POLS 1140

Models of Political Cognition

Updated Mar 19, 2026

Thursday

Plan for today

  • Finish up discussion of political misinformation

  • Political Cognition J. Zaller and Feldman (1992)

  • J. R. Zaller (1992) Receive-Accept-Sample

  • Begin Lodge and Taber (2013)

Announcements

  • Reading Reflections:

    • 1st by Feb 24
    • 2nd by March 19
    • 3rd by Apr 30 (Optional, replace lowest grade)

  • First Term Paper: March 10

  • Revisions to group projects

Do you believe in Miracles?

Gymnastics is overrated

Class Attendance Survey

Thank you for showing up!

Misinformation

Motivating questions

  • What is misinformation?
  • Why do people become misinformed?
  • Can we correct misinformation?
  • Are reported misperceptions sincere?

What is misinformation

  • James H. Kuklinski et al. (2000): “People are misinformed when they confidently hold wrong beliefs”

Rumors

  • Lack evidentiary standards

  • May turn out to be true

Conspiracy beliefs

  • Explain events via hidden, powerful actors

  • Often tied to dispositional predispositions

Misinformation

  • Unambiguously false

  • Confidently held

Intrepetation:

  • The people who give the most inflated, factually wrong answers are often the most confident.

Origins of misinformation?

Jerit and Zhao (2020) (pp 79-81) review some psychological explanations, emphasizing different cognitive motivations:

  • Accuracy motives \(\to\) correct decisions
  • Directional motives \(\to\) consistent decisions

Misinformation is a form of motivated reasoning reflecting a directional desire to maintain consistency with ones’ prior beliefs.

  • Directional motives are often the default in politics.

  • Identity-linked issues activate them most strongly.

Correcting Misinformation

  • Extensive but theoretically fragmented.

  • Depends on the issue, correction, and individuals

    • Can you find concrete examples? (p. 83)

  • What counts as success?

    • Changed beliefs?
    • Changed attitudes?
    • Both?

  • Possibility for corrections to backfire

Backfire Effects

  • What does it mean for a correction to backfire?

  • Why might corrections fail?

    • Correction repeats misinfo, increasing salience
    • Correction threatens worldview/identity triggering directional motives

  • Compare backfire effects in Nyhan and Reifler (2015) to replication study Haglin (2017)

Nyhan and Reifler (2015)

Haglin (2017)

Measuring misinformation

  • Conceptually, misinformation involves confidently holding false beliefs

    • But many studies fail to measure confidence

  • Some scholars have proposed that misinformation is a form of expressive responding or partisan cheerleading and that partisan gaps disapper when we incentivize correct responses (Bullock et al. 2015)

    • If partisan gaps disappear under incentives, are we observing misinformation — or expressive identity signaling?

  • What do we make of the directions for further research on p. 88?

Broader Implications:

Think in terms of larger questions of citizen competence.

Why does it matter if citizens:

  • are confidently wrong?
  • are strategically expressive
  • update their factual beliefs, but not their subsequent interpretations?
  • only correct their beliefs when their identity is not threatened?

Political Cognition

Overview

  • This is one of these topics that could be an entire course (or two)

  • Introduce two paradigms for thinking about political cognition

    • Receive-Accept-Sample (Zaller and Feldman 1992, Zaller 1992)

    • Dual-process models of cognition (Taber and Lodge )

Background

  • How to citizens make sense of a complex world?

    • They don’t (Converse 1964)

  • They rely on cues and heuristics

    • Often, but not only from elites

  • They construct attitudes which reflect a mix of:

    • Predispositions, frames, schemas

    • Salient considerations

Theories of the middle range

Sociological theory, if it is to advance significantly, must proceed on these interconnected planes: (1) by developing special theories from which to derive hypotheses that can be empirically investigated and (2) by evolving a progressively more general conceptual scheme that is adequate to consolidate groups of special theories - Merton (1968)

Additional Readings

Some additional readings you might consider for your reading reflections

Cues, Heuristics, Schema

  • Mondak (1993) “Source Cues and Policy Approval: The Cognitive Dynamics of Public Support for the Reagan Agenda.”

  • James H. Kuklinski and Hurley (1994) “On Hearing and Interpreting Political Messages: A Cautionary Tale of Citizen Cue-Taking.”

  • Kam (2005) “Who Toes the Party Line? Cues, Values, and Individual Differences.”

