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

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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.