Contribuciones de La Aproximación Sociocognitiva A La Psicología Política

Political Psychology, Vol. 21, No.
4, 2000
Editors’ Note
The editors of Political Psychology invited Professor Kathleen McGraw to

contribute a Millennium essay on the influence and intellectual trajectory of the
cognitive approach in the field of political psychology. Professor McGraw,
trained as a social psychologist, is currently in the Department of Political Science
at Ohio State University, after being in the Political Science Dept. at SUNY Stony
Brook for many years. She has been a prominent and longstanding contributor to
theory and research in the political cognition arena, and has a broad grasp of
research and theoretical developments in the field. Her Millennium essay offers
an assessment of the insights and controversies generated by the cognitive
approach, and identifies important and substantive scholarly trends. McGraw
suggests that political psychology shows all the signs of a maturing scientific field:
“Tremendous theoretical, substantive, and methodological advances have been
made in a short period of time. Political cognition scholarship has begun to live
up to its promise—illuminating the cognitive processes that occur when citizens
think about and react to the world of politics.”
Contributions of the Cognitive Approach

to Political Psychology
Kathleen M. McGraw
Department of Political Science
The Ohio State University
The social cognition tradition has had a strong impact on political psychology scholarship
in the last part of the 20th century. The purpose of this essay is to review the contributions
of the cognitive approach in helping political psychologists to better understand how citizens
think about the world of politics. I consider research concerned with both the mental
structure or representation of information about the political world and research concerned
with specifying the cognitive processes that produce political judgments and opinion, and
conclude that political cognition scholarship has begun to live up to its promise. In the
second part of the essay, I suggest a research agenda for the future, pointing to ten directions
for extending the political cognition paradigm.
KEY WORDS: political cognition, social cognition, memory, information processing.
805
0162-895X © 2000 International Society of Political Psychology
Published by Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK.
806 McGraw
Political psychology is inherently interdisciplinary, engaging scholars from

several disciplines who draw on diverse theoretical frameworks to inform their
research. As a result, political psychology is a richly pluralistic field, a condition
that has been both applauded [e.g., Greenstein’s (1973) exhortation to “let many
flowers bloom”] and the source of some dismay [e.g., Merelman’s (1979) Humpty
Dumpty metaphor of fragmentation]. Although the pluralistic nature of the disci-
pline is perhaps its most defining quality, there has also been an ebb and flow in
the paradigms that have dominated political psychology scholarship over the past
half-century. McGuire (1993) characterized the history of political psychology as
progressing through three “eras”: the “personality and culture” era of the 1940s
and 1950s, the “attitudes and voting behavior” era of the 1960s and 1970s, and the
“political cognition and decision” era of the 1980s and 1990s (see also Sullivan &
Rahn, in press, for a historical overview). The dominant influence on the political
cognition and decision era has been the social cognition tradition from social
psychology. The purpose of this essay is to review and evaluate the contributions
of social and political cognition to political psychology and political science. It is
organized in three sections. I begin with a bit of history and definitions in order to
delineate the contours of the literature that will be reviewed. I then turn to a review
and evaluation of the contributions. This review, by necessity, is intended to be
illustrative rather than comprehensive. Finally, because this essay is part of the
journal’s Millennium Series, I take the opportunity to look to the future to suggest
a research agenda for the next century.
What Is Social Cognition and Why Did It Become Important

in Political Psychology?
Social cognition is not a specific theory or domain of inquiry, but instead is a

