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The Receive-Accept-Sample Model ---Do Political Attitudes Exist? 16/11/2015 Content Introduction The 1987 Pilot Study The Model Deductions Conclusion Introduction Consideration: 1.Any reason that might induce an individual to decide a political issue one way or the other. 2. A compound of cognition and affect. Two types of political messages: Persuasive messages: arguments or images providing a reason for taking a position or point of view; if accepted by an individual, they become considerations. Cueing messages: carried in elite discourse, consist of “contextual information” about the ideological or partisan implications of a persuasive messages. They enable citizens to perceive relationships between the persuasive messages they receive and their political predispositions, which in turn permits them to respond critically to the persuasive messages. 2017/5/24 Introduction Reception Axiom Resistance Axiom The RAS Model Accessibility Axiom Response 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 – in a word, to receive – People to resist politicaltend messages argumentsthat thatissue. are concerning inconsistent with their political predispositions, but they do so only to the The more recently a extent that they possess the consideration has been contextual information called to mind or thought necessary to perceive a about, the less time it takes relationship between the to retrieve that consideration message and their or related considerations predispositions. from memory and bring them to answer the top of the head Individuals for by use. survey questions averaging across the considerations that are immediately salient or accessible to them. 1987 Pilot Study 450 persons The 1987 Pilot Study 357 persons A series of standard issue questions on federal job guarantees, the proper level of government services, and aid to blacks Still thinking about 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? Without waiting for the respondent to answer, they asked the respondent to discuss particular phrases and ideas in the question. 1987 Pilot Study Retrospective probes: 1.After people had answered the question 2.To elicit a sort of “memory dump” Stop-and-think probes: 1.Before respondents could answer the question 2.To induce people to think more carefully 3.To elicit the range of considerations as nondirectively as possible 1987 Pilot Study Limitations 1. Different rate 2. The difficulty in sharply distinguishing one “consideration” from another 3. Small sample size 4. Less politically aware respondents drop out of surveys at disproportionately high rates 5. The unusually short time The Model A1 Reception Axiom Persuasive messages + Cueing messages Reasons: 1. concerned with how individuals acquire information from the environment and convert it into opinion statements. 2. survey measures that capture cognitive engagement with politics outperform measures of affective engagement in explaining most aspects of public opinion. 2017/5/24 The Model Cognitive engagement Political attentiveness or political awareness a general measure knowledge It does not directly test individuals’ information about or attention to a particular issue at a particular time but more narrowly focused measures of awareness to intellectual engagement with foreign policy issues or race policy issues. A1 indicates nothing about the sources of the political communications that shape mass opinion. All that is claimed in A1 is that reception of politically relevant communications is positively associated with intellectual engagement with a given issue. 2017/5/24 The Model A2 Resistance Axiom “ • The probability of individuals acquiring cueing information depends on their levels of awareness of each given issue. • A1 and A2 together imply that the likelihood of resisting persuasive communications that are inconsistent with one’s political predispositions rises with a person’s level of political attentiveness. • This postulate makes no allowance for citizens to think, reason, or deliberate about politics. The Model A2 Resistance Axiom Converse maintains that individuals respond critically to the political ideas they encounter, they rely on contextual information from elites about how different ideas “go together” and thereby “constrain” one another. • Psychological literature on opinion: ➡McGuire: people tend to accept their opinion leadership more readily. The more abstract the link between a predisposition and a related policy issue, the greater the amount or obscurity of knowledge necessary to perceive the linkage 2017/5/24 The Model A3 Accessibility Axiom • The longer it has been since a consideration or related idea has been FORGOTTEN activated, the less likely it is to be accessible at the top of the head. A long unused set of considerations may be completely inaccessible. The Model A4 Response Axiom Persons who have been asked a survey question do not normally canvass their minds for all considerations relevant to the given issue; rather, they answer the question on the basis of whatever considerations are accessible” at the top of the head”. 2017/5/24 The Model A4 Response Axiom Example: Four-stage model ------ Tourangeau and Rasinski (1) interpret the question to determine what the issue before them really is (2) canvass their minds for relevant thoughts (3) integrate their thoughts into a coherent opinion (4) map that opinion onto response options available in the question. 2017/5/24 The Model Survey response Opinion statement Receive now information 2017/5/24 Decide whether to accept it Sample at the moment of answering questions Deductions D1 Ambivalence Deduction • A2 Resistance Axiom • Citizens will be unlikely to exhibit high levels of resistance to arguments that are inconsistent with their values, interests, or other predispositions. Deductions 1. Make a count of the number of opposing remarks by a person that can be paired against each other. Any conflict score above zero indicates that the person experiences some degree of internal conflict on the given issue. 2. Make a count of the number of times people spontaneously express ambivalence or difficulty in making up their minds “I see merit in both sides”, “that’s a tough question”; “depends”; “both are valid points 3. Star codes indicate a directional thrust to the comment, but also some ambivalence with respect to that direction. “Although I think X, I nevertheless favors Y.” 4. A count of the ambivalence indices on which a person scored + 1 of higher. Deductions Deductions D2 the Response Axiom leads us to expect a strong relationship between the responses people make to closed-ended policy questions and the ideas that are at the top of their heads as they do so. Because it claims that people answer survey questions on the basis of the ideas that are most salient to them at the moment of response. Deductions Deductions D3 Variability in people’s response to survey questions People form conflicting considerations on most issues, and base their survey responses on whichever of these considerations happen to be at the top of the head at the moment of response. The model also has strong implications for the structure of this response instability so long as the flow of information in the political environment remains steady. Deductions D4 Response instability consists almost exclusively of chance variation around a largely stable central tendency from A1, more awareness persons are more likely to possess the cueing messages necessary to respond to incoming information in a critical manner. They are more likely than less informed persons to reject information that conflicts with their values and to accept only