The Rationalizing Voter (Cambridge Studies in Public Opinion

The Rationalizing Voter (Cambridge Studies in Public Opinion and Political Psychology)

Political behavior is the result of innumerable unnoticed forces and conscious deliberation is often a rationalization of automatically triggered feelings and thoughts. Citizens are very sensitive to environmental contextual factors such as the title "President" preceding "Obama" in a newspaper headline, upbeat music or patriotic symbols accompanying a campaign ad, or question wording and order in a survey, all of which have their greatest influence when citizens are unaware. This book develops and tests a dual-process theory of political beliefs, attitudes, and behavior, claiming that all thinking, feeling, reasoning, and doing have an automatic component as well as a conscious deliberative component. The authors are especially interested in the impact of automatic feelings on political judgments and evaluations. This research is based on laboratory experiments, which allow the testing of five basic hypotheses: hot cognition, automaticity, affect transfer, affect contagion, and motivated reasoning.
Country USA
Brand Cambridge University Press
Manufacturer Cambridge University Press
Binding Paperback
ItemPartNumber 51 b/w illus. 13 tables
ReleaseDate 2013-04-22
UnitCount 1
Format Illustrated
EANs 9780521176149

The Rationalizing Voter (Cambridge Studies in Public Opinion and Political Psychology)