metatheoretical set of assumptions that guides research in social psychology on a
variety of substantive topics. Fiske and Taylor (1984) defined social cognition as
“the study of how people make sense of other people and themselves. It focuses on
how ordinary people think about people” (p. 1). Social cognition deals with three
fundamental questions (Sherman, Judd, & Park, 1989). First, how is social infor-
mation stored and organized in memory? Second, how does information that is
stored in memory affect the processing and interpretation of new information, as
well as subsequent judgments, choices, and behaviors? Third, how are mental
representations changed by new information, reflection, and other processes? In
sum, social cognition is explicitly mentalistic in orientation, concerned with
cognitive activity (mental structure and process) and its role in shaping human
judgment and behavior.
Social psychology has always relied on cognitive concepts, even when behav-
iorism dominated psychology writ large. The cognitive orientation in social psy-
chology was reinvigorated in the late 1970s, following fundamental developments
in cognitive psychological theories and methods. A trio of influential books
Contributions of the Cognitive Approach 807
signaled the new perspective: the edited volume Social Cognition: The Ontario
Symposium (Higgins, Herman, & Zanna, 1981), Human Inference: Strategies and
Shortcomings of Social Judgment (Nisbett & Ross, 1980), and Social Cognition
(Fiske & Taylor, 1984). Despite its dominance in social psychology—perhaps best
reflected by the audacious chapter title “The Sovereignty of Social Cognition”
(Ostrom, 1994)—social cognition also drew persistent challenges and criticisms.
Three complaints dominated: “Social cognition research fails to deal adequately
with affect, it fails to deal adequately with motivation, and it fails to deal adequately
with actual interaction” (Fiske & Godwin, 1994, p. 150). Although social cognition
research until the late 1980s indeed focused on relatively “cold” cognitions,
developments in the 1990s have reflected renewed interest in integrating cognition,
motivation, and affect (Fiske & Taylor, 1991; Kunda, 1999).
I have taken some pains to detail the evolution of social cognition because the
evolution of political cognition has strong parallels.1 Political cognition is a
metatheoretical approach guiding research on basic substantive problems that are
among the enduring concerns of political science. The cognitive approach in
political science is characterized by the deceptively simple premise that informa-
tion about the outside political world is organized in internal memory structures
(“pictures in the head”; Lippmann, 1922), and that these memory structures
determine how people interpret and evaluate political events and make decisions.
Consequently, political cognition is inherently reductionistic: The units of analysis
are micro-level cognitive processes. Rahn and Sullivan (in press) note that this
reductionism may lead those who prefer more macro-levels of analysis to view the
political cognition approach to political psychology as “insufficiently political.” I
concur with Rahn and Sullivan that the individual/cognitive level of analysis is an
essential and unavoidable aspect of political psychology (and, as they write, “will
not apologize for it”). The challenge, and the ultimate test of its success, will be
the extent to which the reductionistic cognitive approach can illuminate the larger,
more “macro” questions of political life.
Certain traditions in political science have a longstanding interest in cognitive
concepts, most obviously the continuing debate about belief systems and ideologi-
cal constraint (Converse, 1964), but also work on cognitive political development
(Merelman, 1969) and foreign policy decision-making (Jervis, 1976). The impor-
tation of social cognitive principles allowed political scientists to investigate these
and other topics with increased theoretical and methodological rigor. The first
explicit application of cognitive psychology in political science was Axelrod’s
1 There are boundaries implied by these different terms, but they are admittedly fuzzy. For the most
part, I use social cognition to refer to theory and research published by social psychologists in social
psychology books and journals, and political cognition to refer to theory and research published in
political psychology and political science outlets. I do not make much of a distinction between political
psychology and political science in this essay, as the cognitive approach has plainly had an impact on
both. More clearly, political cognition is now a prominent perspective in political psychology that has
had an impact on “mainstream” political science theories and research.
808 McGraw
(1973, 1976) research on the causal schemata (i.e., beliefs about why different
events occur) of foreign policy decision-makers. As with social cognition, it is
possible to point to a trio of important books that signaled the coming-of-age of
political cognition: Processing the News (Graber, 1984), the edited volume Politi-
cal Cognition (Lau & Sears, 1986), and News That Matters (Iyengar & Kinder,
1987). And as with social cognition, detractors have persistently argued that
political cognition is impoverished by a failure to incorporate affective, motiva-
tional, and contextual variables (I return to this point below).
Why did this particular cross-disciplinary migration of ideas occur? Although
the influence of cognitive psychology on social psychology comes as no surprise,
the influence of social cognitive psychology on political science invites commen-
tary. Several developments are worthy of note. The first is simply that political
science could not have avoided the “cognitive revolution,” which had a profound
impact in the late 20th century on virtually all academic disciplines, as well as
education and industry. Second, as a “borrowing discipline” (Jervis, 1989; Sears,
1989), political science has a tradition of being heavily influenced by both eco-
nomics and psychology, with rational choice models becoming increasingly popu-
lar in the 1980s. Political cognition, with its fundamental concern for accurately
specifying the mental processes underlying judgment and choice, provided a useful
alternative to scholars concerned about the influence of rational choice models that
were rooted in assumptions that violate well-established principles of limited
information processing.
Social cognition’s influence on political science also grew as a result of the
embrace and promotion of the cognitive approach by prominent scholars involved
with the most influential graduate political psychology programs in the late 1970s
and early 1980s: David Sears at the University of California, Los Angeles; John
Sullivan and Gene Borgida at the University of Minnesota; and Milton Lodge at
the State University of New York at Stony Brook. These scholars and their
programs arguably began the cognitive revolution in political psychology because
they trained, placed, and hired scholars armed with the theoretical and methodo-
logical advances of cognitive psychology.
For example, David Sears produced a line of social psychology PhDs who
were interested (in varying degrees) in political cognitive issues, and who were
subsequently placed in political science departments and published widely in
political science journals (Don Kinder, Rick Lau, Leonie Huddy and Carolyn Funk
are first-generation Sears’ offspring; Jon Krosnick, Tom Nelson, and Kathleen
McGraw are second-generation products). At Minnesota, John Sullivan and Gene
Borgida trained a number of political science PhDs in social cognition who went
on to become major forces in the movement (e.g., Pam Conover, Stanley Feldman,
Mark Peffley, Jon Hurwitz, and Wendy Rahn). Finally, the continued commitment
of Milton Lodge and the Stony Brook Political Science Department to cognitive
political psychology deserves mention, in particular their penchant for hiring
scholars with substantive interests in cognition (e.g., with political science PhDs,
Shanto Iyengar, Stanley Feldman, and Charles Taber; with social psychology
PhDs, John Herstein, Ruth Hamill, George Quattrone, Kathleen McGraw, Victor
Ottati, Leonie Huddy, and Howard Lavine).
Political Cognition’s Role in Political Psychology
How has the cognitive approach in political psychology helped us to better