information that is consistent. Deductions D5 Better informed persons are more likely to possess the cueing information necessary to reject communication inconsistent with their values. Test of D5: Respondents were asked to state their position on a seven-point scale. Then, in a final stage, they were asked to indicate the position of several prominent political figures or groups on this scale. Deductions Deductions D6 D5 will make it more likely that they will form considerations that are homogeneously consistent with their values. Test of D6: Began by classifying each person’s considerations as “consistent” with their underlying ideology or “inconsistent”. Deductions Deductions D7 Then, the homogeneity will lead, inter alia, to greater response stability over time. The more political aware persons exhibit less random instability in their closed-ended attitude reports. (Dean and Moran, 1977; Feldman, 1989; Zaller, 1991) Deductions D8 Attitudes stability should be weaker for issues on which partisan divisions are hazy or nonexistent, because in such cases the public gets few message cues. Deductions D9 The degree of public attentiveness to an issue is generally high, it follows that attitude statements on this issue will exhibit less variability, all else equal, than will attitude statements on a more remote or abstract issue. Deductions D10 Individuals who care more strongly about issues, or who are members of what Converse has called “issue publics”, will pay more attention to issues and hence exhibit less chance variability in their attitude statements about these issues. Deductions D11 People’s responses to particular questions may vary stochastically around their equilibrium points, but the equilibrium points themselves should remain constant as long as the environment remains stable. D12 changes in the directional thrust of people’s open-ended remarks are associated with changes in the direction of their closed-ended remarks Deductions person who makes mostly liberal comments when discussing a policy issue at the first interview and mostly conservative remarks at the second review would be expected to change her closed-ended response from liberal to conservatives as well. Attitude2 = b0 + b1 Attitude1 + b2 Considerations1 + b3 Considerations2 Deductions D13 Deductions People who mention an equal number of opposing considerations should be stable only as often as could be expected by chance along, which is 50 percent of the time. Deductions Deductions Deductions D14 A3 Accessibility Axiom Different question orders may then bring different considerations to the top of people’s memory heaps, thereby increasing chances that they will affect responses to subsequent questions. Remain at the top of a heap of idea in one’s memory, readily available for use. D15 The intrusion of unexpected or novel considerations into the question-answering process would not be expected to affect all respondents equally Deductions Some people may possess considerations that are so consistent in support of one side of an issue that the admission of additional considerations should have no effect. Others, may be deeply ambivalent on the issue may possess a roughly even balance of considerations for and against the issue. the persons who should be most strongly affected by artificial changes in question order. Deductions D16 – D18 People who reported that they had mixed feelings about an issue were quite susceptible to question-order effects, or what call “carryover effects”: Race of interviewer; Reference groups; Priming effects. The mechanism responsible for each of these effects is the tendency for people to respond to question at least partly on the basis of whatever ideas are immediately salient to them. Deductions Race of interviewer Shortly after 1986, New York Times poll found that President Reagan’s approval rate among black was 37 percent, a Washington Post poll estimated that black approval of Reagan was only 23 percent. While the Times followed normal interview procedures, the Post used black interviewers who informed their black respondents that they would be participating in a study of the attitudes of black Americans. Deductions Reference groups In a classic social psychology experiment, Charters and Newcomb (1958) found that Catholics were more likely to state attitudes that were consistent with Church doctrine, their religion was made salient to them. Salience was achieved by having a priest make a brief appearance in the room near the time at which the questionnaire was administered. Deductions “Priming effects” of television news Iyengar (1991) has shown that TV news often functions to make ideas more accessible for use in answering questions about the attribution of social and political responsibility. Deductions D19 Priming effects may be explained by the assumption that individuals do not typically possess “just one attitude” toward issues, but serval opinions, and that which of these potential opinions they report depends on the information that has been most recently made salient to them. Deductions D20 The type of priming or question-order effect is also explainable from the RAS model. Ideological orientations made salient to them just prior to answering policy items, those respondents who have such an orientation are more likely to rely on it as a consideration in formulating responses to subsequent policy questions, thereby making these responses more strongly correlated with their ideological positions and hence also more ideologically consistent with one another. Deductions D21 With increases in political awareness, come increases in critical capacity and hence in the internal consistency of the considerations one forms. More politically aware persons should be expected to be more non centrist or extreme in their attitude reports. Deductions D22 If political awareness is a cause of extreme attitude reports, individuals can report extreme attitudes more quickly with less hesitation before answering, than less extreme ones. Reason: the Accessibility Axiom contends that considerations that have been more recently activated take less time to locate and call to the top of the head for use. Political awareness ought to be associated with more recent activation of one’s political thoughts and hence with quicker reporting of one’s attitudes. More extreme the attitudes, the more quickly reported. Deductions D23 & D24 Stability of response over time, and strength of correlation between the response and related attitudes, which may be called predictive reliability. Both would be expected to be higher among respondents engaging in the stop-and-think procedure than among those answering questions in the normal fashion. Response = b0 + b1Form + b2Ideology + b3Form * Ideology Deductions Deductions Conclusion Ambivalence Deduction which asserts that individuals feel differently toward different aspects of most issues; and the Response Axiom, which asserts that individuals base their survey responses on the considerations that are most immediately salient to them. Conclusion Individuals do not normally have a single, fixed attitude on issues - is probably the more unfamiliar and hence potentially controversial. Individuals do not typically possess “true attitudes” on issues, as conventional theorizing assumes, but a series of partially independent and often inconsistent ones. Person’s attitudes is expressed at different times depends on which has been made most immediately salient by chance and the details of questionnaire construction, especially the order and framing of questions. Reference J.Zaller(1992), The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion, Cambridge University Press Thank you