Chapter 6: The Political Psychology of Mass Politics

Chapter 6: The Political Psychology of Mass Politics

Chapter overview

• Explores how people think, feel, and decide about politics in the United States (and with reference to voting behavior in Britain/UK).
• Key questions in political psychology:
  • How sophisticated is the public about politics and democratic ideals?
  • How much attention do people pay to political information?
  • How do people process and use information during campaigns?
  • How do people decide for whom to vote?
  • How tolerant are people of views contrary to their own?
• The chapter focuses on the Political Being (the average citizen) with emphasis on attitudes and cognition, and on the US political environment, with notes on mass voting studies in Britain.
• Introduces the idea of the “political brain” — genetics and biology can influence political thinking and behavior.
• Structure: concepts, the Michigan school (The American Voter) and its critique, information processing in campaigns, affect and tolerance, cross-national comparisons, and the role of genetics and the brain.

Key terms (Page 15)

• cognitive style

• collegial management style

• competitive management style

• formalistic management style

• forming norms

• orientation toward political conflict

• sense of efficacy

• storming

• transactional leadership

• transformational leadership

• Suggestions for further reading (references listed)

• Notes (selected references cited):

  • Johnson (1974); George (1980); Porter (1980); Greenstein (1982); Campbell (1986); Crabb & Mulcahy (1986); Pika (1988); Hargrove (1988); Jones (1988); Burke & Greenstein (1991); Haney (1997); George & George (1998); Preston (1997, 2001); Preston & ’t Hart (1999, 2004); etc.
  • Neustadt (1960/1990)
  • Interviews with Bush administration policymakers (anonymized)
  • Allen & Broder (2004) article on Bush’s leadership style

Beliefs, values, ideology, attitudes, and schemas (Page 17)

• Beliefs
  • Associations people form between an object and its attributes (definition from Eagly & Chaiken, 1998).
  • Alternative: cognitive components that form our understanding of how things are (Glynn, Herbst, O’Keefe, & Shapiro, 1999).
  • When beliefs cluster, they form a belief system.
• Values
  • Terminal values: goals or end states we seek (e.g., safe society, civil liberties).
  • Instrumental values: means to achieve goals (e.g., police enforcement that respects civil liberties).
  • Lockean liberalism anchors American political values; values remain relatively stable despite issue changes (McClosky & Zaller, 1984).
• Ideology
  • An elaborate, far-ranging structure of attitudes and beliefs linking values to political positions (Campbell, Converse, Miller, & Stokes, 1960/1964).
• Attitudes
  • Enduring system of positive/negative beliefs, affective feelings, and action tendencies regarding an attitude object.
  • Central questions about attitudes: consistency, relation to behavior, information processing, acquisition, sophistication, balancing inconsistencies.
• Schemas
  • Cognitive structures representing knowledge about concepts or stimuli, including attributes and relations among attributes (Fiske & Taylor, 1991).
• Key takeaway
  • These constructs (beliefs, values, ideology, attitudes, schemas) form the mental framework through which people interpret politics and decide how to act.

Political sophistication and voting in America (Pages 17–18)

• Starting in the late 1940s, researchers used surveys to probe how sophisticated Americans are about politics and how they process political information.
• Central questions include: are attitudes consistent? do political attitudes relate to voting? how do people acquire attitudes? how cognitively complex are attitudes?
• The Michigan school (The American Voter) and the concept of an integrated mental map
  • The idea: voters organize political objects (candidates, parties, issues) into a coherent, interconnected map rather than viewing them as isolated items.
  • This facilitates processing and decision-making according to an overall framework.
• Core idea: the electorate develops patterns that link ideology, party, issues, and group interests into a cohesive structure.

The Michigan model and the funnel of causality (Pages 18–22)

