on the motivational bases of heterogeneity in political...

Heterogeneous Political Judgment, p. 1

On the Motivational Bases of Heterogeneity in Political Judgment Strategies

Abstract - What factors prompt citizens to switch from a partisan cue-taking judgment strategy,

one in which they reflexively side with the in-group in policy and electoral contests, to a more

thoughtful one, in which they pause to consider more valuable information? Previous work

suggests that heterogeneity in political reasoning is triggered by the experience of anxiety. In this

research, we examine a broader consideration: whether partisan cues provide adequate

confidence in the quality of one’s judgments. Using ANES panel studies, we examine how the

emotions of anxiety and enthusiasm influence the manner in which voters appraise presidential

candidates, update opinions on policy issues, and form perceptions of the economy. The results

consistently indicate that heterogeneity does not depend exclusively on anxiety, but on whether a

given emotion harmonizes or conflicts with one’s partisan identity. Findings are discussed in

terms of the paths to adaptive partisanship and responsible citizenship.

Word Count – 8,490


Over the past half century, two broad questions have dominated the study of mass

political behavior. First, how – by what reasoning processes – do ordinary citizens form their

political judgments? And second, how “good” are they from a normative perspective? To address

these questions, political scientists have focused on variation in two key dimensions of mass

political thought: its depth and objectivity (Lau and Redlawsk 2006; Sniderman, Brody and

Tetlock 1991). Consistent with the portrayal of the American public as awash in political

ignorance and lacking in political interest (Bennett 1989; Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996),

empirical studies indicate that judgments about policies and candidates tend to be quick,

reflexive, and shallow, often bearing little relation to the most diagnostic information (Druckman

2001; Kam 2005; Rahn 1993). Moreover, research on motivated reasoning demonstrates that

citizens are often more interested in gratifying partisan expectations than in forming evenhanded

judgments that respect the available “evidence” (Bartels 2002; Jacobson 2010; Lodge and Taber

2012; Redlawsk 2002; Taber and Lodge 2006). In summarizing their work on political

information processing, Lau and Redlawsk (2006: 13) conclude that “most decisions are better

understood as semiautomatic responses to frequently encountered situations than as carefully

weighed probabilistic calculations of the consequences associated with the different

alternatives.”

At times, however, citizens are more thoughtful, critical, and open-minded in their

approach to politics (e.g., Basinger and Lavine 2005; Hillygus and Shields 2008; Kam 2006;

Marcus et al. 2000). Rather than digging in their partisan heels and ignoring readily available

information, individuals are occasionally willing to devote substantial cognitive resources in

making their judgments, and to show a stronger desire to be accurate than to shore up their

partisan identities. For example, Hillygus and Shields (2008) find that voters are responsive to


campaign information when they disagree with their party on a personally important policy issue.

Under these circumstances, citizens turn out not to be hard-headed motivated reasoners, but

rational (i.e., prospectively-oriented) policy voters. In related work, Kam (2006) finds that

intense campaigns for the House and Senate increase the extent to which voters form balanced

reactions toward the candidates. She concludes that “intense campaigns not only give citizens

food for thought, but they also encourage them to digest it more slowly – to ruminate and engage

in open-minded thinking” (p. 939). This variation in political thinking has led to the

identification of two idealized strategies by which people learn about, evaluate and engage with

the political world: resolute partisanship and reflective deliberation (MacKuen, Wolak, Keele

and Marcus 2010).

The two forms of reasoning serve different goals and lead to judgments of varying

normative quality. Reflective deliberation – in which citizens “consider alternative views, switch

perspectives, [and] consider new and possibly contradictory evidence” (Kam 2006: 932) – is a

validity-seeking strategy in which political beliefs reflect an attempt to grapple with the

substantive merit of competing claims. By contrast, resolute partisanship serves directional goals

(i.e., coming to pre-fabricated conclusions designed to uphold standing commitments),

facilitating political engagement and commitment to the partisan in-group. It can also promote a

tribal “us” versus “them” mindset, enhancing psychological equanimity at the cost of accurately

perceiving political reality or understanding the implications of one’s preferences. Steadfast

partisan cue-taking also provides an opportunity for elites to engage in manipulation, i.e., to craft

particular phrases and presentations to “change public opinion and create the appearance of

responsiveness as they pursue their [own] desired policy goals” (Jacobs and Shapiro 2000: iv).


The major question we wish to address in this article is when—under what conditions—

will citizens be motivated to think in a deliberative manner about their political choices, and

more importantly, why? Specifically, what prompts citizens to switch from a partisan cue-taking

strategy, one in which they reflexively side with the in-group in policy and electoral contests, to

a more thoughtful one, in which they pause to consider more valuable information? For example,

what determines whether citizens rely on their material circumstances in forming preferences on

salient economic issues? Or when will they reason: “I favor a progressive tax system because I

value social equality,” rather than “I favor a progressive tax system because I am a Democrat and

that’s what Democrats favor.” While it might be argued that the two forms of reasoning produce

the same outcomes – especially as the electorate has become increasingly “sorted” along

partisan-ideological lines (Abranowitz 2010; Levendusky 2009) – the connections among party

identification, income, policy preferences, and core values are not that strong.1 Therefore,

perceptions and preferences reached on the basis of partisan cues will perforce be quite different

from those rooted in one’s values and interests.

Political scientists have often acknowledged that in constructing their judgments,

individuals take account of different considerations and attach different weights to them (e.g.,

Basinger and Lavine 2005; Gomez and Wilson 2001; Lau and Redlawsk 2006; Sniderman et al.

1991; Zaller 1992). To date, research has focused most frequently on dispositional differences in

cognitive ability. Whether referred to as “level of conceptualization,” “sophistication,”

“awareness,” or “knowledge,” or measured simply as years of education, the traditional view is

that a small number of “able” citizens are more likely than the ill-informed masses to form their

1 Data reported by Levendusky (2009: 46-49) and Abramowitz (2010: 45) indicate that the percentage of the electorate that is sorted on policy issues has increased only weakly between 1972 and 2004. As examples, consider that the zero-order correlations between party identification and tax preferences (using data from the 2008 ANES Panel Study) is .35; the correlation between party ID and income (using the same 2008 data) is .16; and the correlation between party ID and support for limited government in 2004 is .35.


political judgments using complex decision rules that focus on the most diagnostic information

(Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996; Kam 2005; Sniderman et al. 1991).

However, sophistication turns out to be a double-edged sword. While it facilitates

political understanding, it also makes it easier for citizens to engage in biased reasoning to

defend their political attitudes (Bartels 2008; Gaines et al. 2007; Jacobson 2010; Lodge and

Taber 2012; Kuklinski et al. 2008; Taber and Lodge 2006). Traditional ability-centered

approaches also ignore citizens’ motivation to acquire and use political information. If well-

informed citizens can manage to attain sufficient confidence in their political judgments through

reliance on cost-saving cues alone (e.g., party identification), they should rationally choose to

ignore other relevant information, even if that information is highly diagnostic to the decision,

and even if they are capable of acquiring it (Downs 1957; Lupia and McCubbins 1998). Finally,

as MacKuen et al. (2010) have noted, ability-related approaches assume that individuals apply

the same decision strategies across contexts. By contrast, a large body of research in psychology

(and a growing one in political science) indicates that people reach their political judgments

through a variety of strategies, depending on the situation (for reviews, see Chaiken and Trope

1999; Druckman and Lupia 2000; Lavine et al. 2012; Payne, Bettman and Johnson 1993).