understand how citizens think about the world of politics? The following discussion
is inherently subjective and undoubtedly biased by my own interests and areas of
expertise. Moreover, space considerations mandated a focus on political cognition
as it pertains to our understanding of the mass public and ordinary citizens.
Important advances have also been made in the area of elite cognition and
decision-making, and interested readers are directed to Herrmann (1985, 1994),
Jervis (1976), Larson (1985, 1994), Sylvan and Voss (1998), and Tetlock (1998)
for more thoughtful and detailed treatments than can be provided here.
Theoretical Precision and Methodological Innovation
The most striking contribution of the cognitive approach is that it has brought
theoretical precision and methodological innovation to research on a host of topics
in political psychology. In terms of theoretical precision, the cognitive approach
provides frameworks for describing and understanding several different types of
internal memory structures and processing stages, and also addresses constraints
on the information-processing system in terms of limitations on the cognitive
resources available for representational capacity and computational complexity.
No doubt many readers are skeptical that the introduction of concepts such as
schemata and associative networks, links and nodes, spreading activation, acces-
sibility and availability, and so on, was an improvement over “belief systems.” And
it is often the case that scholars use these terms imprecisely and inaccurately.
However, cognitive constructs such as these, and the theories in which they are
embedded, have given political psychologists the ability to think with more
precision and to deduce more creative and fine-grained hypotheses about cognitive
processes than was possible in the pre-cognitive era (evidence for this assertion is
provided in the discussion of the specific contributions that follow).
Experimentation is alive and well in political science and political psychology,
increasingly well-regarded and prominent in mainstream journals (Kinder &
Palfrey, 1993; McGraw, 1996; McGraw & Hoekstra, 1994). The acceptance of
experimentation can be traced in large part to Iyengar and Kinder’s (1987) News
That Matters. That work is important on many levels, including for our purposes
the development of a cognitive theory of media effects (priming). Iyengar and
Kinder’s landmark work, in combination with the sustained Stony Brook experi-
mental cognitive tradition (beginning with Wahlke & Lodge, 1972), paved the way
for methodological diversity in political science research. Because experimentation
810 McGraw
is ideally suited for decomposing complex phenomena into their component causal
processes, political cognition research has been particularly reliant on experimen-
tation, especially in the laboratory. Political cognition researchers have used and
championed a diverse array of measurement and methodological techniques to
gauge mental structure and process, including the use of reaction times, recall
clustering, computational modeling, and process tracing (see the contributions in
Lodge & McGraw, 1995, for illustrative examples). At the same time, proponents
of the cognitive approach have been innovative in exploiting the general-purpose
public opinion survey to illuminate issues of cognitive structure and process (e.g.,
Miller, Wattenberg, & Malanchuk, 1986; Rahn, Krosnick, & Breuning, 1994).
More recently, the movement toward embedding experimental designs within
general public opinion surveys, a breakthrough that owes a great deal to Paul
Sniderman’s leadership and vision (e.g., Sniderman & Grob, 1996) has provided
political psychologists with even more powerful tools for exploring political
cognitive processes.
In the remainder of this section of the essay, I differentiate between two broad
categories of contributions: those concerned with the structure or mental repre-
sentation of various types of political objects, and those concerned with the
dynamics of cognitive processes that produce a political response or judgment
(following the organization of Lodge & McGraw, 1995); the “procedural” contri-
butions receive more attention. To some extent, the “structure versus process”
distinction is artificial; both are often jointly considered in the same project, as they
are both necessary for a full understanding of political thinking. Nonetheless, it
provides a useful organizing framework.
The Structure of Political Memory
Just as the schema concept provided the initial meeting ground for social and
cognitive psychology in the early 1970s, so too did the concept pave the way for
social cognition’s entry into political science. A schema is defined as “a cognitive
structure that represents knowledge about a concept or type of stimulus, including
its attributes and the relations among those attributes” (Fiske & Taylor, 1991, p.
98). The schema concept was congenial to political scientists because it fit nicely
with a set of existing constructs with which they were comfortable (e.g., belief
system, attitude, stereotype). In the mid-1980s, four articles by prominent scholars
were published in the flagship journals of political science (American Political
Science Review and American Journal of Political Science) that included a refer-
ence to “schema” in their titles, so signaling that the cognitive revolution was
officially underway in political science (Conover & Feldman, 1984; Hamill, Lodge,
& Blake, 1985; Lodge & Hamill, 1986; Miller et al., 1986). Some were less than
enthusiastic, calling for political psychologists to go “beyond the ‘S’ word” (Kuklinski,
Luskin, & Bolland, 1991), engendering a lively debate with the “S-word” defenders
(Lodge, McGraw, Conover, Feldman, & Miller, 1991). Ironically, the term
“schema” itself has begun to fade from usage, largely because it is imbued with
many meanings and so somewhat imprecise. Increasingly, scholars rely on “asso-
ciative network models,” referring to a class of models that conceptualize the
representation of information in memory as a network of nodes and connecting
links (Anderson, 1983).
Research on political memory, concerned with measuring with precision the
structure of the information stored in memory and examining the consequences of
various types of knowledge structures for subsequent inferences and judgments,
has been creative and varied. Diverse political stimulus targets—candidates,
groups, and issues—have been the focus of studies relying on controlled experi-
ments and survey methods. As political memory could be the topic of an essay all
to itself (and probably should be), my discussion is necessarily brief and selective,
focusing on three key areas of investigation.
First, researchers have considered how citizens organize information about
political actors in memory. One of the first “schema” studies was Miller et al.’s
(1986) study of the organization of candidate trait characteristics, using responses
from the National Election Studies (NES) like-dislike questions; Kinder (1986)
made use of NES trait ratings to address the same topic. There has been a sustained
interest in this question (for a review, see Funk, 1996), and it is clear from this
varied literature that citizens have coherent, systematic mental images of candi-
dates, organized primarily around the dimensions of competence, trustworthiness,
and warmth. My students and I have approached the question of how information
about candidates is structured in memory in a different way, focusing on whether
memory is structured along the “stuff” or substance of politics (policies and
personal attributes) or along an evaluative dimension (positive and negative). Our
work indicates that substantive organization dominates (McGraw, Pinney, &
Neumann, 1991; McGraw & Steenbergen, 1995), consistent with Lau’s (1989a)
argument that different citizens care about different “things” in politics, such as
policies, personal character, group interests, etc.
Second, researchers have focused on how existing knowledge structures
influence learning about and inferences drawn about political candidates. Partisan
stereotypes—the beliefs, knowledge, and expectancies citizens have about the
major parties (Rahn, 1993)—exert considerable influence on political information
processing, determining what people remember about candidates (Lodge & Hamill,
1986) and the inferences that they draw (Conover & Feldman, 1989; Rahn, 1993).
Other types of stereotypes are also politically consequential. For example, voters
tend to stereotype politicians by sex, attributing to them personality traits, policy
issue stands, and other political beliefs (Huddy, 1994; Huddy & Terkildsen, 1993;
Kahn, 1994). Finally, a number of studies have investigated the impact of racial
stereotypes on political judgments, concluding that the impact of such stereotypes
depends on a number of limiting conditions, in particular the “fit” between a
particular target of judgment and the broader stereotype (e.g., Hurwitz & Peffley,
1997; Peffley, Hurwitz, & Sniderman, 1997; Terkildsen, 1993). An important
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unifying theme across these three research questions (i.e., the impact of partisan,
sex, and racial stereotypes) is the recognition that citizens are flexible information
processors, capable of engaging in both “theory-driven” (stereotypic) and “data-
driven” (attentive to the particulars of a specific case) processing when making
political judgments, in line with the theoretical predictions drawn from dual-
process models in psychology (e.g., Fiske, 1986; Fiske & Neuberg, 1990).
Third, a fair amount of recent research has been concerned with understanding
how attitudes about policy issues are represented in memory. Contrary to the
conclusion reached for political candidates, evidence from multiple studies sug-
gests that the information that people hold about policies is often organized along
the evaluative dimension (i.e., agreement and disagreement; Berent & Krosnick,
1995; Judd & Kulik, 1980; McGraw & Pinney, 1990). Beyond the question of
evaluative organization, the relationship between the complexity of beliefs associ-
ated with an attitude object (i.e., the number of independent dimensions underlying
the attitude) and the extremity of the attitude has received attention, with greater
complexity generally associated with more moderate attitudes (Linville, 1982;
Lusk & Judd, 1988; Tetlock, 1989). Finally, there is growing interest in ambiva-
lence as a structural property of attitudes, a construct that is a central component
of Zaller and Feldman’s (1992) influential model (for a review of the psychological
literature, see Eagly & Chaiken, 1993; for political psychological developments,
see Holbrook, Krosnick, Gardner, & Cacioppo, 2000; Meffert, Guge, & Lodge,
1997; Steenbergen & Brewer, 1997).
Specifying Opinion Formation Processes
Political scientists have made tremendous progress in identifying the varied

