with issue salience. I further examined causal processes in the case of pangolin conservation advocacy, in which specialist NGOs first raised issue salience and generalist NGOs followed. The findings suggest a division of labor among NGOs and challenge a conventional view that the power of NGOs is concentrated in a small number of prominent organizations.
Politics around the world has become more divisive. We ask if the influence of far‐right parties extends to personal concerns and argue that a theory combining issue ownership with partisan discourse can explain personal policy salience. Using aggregate Eurobarometer data, we create compositional models to estimate the effect of partisan discourse on pocketbook policy concerns. We focus on whether these elite messages influence concerns differently depending on the presence of a far‐right party. We find that more partisan discussion about law‐and‐order issues influences relative personal concerns on security and immigration issues across ideological groups when a far‐right party is present. Our findings suggest that an “issue‐owning” party can alter how people interpret politics and view their own concerns. Far‐right parties influence the perceptions of people across ideologies. Research showed that these parties can influence parties and voters; we show that they can shape personal perceptions.
Party elite cues are among the most well-established influences on citizens’ political opinions. Yet, there is substantial variation in effect sizes across studies, constraining the generalizability and theoretical development of party elite cues research. Understanding the causes of variation in party elite cue effects is thus a priority for advancing the field. In this paper, I estimate the variation in party elite cue effects that is caused simply by heterogeneity in the policy issues being examined, through a reanalysis of data from existing research combined with an original survey experiment comprising 34 contemporary American policy issues. My estimate of the between-issue variation in effects is substantively large, plausibly equal to somewhere between one-third and two-thirds the size of the between-study variation observed in the existing literature. This result has important implications for our understanding of party elite influence on public opinion and for the methodological practices of party elite cues research.
Political participation and party attachment in Western democracies have become more and more volatile. In turn, political campaigns seem increasingly dependent on short-term discursive windows of opportunity opened by dynamic debates on issues such as migration, climate, employment and economic policies. Based on panel data from nine European countries, we investigate how patterns and changes in the materialist and postmaterialist concerns of respondents affect electoral turnout and party switching. By relating these variables, we aim to uncover whether and to what extent underlying concerns – and thus short-term politicization – account for short-term patterns of electoral volatility. We pay special attention to young respondents, who are often framed as being particularly dynamic and less bound to traditional political loyalties. Our findings offer insights into short-term change in discursive opportunities for political mobilization and broader democratic engagement.
In periods of political unrest, media habits change significantly, allowing for new patterns of selectivity. This study's main contribution lies in its application of selective exposure theory and its comparison of people's media uses in five Global South polities that witnessed widespread protests in 2019: Chile, Hong Kong, Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon. It examines the relationship between people's trust in the media and selective exposure at a global comparative level and within the contexts of political upheavals and hyperconnected media systems. The study also assesses the relationship between issue publics and participation in protests. Using cross-sectional surveys in each of the five countries/regions, it compares participants’ support for the protests and their exposure to legacy and social media. The findings reveal that media trust and issue publics play a significant role in determining the level of preference for pro-attitudinal news content. Trusting pro-attitudinal TV channels relates to following pro-attitudinal TV channels, and trusting counter-attitudinal TV channels relates to following counter-attitudinal TV channels. In addition, the strong issue publics group was more likely than the weak and moderate issue publics groups to participate in street protests.
The Cambridge Handbook of Political Psychology provides a comprehensive review of the psychology of political behaviour from an international perspective. Its coverage spans from foundational approaches to political psychology, including the evolutionary, personality and developmental roots of political attitudes, to contemporary challenges to governance, including populism, hate speech, conspiracy beliefs, inequality, climate change and cyberterrorism. Each chapter features cutting-edge research from internationally renowned scholars who offer their unique insights into how people think, feel and act in different political contexts. By taking a distinctively international approach, this handbook highlights the nuances of political behaviour across cultures and geographical regions, as well as the truisms of political psychology that transcend context. Academics, graduate students and practitioners alike, as well as those generally interested in politics and human behaviour, will benefit from this definitive overview of how people shape – and are shaped by – their political environment in a rapidly changing twenty-first century.
