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

智力价值本论文扩展了心理学中发展起来的兴趣评价模型，以了解个体在政治兴趣和知识上的差异。这是一项更大的合作努力的第一步，目的是开发一种政治利益的比较理论，解释为什么西方民主政体的政治利益和知识差异如此巨大。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经历中发展起来的，在这些经历中，个人了解什么对他们感兴趣，什么对他们不感兴趣。对于政治利益的发展，相关经验的顺序是接受政治信息，几乎总是(直接或间接)由大众媒体产生。因此，要回答为什么有些人对政治感兴趣，有些人不感兴趣的问题，首先必须回答为什么个人对特定的政治信息感兴趣(或不感兴趣)的问题。本研究认为，这是个体特征和信息之间相互作用的函数，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。情绪评价模型认为，个体只有在(有意识或下意识)评价事件与特定抽象结构匹配后才会体验到一种情绪。在做出适当的评估后，相应的情绪就会“激发”。因此，评价理论家主要关注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要素是否都是必要和充分的，以激发相关的情绪反应。对于兴趣，兴趣评价结构的主导模型(由于西尔维亚)假设了两个决定事件或对象是否有趣的评价维度：整理维度(被评估的事件的新颖性、复杂性、不确定性和矛盾性)和应对潜力或可理解性维度，这是个人对其理解事件能力的评价。本文的主要贡献在于探讨了这种利益评价结构是否适用于政治利益，并提出和探索了它在政治上更有用的一个重要扩展：明确地将信息捷径或启发式方法融入到理论中。经验上，本文提出了一个新的实验平台来评估兴趣评价结构，它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该理论中得出的假设，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。广泛影响本研究不仅将有助于政治学中关于政治利益的文献，而且将启发式纳入更广泛地研究情绪评估模型的人。除了学术界，这些结果应该会引起政治活动和其他公民项目的兴趣，这些项目试图了解如何激发政治兴趣。

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.