• The American Voter (Campbell et al., 1960/1964) introduced the Michigan model and the concept of political sophistication.
• Ideologue concept
  • An ideologue is someone whose attitudes align consistently with liberal or conservative principles across issues, parties, and candidates.
  • In practice, few Americans are true ideologues.
• Levels of conceptualization (Campbell et al.)
  • Ideologues: understand and articulate liberal vs conservative principles, align with party and issues; very high ideological coherence.
  • Near-ideologues: claim to know the differences but with less confidence or articulation.
  • Group benefits: evaluate issues in terms of concrete benefits for their group relative to other groups; limited abstract understanding.
  • Nature of the times: judge politics by whether times are good or bad for themselves and families; minimal ideology.
  • Absence of issue content: vote or have opinions based on party or candidate attributes with little issue content.
• Quantitative findings from The American Voter (1964): only about 2.5% were ideologues; about 42% were group benefits; 24% nature of the times; 22.5% no issue content; 9.5% near-ideologues.
• The Changing American Voter (Nie, Verba, & Petrocik, 1976)
  • Found that political knowledge and levels of conceptualization rose when politics got more exciting; ideologues rose to about 31% in some contexts; issue consistency also improved.
• The Unchanging American Voter (Smith, 1989)
  • Critical of the idea that levels of conceptualization capture how people actually think about politics; argues for methodological and conceptual criticisms.
• Overall takeaway
  • Americans are not political philosophers; a deep cognitive commitment to abstract liberalism/conservatism is rare; early Michigan model suggested low sophistication, later work nuanced by changes in context, question wording, and new data.
• Table 6.1: Levels of Conceptualization Over Time (percentages; samples vary in N across years)
  • Ideologues: 1956: 12%, 1960: 19%, 1964: 27%, 1968: 26%, 1972: 22%, 1976: 21%, 1980: 21%, 1984: 19%, 1988: 18%
  • Group benefit: 1956: 42%; 1960: 31%; 1964: 27%; 1968: 24%; 1972: 27%; 1976: 26%; 1980: 31%; 1984: 26%; 1988: 36%
  • Nature of the times: 1956: 24%; 1960: 26%; 1964: 20%; 1968: 29%; 1972: 34%; 1976: 30%; 1980: 30%; 1984: 35%; 1988: 25%
  • No issue content: 1956: 22%; 1960: 23%; 1964: 26%; 1968: 21%; 1972: 17%; 1976: 24%; 1980: 19%; 1984: 19%; 1988: 21%
  • N: varying samples (e.g., 1,740; 1,741; 1,431; 1,319; 1,372; 2,870; 1,612; 2,257; 2,040)
• The funnel of causality (Figure 6.1 in the text)
  • Long-term factors (attitudes): party identification (attachment to a party) and group interests.
  • Short-term factors: issues and candidates’ personal characteristics.
  • The model views voting as a process where long-term commitments shape responses to short-term forces, creating the final vote choice.
• Party identification
  • A long-term attitude: identification as Democrat or Republican, acquired through socialization and life experiences; tends to be relatively stable, though intensity can vary.
  • Strength of party attachment correlates with political interest, knowledge, and turnout.
  • Generational shifts: Depression-era generation showed stronger Democratic attachment; newer generations show more even distribution between parties and larger independents.
• Electoral dynamics and party identification in modern data
  • 2008 Pew data: Democrats 36%, Republicans 27%, Independents 37% (with leanings among independents: 15% lean Democratic, 10% lean Republican, 12% no leaning).
  • Partisanship affects how people view issues and candidates and screens information; independents split between parties or may lean one side.
• Baseline and deviations (normal vote framework)
  • Normal vote: when intently attached independents split evenly, typical baseline is roughly 54% Democratic and 46% Republican (historical baseline in the 1950s–1970s when Democrats held majority).
  • Deviations from normal vote illustrate the impact of candidate appeal, foreign policy attitudes, and perceptions of government management (e.g., Eisenhower’s deviation in the 1950s due to candidate charisma and policy reactions).
• Rational choice vs cognitive processing perspectives
  • Rational choice/ self-interest explanations emphasize issue-based, short-term calculations and view partisanship as a byproduct of these calculations.
  • Political psychologists emphasize cognitive processing, information screening, and embedded long-term attachments as core drivers of voting behavior.
  • Miller & Shanks (1996) defend the Michigan model’s emphasis on partisanship as a robust predictor, though evidence acknowledges complexity.
• Genetics and party identification
  • Recent work shows both environmental and genetic contributions to party identification and the strength of partisan ties.
  • Key studies:
  • Funk, Smith, Alford, & Hibbing (2010): genetics and environment both predict party identification; environment remains influential but genetics also play a role.
  • Dawes & Fowler (2009): a genetic correlate (DRD2 dopamine receptor) associated with party identification; related to cognitive functioning and social attachments.
  • Settle et al. (2009); Hatemi et al. (2009): genetic factors contribute to the strength of political ties.
  • Implication: environment alone cannot fully account for party identification or its strength; both heredity and environment shape political behavior.

The Maximalists and critiques of the Michigan model (Pages 23–24)

• The maximalist critique argues that the Michigan model offers a minimalist view of political thinking and underestimates sophistication.
• Lane (1962; Lane & Sears, 1964) and others argued for a more optimistic view of public knowledge and engagement.
• Neuman (1986): proposed three publics instead of a single mass public
  • Political sophisticates (~5%): highly informed and active
  • The majority (~75%): educated and capable but not consistently motivated to engage politically
  • Apolitical (~20%): lack cognitive capacity or motivation to engage in politics
• Sniderman, Brody, and Tetlock (1991): maximalists emphasize the role of affect in political reasoning (emotion and motivation influence how people form and use political beliefs).
• Core critique of the Michigan model (as summarized by maximalists):
  • People do not necessarily organize beliefs along a simple liberal-conservative continuum.
  • Belief systems are constructed through reasoning about choices, with weights given to different considerations that vary by problem and person.
  • The structure of beliefs may differ across individuals and contexts, not conforming to a uniform, linear spectrum.
• Sniderman et al. (1991) quote excerpt (paraphrased here): beliefs are connected in diverse ways depending on the problem and the individual; the traditional approach asking how one idea connects to another assumes uniform connections across people, which may be false in practice.
• Overall takeaway from the Maximalists: political thinking is more varied and affect-laden than the minimalist Michigan model suggests; people weigh considerations differently, and attitudes can be context-dependent.