  • J. H. Kuklinski, Luskin, and Bolland (1991) “Where Is the Schema? Going Beyond the”S” Word in Political Psychology.”

  • Lau and Redlawsk (2001) “Advantages and Disadvantages of Cognitive Heuristics in Political Decision Making.”

Core Values, Moral Foundations

  • Feldman (1988) “Structure and Consistency in Public Opinion: The Role of Core Beliefs and Values.”

  • Evans and Neundorf (2020) “Core Political Values and the Long-Term Shaping of Partisanship.”

  • Weber and Federico (2013) “Moral Foundations and Heterogeneity in Ideological Preferences: Moral Foundations and Heterogeneity in Ideological Preferences.”

  • Hatemi, Crabtree, and Smith (2019) “Ideology Justifies Morality: Political Beliefs Predict Moral Foundations.”

Motivated Reasoning, Hot Cognition, Emotion

  • Taber and Lodge (2006) “Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs.”

  • Coronel et al. (2012) “Remembering and Voting: Theory and Evidence from Amnesic Patients.”

  • Valentino et al. (2011) “Election Night’s Alright for Fighting: The Role of Emotions in Political Participation.”

  • Funck and Lau (2024) “A Meta‐analytic Assessment of the Effects of Emotions on Political Information Search and Decision‐making.”

Zaller and Feldman 1992

Take a few moments to review

  • What’s the research question
  • What’s the theoretical framework
  • What’s the empirical design
  • What are the results
  • What are the conclusions

What’s the research question

What’s the research question

Why are survey responses:

  • So unstable over time?

  • So sensitive to question wording and order?

Do citizens:

What’s the theoretical framework

Background:

  • Zaller and Feldman address research on response instability (Converse 1964) and response effects (question wording/order effects)

  • Reject the assumption that citizens possess fixed, survey-ready attitudes. Attitudes are not revealed — they are constructed.

“… people are using the questionnaire to decide what their”attitudes” are (Bishop, Oldendick, and Tuchfarber 1984; Zaller 1984; Feldman 1990).” (p. 582)

  • Citizens formulate responses to surveys from the top of their head

What’s the theoretical framework

Three axioms:

Axiom 1: The ambivalence axiom. Most people have competing considerations on most issues.

What’s the theoretical framework

Three axioms:

Axiom 1: The ambivalence axiom.

Axiom 2: The response axiom. Survey answers reflect an average of the considerations currently salient.

What’s the theoretical framework

Three axioms:

Axiom 1: The ambivalence axiom.

Axiom 2: The response axiom.

Axiom 3: The accessibility axiom. Salience depends on stochastic sampling — recently activated ideas are more likely to be used.

What’s the theoretical framework

  • Zaller and Feldman’s (1992) framework provide the microfoundations for the Recieve-Accept-Sample model of mass opinion developed by Zaller (1992)

  • Rather than read two chapters, we read one article and rely on me to flesh out the RAS model this week and next

Preview

Concepts

  • Consideration: Any reason that might induce an individual to decide a political issue one way or another.

  • Political Awareness: “the extent to which an individual pays attention to politics and understands what he or she has encountered.” (Zaller 1992, p. 21) generally measured by standard PK-scales

  • Predispositions: stable, individual-level traits that regulate the acceptance or non-acceptance of the political communications the person receives” (Zaller 1992 p. 22)

  • Ambivalence: A person is ambivalent when they hold multiple, conflicting considerations

    • Bipolar vs Bipartite scales

What’s the empirical design

  • Goal: Directly observe “considerations”

  • Two-wave panel data from the 1987 Pilot Study of the NES

  • Outcomes: Close-ended policy items (job guarantees, government services, and aid to Blacks)

  • Paired with:

    • Retrospective Probes (Provide answer than explain)
    • Prospective (List considerations then provide answer)

  • Key move: Link open ended considerations to close ended responses

  • Responses coded a number of ways (p. 589) to capture “ambivalence”

Retrospective Probes:

  • Retrospective: “designed to find out what exactly was on people’s minds at the moment of response”

Still thinking about the question you just answered, I’d like you to tell me what ideas came to mind as you were answering that question. Exactly what things went through your mind. (Any others?)

Prospective Probes

  • Stop and Think: “designed to induce people to search their memories more carefully than they ordinarily would for pertinent considerations.”