ingredients of public opinion, in particular material interests, feelings toward social
groups, and principles (for a review, see Kinder, 1998). However, this literature
“tells us nothing about how citizens assemble their views, how they put the various
ingredients together” (Kinder, 1998, p. 812). It is here that the cognitive approach
has been most influential, as political psychologists have identified and systemati-
cally explored two distinct processes underlying the formation of political attitudes
and opinions. The first is that judgments, and in particular evaluations of political
candidates, are formed on-line. Drawing on Hastie and Park’s (1986) seminal work
in social psychology, Milton Lodge and his Stony Brook colleagues have proposed
that citizens integrate the evaluative implications of new information about candi-
dates by continuously updating an “on-line running tally” when information is first
encountered. When an evaluation of the candidate is necessary, the summary tally
is retrieved, not the specific pieces of information that contributed to it. As a result,
there is often no relationship between what can be recalled about a candidate and
the overall evaluation; rather, that evaluation is a function of the information to
which the individual was exposed (Lodge, 1995; Lodge, McGraw, & Stroh, 1989;
Lodge & Steenbergen, 1995; McGraw, Lodge, & Stroh, 1990a, 1990b; Rahn,
Aldrich, & Borgida, 1994; Rahn, Krosnick, & Breuning, 1994).
An alternative to on-line opinion formation exists, and that is through a
memory-based process. Here, information is encountered, and some (but not all)
of it is stored in long-term memory. When a judgment is needed, the individual
searches long-term memory for information and integrates the information that can
be retrieved to compute the judgment. In the end, the opinion is a reflection of the
information that can be retrieved form memory; empirically, a strong relationship
between recall and judgment results. This kind of memory-based model is popular
in the study of public opinion, most prominently in Zaller and Feldman’s work
(Feldman, 1989, 1995; Zaller, 1990, 1992; Zaller & Feldman, 1992). Memory-
based processes are also central to Iyengar and Kinder’s (1987) theory of media
priming and its many extensions; Aldrich, Sullivan, and Borgida’s (1989) analysis
of foreign policy and issue voting; and Lau’s (1989a) model of “political chronici-
ties” and vote choice.
The identification and empirical evaluation of these two models of opinion
formation are among the most impressive contributions of the cognitive approach.2
Of course, the two models make opposite predictions, which may trouble scholars
who prefer a “one model fits all” intellectual world. The differences between the
two models can be reconciled under the principle that both are equally “right” but
under different conditions [this is the amicable solution reached by McGraw et al.
(1990b) and Zaller (1992)]. The central condition regulating on-line processing is
the prior goal of forming an impression or attitude (Hastie & Park, 1986; Lodge et
al., 1989). Accordingly, on-line processing should be more likely to apply to the
evaluation of candidates for whom a voting decision is anticipated, and less so for
abstract issues that only come up when a pollster makes a surprise phone call.3
Similarly, more sophisticated individuals are more likely to be habitually adept at
on-line processing, whereas unsophisticated citizens are more likely to rely on
memory-based strategies (McGraw et al., 1990b). We might also expect that
opinions about issues that are of great subjective importance to an individual are
formed on-line, whereas issues that are unimportant are more likely to produce
memory-based opinions. Other situational parameters, such as information struc-
ture (Rahn, Aldrich, & Borgida, 1994) and task complexity (Redlawsk, in press),
2 The two models have a second ironic commonality. Although both are fundamentally concerned with
cognitive process, both are also strikingly silent about the ingredients of opinions. Every “considera-
tion” (Zaller, 1992) and piece of “information” (Lodge et al., 1989) has an equal status in both models.
As Kinder (1998) noted, conclusions about the normative implications of processing under the two
models are “premature” until we evaluate more systematically the kinds of ingredients that contribute
to opinion formation in each model.
3 Note that the distinction between the target of judgment—candidate versus issue—is really not what
is fundamental here. The argument is that, all else equal, citizens are more likely to have the goal of
forming an impression of candidates than “forming an impression” of an issue (i.e., reaching a
summary “pro-con” position). It is the existence of the goal to reach a summary evaluative judgment,
regardless of the target, that is critical.
814 McGraw
are likely to be important regulating conditions, and future research specifying

more fully these “conditions under which” would be welcome.
Delineating the Boundaries of Accessibility Effects
Memory-based processing is based on the psychological construct of accessi-

bility, or the ease or readiness with which information can be retrieved from
memory. Accessibility, which has been very popular and influential in theories of
attitude formation and change (Iyengar, 1991; Iyengar & Kinder, 1987; Jacobs &
Shapiro, 1994; Kinder & Sanders, 1996; Zaller, 1992), receives emphasis because
of the fact of limited information-processing capabilities. That is, because people
are unable to process a large number of pieces of information simultaneously, they
instead often rely on considerations that are most accessible and so are retrieved
most easily (automatically or deliberately) from memory. Consequently, informa-
tion that is more accessible has a greater impact on judgments and decisions.
There is widespread empirical support for accessibility in psychology. How-
ever, despite its theoretical prominence, there has been little direct evidence of the
role of accessibility presented by political psychologists until recently. Reaction
time, or response latency, measures have begun to be used to provide this evidence.
Such measures are crucial for evaluating the role of accessibility as a mediator of
political judgment because they directly gauge the ease of retrieval from memory
via a temporal metric (Fazio, 1990). Political psychologists have recently made use
of response latency measures in experimental and survey contexts to evaluate the
viability of accessibility as a key mediator of political judgments. Both positive
and negative findings have been reported. First, the null results: Contrary to the
theory of media priming and media effects more generally (Iyengar & Kinder,
1987; Price & Tewksbury, 1997), accessibility does not appear to mediate media
priming effects (i.e., changes in the ingredients of evaluation; Miller & Krosnick,
2000) or framing effects (Nelson, Clawson, & Oxley, 1997). Rather, both of these
research programs suggest that media priming and framing effects occur because
of systematic and reasonable changes in the perceived importance of different
political considerations. On the positive side, response latency measures have
proven to be increasingly useful in the survey context, illuminating the antecedents
and political consequences of attitude accessibility (e.g., Huckfeldt, Levine, Mor-
gan, & Sprague, 1999; see also the contributions to the March 2000 special issue
of Political Psychology). Incorporating response latency procedures into survey
research has the potential to provide an unprecedented look into the respondent’s
cognitive processes in that research setting.
Cognitive Theories of the Survey Response
In addition to the methodological and conceptual advances provided by