In the next section, we review research that focuses on voters’ incentives to behave more

as resolute partisans or reflective deliberators.2 In particular, we contrast two broad motivational

perspectives on the circumstances under which voters are expected to rely principally on

partisanship in making their policy and electoral judgments, and when they are expected to think

more deeply and evenhandedly about their choices: affective intelligence theory (Marcus et al.

2000, 2011) and partisan ambivalence theory (Basinger and Lavine 2005; Hillygus and Shields

2 We are not suggesting that these two strategies constitute discrete categories; rather, they are theoretical endpoints of a continuum along which individuals rely increasingly on costly information (see Chaiken et al. 1989; Petty and Cacioppo 1986).


2008; Lavine et al. 2012). We then present several empirical tests to distinguish between these

two perspectives, and conclude that responsible citizenship need not be precipitated by the

experience of anxiety, but may come about through other pathways.

Motivational Theories of Heterogeneous Political Judgment

The hypothesis that political judgments depend on citizens’ informational incentives can

be traced to Downs (1957). However, it was Marcus and colleagues who provided both a

powerful empirical demonstration of the primacy of motivation as well as a rigorous intellectual

framework to explain it (MacKuen et al. 2010; Marcus 1988; Marcus and MacKuen 1993;

Marcus et al. 2000). Relying on insights from neuroscience (e.g., Damasio 1994; Grey 1981;

LeDoux 1996), they argue that the nature of political reasoning lies in the experience of emotion

Specifically, Marcus and his colleagues have developed a theory of affective intelligence, in

which the key emotions of enthusiasm and anxiety – viewed as the products of functionally

distinct bio-behavioral regulatory systems – determine how citizens construct their political

judgments. The “disposition system,” which mediates the emotion of enthusiasm, responds to

positive incentives by directly initiating habit-based behavior. A second system, referred to by

Marcus et al. (2000) as the “surveillance system,” detects threat and danger in the environment.

Activation of the surveillance system results in the emotion of anxiety, which interrupts ongoing

habitual action and promotes increased thoughtfulness and greater motivation for learning.

Applied to the realm of mass political judgment, enthusiasm is expected to motivate

political participation and to increase voters’ reliance on their political habits (e.g., party

identification). Anxiety, by contrast, is expected to lead voters to turn away from habitual

responses and devote more attention to diagnostic information in the environment. In line with

affective intelligence theory (hereafter AIT), Marcus et al. (2000) have shown that anxious


voters (a) pay greater attention to the political environment and acquire more information about

candidates’ policy stands; (b) rely less on partisanship and more on policy preferences and

assessments of candidate character in forming candidate evaluations; and (c) defect at higher

rates in presidential elections (see also Marcus and MacKuen 1993). Brader (2006) provided

more powerful evidence of the role of anxiety by manipulating it experimentally in the context of

political advertising. He found that compared to an emotionally pallid ad, a fear ad – which was

intended to produce anxiety – led to greater attentiveness and more persuasion. Finally, anxiety –

though not anger or enthusiasm – has been found to increase the quantity and quality of

information processing, including the desire for balance and compromise (MacKuen et al. 2010;

Valentino, Hutchings, Banks and Davis 2008). Taken together, this work suggests that anxiety

leads to political decisions that are more informed by contemporary information and less by

partisan loyalty. In the language of dual-process theories of cognition, anxiety reduces heuristic

processing and stimulates systematic processing.

The affective intelligence model has gained wide acceptance in political science.

However, reflective deliberation may arise through pathways other than anxiety. If opportunities

for citizens to take a sober second look derive from a broader set of dynamics, we should expect

to observe good citizenship (in the form of high quality judgments) more of the time. A large

body of research on persuasion and social judgment in psychology indicates that people are

motivated to attain a certain degree of confidence in the “correctness” of their decisions, and that

they will seek out (and deliberate about) information until actual confidence matches or exceeds

the desired level (Chaiken and Trope 1999). Most relevant here, when party behavior and

performance undermine the reliability of partisan brand names (e.g., profligate Republican


spending under George W. Bush), partisan cues become less trustworthy, and thereby lose their

power as judgment guides (Lupia and McCubbins 1998).

Partisan ambivalence theory (Basinger and Lavine 2005; Lavine et al. 2012) proposes

that the degree of confidence citizens may derive from partisan cues depends on the extent to

which contemporary evaluations of party behavior and performance dovetail with expectations

derived from long-term partisan identifications. In line with the general theory of cognitive

consistency (Festinger 1957), citizens should have a strong preference for harmonizing their

affective attachments and their contemporary perceptions of performance. However, when the

information flow about one’s own party becomes persistently negative (or when the other party

performs consistently well), efforts to maintain equilibrium inevitably break down. Under

normal circumstances, partisans may be quick to blame the out-party and credit the in-party, but

they are not entirely immune to how economic swings, scandal, and the quality of domestic and

foreign policy management reflect on party competence and leadership. Expressed in

psychological terms, the process of motivated reasoning is not unbounded. A disequilibrium is

therefore likely to arise when perceptions of the parties’ behavior are out of step with normal

expectations, for example, when the in-party (i.e., one’s own party) is plagued by scandal, when

it embraces issue positions that are inconsistent with core ideological principles, or when it fields

poor candidates, presides over economic downturn, or mismanages an international conflict or a

domestic emergency.

The central idea is that when identity-based expectations are disconfirmed by perceptions

of party behavior, the habit of partisanship loses much of its heuristic value. Specifically, this

disjuncture undermines the belief that partisan cues can effectively substitute for more detailed

(but costlier) information. To pick up the judgmental slack, ambivalent partisans should engage


in deeper, more effortful thought about their political options. For example, they may devote

more attention and thought to candidates’ policy stands in deciding whether to support them, and

may rely more on their personal economic circumstances in forming public policy preferences.

Moreover, ambivalent partisans should hold judgments that are less demonstrably plagued by

partisan bias, as they are less likely to view political reality through a partisan lens.

Experimental research in psychology corroborates that ambivalence reduces judgment

confidence, motivates individuals to devote greater cognitive resources to judgment tasks, and

increases accuracy. In one study, Jonas, Diehl and Bromer (1997) manipulated ambivalence by

associating a new consumer product with either evaluatively consistent or inconsistent features.

They found that those assigned to the latter (ambivalent) condition held less confidence in their

initial attitudes toward the product, and as a result engaged in greater elaboration of its attributes

in deciding whether to purchase it. In another persuasion experiment, Maio, Bell and Esses

(1996) linked ambivalence with deliberative thinking by presenting individuals with either strong

or weak arguments in favor of increased immigration of a minority group. They found that

among those with ambivalent attitudes toward the group, persuasion depended on the cogency of

the substantive arguments, such that more opinion change was observed in the strong (vs. weak)

arguments condition (indicating deliberative reasoning). By contrast, non-ambivalent

respondents ignored the substantive merit of the arguments and simply relied on their prior group

attitudes in expressing their policy opinions, indicating heuristic (habit-based) thinking.