Before telling me how you feel about this, could you tell me what kinds of things come to mind when you think about government making sure that every person has a good standard of living? (Any others?)

Now, what comes to mind when you think about letting each person get ahead on their own? (Any others?)

What are the results

What are the results

Model purports to explain a lot

What are the results

Let’s condense these into the following claims:

  • People often hold conflicting considerations on issues (Ambivalence)

  • Total considerations increases with political knowledge (Reception)

  • People form responses from considerations at the top of their head (Response)

  • More consistent considerations = More stable responses (Ambivalence, Response, Resistance)

  • Political awareness moderates the effect of survey form

People often hold conflicting considerations on issues

People often hold conflicting considerations on issues

Total considerations increases with political knowledge

Total considerations increases with political knowledge

People form responses from considerations at the top of their head

People form responses from considerations at the top of their head

More consistent considerations = More stable responses

More consistent considerations = More stable responses

Political awareness moderates the effect of survey form

Political awareness moderates the effect of survey form

Summary of the results

  • Unstable attitudes reflect underlying ambivalence

  • Describe attitudes as the result of a probabilistic search reflecting:

    • Effects of ideas recently made salient
    • Effects of thought on attitude reports

What are the conclusions

  • As we’ll see, the analyses here provide the foundation for the RAS model of mass opinion

    • Elite driven

    • Individuals in context

    • But perhaps ignores the role of groups and issues

Receive-Accept-Sample

What’s the theoretical framework

  • Zaller and Feldman’s (1992) framework provide the microfoundations for the Receive-Accept-Sample model of mass opinion developed by Zaller (1992)

Four Axioms of RAS

The RAS Model:

Opinion statements, are the outcome of a process in which:

  • People receive new information

  • Decide whether to accept it based on predispositions, prior considerations, contextual knowledge

  • Sample at the moment of answering questions by averaging across considerations

\[Pr(Liberal)= \frac{L}{L+C}\]

  • “The probability of a liberal response equals the proportion of accessible considerations that are liberal.”

Implications of the Model

  • People are often ambivalent on issues

  • Ambivalence is a function of political awareness

  • Response effects reflect changes in the accessibility of different considerations

  • Persuasion depends on both reception and acceptance

  • The flow of information matters (one-sided vs two-sided)

People are often ambivalent on issues

  • Politics is complex

  • People are often aware of arguments for and against particular issues

Ambivalence is a function of political awareness

  • The politically aware encounter more information but accept less

  • The political unaware encounter less, but may reject more inconsistently

Response effects

The accessibility axiom is consistent with “response effects” like:

  • Race of interviewer effects

  • Question order effects

  • Question wording effects

Each alter the saliency or accessibility of different considerations

Persuasion depends on both reception and acceptance

\[Pr(Change) = Pr(Reception)\times Pr(Acceptance|Reception)\]

Hard vs Easy Learning

The flow of information matters

  • RAS is a largely a top-down model, where people draw considerations from elite discourse.

  • RAS predicts change when the flow of information changes

  • The nature of changes should differ based

    • Characteristics of individuals (political sophistication)
    • The nature of information flow (one-sided vs two-sided)

The flow of information matters

Changes in the Information Flow

Lead to Changes in Attitudes about Vietnam War

Summary: The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion

Zaller (1992) articulate’s the Receive-Accept-Sample model of mass opinion

  • People receive information from the world
  • Decide whether to accept this information into their store of considerations
  • Form attitudes by sampling from their available considerations

Summary: The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion

The RAS model implies that

  • People are often ambivalent on issues

    • Possess competing considerations on issues

  • Ambivalence is a function of political awareness

    • Low awareness: Few considerations
    • Moderate awareness: Most ambivalence
    • High awareness: Structured and consistent

  • Response effects reflect changes in the accessibility of different considerations

  • Persuasion depends on both reception and acceptance

    • Political awareness increases reception, but decreases acceptance

  • The flow of information matters

    • One sided vs Two sided

Dual Process Models of Cognition

Beyond Receive-Accept-Sample

  • RAS is a “useful” model
    • It appears to explain a lot with relatively few assumptions
  • RAS is a “simple” model
    • Lot’s of mechanisms left unexplained
  • RAS is a survey response and opinion formation
  • Taber and Lodge make deeper claims about cognition, motivation, and evaluation