Practical and real-world implications

• Voting behavior is influenced by a mixture of long-term identities (party ID, group interests) and short-term forces (issues, candidates).
• Public political knowledge remains uneven; many citizens rely on party identification as a heuristic when information is scarce or complex.
• The growing recognition of genetic influences on political behavior adds a biological dimension to understand political attitudes, which has implications for political socialization and the predictability of voting patterns.
• The debate between minimalist and maximalist views informs how political campaigns might tailor messages: some voters respond to ideology and issues, while others respond to affect, candidate traits, or party cues.
• Ethical implications: as we consider genetics in political behavior, issues of privacy, determinism, and the potential for misinterpretation or misuse of genetic data for political manipulation must be acknowledged.

Formulas and quantitative references

• The funnel of causality (conceptual model of voting):
  • Let L denote long-term factors (e.g., party identification, group interests) and S denote short-term factors (e.g., issues, candidate characteristics).
  • The vote V can be represented as a function of these factors: V = f(L, S)
  • Long-term factors influence how individuals interpret and respond to short-term information.
• Baseline (normal vote) concept:
  • In historical contexts where party identification is evenly split among independents, a typical baseline vote is: ext{Normal Vote} = 54 ext{% nbsp;Democratic} ext{ vs } 46 ext{% nbsp;Republican}
• Percentages from Table 6.1 (Levels of Conceptualization Over Time):
  • Ideologues: 1956: 12%; 1960: 19%; 1964: 27%; 1968: 26%; 1972: 22%; 1976: 21%; 1980: 21%; 1984: 19%; 1988: 18%
  • Group benefit: 1956: 42%; 1960: 31%; 1964: 27%; 1968: 24%; 1972: 27%; 1976: 26%; 1980: 31%; 1984: 26%; 1988: 36%
  • Nature of the times: 1956: 24%; 1960: 26%; 1964: 20%; 1968: 29%; 1972: 34%; 1976: 30%; 1980: 30%; 1984: 35%; 1988: 25%
  • No issue content: 1956: 22%; 1960: 23%; 1964: 26%; 1968: 21%; 1972: 17%; 1976: 24%; 1980: 19%; 1984: 19%; 1988: 21%
  • Sample sizes (N) varied by year (examples: 1,740; 1,741; 1,431; 1,319; 1,372; 2,870; 1,612; 2,257; 2,040).

Connections to foundational principles and real-world relevance

• Foundational ideas: how beliefs and values translate into political behavior; the role of cognitive processing in processing political information; and how identity (party ID) anchors voting behavior.
• Real-world relevance: long-term party identification remains a strong predictor of voting, but the strength and expression of that attachment can shift with demographic changes, elections, and issues. The integration of genetics into political psychology suggests a more nuanced picture of how dispositions form and how stable they are across generations.
• Cross-national perspective: while the Michigan model originates in the US context, similar questions about sophistication, attitudes, and processing have been explored in other democracies, with variations in political culture and party systems.

Ethical, philosophical, and practical implications

• Ethically: using genetic information to predict political behavior raises concerns about privacy, consent, and potential manipulation of political views or targeting.
• Philosophically: challenges to the idea of a fully rational, ideologically coherent citizen; acknowledges the role of affect and contextual reasoning in political judgment.
• Practically: campaign strategists may leverage understandings of partisanship, issue salience, and candidate traits; educators and policymakers should consider how to improve political literacy to enhance democratic deliberation.

Summary takeaways

• The Michigan model emphasizes long-term party identification as a core driver of voting, with short-term factors modulating behavior.
• Not all citizens are ideologues; conceptualization levels vary widely across the population and over time.
• The maximalist critique argues for greater attention to affect, diverse belief structures, and non-linear reasoning in politics.
• Genetics and environment jointly shape party identification and its strength, suggesting both inherited and socialized components.
• The political psychology of mass politics blends cognitive, affective, and social factors to explain how Americans think about politics and how they decide whom to vote for.

Key references (selected)

• Campbell, Converse, Miller, & Stokes (1960/1964). The American Voter.
• Nie, Verba, & Petrocik (1976). The Changing American Voter.
• Smith (1989). The Unchanging American Voter.
• Niemi & Weisberg (Eds.) (1993). Controversies in Voting Behavior.
• Pew Research Center (2008). Party identification and independents demographics.
• Funk, Smith, Alford, & Hibbing (2010); Dawes & Fowler (2009); Settle et al. (2009); Hatemi et al. (2009). Genetic correlates of party identification and strength of partisan ties.
• Sniderman, Brody, & Tetlock (1991). Maximalist perspective on political thinking.
• Neuman (1986). Three publics model.
• Sniderman et al. (1991). On the structure of belief systems and choice considerations.