Showdown at the OK Corral: Competing Theories of Political Judgment

• In Event: Persuading the Public

Abstract

Several years ago the authors of Affective Intelligence Theory (Marcus, et al, 2000), Hot Cognition (Lodge and Taber, 2013), and Partisan Ambivalence Theory (Lavine, et al, 2012 ), presented a joint paper laying out the similarities, and differences, between their various approaches (Johnson et al, 2014). The crux of the disagreement between the three approaches is what motivates deep, even-handed, systematic, effortful, “System 2" processing. The implicit assumption underlying both AIT and PAT is that we should care about the answer to this question because deliberate System 2 processing will yield better decisions. In contrast, Lau and Redlawsk’s (2006) information processing model sees little need or value in deliberative System 2 processing: It rarely occurs among the mass public, they argue, and when it does occur, it is more likely to result in lower, not higher, quality decisions.
To test these competing theories, we designed a straightforward panel experiment simulating a presidential election campaign involving both a simulated primary election and a general election where the champions of the two parties face off. To test hot cognition, positive, negative, or neutral implicit affect is randomly associated with the three competing candidates within the subject’s party’s primary. To test affective intelligence, between the primary and general elections we conducted an incidental emotions manipulation by randomly asking subjects to describe a situation that made them feel enthusiastic, angry or anxious. And to manipulate partisan ambivalence, we associated either negative implicit affect with the in-party candidate, or positive implicit affect with the out-party candidate, during the general election campaign. Results will address whether any of these theories can predict voter behavior during something approaching the hurly-burly incredibly rich information environment of an actual presidential election campaign.

Authors

• Tessa M. Ditonto, Iowa State University

• Richard R. Lau, Rutgers University, New Brunswick

• Jamel Love