What is public opinion, what factors cause it to form in particular ways, and why does it matter? In this chapter, we define public opinion as opinions on matters of public debate that have significant implications for society. Then, we provide an overview of key developments in three central topics in research on public opinion. First, we discuss research on opinionation, or when and why a person forms an opinion on a political topic. Second, we discuss directionality of opinion, or factors that shape whether a person forms a particular kind of opinion (e.g., favourable or unfavourable) on an issue. Finally, we discuss the consequences of public opinion, or how opinions shape action, with a focus how public opinion influences voting, civic activism, and government attention and action. We end by considering emerging research trends in the field of public opinion that can inspire future research on the topic.
Djupe and Gilbert investigate the political influence of church and how membership in organized religious bodies shapes the political life of members. Djupe and Gilbert's goal in this inquiry is to re-center scholarly attention on the voluntary association as an essential element of American civic and political life. They develop a theoretical framework that captures the multifaceted elements of church life that affect individual political attitudes and actions. Political information from clergy, small groups, and social networks flows plentifully in churches, but individuals process that information differently depending on their motivations related to their status in the church. Articulating a more fully specified model of how associations expose individuals to political information and norms will help us understand the political opinions and behavior of citizens and the contribution of that pattern to sustaining democracy.
Research Summary
Whilst existing research generally assumes corporate social responsibility (CSR) is seen as universally positive, firms increasingly adopt practices, and take stands, on highly polarizing social issues (e.g., gun-control, LGBTQ rights, abortion). To better understand this phenomenon, we develop a theory about when firms will emulate, ignore, or oppose each other's CSR efforts, based on attributes of the underlying social issue (its salience and polarization), the level of market competition, and the substantiveness of CSR. Our theory predicts several distinct equilibrium outcomes, including the potential for social counter-positioning, whereby rival firms take advantage of socio-political polarization to horizontally differentiate by taking opposing stances on a polarizing issue. Counterpositioning is more likely when salience is high, but agreement is low, when markets are competitive, and when CSR is largely symbolic.
Managerial Summary
Firms increasingly find themselves drawn, willingly or not, to taking stances on a controversial social issue (e.g., gun rights, abortion), though doing so risks alienating (some) stakeholders. In this paper, we develop a theory of why, when, and how firms should take a stance on a polarizing issue. We argue that firms profit from doing so when (1) the issue is salient, (2) markets are competitive, and (3) the actions are mostly symbolic. We also show that taking a stance on polarizing issues creates opportunities for the firms' competitors to counter their ideological positioning, strengthening weaker rivals in the process. Thus, in competitive markets, taking clear stances on polarizing, salient issues can segment the market, increasing the profits of all firms, and, potentially, intensifying polarization.
Natural disasters are worsening, but elected officials have not adequately invested in programs that would improve disaster preparedness. Federal spending and election outcomes have been taken to suggest policymakers' failure to support long‐term preparedness results from a lack of interest in disaster preparedness among voters and a pervasive preference among voters for more spending on disaster relief than preparedness. However, our national survey experiment on state legislators and public preferences shows that the public is equally interested in disaster preparedness and relief and that both the public and legislators are open to increases in spending on preparedness. The support for preparedness can be motivated by information about past disaster losses rather than having to make difficult predictions about future losses. This study suggests the lack of preparedness spending stems not from voter disinterest, but from a failure of legislators to harness voter support for preparedness. Specifically, the legislators included in our study report being less responsive to attentive voters' preferences on preparedness than relief. 