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

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议题。第一个目标是促进代表权，这与第二个目标——告知民众——密切相关。但是，如果竞选活动不能教育公民，或者如果人们是有偏见的候选人信息消费者，那么公民能够确保他们得到充分代表的程度就会被削弱。如果倾向和党派标签干扰了对候选人议题立场的客观关注，那么这就引发了对代议制民主中公民能力的严重担忧。想象一下，一个公民试图在两个候选人之间做出选择。通常，政党暗示会简化选择，这些暗示会很容易地表明候选人和选民持有相似的信念。然而，在当代政治中，政党暗示往往无法发挥其提供信息的作用。通常情况下，候选人在问题上的立场与他们的同僚形成鲜明对比。当政党线索和议题偏好出现分歧时，公民能够胜任地关注候选人的立场吗？或者，党派身份是否会干扰人们了解自己选择的能力？关于政党线索和政策信息如何影响公民能力的混合证据需要在动态竞选的背景下进一步探索。该项目的智力价值源于它对关键问题的关注：派对线索在多大程度上限制了信息的寻求和客观性，以及有多精确？如果人们因为政党标签而无法关注候选人的政策立场，代议制民主的期望就需要更好地了解如何减轻这种偏见。之前的实验未能同时：1)利用竞选活动的动态特性，揭示公民客观学习政策信息的意愿；2)探索超越候选人评估的政党和政策操纵的后果；3)评估党派偏见背后的机制。这个项目既改变了候选人和选民之间基于问题的协议的程度，也改变了候选人的政党标签。这些操作，以及在动态的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他们选择的条件。作为一篇关于竞选学习的大型论文的主要组成部分，这个实验设计讨论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，这将有助于深入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。这项工作的更广泛的影响与它扩展了我们对人们为什么在竞选期间学习，他们的倾向如何塑造他们对信息的开放程度，以及新信息对他们态度的影响的认识有关。此外，本项目还促进了对刻板印象、学习以及在评估选择时使用简单线索的规范性后果的多学科兴趣。通过了解人们在哪些条件下会了解到有关候选人的令人不舒服的信息，该项目有助于更好地了解为什么有些人比其他人更容易接受不同的观点。此外，了解党派偏见减弱的条件可以制定策略，鼓励选民客观地关注具体的政策，而不仅仅是党派过滤的信息。除了政治学之外，这些发现还会引起研究动机学习的心理学家、对代表性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方面作用的政策制定者的兴趣。

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.