Studies by political scientists on electoral perception and judgment provide converging

evidence on the impact of ambivalence. For example, Meffert, Guge and Lodge (2004) found

that ambivalence toward presidential candidates was associated with less confidence but greater

accuracy in placing them on policy issues. Basinger and Lavine (2005) and Hillygus and Shields


(2008) found that when voters held beliefs that conflicted with their partisan identities, they

relied more on policy and less on partisanship in their voting decisions. And Lavine et al. (2012)

found that ambivalent partisans relied more on real economic signals (e.g., changes in GDP and

unemployment) and less on partisanship in forming retrospective judgments of economic

performance. In sum, by motivating citizens to think more deeply and more objectively about

their political options, partisan ambivalence may (1) be a broad determinant of whether citizens

act more like resolute partisans or reflective deliberators, and (2) account for the effects of

anxiety in past research (e.g., Marcus et al. 2000).

When Do Citizens Rely on Costly Information?

Affective intelligence holds that the motivation to engage in reflection and reevaluation

hinges specifically on activation of the surveillance system, that is, on the perception of threat

and the experience of anxiety. However, negative evaluations of one’s own party represents only

one route by which a disjuncture between partisan identity and party evaluations may occur. It

may also result from holding positive evaluations of the other party. For example, in signing

NAFTA and welfare reform and in acknowledging that “the era of big government is over,”

President Clinton improved the Democratic Party brand among moderate Republicans (Lebo and

Cassino 2007).3 As approval of the out-party does not logically entail the activation of the

surveillance system or the experience of anxiety (just the opposite we would think), its influence

in stimulating deliberative thought is difficult to square with AIT. If positive evaluations of the

out-party enhance deliberative reasoning just as do negative evaluations of the in-party, then: (1)

AIT is in need of theoretical revision; and/or (2) adaptive political behavior may arise from other

circumstances.

3 As, of course, did the economic super-boom that Clinton presided over during his second term.


The predictions of the two frameworks in the context of candidate evaluation are depicted

in Figure 1.4 According to AIT (see top panel), only feelings of anxiety modulate the degree to

which party identification and issue preferences drive candidate evaluations. Enthusiasm toward

the in-party candidate, by contrast, is hypothesized to exert a direct (positive) effect on voters’

electoral preferences. According to AIT, then, enthusiasm and anxiety exert functionally distinct

effects on political judgment. According to partisan ambivalence theory (hereafter PAT; see

bottom panel), the political effects of enthusiasm and anxiety depend entirely on whether they

constitute identity-conflicting or identity-consistent reactions. Anxiety experienced in relation to

the candidate of one’s own party or enthusiasm for the candidate of the opposing party –

hereafter “in-candidate anxiety” and “out-candidate enthusiasm” – should undermine judgment

confidence on the basis of partisan cues, as both emotions (so directed) are in conflict with one’s

partisan identity. In-candidate enthusiasm and out-candidate anxiety, however, reinforce one’s

partisan identity, and should thus heighten citizens’ confidence in standing (partisan) decisions.

4 The illustrations are inspired by Ladd and Lenz (2008).


Figure 1. Graphical Depictions of AIT and PAT

A. Affective Intelligence Theory

B. Partisan Ambivalence Theory

-

+

+

IssuePreferencesParty ID

CandidateEvaluation

Anxiety

Enthusiasm

--

IssuePreferences

-

+

+

Party ID

CandidateEvaluation

In-Anxiety and Out-

Enthusiasm

Out-Anxiety and In-

Enthusiasm


Hypotheses

We conducted several empirical tests to determine the factors that prompt citizens to

move from a reflexive partisan cue-taking strategy to one in which they pause to consider more

valuable (but costly) information. In each case, AIT predicts that only anxiety (especially toward

the in-party candidate) instigates systematic thinking, i.e., less reliance on party and more

reliance on costlier information. By contrast, PAT predicts that the experience of identity-

conflicting emotions (whether in the form of anxiety or enthusiasm) leads to more systematic

(and less habit-based) thinking, and that the experience of identity-consistent emotions has the

opposite effects (i.e., increasing reliance on party and decreasing reliance on costlier

information). Our first tests examine the pattern of heterogeneity in the context of electoral

choice. We then examine the bases of preference updating on policy issues. Here we determine

the extent to which updating reflects partisan polarization or increased alignment with material

interests, and whether AIT or PAT better captures the pattern of observed heterogeneity. Last,

we examine changes in economic perceptions from January to November of 2008. Although the

economy was in steep decline throughout the year, Republicans – as in-partisans – were less

likely than Democrats to hold veridical perceptions. We examine whether variation in

judgmental accuracy among Republicans is better captured by AIT or PAT.

Data and VariablesData

We rely on three datasets to distinguish between AIT and PAT: the American National

Elections Studies (ANES) cumulative file; the 2008 ANES Panel Study; and the 1992-1996

ANES Panel Study. The cumulative file merges all election studies from 1948-2008, and


contains most items asked in at least three election years. The variables required for our analyses

appear in all presidential election years from 1980-2008.

VariablesCandidate Emotions. Beginning in 1980, the ANES has asked respondents about their

emotional reactions toward the presidential candidates. The question asks: “Has [candidate] –

because of the kind of person he is, or because of something he has done – made you feel

[emotion term]?” In the February wave of the 2008 panel study, the question read: “When you

think about (Barack Obama/John McCain), how [emotion term] does he make you feel?”

Responses were dichotomous (yes/no) in the 1980-2008 cumulative file surveys and in the 1992-

1996 panel study, and ranged from one (“not at all”) to five (“extremely”) in the 2008 panel

study. In all surveys, respondents were asked about four discrete emotions: “afraid,” “angry,”

“hopeful,” and “proud.” Consistent with Marcus et al. (2000), we combined the proud and

hopeful items separately for each candidate as a measure of candidate-specific enthusiasm, while

responses to the afraid item were used as a measure of candidate-specific anxiety.5

Partisanship and Partisan Strength. In all surveys, partisan identification was a

dichotomized measure coded “1” for Republicans and “0” for Democrats (leaners included). In

the 2008 panel study, we utilized the measure from the January wave of the survey. Partisan

strength was measured by folding the 7-point ANES partisanship item at its midpoint, so that

0=leaners, 1=weak partisans and 2=strong partisans (independents excluded).

Comparative Issue Distance. Following Marcus et al. (2000), issue-based candidate

evaluation was measured via comparative candidate issue distance. Specifically, we calculated

the absolute distance between the respondent’s position on a given issue and his or her

5 While Marcus et al. (1993, 2000) originally measured candidate anxiety with both the “afraid” and “angry” items, they have recently reconceptualized the latter as “aversion” (Marcus, MacKuen, Wolak and Keele 2006; MacKuen et al. 2010; see also Valentino et al. 2008). We thus exclude the anger item from the measure.


perception of each candidate’s position. For each issue, we then subtracted the absolute distance

from the Republican candidate from the absolute distance from the Democratic candidate, and

averaged across issues. In the cumulative file analysis, the issues were defense spending, foreign

policy orientation toward the USSR, women’s role in society, government aid to black

Americans, government versus private health insurance, government spending and services, and

government guaranteed jobs and income. We use the average for all available issues for each

respondent in this calculation. In the 2008 panel study, the issues (assessed in the January wave

for respondents’ positions, and in the June wave for candidate perceptions) included a

constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, raising taxes on those making more than

$200,000 per year, raising taxes on those making less than $200,000 per year, government-

provided prescription drugs for seniors on low income, government-provided healthcare for all

Americans, imprisonment of suspected terrorists without charging them with a crime,

warrantless wiretapping, temporary work visas for illegal immigrants, and a path to citizenship

for illegal immigrants.

