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

智力MeritThis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。这是更大规模合作努力的第一步，旨在开发政治利益比较理论，解释为什么西方民主国家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，长期利益是在一系列离散的情感体验中发展起来的，在这些体验中，个人了解什么让他们感兴趣，什么不感兴趣。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。本研究认为，这是个人特征和信息特征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。情绪评价模型认为，只有在个体（有意识或无意识地）评价事件与特定的抽象结构相匹配之后，才会体验到某种情绪。一旦做出了适当的评价，相应的情绪就会“燃烧”起来。因此，评价理论家主要关心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中的所有元素是否都是必要的，足以引发相关的情绪反应。对于兴趣，兴趣评价结构的主导模型（由Silvia提出）提出了两个评价维度，决定了事件或对象是否有趣：一个是整理维度（被评价的事件的新奇、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，这是一个人对自己理解事件的能力的评价。 本文的主要贡献在于探讨这种利益评价结构是否适用于政治利益，并提出和探索这种利益评价结构在政治中更有用的一个重要延伸（获取信息通常很昂贵）：一个明确的纳入信息捷径或理论。经验上，本文提出了一个新的评估利益评价结构的实验平台，（更有效地生成相关的观察结果），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地测试假设从理论和了解，如果评估理论的兴趣将是有用的，更好地了解个人的变化在political interests.Broader ImpactsThis研究将不仅有助于文学在政治学上的政治利益，但也对那些研究评价模型的情绪更普遍，通过列入prostitics。在学术界之外，研究结果应该对政治运动和其他寻求了解如何激活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.