Persuasion and Propa - Lecture notes - POL 565 2 - 20 - 14 PDF

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Errol Kupelian

2/20/14 POL 565- RAS Model and Applications

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Zaller- Top down interpretation of public opinion What is political awareness for Zaller? o Measures the individuals attention to politics and understands what they’re receiving o Neutral factual information will generally have some connection to elite cue Awareness- associated with increased exposure to elite communications, but are more critical of their beliefs and less likely to internalize High awareness people are more savvy on what they will believe or internalize Predispositions- stable individual/contextual factors brought to the model by the individual. It regulates the acceptance or non-acceptance of political information Elites do not shape predispositions, and react to awareness in some interesting ways Political awareness effects how someone will apply their predispositions Zaller engages Converse quite directly- how does Zaller relate to Converse? o Zaller attempts to explain that attitudes exist, which are in relation to Converse- challenges response instability, the meaning he attributes to Converse’s data is more optimistic Zaller’s theory can account for the randomness in response patterns- why attitudes appear to vary across responses randomly or a contradiction Can explain random measurement error and systematic differences Agrees with Converse that most people do not possess fixed attitudes, no such thing as a “true attitude” Zaller’s use of terms: o Constructive process- When people are uttering a political statement, they create one on the spot- they sample considerations that are most salient in their memory o Memory based model- The reliance or culling of memory- leading to Zaller being considered a memory based model  Lavine- conscious recollections of the story are essential o Consideration- a conclusion that reached given perceptions- any reason a person has to come to a conclusion Zaller’s attempt to get at consideration through creative survey questions o People averaging over a variety of considerations, requires memory Zaller’s Axioms (Assumptions) o Reception Axiom  The greater a person’s level of cognitive engagement with an issue, the more likely he or she is to be exposed to and comprehend (i.e. receive) political messages o Resistance Axiom  People tend to resist arguments that are inconsistent with their political predispositions o Accessibility

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The more recently a consideration ahs been called to mind or thought about, the less time it takes to retrieve that consideration to the top of the head o Response axiom  Individuals answer survey questions by averaging across the considerations that happen to be salient at the moment of response Evidence of Zaller’s model o Chapter 4  Pilot study- people are randomly assigned  RAS- Receive, Accept, Sample model  Ambivalence- lots of operationalizations  Should have more ambivalence in the stop and think conditionmore thought should lead to greater ambivalence  Retrospective vs Stop and Think  Retrospective, they give an opinion, then think about why they gave it  Retrospective is all about justification of what was just said o Table 4.3- relationship between open ended remarks and opinion statements o People who are more politically aware should be more likely to understand which position a cue giver should take  Table 4.4- as you go from low, middle, to high political awareness The 4 basic axioms has a lot of reach for the general argument Political awareness might not discriminate as well in high information populace Issue publics instead- high motivation individuals on specific issues Page 71- more direct evidence for the RAS model o Change the mix of considerations, the opinion changes o Connection of data in multiple points of time o Looking for larger coefficients at point 2, pattern is stronger for the retrospective condition Biggest effects of condition at time 2, rather than time 1- but there is a independent effect for the utterances people make Response effects- people’s responses in opinion surveys seem to change given small subtle changes, such as question order etc RAS deals with question wording effects through the accessibility axiom Saliency effect- different words and framing of arguments, causes different considerations to be invoked, and leads to different opinions being generated Framing an argument one way, one set of considerations is inflamed, another way another path to persuasion is activated Current day examples of RAS modeling Yaeger et al (2011) o Traditional most important problem question wording  “What do you think is the most important question facing this country today?”  Developed by George Gallup in the 1930s, used ever since

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In a 2009 poll, just 1% of respondents said “the environment” to the MIP question  By contrast, the economy is mentioned like 24-61%  Seems strange, as global warming is a very salient issue o Does the MIP question accurately identify the problems that Americans consider to be the nation’s most important?  People randomly assigned to receive 1 of 4 different words to the MIP question  Questions used to develop different considerations o Traditional MIP question is not necessarily flawed, but  Asking the question with a slightly different wording shifts the distribution of responses Schuldt et Al (2011) o Why might we expect difference in question wording to matter?  Different focus (temperature increases versus temperature changes)  Connotations to human causation versus natural causation  Global warming involves stronger connotations of human causation, whereas climate change connotation to natural causation  74% stated phenomenon was real when question was presented  Salience effects- Republican respondents were much more skeptical that global climate change is real when “Global warming” used rather than “climate change”  No other political group was significantly affected by the question wording  Liberal and conservative think tanks use different language in speaking about this phenomena o Which comes first? Difference exists at the mass level of the public, which the elites pick up on? Or do the elites build the public’s opinion which then feedback to the elites? o Zaller is totally top down, elites are top down Accounting for the effects of elite communications: the mainstream and polarization effects o Elite communications can be unified, or conflicting On-line Model Lodge et Al o Argument: Previous survey methodology relied on the direct recall of memory- propose a different model where people rely on cognitive evaluations instead of memory retention. Also an inclusion of affect tags Implicit architecture of public opinion up to Lodge that memory was the bedrock of opinion- couldn’t remember any political information- no recall of information means opinion was generally groundless People become exposed to information, then extract the evaluative content o On-line model o Tally/affective tags  Lavine- efficient use of information processing.

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Issues of motivation and ability which toggles between memory vs. efficient models Time saving- people process information on-line, there is a relationship between a person’s on-line tally and a person’s candidate evaluations, stronger than their recall of the candidate and their evaluations Lodge Model o Evaluation  distractor task (demographics)  “message” (Which creates an OL tally- we have a prior evaluation of a person before message, and then opinions after message)  experimental manipulation/ depth processing  delay (1-30 days)  recall measures / evaluation (DV) o Why close relationship between recall and evaluations? Because people are generating good evaluations to match some recall- message evaluation and recall evaluation (message is a person’s tally, what was the evaluative information they extracted from the message, which they attempt to o We are trying to hit the tally and recall against one another- the coefficients on message are much larger than recall- people register that information, and will relate it to their candidate preferences in a meaningful way o Normative notion of the tally- having a tally and having some feeling on candidates and issues creates a bias when confronting new issues Nagging problem of recall- recall only seems to be related to evaluations in survey data, but that could easily be the result of On-line model, can’t help us make sense of response instability, because it somewhat implies that there is a stable attitude respondents have Lavine argues that people might do either model of processing, memory and on-line Kam o Flaws of the methodology lead to Zaller’s conclusions on public opinionthere are other ways to create a measure of public opinion other than survey data- the opinion survey might be a vehicle that is especially prone to demonstrate response effects o Opinion might look differently if you measure it differently- different critique that the citizen is a potentially active processor o People who are high in need for cognition are particularly apt to need to process o Value of the Zaller model- Parsimony with very few assumptions- Kam adds lots of complexity- there are some caveats that need to be held  Doesn’t account for social influence  Features of the environment can trigger goals that mitigate accessibility effects- systematic or central processing can be activated by task relevance, issue importance, etc...