response latency measures, survey research has more generally been reinvigorated
by insights into the cognitive processes involved when respondents generate

answers to questions posed to them (e.g., Krosnick, 1999; Krosnick & Fabrigar, in
press; Sudman, Bradburn, & Schwarz, 1996; Tourangeau & Rasinski, 1988). The
common theme of these perspectives is the decomposition of the survey response
into a series of cognitive steps that would produce an optimal response (i.e., the
response that is an accurate representation of the actual attitude or belief). Kros-
nick’s (1991) insight is that the complexity involved in these responses is so great
that, in many circumstances, many respondents compromise their standards and
settle for suboptimal responses through “satisficing.” The survey literature has been
plagued with a seemingly endless laundry list of methodological artifacts—ques-
tion wording, question order, response biases—that until recently have given the
appearance of being both unpredictable and unavoidable. The critically important
contribution of the cognitive theories of survey response, and in particular Kros-
nick’s optimizing-satisficing continuum and his identification of the conditions that
foster a given respondent’s strategy, is that they provide parsimonious explanations
for questionnaire “artifacts” and suggest solutions for designing better question-
naires that minimize biased response patterns (for a comprehensive treatment, see
Krosnick & Fabrigar, in press).
Understanding the Role of Affect in Political Judgment
The common charge of “too little affect” (e.g., Kuklinski et al., 1991) levied
against the political cognition tradition is an easy one to make, although ultimately
not credible.4 Two responses to the charge: First, in the earliest days of political
cognition scholarship, it was a legitimate strategy to omit affective parameters from
the models and research, because after all the central goal was to understand
cognitive processes. It is hardly fair to criticize a cognitive approach for focusing
on cognition. Second, and more important, affect in its various manifestations
(evaluation, emotion, mood, arousal; for a discussion, see Ottati & Wyer, 1993)
has played an essential role in political cognition scholarship, as both a lead and
supporting character. The reason for this is simple: It is nearly impossible to study
people’s understanding of and reactions to the world of politics without considering
affect, because the feelings people have about that world—weak or strong, diffuse
or specific—inevitably intrude. It is more than a coincidence that some of the
leading scholars in social psychology who have grappled with incorporating affect
into their models have had more than a passing interest in the political context (I
have in mind Susan Fiske, Chick Judd, and David Sears).
A number of examples can be generated in support of the assertion that affect has
played a central role in political cognition research. Abelson, Kinder, Peters, & Fiske
(1982) examined affective reactions to presidential candidates, in relationship to other
4 In contrast, the other two common criticisms—“too little motivation” and “too little context”—are
more legitimate. I address these criticisms below.
816 McGraw
beliefs and judgments, and found that affective reactions were potent predictors
and that the two affective reactions (positive and negative) were independent. The
independence conclusion has generated some controversy (Green, Salovey, &
Truax, 1999; Ottati, Steenbergen, & Riggle, 1992), and its resolution will have
important consequences for our understanding of the role of ambivalence in
political judgment. Judd and his colleagues have systematically explored the
cognitive representation of the evaluative components of attitudes (Judd & Kros-
nick, 1989; Judd & Kulik, 1980; Lusk & Judd, 1988). The possibility that impres-
sions about political candidates are organized around an evaluative dimension has
been considered (McGraw et al., 1991; McGraw & Steenbergen, 1995). Affect has
been treated as a heuristic that organizes citizens’ beliefs about strategically
important groups (the “likeability heuristic”; Brady & Sniderman, 1985); more
generally, affective-driven thinking seems to be the characteristic reasoning mode
of less sophisticated citizens (Sniderman, Brody, & Tetlock, 1991). The on-line
model is primarily an affective model; as Lodge (1995) argued, “affect in our model
is central: all social stimuli are thought to be affectively charged, and what citizens
do when evaluating candidates is to cull the affective value from each element of
campaign messages to update their overall assessment of the candidates” (p. 119).
In what might be considered the “Minnesota tradition,” affect has long been
front and center in the work of John Sullivan and his students and colleagues.
Hostility toward social groups is the central feature of the “content-controlled
measure of political tolerance,” and affective feelings such as threat are a critical
determinant of intolerance (Marcus, Sullivan, Theiss-Morse, & Wood, 1995;
Sullivan, Piereson, & Marcus, 1982; see also Kuklinski, Riggle, Ottati, Schwarz,
& Wyer, 1991). Emotional reactions have been found to be powerful determi-
nants—above and beyond cognitive reactions—to the economy (Conover & Feld-
man, 1986) and to Congress (Hibbing & Theiss-Morse, 1998). George Marcus and
his colleagues (Marcus, 1988; Marcus & MacKuen, 1993; Marcus, Neuman, &
MacKuen, 2000; Marcus & Rahn, 1990) have put forth a sophisticated model of
the relationship between emotions on the one hand, and political learning and
judgment on the other, a model that addresses and challenges normative under-
standings of the role of emotion in democratic citizenship. Wendy Rahn has
recently put forth the concept of “public mood,” defined as a “diffuse affective state
. . . that citizens experience because of their membership in a particular political
community” (Rahn, Kroeger, & Kite, 1996, p. 31), and linked the construct to a
number of important political judgment and behavioral processes (Rahn, in press).
The Future of Political Cognition: A Research Agenda
It takes a certain amount of hubris to prognosticate about the future, and wiser
folks than this author have resisted making detailed predictions about what the
future holds for political psychology (e.g., Kinder, 1998; McGuire, 1993). At the
editors’ request, however, I suggest directions in which future research might
move. The list below includes unanswered questions central to political cognition
as well as suggestions for extending the political cognition paradigm. No priority
in importance is implied by the sequence; rather, the list is organized to move from
more micro to more macro topics.
In generating this list, it was impossible not to reflect on different ways of
“doing” political psychology (Krosnick, in press; Krosnick & McGraw, in press;
Rahn & Sullivan, in press). One way of doing political psychology is a direct
application of psychological models to political science (e.g., the on-line process-
ing concept; Lodge et al., 1989). It is my distinct impression that direct application
of this sort has decreased in frequency in political psychology, and in political
cognition in particular. This is a laudable development, as it indicates that political
psychologists are motivated by their own substantive concerns, not simply by
borrowing from the soup du jour in social psychology. Nevertheless, some of the
recommendations below suggest that political psychologists take a new peek over
to the social psychological side of the fence, because of advances in social
psychological theory that have addressed some of the “too little ____” (affect,
motivation, interaction, context, politics) charges levied against the cognitive
approach. I am not recommending haphazard or mindless applications of psycho-
logical theory. Instead, the inherent complexity of the political context brings with
it the potential to generate new extensions and modifications of emerging psycho-
logical theories, thereby enriching psychological theories while expanding our
understanding of critical political phenomena.
When and Why Does Political Sophistication Matter?
Rahn (1995, p. 50) noted that “it has become de rigueur for political psycholo-
gists to assume that the most important source of heterogeneity in political infor-
mation processing” is individual differences in political sophistication (or expertise
or awareness). On balance, there is substantial evidence supporting this general
claim (e.g., Sniderman et al., 1991; Zaller, 1992; see also the contributions to the
Spring 1990 special issue of Social Cognition). But there is also a sizable body of
mixed findings, perhaps best illustrated by the literature linking sophistication and
media priming effects, where sophistication has been found to inhibit priming
(Iyengar and Kinder, 1987), to facilitate priming (Krosnick & Brannon, 1993;
McGraw & Ling, 2000), and to have no impact on priming (Krosnick & Brannon,
1993). A careful and comprehensive review would probably reveal a similar pattern
of unruly findings across multiple domains. Although most political psychologists
would concur that “sophistication matters,” and that the influence of sophistication
derives at least in part from cognitive structural and procedural mechanisms, we
are far from understanding how and when sophistication counts. There is still no
consensus about how to operationalize sophistication—as a constellation of quali-
ties such as political interest, knowledge, attention, and involvement, or as a single
construct, most typically knowledge.5 Given that the operationalization question
818 McGraw
is still unresolved, our ability to develop a clearer understanding of the impact of

