Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: What Makes Politics Interesting?

本论文项目扩展了心理学中开发的兴趣评估模型，以了解政治兴趣和知识的个体差异。这是一个更大的合作努力的第一步，以发展政治利益的比较理论，解释为什么政治利益和知识在西方民主国家之间差异如此之大。从理论上讲，这项研究认为，长期兴趣是在一系列离散的情感体验中发展起来的，在这些体验中，个体了解到自己感兴趣的是什么，不感兴趣的是什么。对于政治利益的发展而言，相关经验的顺序是接受政治信息，这些信息几乎总是（直接或间接）由大众传播媒介产生。因此，要回答为什么有些人对政治感兴趣而有些人不感兴趣的问题，首先必须回答为什么一个人对特定的政治信息感兴趣（或不感兴趣）的问题。这项研究认为，这是个体特征和信息之间相互作用的结果，我们可以通过应用心理学中发展起来的兴趣评价理论来理解这种相互作用的本质。情绪评价模型断言，个体只有在（有意识或潜意识地）将事件评价为符合特定的抽象结构后才会体验到某种情绪。在做出适当的评价之后，相应的情绪“燃烧”起来。因此，评价理论家主要关注的是定义与特定情绪相关的评价结构，并设计实验来测试所提出的结构的所有元素是否必要和足以引发相关的情绪反应。对于兴趣，兴趣评估结构的主要模型（由Silvia提出）假设了两个评估维度来确定事件或对象是否有趣：一个是协作维度（评估事件的新颖性、复杂性、不确定性和冲突性），另一个是应对潜力或可理解性维度，这是个体对她理解事件能力的评估。这些维度表明了一个人在认知和情感上如何将自己定位于一个事件或物体。本文的主要贡献是探索这种利益评估结构是否适用于政治利益，以及提出和探索它在政治中更有用的一个重要延伸（在政治中获取信息通常是昂贵的）：将信息捷径或启发式明确纳入理论。在经验上，本文提出了一个新的实验平台来评估兴趣评估结构，该平台应该比以前的设计更强大（更有效地产生相关观察），并且更适用于更广泛的实质性领域。这些实验将使我们能够严格检验从理论中得出的假设，并了解利益评估理论是否有助于更好地理解政治利益的个体差异。更广泛的影响本研究不仅将为政治兴趣的政治学文献做出贡献，而且还将为那些通过包含启发式更广泛地研究情感评估模型的人做出贡献。在学术界之外，研究结果应该对政治运动和其他试图了解如何激发政治兴趣的公民项目感兴趣。

Intellectual MeritThis dissertation project extends appraisal models of interest developed in psychology to understand individual differences in political interest and knowledge. It is a first step in a larger collaborative effort to develop a comparative theory of political interest that explains why political interest and knowledge vary so dramatically across the Western Democracies. Theoretically, this research takes the view that long-term interests are developed in a series of discrete emotional experiences in which individuals learn what does and does not interest them. For the development of political interests, the sequence of relevant experiences is the reception of political messages, almost always (directly or indirectly) generated by the mass media. Thus, to answer the question of why some individuals are interested in politics and some are not, one must first answer the question of why an individual is (or is not) interested in particular political messages. This study argues that this is a function of an interaction between characteristics of the individual and of the message, and that we can understand the nature of that interaction by applying appraisal theories of interest that have been developed in psychology.Appraisal models of emotions assert that individuals experience an emotion only after they (consciously or subconsciously) appraise events as matching a particular abstract structure. Upon making the appropriate set of appraisals, the corresponding emotion "fires." Thus, appraisal theorists are principally concerned with defining the appraisal structure associated with a specific emotion, and designing experiments to test whether all the elements of the proposed structure are necessary and sufficient to provoke the relevant emotional response. For interest, the leading model of the appraisal structure of interest (due to Silvia) posits two appraisal dimensions that determine whether the event or object is interesting: a collative dimension (the appraised novelty, complexity, uncertainty, and conflictualness of the event) and a coping potential or comprehensibility dimension, which is an individual's appraisal of her ability to understand the event. These dimensions indicate how a person may orient herself to an event or object both cognitively and emotionally.The main contribution of the dissertation is to explore whether this appraisal structure of interest applies to political interest, as well as to propose and explore one important extension of it that is more useful in politics (where it is often costly to get information): an explicit incorporation of information short-cuts or heuristics into the theory.Empirically, the dissertation proposes a new experimental platform for evaluating the appraisal structure of interest that should be both more powerful (more efficiently generates relevant observations) than previous designs and more applicable to a wider set of substantive domains. These experiments will allow us to rigorously test hypotheses drawn from the theory and understand if the appraisal theory of interest will be useful in better understanding individual variation in political interest.Broader ImpactsThis study will not only contribute the literature in political science on political interest, but also to those studying appraisal models of emotion more generally, via the inclusion of heuristics. Beyond academia, the results should be of interest to political campaigns and other civic programs that seek to understand how to activate politically interest.