自然灾害正在恶化，但获选官员还未充分投入于一系列改善灾害预备的计划。联邦开支和选举结果表明，政策制定者未能支持长期备灾的原因是因为选民对备灾缺乏兴趣，以及选民普遍倾向于在救灾方面的支出多于备灾。不过，我们对州立法者和公众偏好进行的全国调查实验表明，公众对备灾和救灾同样感兴趣，并且公众和立法者都对增加备灾支出一事持开放态度。激发备灾支持一事能通过关于过去灾害损失的信息来完成，而不是必须对未来灾害损失作出艰难的预测。本研究表明，备灾支出不足并非源于选民的不感兴趣，而是立法者未能充分利用选民对备灾的支持。具体而言，本研究中的立法者报告，其对选民备灾偏好的响应度低于选民救灾偏好。 Los desastres naturales están empeorando, pero los funcionarios electos no han invertido adecuadamente en programas que mejorarían la preparación para desastres. Se ha considerado que el gasto federal y los resultados de las elecciones sugieren que el hecho de que los legisladores no respalden la preparación a largo plazo se debe a la falta de interés en la preparación para desastres entre los votantes y una preferencia generalizada entre los votantes por gastar más en ayuda para desastres que en preparación. Sin embargo, nuestro experimento de encuesta nacional sobre las preferencias del público y los legisladores estatales muestra que el público está igualmente interesado en la preparación y el socorro en casos de desastre y que tanto el público como los legisladores están abiertos a aumentar el gasto en preparación. El apoyo para la preparación se puede motivar con información sobre pérdidas por desastres pasadas en lugar de tener que hacer predicciones difíciles sobre pérdidas futuras. Este estudio sugiere que la falta de gasto en preparación no se debe al desinterés de los votantes, sino a que los legisladores no lograron aprovechar el apoyo de los votantes para la preparación. Específicamente, los legisladores incluidos en nuestro estudio informan que responden menos a las preferencias de preparación de los votantes atentos que al alivio.
Als der Zuzug von Geflüchteten nach Deutschland Ende 2015 gerade seinen Höhepunkt erreichte, schnellten die Umfragewerte der AfD in die Höhe. Der damalige stellvertretende AfD-Vorsitzende Alexander Gauland sprach in diesem Zusammenhang von der „Flüchtlingskrise“ als einem „Geschenk“ für seine Partei. So provokant seine Aussage auch erscheinen mag: Nur wenige Sozialwissenschaftler bezweifeln, dass sich Migration positiv auf das Wahlergebnis der AfD ausgewirkt hat. Doch worauf kommt es bei diesem Zusammenhang an? Führt ein größerer Anteil an MigrantInnen zwangsläufig zu einem höheren Stimmanteilen der AfD? Oder erklären sich die Wahlerfolge der AfD eher aus der gestiegenen Salienz des Themas Migration? Diesen Annahmen wird in diesem Beitrag nachgegangen. Dabei werden zwei unterschiedliche Wege beschritten: Zum einen wird der Frage nachgegangen, ob die AfD eher vom statischen Ausländeranteil oder von einem Anstieg in diesen Anteilen profitiert. Dies würde einen direkten Zusammenhang zwischen Migration und den Wahlergebnissen der AfD nahelegen. Zum anderen wird
geprüft, ob die Salienz des Themas Migration eine zentrale Voraussetzung für die Mobilisierung rechtspopulistischer Wählerschaft und damit einen wichtigen Erfolgsfaktor für die AfD darstellt. Die Ergebnisse legen nahe, dass das Zusammenspiel aus schnell gewachsenem Ausländeranteil und damit einhergehender
gestiegener Salienz des Themas Migration zu einem Erstarken der
AfD führten.
The public agenda is an ecosystem in which public issues interact and compete to gain public attention. Whether this ecosystem is primarily competitive or cooperative is an unsettled question in the literature on agenda-setting. This study employs an ecological approach to explicate interissue relationships. It quantifies the nature and evolution of the issue ecosystem and examines the roles of the value orientations of issues and of individuals' education levels and political partisanship in interissue relationships. The study compiled and analyzed the Gallup Most Important Problem polls in the United States from 1958 to 2020. The findings indicate that the issue ecosystem of the American public is essentially competitive and that the balance of competition and cooperation has remained unchanged over time. The interaction between public issues involving materialistic values was more likely to be competitive and the interaction between issues involving postmaterialistic values was more likely to be cooperative.
