An Examination of Political Attitudes and Behavior Using Regulatory Focus Theory

Using Regulatory Focus Theory (RFT, Higgins 1997), I take a broad look at the manner in which political behaviors and attitudes are impacted by the promotion and prevention motivational systems. I first look at how behavior in life generally and political life specifically are similar in terms of regulatory focus. Second, I look at how RFT is related to political attitudes. Specifically, I look at whether there is a connection between regulatory focus and ideological attitudes, whether there is a relationship between policy context and motivational systems, and whether the status quo of a policy leads to a relationship between focus and issue attitudes. Finally, I look at how regulatory fit impacts the intention to vote as well as attitudes related to casting a ballot. I look at process based regulatory fit by interacting a person’s chronic regulatory focus and how they behave in political life. I also analyze outcome based fit by manipulating focus and the content of a Get Out the Vote message. I examine these topics by using three separate studies – two surveys and one experiment. I show people generally use either eager or vigilant strategies across both every day and political life. I also show that people who use eager strategies vote for their preferred candidate while those using vigilant strategies are more likely to blackball disliked candidates. My findings show a much stronger connection between a general proclivity to use eager strategies and holding a promotion orientation than prevention focus and using vigilant strategies. In addition, I find that the environment in which people are politically active impacts attitudes. For example, the current status quo of a policy impacts how regulatory focus is related to issue attitudes. Also, under certain conditions, the combination of focus and strategy use can increase external efficacy and positive attitudes related to voting. Overall, people’s motivational systems color their view of the political world and how they relate to it. Advisor: John R. Hibbin

Beyond Survey Self-Reports: Using Physiology to Tap Political Orientations

Some aspects of our attitudes are composed of things outside of our consciousness. However, traditional survey research does not use measurements that are able to tap into these aspects of public opinion. We describe, recommend, and demonstrate a procedure by which non-self-reported responses can be measured in order to test whether these responses have independent effects on individuals’ preferences. We use one of the better-known physiological measures—electrodermal activity or skin conductance—and illustrate its potential by reporting our own study of attitudes toward President Barack Obama. We find that both self-reported emotional responses and physiological responses to Obama’s image independently correlate with variation in the intensity of attitudes regarding his job approval and his central policy proposal: health-care reform

An Examination of Political Attitudes and Behavior Using Regulatory Focus Theory

Using Regulatory Focus Theory (RFT, Higgins 1997), I take a broad look at the manner in which political behaviors and attitudes are impacted by the promotion and prevention motivational systems. I first look at how behavior in life generally and political life specifically are similar in terms of regulatory focus. Second, I look at how RFT is related to political attitudes. Specifically, I look at whether there is a connection between regulatory focus and ideological attitudes, whether there is a relationship between policy context and motivational systems, and whether the status quo of a policy leads to a relationship between focus and issue attitudes. Finally, I look at how regulatory fit impacts the intention to vote as well as attitudes related to casting a ballot. I look at process based regulatory fit by interacting a person’s chronic regulatory focus and how they behave in political life. I also analyze outcome based fit by manipulating focus and the content of a Get Out the Vote message. I examine these topics by using three separate studies – two surveys and one experiment. I show people generally use either eager or vigilant strategies across both every day and political life. I also show that people who use eager strategies vote for their preferred candidate while those using vigilant strategies are more likely to blackball disliked candidates. My findings show a much stronger connection between a general proclivity to use eager strategies and holding a promotion orientation than prevention focus and using vigilant strategies. In addition, I find that the environment in which people are politically active impacts attitudes. For example, the current status quo of a policy impacts how regulatory focus is related to issue attitudes. Also, under certain conditions, the combination of focus and strategy use can increase external efficacy and positive attitudes related to voting. Overall, people’s motivational systems color their view of the political world and how they relate to it. Advisor: John R. Hibbin

An Examination of Political Attitudes and Behavior Using Regulatory Focus Theory

Using Regulatory Focus Theory (RFT, Higgins 1997), I take a broad look at the manner in which political behaviors and attitudes are impacted by the promotion and prevention motivational systems. I first look at how behavior in life generally and political life specifically are similar in terms of regulatory focus. Second, I look at how RFT is related to political attitudes. Specifically, I look at whether there is a connection between regulatory focus and ideological attitudes, whether there is a relationship between policy context and motivational systems, and whether the status quo of a policy leads to a relationship between focus and issue attitudes. Finally, I look at how regulatory fit impacts the intention to vote as well as attitudes related to casting a ballot. I look at process based regulatory fit by interacting a person’s chronic regulatory focus and how they behave in political life. I also analyze outcome based fit by manipulating focus and the content of a Get Out the Vote message. I examine these topics by using three separate studies – two surveys and one experiment. I show people generally use either eager or vigilant strategies across both every day and political life. I also show that people who use eager strategies vote for their preferred candidate while those using vigilant strategies are more likely to blackball disliked candidates. My findings show a much stronger connection between a general proclivity to use eager strategies and holding a promotion orientation than prevention focus and using vigilant strategies. In addition, I find that the environment in which people are politically active impacts attitudes. For example, the current status quo of a policy impacts how regulatory focus is related to issue attitudes. Also, under certain conditions, the combination of focus and strategy use can increase external efficacy and positive attitudes related to voting. Overall, people’s motivational systems color their view of the political world and how they relate to it

Boletín Oficial de la Provincia de Guadalajara: Número 90 - 1943 abril 15

Prior research finds that liberals and conservatives process information differently. Predispositions toward intuitive versus reflective thinking may help explain this individual level variation. There have been few direct tests of this hypothesis and the results from the handful of studies that do exist are contradictory. Here we report the results of a series of studies using the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) to investigate inclinations to be reflective and political orientation. We find a relationship between thinking style and political orientation and that these effects are particularly concentrated on social attitudes. We also find it harder to manipulate intuitive and reflective thinking than a number of prominent studies suggest. Priming manipulations used to induce reflection and intuition in published articles repeatedly fail in our studies. We conclude that conservatives— more specifically, social conservatives—tend to be dispositionally less reflective, social liberals tend to be dispositionally more reflective, and that the relationship between reflection and intuition and political attitudes may be more resistant to easy manipulation than existing research would suggest. Supplementary and data files attached below