Political Sophistication: Theoretical, Methodological and Empirical Perspectives

This dissertation is concerned with the concept of political sophistication, referring to the extent and organization of a person’s stored political cognition (Luskin 1987). Available empirical evidence on the levels of political sophistication in mass publics comes almost exclusively from the United States and point to two broad conclusions: First, systematic empirical research has demonstrated that political information in the mass public is particularly low (Converse 1964, Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996). Citizens lack basic knowledge over political affairs. Time and again empirical studies have systematically showed that citizens in the United States and elsewhere fall short of passing even the most rudimentary political knowledge tests. This finding that was first illustrated by the Michigan school in the early 1960s (Campbell et al. 1960) resulted in a wide pessimism over the meaning of public opinion and even of representative democracy (Inglehart 1985). The second broad conclusion is that the politically sophisticated and unsophisticated differ: Political sophisticates have the cognitive capacity to translate their deeper held political values and predispositions into consistent political attitudes (Zaller 1992). They are able to use their political knowledge in order to make informed vote choices in the sense that they accurately adjust their political positions to the parties’ platforms (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996, Lau and Redlawsk 1997, 2006). What is more, they are more likely to participate in elections and other political activities and are less susceptible to political propaganda (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996). However the idea that political sophistication matters for the quality of the public’s political decision making has met strong theoretical and methodological criticism by the ‘low information rationality’ perspective (Popkin 1991, Lupia 1994, Graber 2001). This group of theories argues that politically inattentive citizens can form their political judgment on the basis of heuristics that allow them to make reasonable choices reflecting their predispositions and interests even though they lack political knowledge

Sociodemographic and psychological correlates of compliance with the Covid-19 public health measures in France

The COVID-19 disease was first identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, having since spread rapidly across the world. The infection and mortality rates of the disease have forced governments to implement a wave of public health measures. Depending on the context, these range from the implementation of simple hygienic rules to measures such as social distancing or lockdowns that cause major disruptions in citizens’ daily lives. The success of these crucial public health measures rests on the public's willingness to comply. However, individual differences in following the official public health recommendations for stopping the spread of COVID-19 have not yet to our knowledge been assessed. This study aims to fill this gap by assessing the sociodemographic and psychological correlates of implementing public health recommendations that aim to halt the COVID-19 pandemic. We investigate these associations in the context of France, one of the countries that has been most severely affected by the pandemic, and which ended up under a nationwide lockdown on March 17. In the next sections we describe our theoretical expectations over the associations between sociodemographics, personality, ideology, and emotions with abiding by the COVID-19 public health measures. We then test these hypotheses using data from the French Election Study

Les électeurs votent aussi selon leur personnalité

Comment rendre compte de l’instabilité électorale au cours de la campagne présidentielle de 2017 ? Cette contribution met en évidence le ressort psychologique individuel lié aux traits de personnalité pour mieux comprendre les raisons qui ont poussé près de 30 % des électeurs à changer de candidat préféré au cours des trois mois précédant le premier tour de l’élection. La figure de l’électeur rationnel est ici mise en débat par l’émergence d’un électeur émotionnel

Authoritarianism, Political Attitudes, and Vote Choice:A Longitudinal Analysis of the British Electorate

The nature, measurement, and correlates of the psychological trait of authoritarianism have spurred an intense and long-lasting debate in political psychology, dating back to the 1950s. This article aims at advancing extant knowledge on authoritarianism—measured here by child-rearing items—in two ways. First, by investigating the impact of authoritarianism on political attitudes and voting, net of individual heterogeneity, thus improving causal estimation. Second, by investigating the extent to which there exists reverse causality between authoritarianism and political attitudes. To do so, we employ a longitudinal analysis that covers a timespan of two years using the 2021 British Election Study Panel. The results suggest that authoritarianism in Britain is positively associated with anti-immigration attitudes, anti-EU preferences, and opposition to economic redistribution. However, when accounting for potential confounding through the inclusion of individual fixed effects, we find that authoritarianism retains its significant association with anti-immigration preferences alone. Further, lagged relations between authoritarianism and immigration preferences indicate that within-person changes in immigration attitudes precede changes in authoritarianism—not the other way around. Finally, the findings indicate that authoritarianism’s correlation with vote choice is a product of omitted variable bias rather than representing a causal relationship