Dual Process Models of Cognition

Dual process models distinguish between systems of cognition that are fast and slow

  • System 1: Fast, Automatic, sub/pre-conscious, parallel, long-term memory
  • System 2: Slow, Deliberate, conscious, serial, working memory
  • T&L: In politics, System 2 is often downstream of and justifying System 1 (rationalization)

The Driving Analogy

Taber and Lodge (2013)

Taber and Lodge (2013) use this dual process framework to argue citizens

  • Rationalizing, not rational
  • Influenced by subtle/implicit cues
  • Rely on a Likeability Heuristic (System 1)

Political judgment is driven by fast affective processes that bias what becomes “thinkable”; conscious reasoning often defends the result.

Taber and Lodge (2013)

The fundamental assumption driving our model is that both affective and cognitive reactions to external and internal events are triggered unconsciously, followed spontaneously by the spreading of activation through associative pathways which link thoughts to feelings, so that very early events, even those that remain invisible to conscious awareness, set the direction for all subsequent processing (p. 18)

Taber and Lodge (2013)

The fundamental assumption driving our model is that both affective and cognitive reactions to external and internal events are triggered unconsciously, followed spontaneously by the spreading of activation through associative pathways which link thoughts to feelings, so that very early events, even those that remain invisible to conscious awareness, set the direction for all subsequent processing (p. 18)

The Model

The Model

  1. Affect first (hot cognition)

  2. Affect biases retrieval (contagion + motivated bias)

  3. Deliberation often rationalizes (evaluation + deliberation)

Key Concepts:

  • Early/implicit: hot cognition, affect priming, spreading activation

  • Biasing mechanisms: affect contagion, motivated bias, affect transfer

  • Downstream/explicit: argument construction, deliberation, rationalization

  • Dynamics: attitude updating, belief updating

Hypotheses

  • Hot cognition: all political objects have positive or negative valence

  • Automaticity: attitudes and behavior can be influenced by information processes that occur outside conscious awareness

  • Affect transfer: affective states and primes can influence current thoughts

  • Affect contagion: affective states and primes can influence information retrieval

  • Motivated reasoning prior affect will bias attention and processing of information toward those prior beliefs

Seven Postulates (p.34)

As you read/review this article, try to find examples/evidence of the following:

  • Automaticity:

  • Hot cognition:

  • Somatic embodiment:

  • Primacy of affect

  • Online updating

  • Affect transfer

  • Affect contagion

Hot Cognition

  • Automatic feelings associated with an event or object

  • Positive or negative

  • Preceed and shape more “rational” deliberative thoughts

Who you got

Todorov et al. 2005

inferences of competence based solely on facial appearance predicted the outcomes of U.S. congressional elections better than chance

Spreading Activation

  • What comes to mind when you think of former president Barack Obama?

Spreading Activation

  • Illustration of hypothetical, white, Republican voter’s beliefs about Obama

  • When think of Obama, these additional connections are activated

  • The stronger the connections, more likely they are to reach consciousness

Affect Transfer, Priming and Contagion

Affect Contagion

An affective contagion effect, such that an unnoticed positive prime promotes positive thoughts and inhibits negative thoughts, while an unnoticed negative prime promotes negative and inhibits positive thoughts. (p. 136)

Affect Contagion

Affect Contagion

Simple cartoon faces flashed outside the conscious awareness of experimental subjects significantly and consistently altered their thoughts and considerations on a political issue, with effects greater in size to those of prior attitudes on the issue (p. 142)

Motivated Reasoning

  • Ask participants to rate the strength of equivalent arguments

  • People with strong priors, greater knowledge, rate congruent arguments as stronger because retrieval/counterarguing are affect-biased (disconfirmation / counterarguing).

Taber and Lodge (2013) - The Rationalizing Voter

  • Dual process model of cognition

    • System 1: Fast, automatic, outside consciousness (How they actually make many decisions)

    • System 2: Slow, deliberative, conscious thought (How we think citizens should make political decisions)

  • Affect proceeds and shapes attitudes and behavior

Seven Postulates (p.34)

Information processing is

  • Automaticity: Priming studies

  • Hot cognition: “Thin slice” cadidate evaulations

  • Somatic embodiment: Iowa gambling experiment

  • Primacy of affect fMRI studies showing affect proceeds conscious thought

  • Online updating Candidate evaluation and recall studies

  • Affect transfer “Sunny day” studies

  • Affect contagion Long run consequences of hot cognition and affect transfer

Critiques

  • Implicit vs Explicit attitudes

  • Are priming effects short lived?