Democratic elections do not always deliver what majorities want. Many conclude from frustrated majorities a failure of democracy. This book argues the opposite may be true – that politicians who represent their constituents sometimes frustrate majorities. A theory of issue intensity explains how the intensity with which different voters care about political issues drives key features of elections, political participation, representation, and public policy. Because candidates for office are more certain of winning the votes of those who care intensely, they sometimes side with an intense minority over a less intense majority. Voters who care intensely communicate their intensity by taking political action: volunteering, contributing, and speaking out. From questions like whose voices should matter in a democracy to whose voices actually matter, this rigorous book blends ideas from democratic theory and formal political economy with new empirical evidence to tackle a topic of central importance to American politics.
People tend to overestimate the extent of existing support for their attitudes. This study sought to determine whether this assumption of consensus would be influenced by the hedonic relevance of the attitude in question. Accordingly, 144 undergraduates equally divided with respect to class status (freshmen and sophomores versus juniors and seniors) were told that their university administrators were studying a tuition surcharge plan that would affect either underclassmen, upperclassmen, or all students. Respondents were asked to evaluate the plan and to estimate the proportion of other students who shared their attitude. Subjects who thought they would be affected by the plan estimated that considerably more students (of all classes) would share their attitude than did respondents who would not be affected. This vested interest-assumed consensus relationship was independent of attitudinal extremity. Implications of these results for the further study of attitude-behavior consistency and judgmental bias were discussed.
Both implicit democratic norms and the reconstructions provided by theorists of rational choice suggest that issue voters are more sophisticated--educated, informed, and active in politics--than other voters. But some issues are clearly more difficult than others, and the voters who respond to @'hard@' and @`easy@' issues, respectively, are assumed to differ in kind. We propose the hypothesis that @'`easy-issue@' voters are no more sophisticated than non-issue voters, and this is found to be the case. The findings suggest a reevaluation of the import of rising and falling levels of issue voting and suggest a prominent role for @`easy@' issues in electoral realignments.
Professor Pennock launches an encyclopedic study that evaluates and ultimately synthesizes a variety of democratic theories. After defining democracy and examining the basic tensions both within and between liberty and equality, and individualism and collectivism, the author sets forth two typologies of operational democratic theories, one related to power, the other related to motivation. In succeeding chapters, he analyzes a series of problems with which any operating democracy must contend, and then measures-on the basis of empirical work done in this area-the adequacy of the various theories in dealing with these problems.
In previous research, the 2nd author and colleagues (see record 1980-30335-001) observed that individuals working together put out less effort than when they work alone; this phenomenon was termed social loafing (SL). Subsequent research by these authors (see record 1981-32831-001) suggested that SL arises, at least in part, because when participants work with others on tasks their individual outputs are lost in the crowd, and, thus, they can receive neither credit nor blame for their performance. The possibility that personal involvement in a task could moderate the SL effect was tested in the present experiment, which used a 2 (high/low involvement) × 2 (high/low identifiability) factorial design across 3 replications with 224 undergraduates. The task involved thoughts generated in response to a counterattitudinal proposal. Replicating previous SL research, present results show that under conditions of low involvement, Ss whose outputs were identifiable worked harder than those whose outputs were pooled. However, when the task was personally involving, the SL effect was eliminated: Ss whose outputs were pooled worked as hard as those whose individual outputs could be identified. (23 ref)
In The Responsible Electorate , V. O. Key urged upon us “the perverse and unorthodox argument … that voters are not fools.” He challenged the notion that the voting act is the deterministic resultant of psychological and sociological vectors. He believed that the evidence supported the view of the voter as a reasonably rational fellow. The present article offers a corollary to Key's “unorthodox argument.” It suggests that certain sociological determinants, secifically group norms regarding party identification, may, upon examination, prove to be rational guides to action. For the voter who is a reasonably rational fellow, it will be argued, these group norms may seem rather sensible.
