Type
Text
Type
Dissertation
Advisor
Taber, Charles | Lebo, Matthew | Jerit, Jennifer | Redlawsk, David.
Date
2015-12-01
Keywords
Cognition, Ideology, Motivated Reasoning, Perception, Public Opinion | Political science
Department
Department of Political Science.
Language
en_US
Source
This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.
Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/11401/76759
Publisher
The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
Format
application/pdf
Abstract
This dissertation examines causes and consequences of ideological perception and theorizes that these judgments are fueled by both conscious and subconscious affect, as proposed by the hot cognition model and the motivated reasoning framework. The first empirical chapter, which stands separate from the others, uses fixed effects NES panel data to demonstrate that ideological perceptions of the party in power impact citizen preferences for federal spending. The second empirical chapter uses an experimental survey to demonstrate that conscious and subconscious affect impact ideological perceptions of fictitious candidates while simultaneously testing a previous finding that Democrats are perceived as more ideological than equally extreme Republicans. The third empirical chapter uses another experimental survey to test if certain policy sets (religious, economic, foreign etc.) are perceived as more ideologically extreme than others. It also hypothesizes that certain political personality types such as authoritarians and libertarians will feel threatened by specific policy sets, generate greater negative affect towards those policies and then select them as the most ideologically extreme in a comparison process. The principle finding of the dissertation is affect that is unrelated to policy evaluation (and likely subconscious) plays a role shaping how we perceive the ideological extremity of others. | 138 pages
Recommended Citation
Amira, Karyn Ann, "Ideological Extremity Perception: Causes and Consequences" (2015). Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions). 2638.
https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/stony-brook-theses-and-dissertations-collection/2638