    • Are they real?

  • External (and internal validity)

  • Positive/Negative affect vs Discrete Emotions

References

Ansolabehere, Stephen, Jonathan Rodden, and James M Snyder. 2008. “The strength of issues: Using multiple measures to gauge preference stability, ideological constraint, and issue voting.” American Political Science Review 102 (2): 215–32.
Bullock, John G, Alan S Gerber, Seth J Hill, and Gregory Huber. 2015. “Partisan bias in factual beliefs about politics.” In Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 10:519–78.
Converse, P E. 1964. “The nature of belief systems in mass publics.” In Ideology and discontent, edited by D Apter. Free Press.
Coronel, J C, M C Duff, D E Warren, K D Federmeier, B D Gonsalves, D Tranel, and N J Cohen. 2012. “Remembering and Voting: Theory and Evidence from Amnesic Patients.” American Journal of Political Science.
Evans, Geoffrey, and Anja Neundorf. 2020. “Core political values and the long-term shaping of partisanship.” British Journal of Political Science 50 (4): 1263–81.
Feldman, S. 1988. “Structure and consistency in public opinion: The role of core beliefs and values.” American Journal of Political Science, 416–40.
Funck, Amy S, and Richard R Lau. 2024. “A meta‐analytic assessment of the effects of emotions on political information search and decision‐making.” American Journal of Political Science 68 (3): 891–906.
Haglin, Kathryn. 2017. “The limitations of the backfire effect.” Research & Politics 4 (3): 205316801771654.
Hatemi, Peter K, Charles Crabtree, and Kevin B Smith. 2019. “Ideology Justifies Morality: Political Beliefs Predict Moral Foundations.” American Journal of Political Science 63 (4): 788–806.
Jerit, Jennifer, and Yangzi Zhao. 2020. “Political misinformation.” Annual Review of Political Science 23 (1): 77–94.
Kam, C D. 2005. “Who toes the party line? Cues, values, and individual differences.” Political Behavior 27 (2): 163–82.
Kuklinski, J H, R C Luskin, and J Bolland. 1991. “Where is the schema? Going beyong the‘ s’ word in political psychology.” American Political Science Review 85 (4): 1341–56.
Kuklinski, James H, and Norman L Hurley. 1994. “On Hearing and Interpreting Political Messages: A Cautionary Tale of Citizen Cue-Taking.” Journal of Politics 56 (3): 729–51.
Kuklinski, James H, Paul J Quirk, Jennifer Jerit, David Schwieder, and Robert F Rich. 2000. “Misinformation and the Currency of Democratic Citizenship.” The Journal of Politics 62 (3): 790–816.
Lau, R R, and D P Redlawsk. 2001. “Advantages and disadvantages of cognitive heuristics in political decision making.” American Journal of Political Science 45 (4): 951–71.
Lodge, Milton, and Charles S Taber. 2013. The rationalizing voter. Cambridge University Press.
Mondak, Jeffrey J. 1993. “Source Cues and Policy Approval: The Cognitive Dynamics of Public support for the Reagan Agenda.” American Journal of Political Science, 186–212.
Nyhan, Brendan, and Jason Reifler. 2015. “Does correcting myths about the flu vaccine work? An experimental evaluation of the effects of corrective information.” Vaccine 33 (3): 459–64.
Taber, Charles S, and Milton Lodge. 2006. “Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs.” American Journal of Political Science 50 (3): 755–69.
Valentino, Nicholas A, Ted Brader, Eric W Groenendyk, Krysha Gregorowicz, and Vincent L Hutchings. 2011. “Election Night’s Alright for Fighting: The Role of Emotions in Political Participation.” The Journal of Politics 73 (1): 156–70.
Weber, Christopher R, and Christopher M Federico. 2013. “Moral foundations and heterogeneity in ideological preferences: Moral foundations and heterogeneity in ideological preferences.” Political Psychology 34 (1): 107–26.
Zaller, John R. 1992. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zaller, John, and Stanley Feldman. 1992. “A simple theory of the survey response: Answering questions versus revealing preferences.” American Political Science Review, 579–616.