Charles M. Judd, Ph.D. - US grants

A perennial problem in social psychology and political science concerns the apparent lack of consistency in the political opinions expressed by individuals. Slight changes in the wording of survey questions or in their order can have dramatic effects on the consistency and stability of expressed opinions. Accordingly, a central concern has been to examine the factors that affect the consistency of expressed political attitudes. A leading candidate in this regard is a respondent's level of political information and sophistication: Those who are more sophisticated express more consistent and stable political attitudes. An assumption that guides this research is that when an individual responds to a political survey question, he or she retrieves some relevant information from memory that is then used in constructing an appropriate response. Following this assumption, differences in response consistency and stability associated with political sophistication must be due in part to differences in the way political information and evaluations are organized in memory. Using procedures recently developed in cognitive psychology, this work will examine differences due to political sophistication or expertise in how political information is stored and organized in memory. Not only do the researchers believe that the political expert simply has more relevant political information stored in memory, but it also seems likely that that information is more tightly organized and more readily available to inform responses to political survey questions. By building a model of how political information and evaluations are organized in memory, and how that organization varies as a function of political sophistication, this research will help us better understand both theoretical issues in the domain of political cognition and practical issues in the assessment of public opinion.

The principal investigator will attend the sixth meeting of the European Social Cognition Network in Lisbon, Portugal to be held from September 8-11, 2004. The meeting is sponsored by the European Science Foundation. The primary objective of the trip will be to foster greater international interaction in the development and promulgation of social cognition research and to facilitate integration of rapid progress made by American and European scholars who study social-cognitive processes. The PI will make a featured presentation at the meeting and will interact in formal and informal ways with many of the approximately 80 attendees at the meeting. A special goal will be to offer constructive feedback and encouragement to young scientists in attendance at the meeting.

These objectives have clear intellectual merit, as they pertain to the integration, consolidation, and stimulation of high-quality research on a wide variety of issues in social cognition, a field that is central to social psychology more generally.

The broader impact of the proposed activity will likely be considerable and will surely extend beyond the meeting itself. Particularly with respect to the goal of enhancing international contact and interaction and encouraging the development of young scholars, conferences such as this one can have a major impact on scientific progress.

The present research focuses on motivated political perceptions, especially as they relate to civic behavior and political behavior that is relevant to the United States 2012 elections. Unlike a great deal of past research on political attitudes, the proposed work focuses on intergroup forces and emotions (such as the anger that is fueled by real or anticipated partisan debates) as they relate to perceptions of the political attitudes of others.

Importantly, the proposed research will challenge two well established empirical findings about perceptions of political attitude distributions. (1) Polarization projection: In contrast to the established idea that people project their own attitudes onto others, the proposal will test the hypothesis, derived from pilot data, that people also project their attitude extremity onto others -- such that people with more extreme political attitudes perceive more political polarization than do with people with less extreme political attitudes. This pattern can sometimes produce the opposite of simple projection. (2) Ingroup homogeneity: Past research shows that people perceive their own groups as more heterogeneous than outgroups ("They are all alike; we are unique."). However, this work will test the opposite hypothesis, that in partisan political domains, people perceive their own group's attitudes as more (not less) homogeneous than the "other side's" attitudes. ("We are united; they are divided.")

The proposed research includes four lab experiments and a longitudinal national field experiment in the context of the 2012 elections. The field experiment will examine polarization projection and ingroup homogeneity at the level of broad ideology (along with specific political issues) as they develop over time, and will examine how these patterns influence civic actions such as voting.

The proposed studies will yield at least three substantial benefits to society and to social scientists in social psychology, political science, business, law, sociology, and other areas. First, the research will make available to researchers a novel, user-friendly methodology for measuring perceived distributions that could be applied in many domains including probability, event frequency, and other, non-political attitudes. Second, the proposed studies will support a diverse research group that currently includes five PhD students and ten undergraduates, approximately half of whom are women. The proposed research will provide an important training component for these students. Finally, and critically, by fostering understanding of how people's attitudes and political identities influence their perceptions of others' political attitudes, this work can inform citizens and civic leaders about factors influencing civic behavior. Such an understanding of how people perceive political distributions would also enable policy makers to craft better and more informed policies that encourage and facilitate civic engagement.