Kathleen M. McGraw

Downward comparison, prejudice, and evaluations of others: effects of self-esteem and threat

In two studies, we explored the effects of trait self-esteem and threats to the self-concept on evaluations of others. In Study 1, subjects high, moderate, and low in self-esteem received either success, failure, or no feedback on a test and later evaluated three pairs of targets: in-groups and out-groups based on a minimal intergroup manipulation, those who scored above average and those who scored below average on the test, and themselves and the average college student. Study 2 explored the effects of self-esteem and threat on in-group favoritism in a real-world setting, campus sororities. Together, the results of these studies indicate that individuals high in self-esteem, but not those low in self-esteem, respond to threats to the self-concept by derogating out-groups relative to the in-group when the group boundaries have evaluative implications.

Guilt Following Transgression: An Attribution of Responsibility Approach

People typically experience guilt when they violate sociomoral norms. Using Heiders (1958) attribution of responsibility model in the two experiments reported here, I examined the attributional mediators of posttransgression guilt. The basic design of both studies was a Level of Responsibility X Subject Role factorial. The first study used a role-playing methodology; in the second, subjects generated protocols describing their own past experiences. The second experiment also distinguished between attributions of responsibility, causality, and blame. In both studies, harmdoer guilt was higher following accidental as opposed to intentional transgressions. The discussion focuses on the dynamics of guilt development and reduction and on the importance of maintaining conceptual distinctions among the various attribution measures in future guilt research.

ON-LINE PROCESSING IN CANDIDATE EVALUATION: The Effects of Issue Order, Issue Importance, and Sophistication

This article reports the results of a study that replicates and extends the impression-driven model of candidate evaluation reported in Lodge, McGraw, and Stroh (1989). This model holds that evaluations are formed and updated on-line as information is encountered, and that as a result, citizens need not rely on specific information available from memory to form their candidate evaluations. In the present work we explore whether the order in which information is encountered, as well as whether information that is personally important, influences the weight accorded to evidence in on-line processing. In addition, differences in information-processing strategies due to political sophistication are examined. The results indicate that important information receives more weight than unimportant information. In addition, the evidence suggests that political sophisticates are more efficient on-line processors than are less sophisticated individuals. The implications of these results for models of candidate evaluation are discussed.

Ambivalence, Uncertainty, and Processes of Candidate Evaluation

The on-line and memory-based processing models of candidate evaluation can be better understood by incorporating the concepts of ambivalence and uncertainty, both as subjective feeling states and as objective properties of information. An experiment was designed to address three questions: What are the relationships between ambivalence and uncertainty? What are the informational foundations of subjective ambivalence and uncertainty, and to what extent are they rooted in on-line (time of exposure) and memory-based (time of judgment) processes? What are the consequences of ambivalence and uncertainty for candidate evaluation? The results suggest that (1) subjective uncertainty is more strongly rooted in information about the candidate than is subjective ambivalence; (2) subjective uncertainty and (to a lesser extent) ambivalence are associated with an increased propensity to engage in memory-based processing; and (3) subjective ambivalence and uncertainty result in more negative evaluations, particularly among less sophisticated people. These results suggest ways in which the on-line and memory-based models might productively be combined.

Contributions of the Cognitive Approach to Political Psychology

The social cognition tradition has had a strong impact on political psychology scholarship in the last part of the 20th century. The purpose of this essay is to review the contributions of the cognitive approach in helping political psychologists to better understand how citizens think about the world of politics. I consider research concerned with both the mental structure or representation of information about the political world and research concerned with specifying the cognitive processes that produce political judgments and opinion, and conclude that political cognition scholarship has begun to live up to its promise. In the second part of the essay, I suggest a research agenda for the future, pointing to ten directions for extending the political cognition paradigm.

Media Priming of Presidential and Group Evaluations

Research on media priming largely has been limited to examining the impact of policy issue concerns on evaluations of presidents and other prominent politicians. The goal of this study was to explore the possibility of priming effects in evaluations of political groups, specifically feminists. We conducted an experiment to compare the conditions under which priming of presidential (Clinton) and group (feminists) evaluations was more or less likely to occur. A number of robust and theoretically meaningful priming effects occurred when the president was the target of judgment, these results clarifying and expanding our understanding of principles suggested in earlier scholarship (e.g., involving issue responsibility, issue novelty, political knowledge, and media trust). In contrast, priming of the group evaluations did not occur under any conditions. We conclude with a discussion of when and why priming of group evaluations and priming of presidential evaluations are likely to diverge.

Manipulating Public Opinion with Moral Justification

Justifications that invoke moral claims are highly effective in shaping public opinion. But moral justifications (“I am obeying the dictates of my conscience”; “This policy is in the communitys best interests”) are difficult to verify as to their truthfulness, raising the possibility that they can be used deceptively. In this article, the psychological and political literatures are reviewed to illustrate why it is so difficult to detect deceptive moral justifications. The difficulty arises because (1) people are not very good at detecting deception in general; (2) the mediated nature of political communication eliminates the nonverbal cues that are most predictive of deception; (3) social judgment biases lead people to focus on the individual and inhibit suspicion; (4) the norms of political culture constrain politicians from accusing each other of lying, so that the public is not prompted by other sources to regard moral claims with suspicion.

Memory for political actors: Contrasting the use of semantic and evaluative organizational strategies

This paper explores the organizational strategies used to represent information about political actors in memory, and it illustrates the usefulness of a specific measure, the adjusted ratio of clustering score (ARC), for inferring memory structure. Assuming the operation of an associative network model, we argue that information about a political actor can be organized along three distinct dimensions: attribute type (differentiating between issue positions and personal attributes), partisanship (differentiating between characteristics typical of Republicans and Democrats), and evaluative type (differentiating between positively and negatively evaluated attributes). The results of a laboratory study indicate that organization along the attribute type dimension was most common, with some evidence of partisan organization. There was no evidence of organization along the evaluative dimension. The implications of the study for understanding individual differences in political reasoning, and the consequences of memory organization strategies, are discussed.

Psychology Journals for Political Scientists

Political psychologists have made the claim that political science is inherently a “borrowing discipline,” with psychology and economics being the primary disciplines of choice when it comes to such borrowing.’ Mainstream political scientists may take umbrage at that characterization of their discipline, but it is nonetheless the case that political science has a long history of profiting from incorporating psychological concepts and theoretical frameworks, particularly in the fields of public opinion and electoral behaviour, political socialization, and international politics. Although the links between political science and psychology are numerous, and the interdisciplinary field of political psychology apparently in a period of ascendancy and growing legitimization.’ it is still probably the case that the number of scholars in political science who are actually regular readers of the psychology literature is quite small. There are a number of good reasons for this, not the least being that the ‘psychology literature’ is a multi-faceted, enormously complex and daunting body of knowledge. One of the goals of this essay is to try to bring an order to this complexity, in order to demonstrate that psychology journals have much to offer political scientists. My comments are directed toward two audiences. The first are those scholars who self-consciously identify themselves as political psychologists, in terms of their research interests and professional memberships, such as in the International Society of Political Psychology and the newly formed Political Psychology section of the American Political Science Association. These scholars are probably well aware of the primary publication outlets for political psychology research, but perhaps less certain about which psychology journals will best serve their interests. The second, larger, and ultimately more important audience, consists of researchers in the ‘mainstream’ of political science who are curious as to what both political psychology and psychology proper have to offer. The emphasis will of necessity be on English language publications. This decision is a natural outgrowth of my background, but also is a reflection of the simple fact that the English language psychology journals are the most influential