sophistication on political judgment and choice is hampered. Krosnick and his
colleagues have provided the most nuanced theoretical discussions disentangling
the myriad effects of sophistication-related constructs on cognitive processes
involved in media effects (e.g., Krosnick & Brannon, 1993; Miller & Krosnick,
1996), and further developments along such lines are sorely needed.
The Representation of Choice
One of the limits of the cognitive approach thus far, at least in regard to
processes of candidate evaluation, is that it has tended to treat the targets of political
judgment as isolated, detached from the social and political context. A contextual
factor that is critical in much of politics is the presence of alternative options. Often
(although not always), citizens learn information about public officials in the
context of making a choice between two or more candidates, but consideration of
the cognitive processes underlying choice is meager in the cognitive tradition. [A
notable exception is the work of Wendy Rahn, Rick Lau, and their colleagues (Lau,
1995; Lau & Redlawsk, 1997; Rahn, 1995; Rahn, Aldrich, Borgida, & Sullivan,
1990; Redlawsk, in press).] There is a sensible, although perhaps not defensible,
reason for this. The social psychological models that have informed much of this
tradition are concerned with “impression formation” and “person perception,”
where the goal is to describe the processes by which people think about individual
others. Choosing between alternatives, for whatever purpose, is not considered in
these models. This mismatch between the goals of psychologists and those of
political scientists is a good example of the limitations of interdisciplinary borrow-
ing. It also points to opportunities, as political psychologists are poised to contribute
to basic psychological theory by elaborating on the cognitive mechanisms contrib-
uting to choice.
The cognitive representation of the choice problem is intrinsically more
complex than the formation of an impression of a single politician, and we know
very little about the development and structure of candidate impressions when a
choice between alternatives is necessary. A central issue is whether voters think
about candidates in an “intracandidate,” candidate-centered manner—searching
for and internally representing information for each candidate as a single gestalt—or
5 Even those who argue that political knowledge is the critical single measure of sophistication disagree
about how knowledge is most validly and reliably measured, a decision that is intimately linked to
normative stands on what citizens should know about the political world. This literature has recently
been enlivened by discussions of which items are the best indicators of sophistication (Delli Carpini
& Keeter, 1993, 1996), simultaneous criticism of factual knowledge “civics IQ” tests in favor of more
in-depth assessment strategies (Gamson, 1992; Graber, 1994, 1996), controversies as to whether
sophistication is best conceptualized as a general or domain-specific construct (Delli Carpini & Keeter,
1993; Iyengar, 1990; McGraw & Pinney, 1990; Zaller, 1990), and systematic evaluations of different
question and response formats (McGraw, Fischle, & Stenner, 2000; Mondak, 2000, in press).
whether they instead adopt “intradimensional” search and representational strate-

gies, linking such attributes as partisanship, ideology, character, and issue posi-
tions. [Lau (1995) and Taber & Steenbergen (1995) supported the intracandidate
perspective, whereas Herstein (1981), Rahn (1995), and Redlawsk (in press)
assumed the intradimensional strategy; see Lau (1995) for a useful theoretical
review.] Note that these information search and storage processes may be inde-
pendent. That is, citizens may seek out and attend to political information by
comparing candidates’ stands on important issues (intradimensional search) but
may store this information in a candidate-centered schema (intracandidate storage).
The point is that we know virtually nothing about these processes.
The representation of choice is surely dependent on how people experience
and perceive the political information environment. The answer is just as surely
“in myriad ways,” ranging from being sporadically and chaotically bombarded with
random bits of political information to being systematically immersed in a richly
detailed and complex political world. Surprisingly, we know almost nothing about
this fundamental issue. Doris Graber’s landmark Processing the News (1984)
provides insights on this question and a paradigm for further research. Under-
standing how people perceive the information environment is important in evalu-
ating the generalizability of experimental work rooted in radically different
assumptions about the information environment, ranging from the static single-can-
didate methodology of many experiments (e.g., Lodge et al., 1989), through more
complex but still static two-candidate stimulus arrays, both written (e.g., Lodge &
Steenbergen, 1995; Rahn, 1995) and visual (e.g., Rahn, 1993), to the dynamic and
highly chaotic “scrolling information board” methodology developed by Rick Lau
and David Redlawsk (Lau, 1995; Lau & Redlawsk, 1997; Redlawsk, in press).
My intuition here is that citizens experience the real world of political infor-
mation in a way that falls between the two ends of this continuum. Certainly, the
political information environment is dynamic, unfolding over time in an often noisy
fashion. But this environment is also probably not as chaotic, urgent, and transient
as the Lau and Redlawsk methodology assumes (I would hasten to add that the
methodology is innovative and creative). As Lau stated in another context, “one
must either revise the basic research strategies of politics and political campaigns,
or be very careful in the inferences drawn from the results” (1990, p. 323).
Linking Heuristics to Cognitive Processes
I have given short shrift in this essay to the sizable contributions from the
political science tradition emphasizing the use of heuristics, or judgmental short-
cuts [Sniderman et al. (1991) is the most prominent, but there are many others].
This neglect is not because of a lack of regard for that tradition, but simply because
theorizing and research on heuristics is largely unconcerned with specifying, with
any degree of precision, the nature of the cognitive structural and procedural
mechanisms involved in the use of heuristics (this is true in political science and
820 McGraw
also in the original behavioral decision theory tradition). And in fact there is no
necessary reason for scholars interested in heuristics to delve into the “black box.”
However, heuristics have reproduced at an alarming rate.6 Sniderman et al. (1991)
anticipated this:
We have always been wary of emphasizing heuristics. The danger, as it
seemed to us, is an endless proliferation of them. But if there are a great
many of them, then even if each simplifies the task of judgment, the task
of keeping track of and coordinating them will become inordinately
complex. (p. 270)
Given the “proliferation” of heuristics in the mental toolbox, analyses aimed at
understanding the cognitive underpinnings of heuristics—how they are organized,
how individuals map aspects of the task problem onto available heuristic options,
how the context influences the accessibility of different heuristics, and how
feedback influences the propensity to use heuristics in the future—could shed light
on the “inordinately complex” problem individuals face in coordinating multiple
judgment strategies.
Linking Motivation and Cognition
In a scandalously underappreciated essay, Lane (1986) noted,

