POLITICAL SCIENCE 261
POLITICAL BEHAVIOR SEMINAR:
Information, Communication, and Influence
Spring 2010
Robert Huckfeldt
[email protected]
What is the role of the citizen in democratic politics? Are citizens capable of making
informed choices, or do the demands of citizenship exceed individual capacities? How should
we assess the political expertise of citizens and electorates? How are the answers to these
questions transformed, depending on whether citizens make their choices as independent
individuals or as interdependent actors who depend on one another for information and
guidance?
This seminar addresses the individual capacities and collective potential of citizens to
play meaningful roles in their own governance. These questions have been addressed from a
number of perspectives, but during the past 50 years there has been an explosion of efforts aimed
at an empirical understanding of the political behavior of democratic electorates. Such research
has produced an immense impact, not only on our understanding of political behavior, but also
on our expectations of democratic politics and democratic citizenship. The seminar focuses on
recent theoretical developments in the study of political behavior, with particular emphasis on the
cognitive revolution in understanding information, communication, and influence..
Several issues and themes continue to appear and reappear: the availability,
acquisition, and processing of political information; the dynamics that underlie citizen decisionmaking; the relationship of individuals to aggregates; alternative conceptions of citizen
rationality. Our goal is to examine the manner in which the various perspectives toward political
behavior shed light on these issues, as well as the ways in which the perspectives encourage
investigators to ask different questions and engage in alternative conceptualizations of political
processes and phenomena.
Course Requirements
Students must read assigned material prior to class meetings, as well as sending the instructor a
weekly 1 to 2 page (on-the-fly) email that responds to each set of seminar readings. (This email is
due no later than 9 P.M on the evening before the seminar.) Students must also participate fully
in seminar discussions, and each student must provide an oral introduction to the material
covered in one of the week’s seminars. Finally, students must submit a research paper by the end
of the quarter.
Due Dates
1. Weekly memos must arrive as e-mail on the instructor’s account no later than 9 PM on the
evening before the seminar.
2. An abstract for the research design or paper is due on January 29.
3. The paper is due on the first day of finals week.
Readings
2
Books for sale
The following books are available for purchase.
Alan S. Zuckerman (ed.). 2005. The Social Logic of Politics. Temple University Press.
Philip E. Tetlock. 2006. Expert Political Judgment. Princeton University Press.
Ziva Kunda. 1999. Social Cognition. MIT Press.
Outline for the Quarter
1. The citizenship problem
P. Converse. 1964. “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics.” In David E. Apter (ed.),
Ideology and Discontent. New York: Free Press.
A. Downs. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper and Row. Chapters
11-14.
H. Simon. 1985. “Human Nature in Politics: The Dialogue of Psychology with Political
Science,” American Political Science Review 79: 293-304.
P. Sniderman. 1993. "The New Look in Public Opinion Research," in A.W. Finifter (ed.),
Political Science: The State of the Discipline II. Washington, D.C.: American Political
Science Association.
R. Huckfeldt. 2001. "The Social Communication of Political Expertise," American Journal of
Political Science 45: 425-438.
2. Information, concepts, attitudes, and automaticity
Z. Kunda. 1999. Social Cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Pp. 1-52.
R. Fazio. 1995. “Attitudes as Object-Evaluation Associations: Determinants, Consequences, and
Correlates of Attitude Accessibility,” in R.E. Petty and J.A. Krosnick (eds.), Attitude
Strength: Antecedents and Consequences, pp. 247-282.
M. Berent and J. Krosnick, "The Relation between Political Attitude Importance and Knowledge
Structure," in Milton Lodge and Kathleen McGraw, chapter 5.
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J. Druckman and K. Nelson. 2003. “Framing and Deliberation: How Citizens’ Conversations
Limit Elite Influence,” American Journal of Political Science 47: 729-745.
R. Huckfeldt, J. Sprague, and J. Levine. 2000. "The Dynamics of Collective Deliberation in the
1996 Election: Campaign Effects on Accessibility, Certainty, and Accuracy," American
Political Science Review 94: 641-651.
3. Deliberation as process
Barabas, Jason. 2004. “How Deliberation Affects Policy Opinions.” American Political Science
Review, 98(4):687–701.
Beck, Paul A. 2002. “Encouraging Political Defection: The Role of Personal Discussion
Networks in Partisan Desertions to the Opposition Party and Perot Votes in 1992.”
Political Behavior, 24(4): 309-337.
Jackman, Simon and Paul M. Sniderman, 2006. “The Limits of Deliberative Discussion: A
Model of Everyday Political Arguments.” The Journal of Politics, 68 (2): 272-283.
Katz, Elihu. 1957. “The Two Step Flow of Communication: An Up-to-Date Report on an
Hypothesis.” Public Opinion Quarterly, 21(1):67–81.
R. Huckfeldt, P.E. Johnson, and J. Sprague. 2005. "Individuals, Dyads, and Networks:
Autoregressive patterns of Political Influence." Chapter 2 in Zuckerman.
4. Information and communication in context
Christopher Anderson and Aida Paskeviciute. 2005. "Macro-Politics and Micro-Behavior:
Mainstream Politics and the Frequency of Political Discussion in Contemporary
Democracies," Chapter 11 in Zuckerman.
Mark Granovetter. 1985. “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of
Embeddedness,” American Journal of Sociology 91: 481-510.
J. Coleman. 1988. “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital.” American Journal of
Sociology 94(S):S95-S120.
Levitan, L. C., & Visser, P. S. (2008). The impact of the social context on resistance to
persuasion: Effortful versus effortless responses to counter-attitudinal information. Journal
of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(3), 640-649.
R. Huckfeldt, P.E. Johnson, and J. Sprague. 2002. "Political Environments, Political Dynamics,
and the Survival of Disagreement," Journal of Politics 64: 1-21.
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Background:
Visser, P. S., & Mirabile, R. R. (2004). Attitudes in the social context: The impact of social
network composition on individual-level attitude strength. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 87, 779-795.
Huckfeldt, Robert, Ken'ichi Ikeda and Franz Urban Pappi. 2005. “Patterns of Disagreement in
Democratic Politics: Comparing Germany, Japan, and the United States.” American
Journal of Political Science, 49(3): 497-514.
Huckfeldt, Robert, Paul E. Johnson and John Sprague. 2004. Political Disagreement: The
Survival of Diverse Opinions within Communication Networks. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
5. Priors, sample data, and heuristic reasoning
Z. Kunda. Social Cognition, Chapter 3-5.
A. Tversky and D. Kahneman. 1974. “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases,”
Science 185: 1124-1131.
R. Huckfeldt, T,K. Ahn, M. Pietryka, and J. Reilly. 2010. "Noise, Bias, and Expertise in the
Political Communication Process," Western Political Science Convention, April.
R. Huckfeldt. 2007. "Unanimity, Discord, and the Communication of Public Opinion," American
Journal of Political Science.
background:
R. Fazio and T. Towles-Schwen. 1999. "The MODE Model of Attitude-Behavior Processes," In
S. Chaiken and Y. Trope (eds.), Dual-Process Theories in Social Pyschology. New York:
Guilford Press. Pp. 97-117.
R. Huckfeldt, P. Beck, R. Dalton, J. Levine, and W. Morgan. 1998. "Ambiguity, Distorted
Messages, and Nested Environmental Effects on Political Communication," Journal of
Politics 60: 996-1030.
R. Huckfeldt, J. Levine, W. Morgan, and J. Sprague. 1999. "Accessibility and the Political Utility
of Partisan and Ideological Orientations," American Journal of Political Science 43: 888911.
Kuklinski, James H. and Paul J. Quirk. 2000. “Reconsidering the Rational Public: Cognition,
Heuristics, and Mass Opinion.” In Arthur Lupia, Mathew D. McCubbins and Samuel L.
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Popkin (eds.) Elements of Reason: Cognition, Choice and the Bounds of Rationality.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Lau, Richard R. and David P. Redlawsk. 1997. “Voting Correctly.” American Political Science
Review, 91 (3): .585-599.
Lau, Richard R., David J. Andersen and David P. Redlawsk. 2008. “An Exploration of Correct
Voting in Recent U.S. Presidential Elections.” American Journal of Political Science,
52(2):395–411.
Lupia, Arthur. and Mathew D. McCubbins. 1998. The Democratic Dilemma: Can Citizens Learn
What They Need To Know? New York: Cambridge University Press.
Richey, Sean. 2008. “The social basis of voting correctly.” Political Communication, 25(4):366–
376.
P. Sniderman, "Taking Sides: A Fixed Choice Theory of Political Reasoning," Chapter 4 in
Lupia, McCubbins, and Popkin.
Sokhey, Anand Edward and Scott D. McClurg. 2008. “Social Networks and Correct Voting.”
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association,
Chicago.
6. Cooperation, persuasion, and self interest (rightly understood)
Kunda, chapter 10.
Elinor Ostrom, James Walker, and Roy Gardner. 1992. “Covenants With and Without a Sword:
Self-Governance is Possible,” American Political Science Review 86(2) (June 1992): 404417.
