Issues, party and character: The moderating role of ideological thinking on candidate evaluation

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 37, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 139-163

  Lavine, Howard ^a   Gschwend, Thomas ^b  

^a STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF MANNHEIM   (Germany)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33846106367     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: 14692112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007123407000075     Document Type: Article

References (117)

1. W. Lance Bennett, 'The Growth of Knowledge in Mass Belief Systems: An Epistemological Critique', American Journal of Political Science, 21 (1977), 465-500;
2. Paul R. Hagner and John C. Pierce, 'Levels of Conceptualization and Political Belief Consistency', Micropolitics, 1 (1983), 311-48;
3. Robert E. Lane, Political Ideology (New York: Free Press, 1962);
4. James A. Stimson, 'Belief Systems, Constraint, and the 1972 Election', American Journal of Political Science, 19 (1975), 393-417;
5. John L. Sullivan, James E. Pierson and George E. Marcus, 'Ideological Constraint in the Mass Public: A Methodological Critique and Some New Findings', American Journal of Political Science, 22 (1978), 233-49;
6. for a review, see Donald R. Kinder, 'Diversity and Complexity in American Public Opinion', in Ada Finifter, ed., Political Science: The State of the Discipline (Washington, D.C.: American Political Science Association, 1983).
7. Philip E. Converse, 'The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics', in David E. Apter, ed., Ideology and Discontent (New York: Free Press, 1964), pp. 206-61;
8. Norman H. Nie, Sidney Verba and John R. Petrocik, The Changing American Voter (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976);
9. Sullivan et al. 'Ideological Constraint in the Mass Public'.
10. Robert J. Huckfeldt, Jeffrey Levine, William Morgan and John Sprague, 'Accessibility and the Political Utility of Partisan and Ideological Orientations', American Journal of Political Science, 43 (1999), 888-911;
11. William G. Jacoby, 'Ideological Identification and Issue Attitudes', American Journal of Political Science, 35 (1991), 178-205.
12. Paul M. Sniderman, Richard A. Brody and Philip E. Tetlock, Reasoning and Choice: Explorations in Political Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
13. Huckfeldt et al., 'Accessibility and the Political Utility of Partisan and Ideological Orientations';
14. William G. Jacoby, 'The Impact of Party Identification on Issue Attitudes', American Journal of Political Science, 32 (1988), 643-61.
15. William G. Jacoby, 'Levels of Conceptualization and Reliance on the Liberal-Conservative Continuum', Journal of Politics, 48 (1986), 423-32;
16. Kathleen Knight, 'Ideology in the 1980 Election: Ideological Sophistication Does Matter', Journal of Politics, 47 (1985), 828-53.
17. Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter, What Americans Know about Politics and Why it Matters (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996).
18. th Annual Carnegie Symposium on Cognition (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1986);
19. Converse, 'The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics';
20. Ruth C. Hamill, Milton Lodge and Frederick Blake, 'The Breadth, Depth, and Utility of Class, Partisan, and Ideological Schemata', American Journal of Political Science, 29 (1985), 850-70;
21. Jacoby, 'Levels of Conceptualization and Reliance on the Liberal-Conservative Continuum';
22. Knight, 'Ideology in the 1980 Election'.
23. Shelly Chaiken, Akiva Liberman and Alice H. Eagly, 'Heuristic and Systematic Information Processing Within and Beyond the Persuasion Context'; in James S. Uleman and Jon A. Bargh, eds, Unintended Thought (New York: Guilford, 1989), pp. 212-52;
24. Richard E. Petty and John T. Cacioppo, 'The Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion', in Leonard Berkowitz, ed., Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (San Diego, Calif.: Academic Press, 1986), Vol. 19, pp. 123-205.
25. Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957);
26. Arthur Lupia, 'Shortcuts versus Encyclopedias: Information and Voting Behavior in California Insurance Reform Elections', American Political Science Review, 88 (1994), 63-76;
27. Arthur Lupia and Mathew D. McCubbins, The Democratic Dilemma: Can Citizens Learn What They Need to Know (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998);
28. Richard Nisbett and Lee Ross, Human Inference: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social Judgment (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1980);
29. Samuel Popkin, The Reasoning Voter (Chicago, III: University of Chicago Press, 1991);
30. Sniderman et al., Reasoning and Choice.
31. In theory, the two modes form the endpoints of an elaborative processing continuum in which social judgements are based on a mix of low-effort and high-effort processes. See Chaiken et al., 'Heuristic and Systematic Information Processing Within and Beyond the Persuasion Context';
32. Richard E. Petty and Duane T. Wegener, 'The Elaboration Likelihood Model: Current Status and Controversies', in Shelly Chaiken and Yaacov Trope, eds, Dual Process Theories in Social Psychology (New York: Guilford, 1999).
