Memory for political actors: Contrasting the use of semantic and evaluative organizational strategies

McGraw, Kathleen M.; Pinney, Neil; Neumann, D.

doi:10.1007/bf00992295

Cited by 21 publications

(21 citation statements)

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“…My students and I have approached the question of how information about candidates is structured in memory in a different way, focusing on whether memory is structured along the "stuff" or substance of politics (policies and personal attributes) or along an evaluative dimension (positive and negative). Our work indicates that substantive organization dominates (McGraw, Pinney, & Neumann, 1991;McGraw & Steenbergen, 1995), consistent with Lau's (1989a) argument that different citizens care about different "things" in politics, such as policies, personal character, group interests, etc.…”

Section: The Structure Of Political Memorysupporting

confidence: 85%

Contributions of the Cognitive Approach to Political Psychology

McGraw

2000

Political Psychology

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The social cognition tradition has had a strong impact on political psychology scholarship in the last part of the 20th century. The purpose of this essay is to review the contributions of the cognitive approach in helping political psychologists to better understand how citizens think about the world of politics. I consider research concerned with both the mental structure or representation of information about the political world and research concerned with specifying the cognitive processes that produce political judgments and opinion, and conclude that political cognition scholarship has begun to live up to its promise. In the second part of the essay, I suggest a research agenda for the future, pointing to ten directions for extending the political cognition paradigm.Political psychology is inherently interdisciplinary, engaging scholars from several disciplines who draw on diverse theoretical frameworks to inform their research. As a result, political psychology is a richly pluralistic field, a condition that has been both applauded [e.g., Greenstein's (1973) exhortation to "let many flowers bloom"] and the source of some dismay [e.g., Merelman's (1979) Humpty Dumpty metaphor of fragmentation]. Although the pluralistic nature of the discipline is perhaps its most defining quality, there has also been an ebb and flow in the paradigms that have dominated political psychology scholarship over the past half-century. McGuire (1993) characterized the history of political psychology as progressing through three "eras": the "personality and culture" era of the 1940s and 1950s, the "attitudes and voting behavior" era of the 1960s and 1970s, and the "political cognition and decision" era of the 1980s and 1990s (see also Sullivan & Rahn, in press, for a historical overview). The dominant influence on the political cognition and decision era has been the social cognition tradition from social psychology. The purpose of this essay is to review and evaluate the contributions of social and political cognition to political psychology and political science. It is organized in three sections. I begin with a bit of history and definitions in order to delineate the contours of the literature that will be reviewed. I then turn to a review and evaluation of the contributions. This review, by necessity, is intended to be illustrative rather than comprehensive. Finally, because this essay is part of the journal's Millennium Series, I take the opportunity to look to the future to suggest a research agenda for the next century. What Is Social Cognition and Why Did It Become Important in Political Psychology?Social cognition is not a specific theory or domain of inquiry, but instead is a metatheoretical set of assumptions that guides research in social psychology on a variety of substantive topics. Fiske and Taylor (1984) defined social cognition as "the study of how people make sense of other people and themselves. It focuses on how ordinary people think about people" (p. 1). Social cognition deals with three fundamental questions (...

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Section: The Structure Of Political Memorysupporting

confidence: 85%

Contributions of the Cognitive Approach to Political Psychology

McGraw

2000

Political Psychology

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“…Existing work on political awareness has interpreted what people know about politics in several ways. It affects the cognitive representation of considerations (Lusk and Judd, 1988;McGraw, Pinney, and Neumann, 1991), attention to and reception of messages (Converse, 1962(Converse, , 1990Zaller, 1990Zaller, , 1992, and ability to counter-argue communications (Krosnick, 1990;Zaller, 1990Zaller, , 1992. Here, the proposition is that the politically aware are not just citizens who happen to know more about politics, but they are citizens who are effortful processors of politics.…”

Section: Which Citizens?mentioning

confidence: 91%

Who Toes the Party Line? Cues, Values, and Individual Differences

2005

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This article explores individual differences in citizens' reliance on cues and values in political thinking. It uses experimental evidence to identify which citizens are likely to engage in heuristic processing and which citizens are likely to engage in systematic processing in developing opinions about a novel issue. The evidence suggests that political awareness crisply distinguishes between heuristic and systematic processors. The less politically aware rely on party cues and not on an issue-relevant value. As political awareness increases, reliance on party cues drops and reliance on an issuerelevant value rises. Need for cognition fails to yield clear results. The results suggest two routes to opinion formation: heuristic processing and systematic processing. Political awareness, not need for cognition, predicts which route citizens will take.

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“…However, scholars have also long noted the importance of considering a second, structural component to knowledge (see McGraw, Pinney, & Neumann, 1991;Neuman, 1981). Factual knowledge measures in communication research are usually constructed in an ad hoc manner, study by study, because they need to reflect the nature of communication content.…”

Section: Political Knowledgementioning

confidence: 99%

Communication Content and Knowledge Content Matters: Integrating Manipulation and Observation in Studying News and Discussion Learning Effects

Eveland

Schmitt

2014

J Commun

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The present study reviews problems in the political learning literature, including ambiguous causality and a lack of specificity in linking communication content to learning outcomes. As a partial solution, our study of media and discussion influence incorporates both manipulated and observed aspects of mass and interpersonal communication. Results indicate that beyond (and often more important than) experimental manipulations, selection processes in news use and variations in the content of political discussions within exposure conditions matter for political knowledge. However, findings vary in predictable ways depending on the form of knowledge-overall factual knowledge, issue-specific knowledge, or knowledge structure density. These results suggest that the process of political learning via communication is more complex than it is often treated empirically.Keywords: Political Conversation, Deliberation, Political Knowledge, Structural Knowledge, News Use, Diversity, Talk. doi:10.1111/jcom.12138 Given that individuals' direct experience with major political events and policy debates are rather limited, researchers have assumed that news media use is a primary source of political information. Therefore, political communication scholars have devoted substantial research to confirm a positive relationship between news exposure and political knowledge. And very early in the history of research on political communication, studies demonstrated that personal interactions may also be relevant channels of political information. Reviews of the research suggest that news use and political discussion are important predictors of political knowledgeCorresponding author: William P. Eveland; e-mail: eveland.6@osu.edu (see Eveland & Garrett, 2014;Schmitt-Beck & Lup, 2013), and that they should be considered to work in tandem in many cases (Southwell & Yzer, 2007).Despite the valuable insights provided by prior scholarship on the effects of news use and political discussion on political knowledge, much of the research suffers from multiple limitations related to design and measurement (see Slater, 2004;Southwell & Yzer, 2007). We begin by reviewing the evidence on communication's relationship with political knowledge, paying particular attention to the methodological limitations of typical political knowledge studies. We then introduce this study, whose design addresses some of the problems with prior research by employing experimental manipulations of news exposure and public affairs discussion in small group settings in which some members have, and some have not, had exposure to relevant news prior to discussion. Just as importantly, the study goes beyond standard experimental and survey procedures by incorporating detailed observational data-content analysis of face-to-face conversation transcripts and computer tracking of online news use-to provide a more precise understanding of the specific aspects of news use and discussion that produce both content and structural aspects of public affairs knowledge. Thus, as advoca...

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Memory for political actors: Contrasting the use of semantic and evaluative organizational strategies

Cited by 21 publications

References 24 publications

Contributions of the Cognitive Approach to Political Psychology

Contributions of the Cognitive Approach to Political Psychology

Who Toes the Party Line? Cues, Values, and Individual Differences

Communication Content and Knowledge Content Matters: Integrating Manipulation and Observation in Studying News and Discussion Learning Effects

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