Psych 586: Psychology of Persuasion Voting Behavior: Election Campaigns and their Effects

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Psych 586 Psychology of Persuasion Voting
Behavior Election Campaigns and their Effects

• Professor Icek Aizen
• Office Tobin 625
• Email aizen_at_psych.umass.edu
• Tel [phone]

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Textbook Model of Qualified Citizen

• Interested in political affairs
• Engages in discussion of political issues
• Well-informed about political affairs, knows the
  issues and alternatives, what the parties stand
  for, etc.
• Votes on the basis of principle
• Exercises rational judgment in coming to a voting
  decision

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Voting Behavior The Columbia School(Lazarsfeld,
Berelson, Gaudet, 1944)
Panel of respondents in Erie County, Ohio

• Social characteristics determine social
  preference.
• SES, religious affiliation, residence accounted
  for most of the variance in voting choice.
• Political campaigns have little or no effect.
• 64 of the voters had made their decisions before
  the nominating conventions. Only 8 started
  supporting one candidate and ended up voting for
  the opponent.

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Voting Behavior The Columbia School(Berelson,
Lazarsfeld, McPhee, 1954)
Low ? Dem. High ? Rep.
Socio-Economic Status
Social Affiliation
Voting Choice
Protestant / Catholic
Protestant ? Dem. Catholic ? Rep.
Rural / Urban Residence
Rural ? Dem. Urban ? Rep.
Cross-Pressured versus Consistent-Pressured Voters
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Berelson et al. (1954)

• Conclusion American voter fails qualifications
  of a citizen in a democratic society. The
  ordinary voter, bewildered by the complexity of
  modern political problems, unable to determine
  clearly what the consequences are of alternative
  lines of action, remote from the arena, and
  incapable of bringing information to bear on
  principle, votes the way trusted people around
  him are voting

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Voting Behavior The Michigan School(Campbell,
Converse, Miller, Stokes, 1960)

• Political preferences are determined not by
  social characteristics but by psychological
  factors.
• Identification with a party explains most of the
  motivation to vote for a candidate.
• In any given election, the more variable factors
  of issues and candidates may take on unusual
  importance.

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Voting Behavior The Michigan School(Campbell,
Converse, Miller, Stokes, 1960)

• Partisan Attitudes
• Democratic Candidate
• Republican Candidate
• Parties as Managers
• of Government
• Parties in Relation to
• Foreign Issues
• Parties in Relation to
• Domestic Issues
• Parties in Relation to
• Group Issues

Party Identification
Voting Choice
KEY Party ID functions as a Perceptual
Screen
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Voting Behavior The Michigan School(Campbell,
Converse, Miller, Stokes, 1960)

• Results for 1956 presidential election
• Party ID voting choice r .64
• Six partisan attitudes voting choice R .71

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Voting Behavior The Michigan School(Campbell,
Converse, Miller, Stokes, 1960)

• Conclusions
• Partisanship is the most important determinant of
  voting choice.
• Issues have little influence. The widespread
  lack of familiarity with predominant issues of
  public policy attests to the frailty of the
  political translation process.
• Independent voters Far from being attentive,
  interested, and informed tend as a group to be
  less involved in politics.

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Beliefs About Goldwater and Johnson One Week
Prior to 1964 Presidential Election(Fishbein
Coombs, 1974)
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Participation in 1988 Presidential
Election(Ajzen Watters, 1989)
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Voting Choice (Bush / Dukakis) in 1988
Presidential Election (Ajzen Watters, 1989)
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Means of Political Persuasion

• Paid political programs
• TV ads by candidate or party
• Political rallies speeches
• T.V. news coverage of comments by candidate
  (sound bites)
• Coverage of campaign by newspapers

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History of the Effects of the Mass Media
(McQuail, 1979)

• PHASE 1 1900-1930s
• The Great Propaganda Scare
• PHASE 2 1940s-1960s
• Minimal Effects
• PHASE 3 Mid-1960s to Present
• Focus on Cognitive Effects

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Phase 1 1900s-1930sThe Great Propaganda Scare

• Assumption Media ? Attitudes
• What was this assumption based upon?
• Casual observation, not empirical research

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Phase 2 1940s 1960sMinimal Effects (Klapper,
1960)

• Marked by growth of research
• Few studies, but very influential studies

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Why are there Minimal Effects?

• Limited Exposure only small proportion of
  population watch political programs or evening
  news on T.V., or read a serious newspaper.
• Selective Exposure people tend to expose
  themselves mainly to messages supportive of
  favored candidate attend rallies, listen to
  speeches, etc.
• Biased Perception confirmation bias tends to
  distort the implications of information to which
  people are exposed.