Before proceeding to the analysis of data, some discussion of the notion of rationality seems in order. The usage subscribed to in the present analysis derives from contemporary game theory. Put most simply, being rational in a decision situation consists in examining the alternatives with which one is confronted, estimating and evaluating the likely consequences of each, and selecting that alternative which yields the most attractive set of expectations. Formally, this process entails making calculations of the following type as a basis for the decision:
where:
E ( Va i ) = expected value of alternative i .
P (o j ∣ a i ) = probability of outcome j given that V (o i ) = value of outcome j to the decision maker.
Evidence is reviewed which suggests that there may be little or no direct introspective access to higher order cognitive processes. Subjects are sometimes (a) unaware of the existence of a stimulus that importantly influenced a response, (b) unaware of the existence of the response, and (c) unaware that the stimulus has affected the response. It is proposed that when people attempt to report on their cognitive processes, that is, on the processes mediating the effects of a stimulus on a response, they do not do so on the basis of any true introspection. Instead, their reports are based on a priori, implicit causal theories, or judgments about the extent to which a particular stimulus is a plausible cause of a given response. This suggests that though people may not be able to observe directly their cognitive processes, they will sometimes be able to report accurately about them. Accurate reports will occur when influential stimuli are salient and are plausible causes of the responses they produce, and will not occur when stimuli are not salient or are not plausible causes.
Examined the effects of differential outcome contingencies on the operation of anticipatory position shifts in 2 studies with 81 female high school seniors and 125 undergraduates. Ss were found to shift their positions on an issue while they were expecting to engage an opponent in a discussion of that issue. As predicted, it was possible to influence the size and direction of such anticipatory shifts by manipulating the personal relevance of the discussion topic and the timing of the discussion onset. Shifts could also be nullified by canceling the expectation of discussion. Results are taken to support a general formulation of anticipatory shifts as strategic responses to immediate situational pressures rather than genuine changes in attitude. It was also found that the durability of anticipatory change was associated with the tendency to engage in cognitive activity supportive of the change. The possibility is discussed that most attitude-change studies have not involved attitude shifts but rather the elastic shifts obtained in the present experiments. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
Analysis of national election surveys from 1956 to 1968 reveals significant changes in the voters' perceptions of issues and the major parties. There has been a considerable increase in the correlation of party identification and opinion on six major issues, relating to social welfare, racial integration, and foreign aid. Voters are more prone to see a difference between the parties on these issues and are increasingly likely to identify the Democratic party as favorable to federal governmental action. These findings contrast with those of The American Voter and similar studies. The reasons for the changes cannot be found in demographic factors, as tested by controls for age cohorts, education, region, and race. More probably the explanation lies in strictly political factors. A particularly important event was the presidential campaign of 1964, in which ideological differences between the parties were deliberately emphasized. The electorate responded to this campaign by becoming more ideologically aware, and its learning appears to have persisted through the 1968 election. This finding suggests that past conclusions about the low ideological awareness of the electorate were specific to the Eisenhower era, and that the issue content of the vote will vary with the stimuli provided by the general political environment.
In The Responsible Electorate , V. O. Key urged upon us “the perverse and unorthodox argument … that voters are not fools.” He challenged the notion that the voting act is the deterministic resultant of psychological and sociological vectors. He believed that the evidence supported the view of the voter as a reasonably rational fellow. The present article offers a corollary to Key's “unorthodox argument.” It suggests that certain sociological determinants, secifically group norms regarding party identification, may, upon examination, prove to be rational guides to action. For the voter who is a reasonably rational fellow, it will be argued, these group norms may seem rather sensible.
Before proceeding to the analysis of data, some discussion of the notion of rationality seems in order. The usage subscribed to in the present analysis derives from contemporary game theory. Put most simply, being rational in a decision situation consists in examining the alternatives with which one is confronted, estimating and evaluating the likely consequences of each, and selecting that alternative which yields the most attractive set of expectations. Formally, this process entails making calculations of the following type as a basis for the decision:
where:
E ( Va i ) = expected value of alternative i .
P (o j ∣ a i ) = probability of outcome j given that V (o i ) = value of outcome j to the decision maker.