Economic Retrospections. Economic perceptions were measured in both the January

and November waves of the 2008 panel study. In each wave, the question read: “Now thinking

about the economy in the country as a whole, would you say that as compared to one year ago,

the nation’s economy is now better, about the same, or worse?” Responses on the final scale

ranged from one (“much worse”) to five (“much better”).

Candidate Choice. Following Marcus et al.’s (2000, 2011) recommendation, candidate

choice was assessed by voting intentions in the pre-election wave of the cumulative file surveys.

This measure was not available in the 2008 panel study (nor was vote choice). Therefore, in the

February and October waves of the study, we used a measure of comparative candidate


evaluation, taking the difference between respondents’ attitudes toward McCain and Obama. The

question read: “Do you like [Barack Obama/John McCain], dislike him, or neither like nor

dislike him?” Responses ranged from one (“dislike a great deal”) to seven (“like a great deal”),

with values of four corresponding to “neither like nor dislike.”

Controls. In all analyses, we control for age, gender, education, income, and an indicator

for black respondents. We also controlled for political knowledge and partisan strength, both as

first-order terms and in interaction terms with party identification, comparative issue proximity

(in the candidate choice analyses), and material interest (in the preference updating analysis).6

This provides some assurance that any contingent effects of emotion are not a function of

dispositional differences in these traditional engagement variables. All variables were recoded on

a zero to one scale prior to analysis.

Results

Heterogeneity in Candidate Appraisal Processes

We begin by modeling vote intentions in the ANES cumulative file, pooling the data

from 1980 (when the emotion terms debuted) through 2008. Specifically, using ordered probit,

we modeled voting intentions (Democrat=-1; Undecided=0; Republican=1) on the basis of the

four emotion items (in- and out-candidate anxiety and enthusiasm), partisanship, comparative

6 In 2008, political knowledge was gauged using six civics questions: How many times can one be elected U.S. president? For how many years is a U.S. senator elected? How many U.S. senators are there from each state? For how many years are U.S. representative elected? What is the presidential succession after the Vice-President? What is the veto override percentage needed in the U.S. House and Senate? (α= .57). To maintain consistency across time, we utilize two items to measure knowledge in the ANES cumulative file: the interviewer’s subjective rating of the respondent’s political knowledge, and the respondent’s knowledge of which party controlled the House of Representatives. In 1992, we rely on the interviewer’s subjective rating of the respondent’s knowledge, as the civics items asked in that survey were coded in such a way that missing data were conflated with incorrect and “don't know” responses.


issue proximity and the controls. To gauge whether and how the emotion terms conditioned the

bases of intentions, we also included eight interactions: party ID x each emotion term, and issue

proximity x each emotion term. We also included separate interactions of political knowledge

and partisan strength with both party ID and issue proximity (as well as the first-order terms). As

Figure 2 indicates, seven of the eight interaction terms involving emotion were statistically

significant (all but for the interaction of issue proximity and in-candidate anxiety), with the

overall pattern strongly supporting PAT (see column labeled “vote”). As the coefficients

indicate, both types of identity-conflicting reactions – out-candidate enthusiasm and in-candidate

anxiety – depressed voters’ electoral reliance on party; moreover, the former had the

corresponding effect of heightening reliance on issues. By contrast, the two identity-consistent

reactions – in-candidate enthusiasm and out-candidate anxiety – had the opposite effects: both

factors heightened voters’ reliance on party and diminished their reliance on issues.

In Figure 3, we translate the coefficients into changes in the predicted probability of

voting Republican as a function of partisanship (top panel) and issue proximity (bottom panel).

As the top panel shows, out-candidate enthusiasm reduced the marginal effect of partisanship by

nearly 80 percentage points, whereas in-candidate enthusiasm had the opposite effect –

increasing the role of partisanship by about 75 points. The role of anxiety similarly depended on


Figure 2. Regression Coefficients, All Models

Cut 6Cut 5Cut 4Cut 3Cut 2Cut 1

IncomeEducation

GenderAge

Lagged PrefsIss/Econ x OEIss/Econ x IE

Iss/Econ X OA

Iss/Econ X SophIss/Econ x IA

Iss/Econ x StrengthPID x OEPID x IE

PID x OAPID x IA

PID x SophPID x Strength

OEIE

OAIA

SophisticationPID StrengthIssues/Econ

Party ID

Black

-5 0 5 -1 -.5 0 .5 1 -2 0 2 4 -2 0 2 4 -2 0 2 4

Vote Evals08 Insure92 Taxes08 EconRetros08

Notes: IA=In-Party Anxiety, OA=Out-Party Anxiety, IE=In-Party Enthusiasm, OE=Out-Party Enthusiasm.


Figure 3. Conditional Effects of Partisanship and Issue Proximity on Presidential Voting, 1980-2008

A. Partisanship

0.2

.4.6

.81

Mar

gina

l Effe

ct o

f Par

tisan

ship

on

Pr(

Vot

e R

ep)

In-Anxiety Out-Anxiety In-Enthusiasm Out-Enthusiasm

Low High

B. Issues

0.2

.4.6

.81

Mar

gina

l Effe

ct o

f Iss

ues

on P

r(V

ote

Rep

)

In-Anxiety Out-Anxiety In-Enthusiasm Out-Enthusiasm

Low High


whether it constituted an identity conflicting or consistent reaction. Anxiety toward the in-party

candidate reduced the effect of partisanship by 28 percentage points, whereas anxiety toward the

out-party candidate magnified the role of party by 17 percentage points (ps < .01). The bottom

panel of Figure 3 shows the corresponding dynamics for issues. Per PAT, both identity-

conflicting emotions substantially heightened respondents’ reliance on issues: out-candidate

enthusiasm by 73 percentage points and in-candidate anxiety by about 30 points. By contrast,

both identity-consistent emotions substantially decreased respondents’ reliance on issues: in-

candidate enthusiasm by over 60 percentage points, and out-candidate anxiety by nearly 40

points. As AIT holds that only anxiety (i.e., not enthusiasm) conditions party and issue voting, it

appears that PAT may provide a better explanation for the dynamic effects of emotion on

political judgment.

However, because the emotion and vote intention variables were measured at the same

time, it is possible that the former is endogenous to the latter (i.e., disliking a candidate leads to

anxiety; liking a candidate leads to enthusiasm). Ladd and Lenz (2008) proposed such an

endogenous affect mechanism to account for the indirect effect of anxiety in a pooled cross-

sectional analysis using the same ANES data presented in the leftmost numerical column of

Figure 2 (minus the elections of 2000, 2004, and 2008). Specifically, Ladd and Lenz argued that

the positive interaction between anxiety and comparative policy distance could occur in the

absence of anxiety playing a causal role. To test their endogenous affect explanation, Ladd and

Lenz modeled third wave candidate evaluation in the 1980 ANES Major Panel Study as a

function of second wave explanatory variables (including anxiety and a lagged measure of

candidate evaluation). If endogenous affect is responsible for the interactions (between anxiety


and partisanship and anxiety and issue proximity), they should disappear when anxiety is

measured in a prior wave. This is exactly what Ladd and Lenz found.

