Voters as Goal-Directed Information Processors: Candidate Traits As Prospective, Performance-Oriented Judgments

越来越多的美国选民被描绘成更关心候选人的个性和形象，而不是候选人的意识形态或问题立场的个人。这一建议借鉴了认知心理学的最新研究，以开发和检验对这一趋势的解释。具体地说，这项研究开发了一个候选人评估模型，该模型将选民视为“认知守财奴”，即他们试图在他们在投票决策上投入的思考量和可能的预测候选人未来行为的思维能力之间取得平衡。由于候选人故意模糊他们的政策立场，并且考虑到大多数选民心目中政党之间的区别越来越小，该模型预测选民在评估候选人时将越来越依赖于个性。将进行一系列实验室实验来验证这一解释。受试者将接触到各种类型的信息，包括问题立场、小组从属关系、关于竞争假想候选人的外表和个性。然后将测试对候选人评估的影响。这项创新性的研究完成后，不仅有助于确定人格对候选人评价的影响，还将有助于确定政治沟通中人格推论的来源。

American voters increasing are portrayed as individuals more concerned with the personalities and images of candidates than with candidate ideologies or issue positions. This proposal draws on recent research in cognitive psychology to develop and test an explanation of this trend. Specifically, this research develops a model of candidate evaluation which view voters as "cognitive misers" in the sense that they attempt to strike a balance between the amount of thought they invest in their voting decision and the likely ability of thought to predict candidate's future behavior. Since candidates intentionally obscure their policy positions and given the decreasing distinction between the parties in most voters' minds, this model predicts that voters will rely increasingly on personalities in evaluating candidates. A series of laboratory experiments will be undertaken to test this interpretation. Subjects will be exposed to various types of information including issue positions, group affiliations, appearance and personality regarding competing hypothetical candidates. The effects on candidate evaluation will then be tested. When completed this innovative research will help determine not only the influence of personality on candidate evaluation but also the source of those personality inferences in political communication.