People are doing more than trying “to organize their political world . . .
they are making their thoughts more comfortable to themselves, they are
watching with a sports fan’s eye and passion, impressing others, evaluat-
ing a process that, in the end, they cherish; and they are trying to
understand and achieve something beyond the election that requires them
to enlist their theories, interpret government boundaries and capabilities,
and decide who should get what, themselves included. Each of these
purposes will give color and tone, transience and durability, shape and
content to their political schemata. (pp. 316–317)
There has been very little consideration of the impact of various motivations and
goals on political cognitive processes (for a full treatment, see Lau, 1990). The
most prominent exception would be consideration of the goal of forming an
impression that is the critical determinant of on-line processing (see above). There
has also been some consideration of “directional motivated reasoning” (i.e., de-
fending existing attitudes and reaching congenial conclusions; Lodge & Taber, in
press; McGraw, Fischle, Stenner, & Lodge, 1996). But as Lane argued, citizens
bring multiple goals to their thinking about the political world, and we have barely
6 I searched abstracts in the political science and psychological literatures, and discovered more than
50 distinct heuristics (or, at least, heuristics given distinct names by researchers). Space precludes
listing them here.
scratched the surface in understanding the conditions under which different goals
are elicited, as well as the consequences of those goals for political cognitive
processes. The authors of The American Voter reminded us that the highly charged
and evaluative nature of politics “vests [our perceptions] with great motivational
importance” (Campbell, Converse, Miller, & Stokes, 1960, p. 13). Our under-
standing of political judgment and choice is doomed to be incomplete until we
incorporate motivational parameters into theoretical and empirical models. This is
an area where recent advances in social psychology may be helpful to political
scientists (for overviews, see Fiske, 1992; Kunda, 1999; see also the symposium
in the January 1999 issue of Psychological Inquiry).
Cognitive Processes in Social and Political Identity
Few political psychologists would dispute the assertion that social identity plays
a fundamental role in interpersonal and intergroup behavior. At their cores, social
identity theory (Tajfel, 1981) and its offspring, self-categorization theory (Turner &
Oakes, 1989) are based on the fundamental cognitive process of social categorization,
which Brewer and Brown (1998) described as the “sine qua non for all current theories
and research in intergroup relations” (p. 556), central to understanding ingroup loyalty,
outgroup derogation, and intergroup conflict and competition. Political psychologists
interested in individual-level judgment and perceptions so far have failed to take full
advantage of the theoretical leverage provided by social identity theory and its many
variants (although significant contributions are provided by Conover, 1984, 1988;
Gibson & Gouws, 2000; Huddy, 1998; Lau, 1989b).
The Representation of Social and Political Groups
As noted above, one of the hallmark contributions of the cognitive approach

has been in spelling out the structural and procedural mechanisms involved in
forming impressions of political candidates and other public officials. Although it
is clear that citizens have stereotypes about prominent social and political groups,
we know very little about the dynamics involved in the formation and evolution of
stereotypes and opinions about those groups. Moreover, although it is clear that
opinions about groups and group members diverge in political (Fenno, 1978) and
social (Hamilton & Sherman, 1996) judgment, theorizing about why these differ-
ences occur is still fairly rudimentary. This is a topic that is enjoying a resurgence
in social psychology, drawing on Campbell’s classic 1958 article that introduced
the concept of entitativity7 as the critical determinant of when social aggregates are
viewed as coherent, unified wholes. [Useful sources include Brewer & Harasty
7 Campbell coined this awkward term, which doesn’t appear in any dictionary, and defined it as “the
degree of having the nature of an entity” (1958, p. 17). It is not likely to carry much cachet for political
psychologists at cocktail parties.
822 McGraw
(1996); Hamilton & Sherman (1996); Hamilton, Sherman, & Maddox (1999).] The
issues raised in this research have direct relevance to political psychology. How
are groups, such as political parties, represented in memory? What leads them to
be cognitively represented as coherent units? How does the coherence of the
cognitive representation influence how new data about groups and their individual
members are received and perceived? How do social identity mechanisms exert
influence on perceptions of the boundaries and cohesiveness of political collectives?
According to Brewer and Harasty (1996), “perceived entitativity may provide a
critical link among cognitive, affective, and behavioral components of intergroup
attitudes that could serve as a basis for an integrated theory of stereotypes,
prejudice, and discrimination” (p. 367).
Political Cognition in a Social Context
Just as the focus in political cognition has been dominated by a concern with
how citizens think about individual political targets, so too the standard paradigm
in political cognition research is to study the judgments and beliefs of the individual
citizen as a solitary figure (Fiske & Godwin, 1994, referred to this as the “hermit”
criticism). The social context in political cognition research is largely ignored, even
though citizens learn and think about the political world in complex social envi-
ronments. In fact, it is hard to imagine any “real” situation that is purely cognitive,
devoid of social meanings, roles, motivations, and constraints. The time is certainly
right for merging cognitive and contextual theories of politics (Huckfeldt &
Sprague, 1993). Some valuable work is already being done, most importantly Diana
Mutz’s (1998) work on impersonal influence and Phil Tetlock’s work on account-
ability (Lerner & Tetlock, 1999), both of which emphasize the importance of
treating cognition as a process of internalized dialogue between the self and real
or imaginary others. But much more remains to be learned about the impact of
social interaction, social roles, and social expectations on how individuals make
sense of the political world. The growing literature on “socially shared cognition”
in social psychology provides a set of theoretical principles that political scientists
may find valuable (Levine, Resnick, & Higgins, 1993; Thompson & Fine, 1999).
Cultural Differences in Political Cognition
The study of political culture has a long and distinguished history in political
science (e.g., Almond & Verba, 1963; Douglas & Wildavsky, 1982) and is of
central importance to political psychology (see the June 1997 special issue of
Political Psychology). But political cognition scholars have steadfastly avoided
grappling with the role of culture in their research, and this is unfortunate. One of
the central tenets of the cognitive approach is that people construct their under-
standing of the social world, and that existing configurations of cognitive struc-
tures influence considerably how new information is processed and perceived.
Unfortunately, because the cognitive approach “rests on a methodological indi-

