Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Communication, Influence, and Informational Asymmetries among Voters

Communication, Influence, and Informational Asymmetries among Voters The costs of political information vary dramatically across individuals, and these costs help explain why some individuals become politically expert while others demonstrate low levels of political knowledge and awareness. An attractive alternative, particularly for those with high information costs, is to rely on information and advice taken from others who are politically expert. This paper focuses on the complications that arise when the informant and the recipient do not share preferences. A series of small group experiments show that subjects tend to weight expertise more heavily than shared preferences in selecting informants, thereby exposing themselves to diverse views and biased information. Experimental subjects employ several heuristic devices in evaluating the reliability of this information, but depending on their own levels of information, these heuristics often lead subjects either to dismiss advice that conflicts with their own prior judgments or to dismiss advice that comes from an informant with divergent preferences. Hence these heuristics produce important consequences for patterns of political influence, as well as reducing the potential for political change. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Political Psychology Wiley

Communication, Influence, and Informational Asymmetries among Voters

Loading next page...
 
/lp/wiley/communication-influence-and-informational-asymmetries-among-voters-hx1kisH0dU

References (20)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
© 2010 International Society of Political Psychology
ISSN
0162-895X
eISSN
1467-9221
DOI
10.1111/j.1467-9221.2010.00783.x
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The costs of political information vary dramatically across individuals, and these costs help explain why some individuals become politically expert while others demonstrate low levels of political knowledge and awareness. An attractive alternative, particularly for those with high information costs, is to rely on information and advice taken from others who are politically expert. This paper focuses on the complications that arise when the informant and the recipient do not share preferences. A series of small group experiments show that subjects tend to weight expertise more heavily than shared preferences in selecting informants, thereby exposing themselves to diverse views and biased information. Experimental subjects employ several heuristic devices in evaluating the reliability of this information, but depending on their own levels of information, these heuristics often lead subjects either to dismiss advice that conflicts with their own prior judgments or to dismiss advice that comes from an informant with divergent preferences. Hence these heuristics produce important consequences for patterns of political influence, as well as reducing the potential for political change.

Journal

Political PsychologyWiley

Published: Oct 1, 2010

There are no references for this article.