33. For a review, see Shelly Chaiken and Yaacov Trope, eds, Dual Process Theories in Social Psychology (New York: Guilford, 1999).
34. The paradigmatic finding in this literature is that in high ability/motivation settings, attitude change is mediated by the effortful processing of the quality of the persuasive arguments, but not by available heuristic cues such as the expertise or attractiveness of the communicator. In contrast, in low ability/motivation settings, heuristic cues but not persuasive arguments mediate persuasion. For a review, see Alice H. Eagly and Shelly Chaiken, The Psychology of Attitudes (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993).
35. Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy;
36. James M. Enelow and Melvin J. Hinich, The Spatial Theory of Voting: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984);
37. Morris P. Fiorina, Retrospective Voting in American National Elections (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981).
38. R. Michael Alvarez, Information and Elections (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997);
39. Pamela Johnston Conover and Stanley Feldman, 'Candidate Perception in an Ambiguous World: Campaigns, Cues, and Inference Processes', American Journal of Political Science, 33 (1989), 912-39;
40. Doris A. Graber, Mass Media and American Politics (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1980);
41. Tali Mendelberg, The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001);
42. Benjamin I. Page, Choices and Echoes in Presidential Elections (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978);
43. Thomas E. Patterson, The Mass Media Election (New York: Praeger, 1980);
44. Kenneth A. Shepsle, 'The Strategy of Ambiguity: Uncertainty and Electoral Competition', American Political Science Review, 66 (1972), 555-68.
45. John R. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
46. Edward G. Carmines and James A. Stimson, 'The Two Faces of Issue Voting', American Political Science Review, 74 (1980), 78-91;
47. Delli Carpini and Keeter, What Americans Know about Politics and Why it Matters;
48. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.
49. James A. Stimson, 'Belief Systems, Constraint, and the 1972 Election'.
50. Angus Campbell, Philip E. Converse, Warren Miller and Donald Stokes, The American Voter (New York: Wiley, 1960);
51. Hamill et al., 'The Breadth, Depth, and Utility of Class, Partisan, and Ideological Schemata';
52. Richard R. Lau and David Redlawsk, 'Advantages and Disadvantages of Cognitive Heuristics in Political Decision Making', American Journal of Political Science, 45 (2001), 951-71 ;
53. George E. Marcus, W. Russell Neuman and Michael MacKuen, Affective Intelligence and Political Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000);
54. Popkin, The Reasoning Voter,
55. Wendy M. Rahn, 'The Role of Partisan Stereotypes in Information Processing about Political Candidates', American Journal of Political Science, 37 (1993), 472-96.
56. Arthur H. Miller, Martin P. Wattenberg and Oksana Malanchuk, 'Schematic Assessments of Presidential Candidates', American Political Science Review, 80 (1986), 521-40.
57. Donald R. Kinder, 'Presidential Character Revisited', in Richard R. Lau and David O. Sears, eds, Political Cognition (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1986), pp. 233-56;
58. Miller et al., 'Schematic Assessments of Presidential Candidates' ;
59. Wendy M. Rahn, John H. Aldrich, Eugene Borgida and John L. Sullivan, 'A Social-Cognitive Model of Candidate Appraisal', in John A. Ferejohn and James H. Kuklinski, eds, Information and Democratic Processes (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), pp. 136-59.
60. Kinder, 'Presidential Character Revisited', p. 235.
61. It has also been argued that personality assessments function 'schematically', allowing voters to make additional inferences about candidate behaviour by relying on implicit cognitive theories associated with the traits of competence, integrity and so on. See Miller et al., 'Schematic Assessments of Presidential Candidates' ;
62. Richard R. Lau, 'Political Schemata, Candidate Evaluations, and Voting Behavior', in Richard R. Lau and David O. Sears, eds, Political Cognition (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1986), pp. 95-126.
63. Rahn et al., 'A Social-Cognitive Model of Candidate Appraisal' ;
64. for a review, see Donald R. Kinder, 'Opinion and Action in the Realm of Polities', in Daniel T. Gilbert, Susan T. Fiske and Gardner Lindzey, eds, Handbook of Social Psychology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998), pp. 778-867.
65. Miller et al., 'Schematic Assessments of Presidential Candidates', found that education was positively associated with mentioning candidate qualities in the NES open-ended likes/dislikes probes. While this finding would appear to contradict our hypothesis, it does not address the question of voters' reliance on candidate qualities in judging the candidates. In fact, these authors found that education fails to exert much of a moderating influence in this respect (see Table 7, p. 534).
66. This finding is somewhat blurred by the fact that Lau and Redlawsk used a summary measure of heuristic use that combined party, ideology and endorsement heuristics. Thus, the hypothesis that sophisticated voters relied more on one type of cue (e.g., ideology) but less on another (e.g., party) was not tested. Moreover, Lau and Redlawsk found that sophisticated voters make effective use of heuristics only when the mock candidates fit partisan stereotypes. In fact, for non-Stereotypie candidates, heuristic use actually decreased the likelihood of 'correct' voting among sophisticated voters.
