The rationalizing voter
By: Milton Lodge, Stony Brook University, Charles S.  Taber, Stony Brook University
Contributors: Taber, Charles S., author
Series: Cambridge studies in public opinion and political psychology
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Cambridge
Language: eng
Number of pages: 281
ISBN-13: 9780521763509; 9780521176149
Subjects: Political psychology; Voting; POLITICAL SCIENCE / General; Public opinion
Description: "Political behavior is the result of innumerable unnoticed forces and conscious deliberation is often a rationalization of automatically triggered feelings and thoughts. Citizens are very sensitive to environmental contextual factors such as the title "President" preceding "Obama" in a newspaper headline, upbeat music or patriotic symbols accompanying a campaign ad, or question wording and order in a survey, all of which have their greatest influence when citizens are unaware. This book develops and tests a dual-process theory of political beliefs, attitudes, and behavior, claiming that all thinking, feeling, reasoning, and doing have an automatic component as well as a conscious deliberative component. The authors are especially interested in the impact of automatic feelings on political judgments and evaluations. This research is based on laboratory experiments, which allow the testing of five basic hypotheses: hot cognition, automaticity, affect transfer, affect contagion, and motivated reasoning."--Publisher's website.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.