Perhaps, then, the pooled cross-sectional results we reported in Figures 2 and 3 can be

explained by endogenous affect. To determine whether this is the case, we turn to the 2008

ANES Panel Study. In this analysis, we use lagged measures of party ID and issue proximity,

and a lagged measure of candidate evaluation (measured in June). By controlling for prior

candidate evaluations, we can examine how voters’ electoral preferences (in October) changed

over the course of the campaign, and determine the extent to which such changes are driven by

partisans versus policy considerations (measured in January). More importantly, by using panel

data, we rule out endogenous affect by design (see Ladd and Lenz 2008). Specifically, we

modeled comparative candidate evaluations in October as a function of evaluations in June, the

four emotions items, partisanship, issue proximity, the relevant interaction terms, and all

controls. The model was estimated via ordinary least squares with robust standard errors.

The statistical results, shown in Figure 2 (under the column “Evals”), indicate that the

shift from party- to issue-based candidate evaluation is driven by enthusiasm (not anxiety), and

in ways that (again) conform to the expectations of PAT. Predicted candidate evaluation scores,

calculated across levels of the constituent terms of the interactions (holding all other variables at

their means), are displayed in Figure 4. As the figure indicates, voters who are unenthusiastic

about the other party’s candidate rendered their evaluations on the basis of partisan loyalty, with

policy considerations making no statistically appreciable contribution: the difference in candidate

evaluation between Republicans and Democrats is .29 (i.e., reflecting an effect of 29 percentage

points), whereas the impact of issues (i.e., the difference between those at the 5th and 95th

percentile values of the comparative issue proximity scale) is .05 (effectively


Figure 4. Conditional Effects of Partisanship and Issue Proximity on Candidate Evaluations in the 2008 Presidential Election

-.20

.2.4

.6

Pre

dict

ed M

argi

nal E

ffect

on

Eva

luat

ions

In-Enth Out-Enth In-Anx Out-Enth

Partisanship Comparative Issue Distance

Low High


zero). By contrast, those who do express enthusiasm for the other party’s candidate are issue

voters. Among these respondents, the impact of party and policy are reversed: the difference in

candidate evaluation between those with policy stands closer to Obama and those with policy

stands closer to McCain is .40; the corresponding impact of party is only .11. Thus, all else

equal, experiencing positive emotion toward the other party’s candidate substantially reduces

voters’ electoral reliance on partisanship, and substantially increases their reliance on policy

agreement. Moreover, voters who are enthusiastic about their own party’s candidate rely on party

ID at more than twice the rate of those lacking such enthusiasm, all else equal (bs = .32 and .15;

p < .01). Finally, and perhaps most tellingly, AIT’s signature effect – that in-candidate anxiety

shifts voters’ electoral reliance from party to issues – failed to obtain.7

In sum, none of these findings follow from AIT; however, they are consistent with PAT.

As voters experience more identity-conflicting feelings (in this case, enthusiasm), they derive

less confidence in their electoral judgments on the basis of partisan loyalty. To pick up the slack,

they turn to more diagnostic information, namely their issue preferences. By contrast, the more

voters experience identity-consistent feelings, the more confidence they derive from partisan

loyalty, and thus the more they use it as a judgmental yardstick (and the less they rely on the

more difficult calculus of issue distance). Moreover, none of these findings can be accounted for

by endogenous affect.

Preference Updating on Economic Issues: Partisan Polarization or Material Interest?

In this section, we examine systematic variation in how citizens update their policy

preferences on economic issues in the wake of intense national debate. We focus first on how

attitudes toward healthcare reform evolved over the first two years of Clinton’s presidency. We

7 Indeed, surprisingly, we find a marginally significant decline in the use of issues as a function of in-candidate anxiety. Given the inefficiency of the estimate, however, this effect should be treated with caution.


then examine preference updating on taxes during the 2008 presidential campaign. Healthcare

reform was the dominant policy emphasis during 1993-1994: the president devoted several major

policy speeches to the topic; the issue was extensively covered in the media; and the insurance

lobby funded an expensive television advertising campaign to defeat the eventual bill. The issue

was thus highly salient to the public (Dancey and Goren 2010; Jacobs and Shapiro 2000).

We contrast two basic processes by which citizens may have responded to this flood of

information. First, they may have chosen to receive and/or accept policy messages only from

fellow partisans, leading to preference adjustments resulting in greater alignment with co-

partisan elites (Zaller 1992). Alternatively, they may have been less attuned to the partisan

source of the message than to its actual content. If so, citizens may have given greater

consideration to how the alternatives resonated with their own material circumstances.

According to AIT, anxiety should depress the influence of party-based preference and heighten

the influence of contemporary information – in this case, how the parties’ positions fit with

citizens’ current economic predicaments. PAT, by contrast, predicts that the switch from

partisanship to material interest as the basis of preference updating will depend, as in the case of

electoral judgment, on the broader pattern of identity conflicting and consistent emotions.

Specifically, the experience of identity-conflicting emotions should shift the locus of attitude

change from partisan cues to personal economic predicaments, whereas the experience of

identity-consistent emotions should depress the role of personal economics and facilitate partisan

polarization.

Preference Updating, 1992-1994. The ANES included a battery of items in the 1992

wave of the 1992-1996 Panel Study to assess personal economic insecurity. These items ask

whether in the past year, one (and one’s family) (a) was better or worse off than a year ago; (b)


put off making planned purchases (including medical and dental treatments); (c) borrowed

money from relatives, friends or a financial institution to make ends meet; (d) dipped into

savings; (e) looked for a second job or worked more hours at one’s present job; (f) saved money

(reverse coded); and (g) fell behind on a rent or house payment. Together, the items provide a

broad and internally consistent portrait of an individual’s current economic predicament (α

= .76). We averaged them to form a composite measure of personal economic insecurity

(0=secure; 1=insecure).

We used this measure to predict attitudes toward government-provided national

healthcare in 1994. The item in both the 1992 and 1994 waves of the panel study read:

There is much concern about the rapid rise in medical and hospital costs. Some people feel there should be a government insurance plan which would cover all medical and hospital expenses for everyone. Others feel that all medical expenses should be paid by individuals, and through private insurance plans like Blue Cross or other company paid plans. Where would you place yourself on this scale, or haven't you thought much about this? (1=government insurance plan; 7=private insurance plans)

The analysis includes the same controls as before (all measured in 1992), as well as a lagged

(1992) measure of health care preference. Unsurprisingly, citizens use partisanship to update

their preferences over time: controlling for baseline differences in 1992, Republicans were 17

percentage points more conservative in their preferences than Democrats by 1994, holding all

other variables at their central tendencies. By contrast, the corresponding effect for personal

economic insecurity is -.02 (effectively zero).