In this paper problems of social choice in general, and political choice in particular, are considered in light of uncertainty. The space of social alternatives in this formulation includes not only pure social states, but lotteries or probability distributions over those states as well. In the context of candidate strategy selection in a spatial model of political choice, candidate strategy sets are represented by pure strategies—points in the space of alternatives—and ambiguous strategies—lotteries over those points. Questions about optimal strategy choice and the equilibrium properties of these choices are then entertained. Duncan Black's theorem about the dominance of the median preference is generalized, and further contingencies in which the theorem is false are specified. The substantive foci of these results are: (1) the conditions in which seekers of political office will rationally choose to appear equivocal in their policy intentions; and (2) the role of institutional structure in defining equilibrium.
The Center for Political Studies' 1972 presidential election survey was used to investigate the role that issue voting, ideology, candidate assessments, and partisan defections played in the Republican landslide of that year. An analysis of issue attitudes revealed a deep policy schism among the Democrats: McGovern supporters preferred liberal policy alternatives while Nixon Democrats favored distinctly conservative issue positions. Interitem correlations among various issues and a liberal-conservative scale showed the voters to have substantial attitude consistency. A normal-vote analysis of these issues demonstrated that the Vietnam war and social issue domains contributed more significantly to the explanation of the vote than did cultural or economic issues. The candidates were clearly perceived as having taken opposing issue positions, with Nixon's position the more preferred by a majority of the population. A proximity measure, computed as the discrepancy between perceived candidate issue position and the voter's policy preference, proved to be a better predictor of the vote decision than the voter's own issue position taken alone. Analyses of candidate assessments showed that McGovern was not a personally appealing candidate—a factor that allowed issue differences to gain maximal importance. The sharp intraparty polarization of Democrats over policy alternatives, a change in the educational composition of the electorate, a decrease in partisan identification, and a growth in partisan defection combined to suppress the impact of party identification as a determinant of the vote decision. It was concluded that the 1972 presidential race could be labeled “ideological” by comparison with past elections.
There is little agreement about the degree to which the American electorate structures its beliefs about salient aspects of the political scene. Disagreement arises in large part from the use of differing concepts of belief structuring. Some researchers look for evidence of consistency, simplicity, and power in belief systems and do not find it in large measure. Others look for complexity and multidimensionality and do find it. Both believe they are measuring belief sophistication. Both schools expect to find greatest evidence of sophistication among the educated and well informed and least among the uneducated and uniformed. The 1972 electorate is stratified by education and political information, and operational indicators of both "constraint" and "complexity" notions of belief structure are examined.
This paper treats both substantive and methodological issues in assessing agent influence on individual political attitudes. From a substantive perspective, the effect of perceptual accuracy, issue salience, and parent-peer orientation on attitude relationships among adolescents, parents, and peers is analyzed. These variables are found to affect relationships in a similar fashion, but their marginal distributions generally lead to higher correlations between adolescents and parents than between adolescents and peers. From a methodological perspective the link between statistical techniques for measuring paired comparisons and conceptions of influence is analyzed. It is argued that parents and peers can have divergent political attitudes, yet both influence the individual in the same direction.
The fundamental process of politics is the aggregation of citizens' preferences into a collective—a social—choice. We develop, interpret, and explain non-technically in this expository essay the definitions, assumptions, and theorems of a mathematical model of one aggregative mechanism—the electoral process. This mechanism is conceptualized here as a multidimensional model of spatial competition in which competition consists of candidates affecting turnout and the electorate's perception of each candidate's positions, and in which the social choice is a policy package which the victorious candidate advocates.
This approach, inaugurated by Downs's An Economic Theory of Democracy , and falling under the general rubric “spatial models of party competition,” has been scrutinized, criticized, and reformulated. To clarify the accomplishments of this formulation we identify and discuss in section 2 the general democratic problem of ascertaining a social preference. We review critically in section 3 the definitions and assumptions of our model. We consider in sections 4 and 5 the logic of a competitive electoral equilibrium. We assume in section 4 that the electorate's preferences can be summarized and represented by a single function; the analysis in section 5 pertains to competition between two organizational structures or two opposed ideologies (i.e., when two functions are required to summarize and represent the electorate's preference). Finally, we suggest in section 6 a conceptualization of electoral processes which facilitates extending and empirically testing our model.