Les électeurs votent aussi selon leur personnalité

Comment rendre compte de l’instabilité électorale au cours de la campagne présidentielle de 2017 ? Cette contribution met en évidence le ressort psychologique individuel lié aux traits de personnalité pour mieux comprendre les raisons qui ont poussé près de 30 % des électeurs à changer de candidat préféré au cours des trois mois précédant le premier tour de l’élection. La figure de l’électeur rationnel est ici mise en débat par l’émergence d’un électeur émotionnel

Fear, Anger, and Voting for the Far Right: Evidence From the November 13, 2015 Paris Terror Attacks

The conjecture that negative emotions underpin support for far-right politics is common among pundits and scholars. The conventional account holds that authoritarian populists catalyze public anxiety about the changing social order and/or deteriorating national economic conditions, and this anxiety subsequently drives up support for the far right. We propose that while emotions do indeed play an independent causal role in support for farright parties and policies, that support is more likely built upon the public’s anger rather than fear. This article explores the relative impact of fear and anger in reaction to the 2015 Paris terror attacks on the propensity to vote for the French far-right party, the Front National, in the 2015 regional elections. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find that anger is associated with voting for the Front National, while fear is associated with voting against the Front National. Moreover, anger boosts the Front National vote most powerfully among far-right and authoritarian voters. On the other hand, fear reduces support for the far right among those same groups

Applying the Theory of Affective Intelligence to Support for Authoritarian Policies and Parties

Emotion, after a long period of inattention, began to attract greater scrutiny as a key driver of human behavior in the mid-1980s. One approach that has achieved significant influence in political science is affective intelligence theory (AIT). We deploy AIT here to begin to understand the recent rise in support for right-wing populist leaders around the globe. In particular, we focus on specific emotional appraisals on elections held at periods of heightened threat, including the two 2015 terror attacks in France, as influences on support for the far-right Front National among conservatives. Contrary to much conventional wisdom, we speculate that threats can generate both anger and fear, and with very different political consequences. We expect fear to inhibit reliance on extant political dispositions such as ideological identification and authoritarianism, while anger will strengthen the influence of these same dispositions. Our core findings, across repeated tests, show that fear and anger indeed differentially condition the way habits of thought and action influence support for the far right in the current historical moment. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it is anger that mobilizes the far right and authoritarians. Fear, on the other hand, diminishes the impact of these same dispositions

‘Citizens’ Attitudes Under Covid19’, a cross-country panel survey of public opinion in 11 advanced democracies

This article introduces data collected in the Citizens’ Attitudes Under Covid-19 Project (CAUCP), which surveyed public opinion throughout the Covid-19 pandemic in 11 democracies between March and December 2020. In this paper, we present a unique cross-country panel survey of citizens’ attitudes and behaviors during a worldwide unprecedented health, governance, and economic crisis. This dataset investigates the behavioral and attitudinal consequences of multifaceted Covid19 crisis across time and contexts. In this paper, we describe the design of the CAUCP and the descriptive features of the dataset; we also present promising research prospects

System Justification and Affective Responses to Terrorism : Evidence from the November 2015 Paris Attacks

A large stream of research has shown that emotional reactions have a powerful impact on political choices and decision-making processes. Yet little is known about individual-level differences in experiencing specific emotions in the light of threatening events. In this article, we argue that system justification, or the endorsement and bolstering of existing social and political arrangements, is positively associated with the experience of positive emotions and negatively associated with the experience of negative emotions in the light of threat. We test our hypotheses using a study conducted a few days after the November 13, 2015, Paris terror attacks on a large sample in France. Our results show that system justification was positively associated with experiencing hope in the light of the attacks and negatively associated with experiencing fear and anger. Moreover, the size of these effects exceeded the respective size of other psychological characteristics such as authoritarianism, conservatism, and national attachment. These findings extend research on the palliative function of system justification to the domain of emotional responses to terrorist shocks