Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: An Experimental Approach to Understanding Elections and Citizen Information Processing

政治学博士论文研究：理解选举和公民信息处理的实验方法

• 批准号: 1225782
• 负责人: Jennifer Wolak
• 金额: $ 0.89万
• 依托单位: University of Colorado at Boulder
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-08-15 至 2014-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1225782&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Political; Science

Electoral campaigns are thought to serve two major purposes: 1) to provide citizens opportunities to hold government accountable and 2) to educate citizens about candidates and issues. The first goal, promoting representation, is intimately tied to the second of informing people. But if campaigns fail to educate citizens, or if people are biased consumers of information about candidates, the extent to which citizens can ensure they are being well-represented is weakened. If predispositions and party labels interfere with objective attention to candidates' issue positions, then this poses serious concerns about citizens' competence in a representative democracy.Imagine a citizen trying to decide between two candidates. Often, the choice is simplified by party cues that provide an easy indication that a candidate and a voter hold similar beliefs. In contemporary politics, however, the party cue often fails to serve its informative role. Frequently, candidates hold issue positions that contrast with those of their co-partisans. When party cues and issue preferences diverge, are citizens able to competently attend to candidate positions? Or do partisan identities interfere with people's ability to learn about their choices? The mixed evidence on how party cues and policy information affect citizen competence requires further exploration in the context of a dynamic campaign.The intellectual merit of the project emanates from its attention to the critical question of: to what extent, and how precisely, do party cues limit information seeking and objectivity? If people are unable to attend to candidates' policy positions because of party labels, the expectations of representative democracy require a better understanding of how such biases may be mitigated. Previous experiments have failed to simultaneously 1) leverage the dynamic nature of campaigns to shed light on citizens' willingness to objectively learn policy information, 2) explore the consequences of party and policy manipulations beyond candidate evaluations, and 3) evaluate the mechanisms underlying partisans' biases. This project varies both the extent of issue-based agreement between candidates and voters as well as candidates' party labels. These manipulations, and the ability to track voters' information searches over the course of a dynamic, simulated campaign, will shed light on the conditions under which citizens objectively learn about their choices. As the main component of a larger dissertation on campaign learning, this experimental design speaks to a central aspect of citizen competence - the ability to overcome partisan biases during elections. Normatively, this will provide insight into how campaigns and elections may better encourage voters to look past simple party labels and objectively evaluate candidates.The broader impacts of this work are connected to its extension of our knowledge of why people learn during campaigns, how their predispositions shape their openness to information, and the consequences of new information for their attitudes. Furthermore, this project contributes to multidisciplinary interests in stereotypes, learning, and the normative consequences of using simple cues in evaluating choices. By understanding the conditions under which people will learn cognitively uncomfortable information about candidates, this project helps develop a better picture of why some people are more open to alternative perspectives than others. Furthermore, understanding the conditions under which partisan biases are attenuated can inform strategies that may encourage voters to objectively attend to policy-specific, rather than just partisan-filtered, information. Beyond political science, these findings will be of interest to psychologists who study motivated learning, social scientists interested in representation, and policymakers seeking to better understand the role of campaigns in promoting civic competence and citizen engagement.

选举活动被认为有两个主要目的：1）为公民提供向政府问责的机会; 2）教育公民了解候选人和问题。第一个目标是提高代表性，这与第二个目标是让人们了解情况密切相关。但是，如果竞选活动未能教育公民，或者如果人们对候选人的信息有偏见，那么公民确保自己得到充分代表的程度就会减弱。如果倾向和党派标签干扰了对候选人问题立场的客观关注，那么这就对代议制民主中公民的能力提出了严重的担忧。通常情况下，选择是简化的政党线索，提供了一个简单的迹象表明，候选人和选民持有类似的信念。然而，在当代政治中，政党线索往往无法发挥其信息作用。通常，候选人持有的问题立场与他们的共同党派形成鲜明对比。当政党线索和问题偏好出现分歧时，公民是否能够胜任候选人的职位？还是党派身份干扰了人们了解自己选择的能力？党的线索和政策信息如何影响公民能力的混合证据，需要在一个动态的campaigns.The项目的智力价值的背景下进一步探索，从它的关注的关键问题：在何种程度上，以及如何准确地，党的线索限制信息寻求和客观性？如果人们因为政党标签而无法关注候选人的政策立场，那么代议制民主的期望就需要更好地理解如何减轻这种偏见。以前的实验未能同时1）利用竞选活动的动态性质来揭示公民客观学习政策信息的意愿，2）探索候选人评估之外的政党和政策操纵的后果，以及3）评估党派偏见的机制。这个项目改变了候选人和选民之间基于问题的协议的程度以及候选人的政党标签。这些操纵，以及在动态模拟竞选过程中跟踪选民信息搜索的能力，将揭示公民客观了解其选择的条件。作为一个更大的论文竞选学习的主要组成部分，这个实验设计谈到了公民能力的一个核心方面-在选举中克服党派偏见的能力。从规范上讲，这将有助于我们了解竞选和选举如何更好地鼓励选民超越简单的政党标签，客观地评价候选人，这项工作的更广泛影响与我们对人们为什么在竞选中学习的知识的扩展有关，他们的倾向如何塑造他们对信息的开放性，以及新信息对他们态度的影响。此外，该项目有助于多学科对刻板印象、学习以及使用简单线索评估选择的规范后果的兴趣。通过了解人们在什么情况下会了解到关于候选人的认知上不舒服的信息，这个项目有助于更好地了解为什么有些人比其他人更愿意接受其他观点。此外，了解党派偏见减弱的条件可以为鼓励选民客观地关注特定政策而不仅仅是党派过滤的信息的策略提供信息。除了政治学，这些研究结果将对研究动机性学习的心理学家，对代表感兴趣的社会科学家以及寻求更好地理解运动在促进公民能力和公民参与中的作用的政策制定者感兴趣。