The key question we wish to address is how the emotion terms altered the influence of

these two focal explanatory variables on preference updating. Most importantly, do the effects of

partisanship and material circumstances (which are only weakly correlated, r1992 = .26, with

Republicans being more secure) depend on anxiety (as AIT claims) or on whether the emotions

constitute identity conflicting or consistent reactions (as PAT claims)? Figure 2 (column labeled


Figure 5. Conditional Effects of Partisanship and Personal Economic Condition on Health Insurance Preferences

-.50

.51

Pre

dict

ed M

argi

nal E

ffect

on

Pre

fere

nces

Out-Anxiety Out-Enthusiasm

Partisanship Personal Economic Condition

Low High


“Insure92”) reveals two significant conditional effects of emotion: anxiety toward the other

party’s candidate heightened the impact of partisanship on preference change, and enthusiasm

toward the other party’s candidate heightened the impact of personal economic insecurity. Both

findings follow from PAT (but not AIT). As Figure 5 shows, a positive change in identity-

consistent emotion (qua out-candidate anxiety) more than tripled the impact of partisanship on

preference updating (from .10 to .30, p<.05), with Democrats moving to the left and Republicans

moving to the right. Strikingly, policy updating among these individuals was entirely unrelated

to their contemporaneous economic predicaments. Thus, for example, economically insecure

Republicans who experienced anxiety toward Bill Clinton in 1992 ignored the policy

implications of their pocketbooks and toed the party line in opposing health care reform.

Figure 5 also shows that identity-conflicting emotion (in this case, out-candidate

enthusiasm) substantially heightened the effect of personal economic insecurity. All else equal,

preference updating among these individuals was driven primarily by material considerations,

the effect of which increased from -.01 to .42 (indicating that the economically secure are 42

percentage points more opposed to reform than the insecure, controlling for baseline preferences

in 1992). This is a substantively meaningful and statistically significant shift.

Preference Updating, January-October 2008. We now consider the extent to which

partisanship shaped preferences over taxes during the 2008 presidential campaign. Both

candidates clearly signaled their preferences on the issue, with Obama vowing to let the Bush tax

cuts expire on the top two percent of income earners, and McCain pledging to maintain them.

We model October tax preferences on the wealthy (>$2000,000) as a function of lagged

preferences in January, partisanship, the emotion items, their interactions with partisanship, and

all controls. As the 2008 ANES panel study does not contain items sufficient to


Figure 6. Conditional Effects of Partisanship on Tax Preferences in the 2008 Presidential Election

0.2

.4.6

Mar

gina

l Effe

ct o

f Par

tisan

ship

(Rep

- D

em)

Out-EnthIn-Enth Out-Anx

Low High


operationalize economic insecurity, we examine the conditional influence of partisanship only.

Specifically, we gauge the extent to which Republicans and Democrats polarized with respect to

their preferences over the course of the campaign. The key interaction estimates, shown in

Figure 2 (under the column “Taxes08”) support PAT. Both identity-consistent emotions (out-

candidate anxiety and in-candidate enthusiasm) facilitate partisan polarization, while the

identity-conflicting emotion of out-candidate enthusiasm decreases polarization. The

corresponding predicted probabilities are plotted in Figure 6. For the two identity-consistent

emotions, moving from low to high increases polarization by 15 and 26 percentage points,

respectively. Conversely, for the identity-conflicting emotion (out-candidate enthusiasm), a

change from low to high decreases polarization by 16 points.

Perceptions in Flux: The Economic Collapse of 2008

The 2008 ANES panel study provides an opportunity to examine the bases of individual-

level change in economic perceptions over the course of a presidential campaign in which the

outlook changed dramatically. Of particular interest here is perceptual heterogeneity among

Republicans (as partisan supporters of the president during a precipitous downtown). We model

changes in perceptions between January and November, a period that straddled several high-

profile economic events, including a plunge in the Dow Jones of more than 5,000 points (a

nearly 40 percent drop), the collapse of two major Wall St. financial institutions, and dire

warnings in late September by the Fed Chairman and Treasury Secretary (and ultimately the

president) of a complete meltdown in the U.S. economy. Our primary question is whether

variability in the pattern of belief updating among Republicans is better predicted by AIT or

PAT. To address this question, we model citizens’ economic retrospections in November as a

function of their retrospections in January, partisanship, the four


Figure 7. Conditional Partisan Bias in Economic Retrospections, November 2008

0.2

5.5

.75

1

Pre

dict

ed P

roba

bilit

y

MW SW SS MW SW SS MW SW SS MW SW SS

Democrats Republicans

Low Out-Enthusiasm High Out-Enthusiasm


emotions items, the relevant interactions and all controls. By controlling for lagged economic

perceptions and by measuring the explanatory variables at lagged time points relative to

perceptions in November, the potential for endogenous affect to distort the estimates is removed

by design.

We estimated the model via maximum likelihood with an ordered probit link. The key

interactions, displayed in Figure 2 (under the column labeled “Retros08”), indicate a substantial

decline in the effect of partisanship as out-candidate enthusiasm increases, a result consistent

with PAT. Indeed, neither of the anxiety items conditions partisan bias in economic evaluations.

In Figure 7, we plot the predicted probabilities of membership in each of the three populated

retrospection categories (“much worse,” “worse,” “stayed the same,” denoted in the figure as

MW, W, and SS; very few respondents perceived the economy to have improved during 2008).

The left side of the figure shows the predicted probabilities for Democrats, the right side for

Republicans. As can be seen, out-candidate enthusiasm has no impact on the retrospections of

Democrats (i.e., the black and grey bars are virtually identical). Nor should it. Whether due to

partisan bias or because they are paying attention, Democrats are expected to hold negative

perceptions of economic change in November of 2008.

The picture is quite different for Republicans. At low levels of out-candidate enthusiasm,

we observe substantial amounts of partisan bias in retrospections. Indeed, at the lowest level of

this moderator (i.e., those with no enthusiasm for candidate Obama, which represents more than

one-third of Republicans), only 66 percent are expected to report that the economy had gotten

“much worse” over the past year. Even more surprisingly, more than a quarter of the remaining

40 percent (about 8% overall) were expected to report that the economy “stayed the same”

during this period. In line with PAT, Republicans who were enthusiastic about Obama in January


were substantially more attentive to the economic environment, with more than 90 percent

perceiving the economy to have gotten “much worse.”

Discussion and Conclusions

An important thrust of contemporary work on political judgment is that perceptions and

preferences are reached through a diverse and flexible set of cognitive strategies. The strategy

adopted is likely to depend on the political context and on the individual’s capabilities and goals.

Political reasoning is thus contingent: sometimes voters rely primarily on their partisan habits,

ignoring more diagnostic information (even if they are capable of acquiring it), while at other

times they taken in more (or better) information and engage in more effortful reflection and

reevaluation. The purpose of our investigation was to identify and test a relatively general

mechanism by which this contingency in political thinking works, and to use our findings to

clarify when, why, and how frequently we might expect to observe adaptive partisanship and

responsible democratic citizenship.

Past work on the contingent nature of political judgment has focused on the idea that

voters will abandon party cues and think more carefully about issues and candidates when they

experience anxiety (Marcus and MacKuen 1993; Marcus et al. 2000). We contrasted this

expectation with a broader framework based on two longstanding insights about the nature of

mass political thought: (1) party identification is the most important predisposition in the

political systems of ordinary Americans; and (2) people make strategic use of their cognitive

resources: when possible, they will minimize decision effort by relying on simple rules, but will

step up their thinking when cognitive shortcuts do not provide for sufficient judgment confidence

(Chaiken and Trope 1999; Lupia and McCubbins 1998).


