Uncertainty and Campaigns

The Psychological Mechanism Behind Campaign-Induced Priming

Bibliographic Data

ID6179576
AuthorsDrexel A Peterson (0000-0002-5673-4826, Iowa State University, corresponding author), David A M Peterson
Year2015
Volume43
Issue1
Pages109-143
Publication date2015-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Politics Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1532-673X • E-ISSN: 1552-3373
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1532673x14535075
OpenAlexW2323342014
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited45

Campaigns change how some people vote. How campaigns have this effect is less well understood. The prevailing view is that these effects occur by changing the content of voters’ attitudes such as partisanship or issue positions (persuasion) and by changing the weights voters applied to these determinants of vote choice (priming). Recent research has challenged this view and suggests that the support for these priming and persuasion effects is overstated. Unfortunately, no research directly specifies and tests the specific psychological mechanism responsible for campaign priming. In this article, I draw on the differences in the forms of attitude strength and demonstrate that changes in citizens’ uncertainty are responsible for these effects. The results suggest that persuasion and changes in uncertainty (but not ambivalence or importance) are responsible for the changes in voters’ decisions during the campaign. Substantively, the largest effects occur because of changes in the uncertainty voters have about the nature of the candidates’ character traits

Ambivalence · Attitude change · Epistemology · Motivated reasoning · Persuasion · Political science · Politics · Cultural Differences and Values · Media Influence and Health · Psychology · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology