Notes

Outline

The Functions of Attitudes Utilitarian Value expression Ego-defense Social adjustment Knowledge

Background to Converse Normative concerns about the quality of democratic representation. Accountability of elected leaders. Deficiencies in ordinary Americans’ knowledge about politics. Disengagement from politics – lack of strong opinions about contemporary issues. “Cognitive consistency” research in social psychology in the late 1950’s. Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory. Heider’s balance theory.

What Do Americans Know About Politics?

Psychological Sources of Belief Systems Cognitive consistency theory humans have a strong motive to resolve inconsistencies between ideas Schema theory knowledge is abstracted from experience knowledge is organized hierarchically Associative network models knowledge is represented as conceptual “nodes” and associative “links” some concepts are more “central” than others some links are powerful, others weak Bounded rationality/judgment & decision heuristics humans develop simple mental “shortcuts” for making quick, adequate judgments and decisions

Schemata And Information Processing

Functions of Schemas Encoding of information Storage of information Retrieval of information Drawing inferences

An Ideological Schema

An Ideological Network