Political Cognition and Political Expertise

社会心理学和政治学中的一个长期问题 担心政治上明显缺乏一致性 个人表达的意见。 的轻微变化 调查问题的措辞或其顺序可以有 对表达的一致性和稳定性的显著影响 意见 因此，一个核心问题是审查 影响政治表达一致性的因素 态度。 在这方面的一个主要候选人是 受访者的政治信息和复杂程度： 那些更老练的人表达的更一致， 稳定的政治态度。 指导这项研究的一个假设是， 个人回答政治调查问题，他或她 从内存中检索一些相关信息， 用于构建适当的响应。 在此之后 假设，响应一致性和稳定性的差异 与政治复杂性相关的部分原因必须是 政治信息和评价 都是在记忆中组织起来的。 利用认知心理学最近发展起来的程序， 这项工作将研究由于政治差异， 在政治信息如何被 在内存中存储和组织。 不仅研究人员 我认为政治专家只是有更相关的 存储在记忆中的政治信息，但它似乎也 这些信息可能组织得更紧密， 随时准备为政治调查答复提供信息 问题. 通过建立一个模型， 评估是在内存中组织的， 随着政治复杂性的变化，这项研究 这将有助于我们更好地理解这两个理论问题， 政治认知领域与现实问题 舆论评估。

A perennial problem in social psychology and political science concerns the apparent lack of consistency in the political opinions expressed by individuals. Slight changes in the wording of survey questions or in their order can have dramatic effects on the consistency and stability of expressed opinions. Accordingly, a central concern has been to examine the factors that affect the consistency of expressed political attitudes. A leading candidate in this regard is a respondent's level of political information and sophistication: Those who are more sophisticated express more consistent and stable political attitudes. An assumption that guides this research is that when an individual responds to a political survey question, he or she retrieves some relevant information from memory that is then used in constructing an appropriate response. Following this assumption, differences in response consistency and stability associated with political sophistication must be due in part to differences in the way political information and evaluations are organized in memory. Using procedures recently developed in cognitive psychology, this work will examine differences due to political sophistication or expertise in how political information is stored and organized in memory. Not only do the researchers believe that the political expert simply has more relevant political information stored in memory, but it also seems likely that that information is more tightly organized and more readily available to inform responses to political survey questions. By building a model of how political information and evaluations are organized in memory, and how that organization varies as a function of political sophistication, this research will help us better understand both theoretical issues in the domain of political cognition and practical issues in the assessment of public opinion.