67. Lau and Redlawsk, 'Advantages and Disadvantages of Cognitive Heuristics', p. 953.
68. For a comprehensive review, see Chaiken and Trope, Dual Process Model in Social Psychology. There is also mounting evidence within political science that ability and motivation heighten effortful thinking, e.g.,
69. Scott Basinger and Howard Lavine, 'Ambivalence, Information, and Electoral Choice', American Political Science Review, 99 (2005), 169-84;
70. Milton Lodge and Charles S. Taber, 'Three Steps Toward a Theory of Motivated Political Reasoning', in A. Lupia, M. McCubbins and S. Popkin, eds, Elements of Reason: Cognition, Choice, and the Bounds of Rationality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 183-213;
71. Marcus et al., Affective Intelligence and Political Judgment.
72. William G. Jacoby, 'The Structure of Ideological Thinking in the American Electorate', American Journal of Political Science, 39 (1995), 314-35.
73. Jacoby, 'The Structure of Ideological Thinking in the American Electorate'.
74. We left out the two items dealing with consistency between ideological identification on one hand and candidate evaluation and vote choice on the other, as candidate judgement is the main dependent variable in our analysis. We also excluded correct placement of the parties and candidates on the ideological continuum, as these items pertain to both political knowledge and ideological thinking. Respondents were deemed as having an ideological self-identification if they placed themselves at a non-neutral point along the 7-point scale (i.e., not 4). Respondents felt close to the consistent ideological group if liberals responded as 'feeling close to' liberals but not conservatives, and vice versa for conservatives. Respondents' ideological self-identifications were considered consistent with their partisan identifications and their policy attitudes if their scores were on the same side of the 7-point scales for both items (i.e., 1,2 or 3 for liberal/Democrat, and 5,6 or 7 for conservative/Republican). Finally, ideological self-identifications were considered consistent with ideological feelings if respondents felt warmer towards the ideological group to which they identified (i.e., for liberals, if the feeling thermometer score for the group 'liberals' was higher than the feeling thermometer score for the group 'conservatives', and vice versa for conservatives). These codings are identical to those used by Jacoby, The Structure of Ideological Thinking in the American Electorate'.
75. Mean proportional ideological thinking scores (on a transformed 0-1 scale) ranged from 0.26 in 1984 to 0.42 in 2000. Across election years, the 'easiest' item was holding a non-neutral ideological identification, which ranged from 0.48 in 1984 to 0.84 in 2000. The 'hardest' items tended to be consistency between ideological self-identification and individual policy attitudes. For example, in 1984, the mean for consistency between ideology and improving the social and economic status of women was 0.20, and in 1996 the mean for consistency between ideology and abortion was 0.18.
76. Gregory B. Markus, 'Political Attitudes during an Election Year: A Report on the 1980 NES Panel Study', American Political Science Review, 76 (1982), 538-60.
77. R. Michael Alvarez and Jonathan Nagler, 'Economics, Issues, and the Perot Candidacy: Voter Choice in the 1992 Presidential Election', American Journal of Political Science, 39 (1995), 714-44.
78. Miller et al., 'Schematic Assessments of Presidential Candidates'.
79. Thus, we excluded comments not related to candidate qualities, such as those related to issues, parties and groups (e.g., the master code categories 'Domestic Issues', 'Foreign Issues', 'Group Connections' and 'Government Activity/Philosophy'). These excluded categories included such comments as the candidate was 'too liberal', 'for equality', 'anti government aid', 'pro lower taxes', 'cold war oriented' and 'in favour of broadening of relations with Russia'. We chose to rely on the open-ended likes/dislikes questions to measure candidate character rather than the closed-ended trait questions, as the latter were nearly perfectly collinear with our dependent variable of candidate evaluation. Results using the trait ratings, however, were similar. For highly similar coding methods of perceptions of candidate character using the likes/dislikes questions, see Marcus et al., Affective Intelligence and Political Judgment,
80. and Miller et al., 'Schematic Assessments of Presidential Candidates'.
81. Robert Luskin, 'Measuring Political Sophistication', American Journal of Political Science, 31 (1987), 856-99, defines political sophistication as the size, range and level of constraint within a political belief system. However, after examining the effectiveness of several measures, he concludes that political knowledge may represent the best single existing approach.
82. Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter, What Americans Know about Politics and Why it Matters;
83. Kathleen M. McGraw, Milton Lodge and Patrick Stroh, 'On-Line Processing and Candidate Evaluation: The Effects of Issue Order, Issue Importance, and Sophistication'; Political Behavior, 12 (1990), 41-58;
84. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion;
85. but see Paul Goren, 'Political Sophistication and Policy Reasoning: A Reconsideration', American Journal of Political Science, 48 (2004), 462-78.
