Milton Lodge

An Impression-Driven Model of Candidate Evaluation

We describe and test two process models of candidate evaluation. The memory-based model holds that evaluations are dependent on the mix of pro and con information retrieved from memory. The impression-driven model holds that evaluations are formed and updated “on-line” as information is encountered. The results provide evidence for the existence of stereotyping and projection biases that render the mix of evidence available in memory a nonveridical representation of the information to which subjects were exposed. People do not rely on the specific candidate information available in memory. Rather, consistent with the logic of the impression-driven processing model, an “on-line” judgment formed when the information was encountered best predicts candidate evaluation. The results raise both methodological and substantive challenges to how political scientists measure and model the candidate evaluation process.

The Responsive Voter: Campaign Information and the Dynamics of Candidate Evaluation

We find strong support for an on-line model of the candidate evaluation process that in contrast to memory-based models shows that citizens are responsive to campaign information, adjusting their overall evaluation of the candidates in response to their immediate assessment of campaign messages and events. Over time people forget most of the campaign information they are exposed to but are nonetheless able to later recollect their summary affective evaluation of candidates which they then use to inform their preferences and vote choice. These findings have substantive, methodological, and normative implications for the study of electoral behavior. Substantively, we show how campaign information affects voting behavior. Methodologically, we demonstrate the need to measure directly what campaign information people actually attend to over the course of a campaign and show that after controling for the individuals on-line assessment of campaign messages, National Election Study-type recall measures prove to be spurious as explanatory variables. Finally, we draw normative implications for democratic theory of on-line processing, concluding that citizens appear to be far more responsive to campaign messages than conventional recall models suggest.

Elements of Reason: Three Steps toward a Theory of Motivated Political Reasoning

The human understanding, when it has once adopted an opinion … draws all things else to support and agree with it. Though there may be (more) instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects or despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects. –Francis Bacon, New Organon (1621) In this essay we propose a theory of motivated reasoning that can account for why both ordinary citizens and political sophisticates are prone to follow Bacons dictum. Three subtheories – hot cognition, online processing, and a “how-do-I-feel?” heuristic – working together, provide a three-step mechanism for how we believe citizens think and reason about political leaders, groups, and issues. This tripartite theory of motivated reasoning starts with the notion that all social concepts are affect laden; all social information is affectively charged (Bargh 1994, 1997; Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, and Kardes 1986; Fazio and Williams 1986; Lodge and Stroh 1993; Taber, Lodge, and Glathar 2000). This is the hot cognition hypothesis (Abelson 1963). Specific to politics, all political leaders, groups, issues, and ideas you have thought about and evaluated in the past are now affectively charged – positively or negatively, strongly or weakly – and this affective tag is stored directly with the concept in long-term memory. On-line processing (Anderson and Hubert 1963; Lodge, Steenbergen, and Brau 1995; Park and Pennington 1986) is a mechanism for updating the value of affective tags attached to concepts in memory.

A Partisan Schema for Political Information Processing

Based on their interest in politics and knowledge of political leaders, individuals are classified into three levels of partisan sophistication: (1) those scoring high in interest and knowledge (partisan schematics), (2) a middle group, and (3) those scoring low (partisan aschematics). In this experimental study, and consistent with findings from cognitive and social psychology, partisan schematics prove better able than partisan aschematics to classify campaign statements as either Republican or Democratic and to recall the policy stands taken by a fictitious congressman. Aschematics, at the other extreme, perform at no better than chance levels in either the recognition or recall of the congressmans policy statements. There are, however, liabilities to sophistication as well: Schematics demonstrate a “consistency bias” in recalling significantly more policy statements that are consistent with the congressmans party identification than are inconsistent with it. This “restructuring” of memory is especially pronounced among sophisticates, and reflects a serious bias in the processing of political information.

