Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Policy Uncertainly and Attitude Strength in Candidate Evaluations

当选民个人看起来如此无知和不感兴趣时，选民如何在选举中作出合理的决定？ 现有的候选人评估和竞选活动的微观理论不能解释总体学习和选举结果。 我提出了一个模型的候选人评估，结合了社会心理的态度强度，展示了选民如何学习和使用有关候选人的信息的理解。 它开始的前提是，选民将他们对候选人的看法分为对候选人的政策立场和性格特征的评价，并且政策维度在因果关系上优先于个人维度。 然而，这种关系取决于某些选民对候选人政策立场的看法。 具体来说，候选人的政策立场对那些更确定的人对候选人性格的看法产生了更大的影响。 随着选民了解的更多，随着政策态度变得更强，它对个性维度和总体评价的影响也会增加。 本文从两个方面进行了检验。 首先，我使用三种类型的国家选举研究-标准横截面（1980年至1996年），1980年的主要小组研究，和1984年的连续监测调查。 最后，使用原始实验分离出潜在的机制。

How can the electorate reach a reasonable decision in elections, when voters, individually, appear so uninformed and uninterested? Existing micro-level theories of candidate evaluations and campaigns cannot account for aggregate learning and election results. I propose a model of candidate evaluation that incorporates a social-psychological understanding of attitude strength that demonstrates how voters learn and use information about candidates. It begins with the premise that voters separate their views of candidates into an evaluation of the candidate's policy positions and character traits, and the policy dimension is causally prior to the personal. This relationship, however, is mediated by how certain voters are about the policy positions of the candidates. Specifically, the policy positions of the candidate exert a greater influence over the perceptions of candidate character for those who are more certain. As a voter learns more, as the policy attitude becomes stronger, its influence over both the personality dimension and the overall evaluation grows. This thesis is tested in two ways. First, I use three types of National Election Studies - standard cross sections (1980 through 1996), the 1980 Major Panel Study, and the 1984 Continuous Monitoring Survey. Finally, the underlying mechanism is isolated using an original experiment.