LECTURE 3: ORIGINS OF PUBLIC OPINION

Question 1

any reason that makes an individual decide to come down on one side of a political issue (a position).

Answer 1

consideration

Question 1

consideration

Answer 1

any reason that makes an individual decide to come down on one side of a political issue (a position).

Question 2

Considerations are a compound of:

Answer 2

• Cognition: a belief concerning an object
• Affect: an evaluation of a belief
  Ex: Bush’s plan to balance the budget is fair.

Question 3

Political predisposition

Answer 3

a characteristic of individuals that is predictive of political behavior.

Question 4

a characteristic of individuals that is predictive of political behavior.

Answer 4

Political predisposition

Question 5

two types of messages

Answer 5

persuasive, cueing

Question 6

Persuasive messages

Answer 6

arguments providing a reason for taking a position. If accepted by individuals, they become considerations. Do not need to be rational. Ex: a democratic politician describes Bush’s budget plan as delusional.

Question 7

Cueing messages:

Answer 7

contextual information about the ideological or partisan implications of a persuasive message. They allow individuals to link between persuasive messages and political predisposition. Ex: a democratic politician describes the budget plan as delusional

Question 8

FROM POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS TO BEHAVIOR

Answer 8

Individuals have various social backgrounds: there is strong correlation between parents and children’s sameness in terms of political affiliation. On top of family, schooling, education, job and friends are all factors that influence the creation of political predispositions, like ideology, party affiliation, ideas, long-term objectives… these dispositions shape political considerations of individuals, which are naturally more short-term and shape individuals votes.

Question 9

WHERE DOES PUBLIC OPINION COME FROM ZALLER

Answer 9

When forming an opinion people react based on their predispositions (shaped into considerations) and the relevance and salience associated to arguments. The likelihood of receiving/accepting information depends on political predispositions.

Question 10

material considerations

Answer 10

Zaller suggests that material self-interest plays a very limited role: non material factors (partisanship and ideological predispositions) help explain why some resist or embrace changes in elite messaging

Question 11

Cavaille

Answer 11

suggest that PO is shaped by combination of material and non-material factors

Question 12

economic hardship / findings

Answer 12

• Experience of economic hardship => care about economic issues => resist elite messages
• Experience of economic hardship => prefer considerations that resonate with own experience and help maintain self-esteem (less belief that effort pays or resources are fairly distributed) => resist elite messages
  In general, after Tony Blair, people voting for the left were more likely to vote for the right, but people who experienced a negative shock tended to stick with the left more.

Question 13

How do people react to new information?

TWO MODELS

Answer 13

a) Rational updating (cold cognition/Bayesian updating): b) Biased updating (hot cognition/motivated reasoning):

Question 14

a) Rational updating (cold cognition/Bayesian updating):

Answer 14

People identify with other supports of a party (partisanship) and evaluate both the activities and performance of a party (you consider other people like you and what your party is doing).

Voters begin life with some ideas about parties and some level of certainty about these views: party differential: combination of prior beliefs and current information.
Voters also make inferences about where the party is going based on their current differentials and news coming in (voters use information from today’s performance to make inferences about what parties will do in the future).
If performance keeps declining, the individual is likely to shift his view on the party itself and, maybe, he will change position.
This assumes an idealistic version of the voter.

Question 15

partisanship

Answer 15

the extent to which people identify with supporters of a party

Question 16

Prospective performance evaluation:

Answer 16

how people assess a party’s performance in government/parliament.

Question 17

Biased updating

Answer 17

People are not as rational, and bias/priors distort new information. This model allows the existence of a systematic bias in our reasoning.

This leads people to self-reinforcing mechanisms: when new info is showed, people do not simply update their views rationally, but they react differently based on the sources of information.

There are 2 main effects:
- Prior attitude effect:
- Disconfirmation bias:
- Confirmation bias:
- Attitude strength effect:
- Sophistication effect:

Question 18

• Prior attitude effect:

Answer 18

: people who feel strongly about an issue will evaluate supportive arguments as stronger and more compelling than opposite arguments.

Question 19

• Disconfirmation bias

Answer 19

people will spend more time and cognitive resources denigrating and counterarguing attitudinally incongruent than congruent arguments.

Question 20

• Confirmation bias:

Answer 20

when free to choose what info they will expose themselves to people, they will seek out confirming over disconfirming arguments (attitude polarization).

Question 21

• Attitude strength effect:

Answer 21

those citizens voicing the strongest policy attitudes will be most prone to motivated reasoning.

Question 22

• Sophistication effect:

Answer 22

the politically knowledgeable, because they possess greater ammunition with which to counterargue incongruent facts, figures and arguments, will be more susceptible to motivated bias than will unsophisticated ones.