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Reinforcement of Existing Attitudes(Lord, Ross,
Lepper, 1979)

• Participants in favor of and opposed to capital
  punishment were exposed to a research article on
  the topic.
• Article had mixed conclusions on the
  effectiveness of capital punishment
• How convincing did participants find the
  conclusions of the article?

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Rated Convincingness of Capital Punishment
Studies (Lord, Ross, Lepper, 1979)
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Perception of Debate PerformanceFirst
Mondale-Reagan Debate (1984)
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Perception of Debate PerformanceSecond
Mondale-Reagan Debate (1984)
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Biased Perception in the Media (Vallone, Ross,
Lepper, 1985)

• Members of opposing groups exposed to identical
  news reports about a massacre of civilians in
  refugee camps in Lebanon.
• Interested in perceptions of media fairness / bias

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Perceived Bias in TV News Coverage of Palestinian
Refugee Massacre (Vallone, Ross, Lepper, 1985)
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Hostile-Media Effect (Vallone et al., 1985)
Your evaluation of medias position
Extreme Negative Evaluation
Extreme Positive Evaluation
Neutral Position (Medias Position)
Your Position
Opponents Position

• Hostile-media effect ? when our positions are
  extreme, we perceive less extreme positions as
  favoring the opposing side

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Why are there Minimal Effects?

• Limited Exposure only small proportion of
  population watch political programs or evening
  news on T.V., or read a serious newspaper.
• Selective Exposure people tend to expose
  themselves mainly to messages supportive of
  favored candidate attend rallies, listen to
  speeches, etc.
• Biased Perception confirmation bias tends to
  distort the implications of information to which
  people are exposed.
• Biased Memory people tend to remember
  information consistent with their own
  preferences, and to forget inconsistent
  information.

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Phase 3 Mid-1960s to PresentCognitive Effects

• The media has some impact, though it is minimal.
• Effect is slightly greater than assumed in Phase
  2, but considerably less than assumed in Phase 1.
• Use of more precise measures and methods for
  measuring influence
• Shift to exploring subtle factors that contribute
  to the medias effectiveness

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Agenda-Setting Function of the Mass Media

• Early Research
• Mass media ? Attitudes
• But the effect of the media may not be directly
  on attitudes.
• Instead
• Mass media ? Issue/Event Salience ? Attitudes
• What is agenda setting?
• The ability of the mass media to influence the
  importance of events in the public mind
• The priorities of the press become the priorities
  of the public

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First Study to Validate Agenda-Setting

• McCombs Shaw (1972)
• Research conducted during the 1968 US
  Presidential Election
• Found substantial correlations between the
  political issues emphasized in the news and what
  voters identified as the key issues in the
  election.

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Agenda-Setting

• McCombs Shaw (1972)
• The mass media may not be successful in telling
  us what to think, but they are stunningly
  successful in telling us what to think about.
• Theodore White in The Making of the President,
  1972
• The power of the press in America is a
  primordial one. It sets the agenda of public
  discussion and this sweeping political power is
  unrestrained by any law. It determines what
  people will talk and think about an authority
  that in other nations is reserved for tyrants,
  priests, parties, and mandarins.

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Limitations of Early Agenda-Setting Research

• Can you think of an alternative explanation for
  the effects that McCombs and Shaw found?

Their Conclusion
News ? Importance of Issues in Voters Minds
Alternative Possibility
Importance of Issues in Voters Minds ? News
How can these two possibilities be
differentiated?
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Experimental Work on Agenda-Setting

• Iyengar, Peters, Kinder (1982)
• Measured importance of various national problems
  both before and after exposure to three or four
  days of manipulated news programs
• Participants received lots of coverage about one
  of three problems
• Inadequacies in US defense preparedness
• Pollution of the environment
• Inflation

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Issue Importance Change Scores Iyengar et al.,
1982 (Study 2)

• 
  Condition
• Problem Pollution Inflation Defense
• Pollution 1.53 -.71
  -.23
• Inflation -.11
  .11 -.06
• Defense -.44
  -.34 .76

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Can the Medias Agenda Alter the Basis for
Citizens Attitudes Toward the President?
Correlations between Voters Evaluations of
Carter and Judgments of Carters Performance on
Specific Problems (Iyengar et al., 1982)

Coverage Emphasized Coverage
Neglected Problem Problem Problem Pollution
.63 .42 Inflation
.63
.39 Defense .88 .53
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Some General Conclusions Regarding Political
Persuasion

• Short-term effects of political propaganda are
  small.
• Initially undecided voters are most likely to
  be influenced.
• Minor short-term effects can be important in
  very close elections.
• In the long term, political information tends
  to shape public opinion and voting behavior.