POL SCI 164A Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Swing Vote, Motivated Reasoning, Cognitive Model
30 Apr 2018
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PS 164A Lecture 3/13 CCM and OLM
1. Attitudinal Continuum
a. Partisan schematics → high information partisans, high info about politics
i. They acquire more information and it is acquired in a biased fashion
b. Partisan aschematics → low information about politics
i. When they acquire more information it is acquired in a non-biased fashion
c. Schema-based processing, stereotypes leads to a more extreme favorable view
2. Fdfs
3.
4. Two reasons that middle/central voters (floating voters) are important and why
candidates pay a lot of attention to them:
1. People with weak preferences are attitudes can be moved a small amount and it
is very impactful (potentially -1 to +1); can cross into different opinions
2. People with weak preferences can be moved much further; more responsive to
arguments
a. People with strong attitudes have stronger motivated reasoning
Cognitive Models of Attitudes
1. CCM (classic cognitive model)
a.
2. OLM (on-line model)
a. Acquire a piece of information and form an evaluation
b. Acquire a second piece of information and update the evaluation
c. Belief is stored in the brain in a way that’s easy to retrieve but the information
itself is hard to retrieve
i. The cognitive foundations are deemed not important to hold onto
d. Two thing that make people more likely to use this:
i. Highly educated
ii. High on need to evaluate
e. Attitude is faster to report; more accessible
f. Less tied to accessible or available or salient beliefs
g. Stronger, more intense, held with more certainty
i. We do not know why this is
h. Less affected by current events or new news
Bizer study
- Are on-line attitudes stronger? Are on-line attitudes accessible? Do on-line attitudes lead
to stronger beliefs?