86. Linda K. Muthen and B. O. Muthen. Mplus User's Guide, 3rd edn (Los Angeles: Muthen & Muthen, 1998-2004.
87. This estimator describes the effect of the factors on the observed indicators as probit regressions, which are appropriate for categorical variables. Moreover, the df for the chi-square is not calculated in the usual way (i.e., number of moments minus number of fixed parameters); rather, it is adjusted so that the p-value for the chi-square distribution is correct, see Muthen and Muthen, Mplus User's Guide, pp. 358.
88. Above 0.90 and below 0.10 are considered 'good fit' for the CFI and RMSEA, respectively; Kenneth A. Bollen, Structural Equations with Latent Variables (New York: Wiley, 1989);
89. Barbara M. Byrne, Structural Equation Modeling with LISREL, PRELIS, and SIMPLIS: Basic Concepts, Applications, and Programming (Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1998).
90. Leona S. Alken and Stephen G. West, Multiple Regression: Testing and Interpreting Interactions (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1991). Also included in the OLS regressions are sex (female = 1; male = 0), race (white = 1; otherwise = 0), and the number of policy issues for which the respondent provided a valid opinion.
91. The results were highly similar when (a) 'directional' scores were substituted for issue proximity scores, see George Rabinowitz and Stuart MacDonald, 'A Directional Theory of Voting', American Political Science Review, 83 (1989), 93-121 ; (b) strength of party identification was entered into the model, both as 'first-order' effects and as interaction terms with issue proximity, party identification, and perceptions of candidate character. The results are thus highly robust across model specifications and measurement strategies.
92. These numbers are probably somewhat inflated, given that politics rates fairly low on the interest scales of most Americans.
93. The conditional effects of issues and character at minimum and maximum levels of ideological thinking are based on regression analyses in which ideological thinking is receded such that a score of 0 corresponds to the minimum or maximum scale score, see Robert J. Friedrich, 'In Defense of Multiplicative Terms in Multiple Regression Equations', American Journal of Political Science, 26 (1982), 797-833.
94. Richard Niemi and Herbert F. Weisberg, eds, Classics in Voting Behavior (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1993), p. 50;
95. Philip E. Converse, 'Assessing the Capacity of Mass Electorates', Annual Review of Political Science, 3 (2000), 331-53.
96. Marc J. Hetherington, 'Resurgent Mass Partisanship: The Role of Elite Polarization', American Political Science Review, 95 (2001), 619-31;
97. Alan Abramowitz and Kyle L. Saunders, 'Ideological Realignment in the U.S. Electorate', Journal of Politics, 60 (1988), 634-52. In addition to the influence of political context on levels of ideological thinking, both dispositional factors (e.g., cognitive ability) and dispositional X context interactions are also important. For example, Hetherington found that the effect of elite polarization on ideological perceptions of the parties was stronger among the educated, who are better equipped to apprehend and respond to changes in the political environment.
98. Hetherington, 'Resurgent Mass Partisanship', p. 624.
99. Edward Carmines and James Stimson, Issue Evolution Race and the Transformation of American Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989);
100. Nie et al., The Changing American Voter;
101. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.
102. Chaiken and Trope, Dual Process Theories in Social Psychology;
103. Lupia and McCubbins, The Democratic Dilemma;
104. Petty and Wegener, 'The Elaboration Likelihood Model';
105. Popkin, The Reasoning Voter,
106. Sniderman et al., Reasoning and Choice.
107. Donald Green, Bradley Palmquist and Eric Schickler, Partisan Hearts and Minds (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002);
108. Morris P. Fiorina, Retrospective Voting in American National Election (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981);
109. Charles Franklin and John E. Jackson, 'The Dynamics of Party Identification', American Political Science Review, 77 (1983), 957-73;
110. Michael MacKuen, Robert S. Erikson and James A. Stimson. 'Macropartisanship', American Political Science Review, 83 (1989), 1125-242.
111. Converse, The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics';
112. Stanley Feldman, 'Measuring Issue Preferences: The Problem of Response Instability', Political Analysis, 1 (1989), 25-60.
113. Donald E. Stokes, 'Some Dynamic Elements in Contests for the Presidency', American Political Science Review, 60 (1966), 19-28.
114. Kinder, 'Presidential Character Revisited';
115. Markus, 'Political Attitudes during an Election Year';
116. Miller et al., 'Schematic Assessments of Presidential Candidates';
117. Samuel Popkin, John W. Gorman, Charles Phillips and Jeffrey A. Smith, 'Comment: What Have You Done for Me Lately? Toward an Investment Theory of Voting', American Political Science Review, 70 (1976), 779-805.