We acknowledge that voters can and do use a wide range of informational shortcuts in

deciding what policy options to support and what electoral choices provide the most attractive

outcomes. In many and probably most political contexts, however, partisan loyalty serves as a

general anchor from which adjustments, typically insufficient ones, are made in judging the

political landscape. Whether because partisanship is a product of early affective socialization

(Campbell et al. 1960); because the party system constrains the public’s menu of choices and

attaches well-known, easily identifiable brand names to the competing options (Jackman and

Sniderman 2002); or because citizens simultaneously attempt to make it easy, get it right, and

maintain cognitive consistency when forming judgments – or for all of these reasons –

partisanship as a heuristic cue stands out in terms of its breadth, inferential power, and cognitive

efficiency.

However, responsible democratic citizenship (e.g., holding office-holders accountable,

maintaining policy control) requires that individuals be willing – at least at key times – to judge

the political landscape independently of their partisan commitments. Given the fact that partisan

identities and material circumstances are nearly orthogonal (the correlation in the 2008 ANES

panel is .16; it averages .20 over the entire length of the ANES series), delegating one’s

preferences to partisan elites while ignoring the policy implications of one’s material interests

will often lead to sub-optimal judgments (at least from a simple economic perspective). More

perniciously, reflexive cue-taking diminishes the responsiveness of elites to the public’s policy

wishes. In Politicians Don’t Pander, Jacobs and Shapiro (2000) argue that politicians conduct

extensive public opinion polling and focus groups to identify the most powerful “language,

arguments and symbols” to persuade the public to support its extremist policy goals (see also

Luntz 2007). They (2000: 5) write that “competing efforts to tip public evaluations of policy


proposals transformed ‘public opinion’ from an autonomous, external influence into a product of

an endogenous process.” Good citizenship therefore requires a mechanism for determining when

simple partisan cue-taking is a reasonable strategy, and when it needs to be supplemented by

some independent thought about the details.

Thus, our empirical effort focused on what moves citizens to eschew toeing the party line

and to consult more substantive considerations (such as material interests). We distinguished

between two theories in this regard: the anxiety-focused perspective of affective intelligence

theory, and partisan ambivalence theory, in which a disjuncture between contemporary party

evaluations and affective partisan attachments provides a signal about the reliability of partisan

cues. We contrasted the two perspectives by examining how two key emotions that have been the

mainstay of research on AIT– anxiety and enthusiasm – influence how voters engage in three

basic tasks of democratic citizenship: evaluating presidential candidates, updating opinions on

policy issues in the wake of a national debate, and perceiving changes in the macro economy. All

but one of our results was based on panel data, in which the explanatory variables were measured

prior to the dependent variable, and in which a lagged measure of the latter was included as a

predictor. This provides a good measure of protection against the scourge of endogeneity, as well

as a conservative test of our hypotheses.

The results, based on three sets of independent samples, provided converging evidence

that heterogeneity does not depend exclusively on anxiety, but on the broader consideration of

whether a given emotion harmonizes or conflicts with one’s partisan identity. In each analysis,

the experience of (one or more) identity-conflicting emotions decreased the role of partisanship

and increased the role of more costly information, whereas the experience of (one or more)

identity-consistent emotions had the opposite effect. Moreover, in direct contradiction to AIT,


the effects were stronger and more reliable for enthusiasm than anxiety. As the former does not

logically entail activation of the surveillance system or the experience of anxiety, these results do

not fit neatly into the AIT framework. As we carefully controlled for both political knowledge

and partisan strength (both as first-order terms and in product terms with focal predictors), the

observed effects cannot be attributed to these standard engagement factors. Moreover, as Figure

2 attests, once identity conflicting and consistent partisan evaluations are in the model, political

sophistication and partisan strength failed to stratify respondents’ reliance on costly information.

What seems to matter, then, is not whether voters experience one particular discrete

emotion (e.g., anxiety), or whether they are highly engaged in politics, but whether they can

derive adequate judgment confidence on the basis of low-effort cues alone. Contemporary

partisan evaluations that conflict with the judgmental implications of party cues undermine

confidence, leading citizens to think more carefully. By contrast, partisan evaluations that

dovetail with party cues enhance confidence, fostering shallower (and potentially biased)

judgments. Where does this leave AIT? Despite the fact that our critical tests seem to cast doubt

on its validity, we believe this is an unwarranted conclusion. Rather, we believe that both

theories are tenable but under different circumstances. AIT may provide a better explanation of

heterogeneity in the moments when anxiety is experienced as a full-throttle, physiological event

(as opposed to indicating in a survey whether a candidate has “ever made you anxious”). When

in the active throes of anxiety, it is eminently adaptive to set aside habit and focus on the most

important information (e.g., Kahneman 2011). Over time, however, the urgency of an emotional

reaction decays, leaving a residual evaluative response. If this evaluative response is out of step

with one’s partisan attachment, it should produce little in the way of judgment confidence, and

thereby instigate a change in the process by which politics is perceived and evaluated. Under


these circumstances, and all of those in which anxiety is irrelevant, PAT would appear to provide

the better explanation.8

The question of how much and what kind of knowledge citizens need to fulfill their role

in a democratic society has been hotly debated by political scientists (Bennet 1988; Delli Carpini

and Keeter 1996; Fishkin 1991; Habermas 1989; Lupia and McCubbins 1998). There would

appear to be a consensus that the Progressive Era ideal of the “informed citizen” – one who

regularly keeps abreast of important political developments and who evaluates politics

independent of party elites – is unattainable. Given the far more immediate and personal

concerns that people face in their day-to-day lives (e.g., raising children, working, engaging in

social relationships), politics rarely rises to the level of a compelling spectacle. At its very core,

however, the concept of democracy implies the constraint of representatives by citizens. In a

political world where partisan cues are utilized unthinkingly, citizens effectively become the

agents of elite interests, as the latter learn that they may take actions (e.g. make policy

statements) with impunity. The dynamic between citizens and elites then becomes one of, in the

words of Shapiro and Jacobs (2000; 2010), “simulated representation,” whereby elites, rather

than seeking to bend their positions to the median, simultaneously shape opinion and

claim responsiveness to a majoritarian will. Our research suggests that citizens – or least the 90

percent who identify with (or lean toward) one party or the other – are equipped with a broadly

functional tool for protecting themselves against this form of tyranny.

8 However, the relevance of PAT is bounded by circumstances in which partisanship itself is relevant. Several recent tests of AIT were conducted in either explicitly non-partisan contexts (e.g., primary elections; Brader 2005) or in ones in which partisanship was not directly invoked (MacKuen et al. 2010; Valentino et al. 2008).


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Supporting Information

The supporting information includes the regression tables for each of the models included

in figure 2. Table 1 corresponds to column 1 of figure 2, table 2 to column 2, etc. We include one

additional model in the supporting information that was excluded from the main body of the

paper for space considerations.

This additional model is included in column 2 of table 4. It is a model of preference

formation over the course of the 2008 presidential campaign on the issue of government-

provided health insurance. The setup of the model is the same as with the tax preference model.

We model October preferences as a function of lagged preferences in January, partisanship, the

emotion items, their interactions with partisanship, and all controls The only significant

moderator of partisanship is in-candidate enthusiasm. As predicted by PAT, this emotion

increases the marginal effect of partisanship from .14 to .50.