MOTIVATED SKEPTICISM IN THE EVALUATION OF POLITICAL BELIEFS (2006)

Abstract We propose a model of motivated skepticism that helps explain when and why citizens are biased information processors. Two experimental studies explore how citizens evaluate arguments about affirmative action and gun control, finding strong evidence of a prior attitude effect such that attitudinally congruent arguments are evaluated as stronger than attitudinally incongruent arguments. When reading pro and con arguments, participants (Ps) counterargue the contrary arguments and uncritically accept supporting arguments, evidence of a disconfirmation bias. We also find a confirmation bias—the seeking out of confirmatory evidence—when Ps are free to self-select the source of the arguments they read. Both the confirmation and disconfirmation biases lead to attitude polarization—the strengthening of t2 over t1 attitudes—especially among those with the strongest priors and highest levels of political sophistication. We conclude with a discussion of the normative implications of these findings for rational behavior in a democracy.

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.

Citizens and Politics: The Motivated Construction of Political Judgments

By one point of view, little remains to be said about voting behavior. A variety of models predict electoral behavior rather accurately, both at the individual and at the aggregate level. But from another point of view, forecasting vote outcomes is not enough. Twenty-seven years ago, Kelley and Mirer (1974: 572) observed that “Our ability to predict how voters will vote is far more solidly based than our ability to explain why they vote as they do.” This deficiency, which remains true today, stems from the black box nature of virtually all models of electoral choice, which are based on some form of information processing but are silent about the mechanisms that turn inputs into outputs. Political psychologists have taken note of the deficiencies of black box models of electoral choice, focusing instead on providing plausible explanations of voting behavior (Boynton and Lodge, 1994; Einhorn, Komorita, and Rosen, 1972; Herstein, 1981; Lodge, McGraw, and Stroh, 1989; Ottati and Wyer, 1990; Rahn, Aldrich, Borgida, and Sullivan, 1990; Taber and Steenbergen, 1995). But this work, our own included, has two key weaknesses. First, we have focused too heavily on the content and structure of beliefs and have paid too little attention to cognitive process. We treat people as passive receptors of information rather than as active, motivated reasoners who interpret information, make inferences, and often choose suboptimally. Second, we have established much too strong a dichotomy between affect and cognition.

The role of regression and range effects in determination of the power function for electric shock

A scale for the apparent intensity of electric shock applied to the forearm was derived from cross-modality matching functions relating noise level, number, and force of handgrip to both line length and shock. For each response mode, the effects of psychophysical regression were estimated from the line judgments and used to make adjustments in the corresponding shock judgments. For shocks ranging from (1.0 to 5.5 mA, combined estimates of subjective magnitude were found to grow as the 2.26 power of the stimulating current.

Comparisons between Category and Magnitude Scaling of Political Opinion Employing SRC/CPS Items

The measurement technique most commonly used by political scientists for determining the direction and intensity of opinion is category scaling–a procedure with serious weaknesses. Recent developments in psychophysics for the magnitude scaling and validation of sensory eontinua offer a powerful alternative to category scaling. Paralleling explicitly the logic and procedures used to scale psychophysically such variables as the loudness of sound and brightness of light, research methods now make it possible and feasible via a simple paper and pencil technique to obtain accurate, precise, cross-modally valid, magnitude measures of the direction and strength of political opinion from respondents in a survey setting. A field survey, pitting category against magnitude measures for a sampling of the most important items employed in the SRC/CPS national election studies, demonstrates that the category scaling of political variables results in (1) the loss of significant portions of information and on occasion (2) the misclassification of respondents. The results of this scale-confrontation study demonstrate the superior utility of magnitude over category scaling for the description and quantitative analysis of political judgments and preferences.

Why People “Don’t Trust the Evidence” Motivated Reasoning and Scientific Beliefs

In this commentary, we embed the volume’s contributions on public beliefs about science in a broader theoretical discussion of motivated political reasoning. The studies presented in the preceding section of the volume consistently find evidence for hyperskepticism toward scientific evidence among ideologues, no matter the domain or context—and this skepticism seems to be stronger among conservatives than liberals. Here, we show that these patterns can be understood as part of a general tendency among individuals to defend their prior attitudes and actively challenge attitudinally incongruent arguments, a tendency that appears to be evident among liberals and conservatives alike. We integrate the empirical results reported in this volume into a broader theoretical discussion of the John Q. Public model of information processing and motivated reasoning, which posits that both affective and cognitive reactions to events are triggered unconsciously. We find that the work in this volume is largely consistent with our theories of affect-driven motivated reasoning and biased attitude formation.