Though typically they have not been the subject of systematic analysis, political cues are often depicted as having a major influence on voters' perceptions of political candidates. In this regard, different interpretations have been offered by those adopting perceptual balance and rational choice perspectives. After reviewing the points of controversy separating these two approaches, a more comprehensive explanation of political cues is offered. In particular, the use of political cues is depicted as involving two key elements: the political cue and the political stereotype with which the cue is associated. The implications of this perspective for voter rationality are then discussed. Finally, some of the key hypotheses are tested, and found to be supported through the use of experimental data.
This paper presents a conceptual and empirical examination of the term “prejudice.” Beginning with a discussion of the cognitive, affective, and conative dimensions of an inter-ethnic attitude, it is argued that the conceptual distinctions among the three attitudinal components are sufficient to question the utility of the blanket description “prejudiced.” This is followed by an exploratory analysis of data on the affective and conative dimensions of attitude toward blacks from a national public opinion survey. Scales tapping affective feelings and two different types of action orientation toward blacks are successfully isolated. Relationships among the scales are moderate and are influenced by variables tapping regional norms and attitudinal intensity. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the term “tolerance” as it has developed in political sociology (that is, as a specific attitude structure whereby competing groups maintain a positive action orientation toward one another in spite of openly conflicting values or interests) and suggests the application of this concept to the study of inter-ethnic attitudes. Empirical analysis of the structure of inter-ethnic attitudes, including “tolerant” attitude structures, would facilitate an integration of the theoretical and policy concerns of the ethnic attitudes lttitudes literature with those of political sociology.
The ambiguity of politicians' words and actions is sometimes attributed to rational seeking of support or votes. Such an explanation must clearly specify the preferences and decision processes among constituents and the calculations by politicians which make ambiguity seem attractive.
The leading effort of this sort is Shepsle's lottery theory , in which politicians take probabilistic stands on issues in order to appeal to risk acceptant, expected-utility-maximizing voters. But the lottery theory suffers from several difficulties. Its predictions are not strong; it can at best account for only certain kinds of observed ambiguous behavior; its main condition for the prediction of ambiguity—risk acceptance among constituents—may not be met; and the expected utility model of risky decision making is not well supported by available evidence.
An emphasis allocation theory is suggested as an alternative. According to it, ambiguity involves an effort to reduce the salience of conflictual matters (such as specific policy alternatives) in the evaluation of politicians, so that attention will be paid to consensual appeals (peace, prosperity, honesty in government).
Across a range of settings, attitudes that people consider personally important have been shown to be more powerful determinants of perceptions of others' attitudes, of liking of others, and of social behavior than unimportant attitudes are. This article reports two studies that evaluate one possible explanation for this difference: the hypothesis that important attitudes may be more accessible in memory and may therefore come to mind more frequently in the course of social perception. In both studies, subjects reported the importance they attached to a series of political attitudes and reported those attitudes on a computer that measured response latencies. Important attitudes were reported more quickly than unimportant ones, even when subjects were instructed to report the first attitudinal cue that came to mind. This finding supports the accessibility hypothesis.
The use of spatial ideas to interpret party competition is a universal phenomenon of modern politics. Such ideas are the common coin of political journalists and have extraordinary influence in the thought of political activists. Especially widespread is the conception of a liberal-conservative dimension on which parties maneuver for the support of a public that is itself distributed from left to right. This conception goes back at least to French revolutionary times and has recently gained new interest for an academic audience through its ingenious formalization by Downs and others. However, most spatial interpretations of party competition have a very poor fit with the evidence about how large-scale electorates and political leaders actually respond to politics. Indeed, the findings on this point are clear enough so that spatial ideas about party competition ought to be modified by empirical observation. I will review here evidence that the “space” in which American parties contend for electoral support is very unlike a single ideological dimension, and I will offer some suggestions toward revision of the prevailing spatial model.