Table 1. Vote Intention, ANES Cumulative File_______________________________________________Variable B SE p_______________________________________________Age .00 .01 .85Gender .04 .05 .38Black -.53 .08 .00Hispanic -.18 .09 .03Education .18 .09 .04Income .11 .09 .22Interest -.04 .08 .62Republican .75 .13 .00Relative Issue Distance 4.31 .71 .00Strength -.35 .27 .19Sophistication -.74 .39 .06In-Anxiety .02 .30 .94Out-Anxiety .46 .25 .07In-Enthusiasm -.36 .28 .20Out-Enthusiasm -.38 .28 .18

Rep X Strength .38 .12 .00Rep X Sophistication .32 .16 .04Rep X In-Anxiety -1.13 .12 .00Rep X Out-Anxiety .97 .12 .00Rep X In-Enthusiasm 3.02 .12 .00Rep X Out-Enthusiasm -2.95 .13 .00Issues X Strength .35 .56 .53Issues X Sophistication .67 .78 .39Issues X In-Anxiety .83 .58 .15Issues X Out-Anxiety -1.55 .52 .00Issues X In-Enthusiasm -2.64 .58 .00Issues X Out-Enthusiasm 3.85 .57 .00Intercept -1.98 .37 .00

N 7395_______________________________________________Notes: Entries are ML ordered probit coefficients and standard errors.. The link function is ordered probit.


Table 2. Comparative Candidate Evaluations, ANES 2008 Panel_____________________________________________________Variable B SE p_____________________________________________________Lagged Evaluations .50 .04 .00Age -.02 .02 .49Male -.01 .01 .25Black .00 .02 .91Education -.03 .02 .16Income -.04 .03 .18Economic Retrospections .08 .03 .00Republican -.02 .06 .74Relative Issue Distance .19 .18 .27Partisan Strength -.03 .03 .37Sophistication -.05 .07 .45In-Anxiety .15 .09 .10Out-Anxiety -.09 .04 .06In-Enthusiasm -.10 .05 .06Out-Enthusiasm -.06 .08 .44

Rep X Strength .14 .04 .00Rep X Soph .09 .06 .12Rep X In-Anx .03 .07 .68Rep X Out-Anx .06 .06 .32Rep X In-Enth .17 .05 .00Rep X Out-Enth -.25 .07 .00Issues X Strength -.06 .09 .54Issues X Soph -.06 .17 .73Issues X In-Anx -.35 .20 .09Issues X Out-Anx .17 .13 .18Issues X In-Enth -.12 .14 .39Issues X Out-Enth .46 .19 .01Constant .24 .08 .00

R^2 .81N 725

_____________________________________________________Notes: Entries are OLS coefficients and robust standard errors. The dependent variable is measured in Oct. Partisanship and economic retrospections are measured in January. Emotions and lagged evaluations are measured in February. Comparative issue distance is calculated as a function of respondents’ issue positions in February and their perceptions of candidate positions in June.


Table 3. Preference Formation on Health Insurance, ANES 1992-1994 Panel____________________________________________________________________Variable B SE p _________________________________________________________Lagged Preferences 1.13 .19 .00Age -.14 .25 .60Male .09 .12 .44Black -.14 .19 .47Education -.15 .24 .54Income .37 .24 .13Unemployed -.14 .23 .55Republican .40 .43 .35Personal Economic Conditions -.05 .76 .95Partisan Strength .06 .34 .87Sophistication .27 .53 .62In-Anxiety -.63 .38 .10Out-Anxiety -.34 .29 .24In-Enthusiasm -.19 .37 .61Out-Enthusiasm -.96 .39 .01Rep X Strength .34 .29 .24Rep X Soph -.16 .49 .75Rep X In-Anx .23 .31 .45Rep X Out-Anx .53 .25 .03Rep X In-Enth -.21 .34 .54Rep X Out-Enth -.35 .35 .32Economic X Strength -.18 .59 .76Economic X Soph -.82 .94 .38Economic X In-Anx .79 .62 .20Economic X Out-Anx .31 .49 .52Economic X In-Enth .64 .61 .29Economic X Out-Enth 1.37 .62 .03Cut 1 -.75 .44Cut 2 -.38 .44Cut 3 .08 .44Cut 4 .73 .44Cut 5 1.16 .44Cut 6 1.71 .44Pseudo R^2 .10N 407

____________________________________________________________________Notes: Entries are ML ordered probit coefficients and standard errors. The dependent variable is measured in 1994, and all independent variables are measured in 1992.


Table 4. Preference Formation on Taxes and Health Insurance, ANES 2008 Panel_______________________________________________________________________

Taxes on >$200K Govt. Health Insurance

Variable B SE p B SE p_______________________________________________________________________Lagged Preferences 2.54 .18 .00 2.10 .16 .00Age -.10 .27 .71 -.32 .26 .23Male .09 .11 .41 .05 .11 .62Black .21 .27 .44 .17 .27 .54Education .32 .22 .14 .05 .22 .82Income .59 .28 .04 .75 .28 .01Republican -.90 .43 .04 .38 .42 .36Partisan Strength -.27 .19 .16 -.03 .18 .87Sophistication -.96 .35 .01 .30 .34 .37In-Anxiety .44 .34 .19 .30 .33 .36Out-Anxiety -.65 .30 .03 .44 .27 .10In-Enthusiasm -.36 .30 .23 -.76 .28 .01Out-Enthusiasm .23 .35 .50 .62 .34 .07

Rep X Strength .39 .27 .15 .28 .27 .29Rep X Soph 1.51 .47 .00 -.09 .46 .84Rep X In-Anx -.45 .54 .40 -.72 .52 .17Rep X Out-Anx .92 .38 .02 .03 .36 .93Rep X In-Enth 1.06 .41 .01 1.07 .41 .01Rep X Out-Enth -.84 .48 .08 -.71 .48 .14

Cut 1 -.03 .35 .60 .33Cut 2 .85 .35 1.17 .33Cut 3 1.12 .35 1.31 .33Cut 4 1.95 .36 2.22 .34Cut 5 2.12 .36 2.34 .34Cut 6 2.70 .37 3.03 .35

Pseudo R^2 .27 .24N 513 512

_______________________________________________________________________Notes: Entries are ML ordered probit coefficients and standard errors. The dependent variable is measured in October, lagged issue preferences and partisanship are measured in January, and emotions and sophistication are measured in February.


Table 5. Economic Retrospections, ANES 2008 Panel________________________________________________Variable B SE p________________________________________________Lagged Retrospections 2.01 .23 .00Age -.48 .23 .04Male -.02 .10 .86Black .27 .23 .24Education -.33 .19 .09Income .04 .24 .85Republican .66 .40 .09Partisan Strength .06 .20 .75Sophistication -.37 .34 .27In-Anxiety .09 .37 .82Out-Anxiety .05 .29 .85In-Enthusiasm -.15 .30 .61Out-Enthusiasm -.12 .36 .73

Rep X Strength -.25 .26 .32Rep X Soph .39 .42 .36Rep X In-Anx -.23 .49 .63Rep X Out-Anx -.42 .35 .23Rep X In-Enth .36 .38 .35Rep X Out-Enth -1.13 .47 .02

Cut 1 .93 .34Cut 2 1.90 .34Cut 3 3.18 .39Cut 4 3.73 .49

Pseudo R^2 .15N 982

________________________________________________Notes: Entries are ML ordered probit coefficients and standard errors. The dependent variable is measured inNovember, lagged retrospections and partisanship are measured in January, and emotions and sophistication are measured in February.

on the motivational bases of heterogeneity in political...

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