Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Information, Communication and Political Learning

个人做出的每一个决定都部分地基于个人关于可选方案的信息。对于政治决策，这些信息主要来自两个来源：媒体和与朋友和家人的非正式讨论。从媒体获取信息代价高昂，因为个人可能缺乏学习的动机、能力或机会。能够学习政治的个人更频繁地参与，也更有效地参与。如果缺乏政治信息的人希望有效地参与政治，他们有两种选择：支付变得知情的成本，或者找到一种低成本的手段，帮助他们像知情者那样行事。许多学者认为后者更可取，并建议以政治讨论的形式随时可以获得低成本的信息。这个项目主要涉及两个问题，即个人如何利用政治讨论来做出决定。首先，个人在多大程度上从他们的讨论伙伴那里了解到事实信息？其次，拥有专家讨论伙伴的不知情的个人是否会像知情的个人一样投票？这个项目使用多种方法来考察通过社会交流促进和抑制政治事实学习的因素。对调查数据的分析表明，党派讨论伙伴对客观条件的评估存在偏见。此外，拥有更多知情讨论伙伴的个人不会在知情的个人投票时投票。然而，调查数据并没有为研究人员提供讨论伙伴正在交流的实际信息。正因为如此，尚不清楚为什么政治讨论不是一种更有效的政治信息交流方式。为了检验这个问题，这个项目使用一个实验来为调查人员提供必要的数据来评估交流条件，这些交流条件对于学习事实和使用这些事实做出更好的决策是最佳的。在实验中，受试者学习两个计算机生成的候选人的提案，然后投票给提案给他们带来更多金钱的候选人。受试者使用提供给他们的私人信息来确定提案的回报。平均而言，这些信息是准确的，但任何一条信息都可能是不准确的。他们还接收来自其他主体的信息。社交传播的信息可能来自不知情或对候选人有偏见的来源。许多研究人员认为，社交交流是不知情的人了解政治的一种低成本手段。这个项目要么证明社交交流是这些群体获取信息的可行途径，要么解释为什么障碍依然存在。该项目将产生更广泛的影响，向政治组织者展示如何改善与知情者的沟通，以此作为刺激政治参与的一种手段。通过让本科生参与实验，该项目还将向学生传授社会科学方法来研究人类行为。

Every decision an individual makes is based partly on the individual's information about the alternatives. For political decisions, this information comes primarily from two sources: the media and informal discussion with friends and family. Obtaining information from the media is costly because individuals may lack the motivation, the ability, or the opportunity to learn. Individuals who are able to learn about politics participate more frequently and participate more effectively. People who lack political information have two alternatives if they hope to participate effectively in politics: pay the costs to become informed or find a low cost means that will help them act as the informed do. Many scholars argue that the latter is preferable and suggest that low cost information is readily available in the form of political discussion. This project is concerned primarily with two questions about how individuals use political discussion to make decisions. First, to what extent do individuals learn factual information from their discussion partners? Second, do uninformed individuals with expert discussion partners vote the same way that informed individuals vote? This project uses multiple methods to examine the factors that promote and inhibit learning of political facts through social communication. Analysis of survey data suggests partisan discussion partners bias evaluations of objective conditions. Further, individuals with better informed discussion partners do not vote as informed individuals vote. The survey data, however, does not provide the researcher with the actual messages that discussion partners are communicating. Because of this, it is not clear why political discussion is not a more effective means of communicating political information. To examine this question, this project uses an experiment to provide the investigator with the data necessary to evaluate the communication conditions that are optimal for learning facts and using those facts to make better decisions. In the experiment, subjects learn the proposals of two computer-generated candidates and then vote for the candidate whose proposals award them more money. Subjects determine the payoff from proposals using private information provided to them. On average, this information is accurate, but any single piece of information may be inaccurate. They also receive information from other subjects. The socially communicated information may come from sources that are uninformed or biased in favor of one of the candidates. Many researchers see social communication as a low cost means for the uninformed to learn about politics. This project will either demonstrate that social communication is a viable path to information for these groups or explain why hurdles remain. This project will have broader impacts by showing political organizers how to improve communications with the less informed as one means of stimulating political participation. By having undergraduate students participate in the experiments, this project would also teach students about social scientific approaches to examining human behavior.