E. Fehr and S. Gachter. 2000. "Fairness and Retaliation: The Economics of Reciprocity", Journal
of Economic Perspectives 14: 159-181.
C. Boudreau. 2009. “Closing the Gap: When Do Cues Eliminate Differences Between
Sophisticated and Unsophisticated Citizens?” Journal of Politics, 71(3): 1-13.
Farrell and M. Rabin. 1996. "Cheap Talk," Journal of Economic Perspectives 10: 103-118.
T.K. Ahn, R. Huckfeldt, J.B. Ryan. 2010. Communication, Influence, and Informational
Asymmetries among Voters,” Political Psychology, forthcoming.
background:
Sue E.S. Crawford and Elinor Ostrom. 1995. “A Grammar of Institutions,” American Political
Science Review 89(3) (September 1995): 582-600.
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Randall L. Calvert. 1985. "The Value of Biased Information: A Rational Choice Model of
Political Advice," Journal of Politics 47: 530-555.
Crawford, Vincent P. and Joel Sobel. 1982. “Strategic Information Transmission.”
Econometrica, 50(6):1431–1451.
E. Fehr and S. Gachter. 2000. "Cooperation and Punishment in Public Goods Experiments,"
American Economic Review 90: 980-994.
J. Johnson. 1993. "Is Talk Really Cheap? Prompting Conversation between Critical Theory and
Rational Choice," American Political Science Review 87: 74-86.
N. L. Kerr and C.M. Kaufman-Gilliland. 1994. Communication, Commitment, and Cooperation
in Social Dilemmas," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 66: 513-529.
A. Lupia and M. McCubbins. 1999. The Democratic Dilemma. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
John Orbell, Tom Morikawa, and Audun Runde. 1995. "The Advantage of Being Moderately
Cooperative." American Political Science Review 89: 601-611.
Elinor Ostrom, Roy Gardner and Jimmy Walker. 1994. Rules, Games and Common-Pool
Resources. University of Michigan Press.
D. Sally. 1995. "Conversation and Cooperation in Social Dilemmas: A Meta-Analysis of
Experiments from 1958 to 1992," Rationality and Society 7: 58-92
7. Political judgment as process
Z. Kunda, chapter 6.
M. Lodge and M. Steenbergen with S. Brau. 1995. “The Responsive Voter: Campaign
Information and the Dynamics of Candidate Evaluation,” American Political Science
Review 89 (June): 309-326.
Taber, Charles and Milton Lodge. 2006. “Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political
Beliefs.” American Journal of Political Science, 50: 755-769.
Bartels, Larry M. 2002. “Beyond the Running Tally: Partisan Bias in Political Perceptions.”
Political Behavior, 24(2): 117-150.
P. Johnson and R. Huckfeldt, chapter 13 in Zuckerman
background:
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R. Huckfeldt, P. Johnson, J. Sprague. 2004. Political Disagreement. New York: Cambridge,
chapters 6 and 7.
R. Petty and D. Wegener. 1999. “The Elaboration Likelihood Model: Current Status and
Controversies,” in S. Chaiken and Y Trope (eds.), Dual-Process Theories in Social
Psychology. New York: Guilford.
8. Information, uncertainty, ambivalence, automaticity
Z. Kunda, Chapters 7,8, and 9
M. Thompson, M. Zanna, and D. Griffin. 1995. “Let's Not be Indifferent About (Attitudinal)
Ambivalence," in R.E. Petty and J.A. Krosnick (eds.), Attitude Strength: Antecedents and
Consequences, pp. 361-386.
John Zaller and Stanley Feldman. 1992. “A Simple Theory of the Survey Response: Answering
Questions versus Revealing Preferences,” American Journal of Political Science 36: 579616.
J. Bargh. 1999. “The Cognitive Monster: The Case against the Controllability of Automatic
Stereotype Effects,” in S. Chaiken and Y Trope (eds.), Dual-Process Theories in Social
Psychology. New York: Guilford.
Background:
John Bassili. 1996. “Meta-Judgmental Versus Operative Indexes of Psychological Attributes:
The Case of Measures of Attitude Strength,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
71: 637-653.
Huckfeldt, Robert, Jeffrey Levine, William Morgan and John Sprague. 1998. “Election
Campaigns, Social Communication, and the Accessibility of Perceived Discussant
Preference.” Political Behavior, 20(4):263–294.
R. Huckfeldt, J. Morehouse, and T. Osborn. 2004. “Disagreement, Ambivalence, and
Engagement: The Political Consequences of Heterogeneous Networks,” Political Psychology
26: 65-96.
9. Politics and Personality
Mondak
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10. Expertise
Tetlock