vidualism . . . it ignores the fact that many psychological processes are the results
of engagement in a given cultural context and are inseparable from that context”
(Fiske, Kitayama, Markus, & Nisbett, 1998, p. 918). Indeed, there is growing
evidence that people inhabiting the same culture will have distinctive ways of
making sense of the social world (Kunda, 1999). These “distinctive ways” of
thinking can be all-encompassing and apparently fundamental to numerous social
domains (e.g., differences between North Americans and other Westerners on the
one hand, and East Asians on the other; Markus & Kitayama, 1991), or more
narrowly restricted to specific domains (e.g., white Southern American males’
culture of honor; Nisbett & Cohen, 1996). The challenge for political psycholo-
gists here will be to resist simply developing a laundry list of cognitive differences
between cultures, and to instead draw on and develop more basic principles to
illuminate the theoretical underpinning of observed differences. [Fiske’s (1991)
relational theory is one provocative framework; for applications, see Fiske &
Haslam (1996); Fiske & Tetlock (1997).]
An Emerging Rapprochement Between Political Psychology

and Rational Choice?
My final comment here is neither a recommendation nor a prediction, but

rather is intended to serve as a cautionary observation. There have been several
prominent attempts in the past decade to integrate positive political theory, often
with elements from a rational choice theoretical perspective, and political psychol-
ogy (e.g., Bianco, 1998; Gerber & Green, 1998, 1999; Lupia & McCubbins, 1998).
There is much to commend this movement toward synthesis, not the least of which
is the calling of a truce between sniping factions and the emergence of researchers
who are comfortable with both modes of scholarship. Formal models have the
potential to add even more precision to theoretical arguments and the ability to
deduce higher order predictions than may be possible with verbally stated psycho-
logical theories.
Criticisms of rational choice theory are plentiful and well-known (in particular,
Green & Shapiro, 1994; Monroe, 1991), and I won’t rehash those arguments here.
Rather, my concern is that this emerging tradition pays only lip service to psycho-
logical principles, and in particular demonstrates little commitment to providing
evidence about critical psychological process mechanisms that would provide
support for, or falsify, theoretical predictions. Political psychologists need to be
wary of claims of compatibility between rational choice and cognitive psychologi-
cal models when behavioral outcomes are the sole focus of inquiry, lest they fall
victim to an updated version of Friedman’s (1953) “as if” argument [i.e., “judge a
model . . . by the accuracy of its predictions. If the model works, say that people
behave as if the model works” (Fiorina, 1975, p. 138)]. The hallmark of the
cognitive approach is the “unpacking of the black box” (Lodge, Stroh, & Wahlke,
824 McGraw
1990), and future scholarship must demonstrate a continued commitment to that

goal. Otherwise we will take steps backward into the untenable position of being
able to predict, but not understand why, citizens think and act as they do.
Conclusions
I admit to being left with a greater feeling of satisfaction with past research
and optimism about the future than I anticipated when I began organizing materials
for this essay. The field of political cognition is scarcely 20 years old, and so is just
moving into the stability and confidence that accompanies intellectual maturity.
Tremendous theoretical, substantive, and methodological advances have been
made in a short period of time. Political cognition scholarship has begun to live up
to its promise—illuminating the cognitive processes that occur when citizens think
about and react to the world of politics. As a consequence, political psychologists
have a much fuller and richer understanding of how citizens make sense of the
political world than we did 20 years ago. Much of the important work remains to
be done, but the prospect of a vibrant agenda for the immediate future is itself a
sign of the health and fertility of the political cognition approach to political
psychology.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to the editors of the journal for soliciting this essay and for their
helpful comments, and to Milton Lodge for his indefatigable faith, enthusiasm, and
support. Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to Kathleen M.
McGraw, Department of Political Science, The Ohio State University, Columbus,
OH 43210. E-mail: mcgraw.36@osu.edu
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Political Psychology, Vol. 21, No.

The editors of Political Psychology invited Professor Kathleen McGraw to

Contributions of the Cognitive Approach

Political psychology is inherently interdisciplinary, engaging scholars from

What Is Social Cognition and Why Did It Become Important

Social cognition is not a specific theory or domain of inquiry, but instead is a

Political Cognition’s Role in Political Psychology

How has the cognitive approach in political psychology helped us to better

Theoretical Precision and Methodological Innovation

The Structure of Political Memory

Specifying Opinion Formation Processes

Political scientists have made tremendous progress in identifying the varied

are likely to be important regulating conditions, and future research specifying

Delineating the Boundaries of Accessibility Effects

Memory-based processing is based on the psychological construct of accessi-

Cognitive Theories of the Survey Response

In addition to the methodological and conceptual advances provided by

by insights into the cognitive processes involved when respondents generate

Understanding the Role of Affect in Political Judgment

The Future of Political Cognition: A Research Agenda

When and Why Does Political Sophistication Matter?

is still unresolved, our ability to develop a clearer understanding of the impact of

The Representation of Choice

whether they instead adopt “intradimensional” search and representational strate-

Linking Heuristics to Cognitive Processes

Linking Motivation and Cognition

In a scandalously underappreciated essay, Lane (1986) noted,

Cognitive Processes in Social and Political Identity

The Representation of Social and Political Groups

As noted above, one of the hallmark contributions of the cognitive approach

Political Cognition in a Social Context

Cultural Differences in Political Cognition

Unfortunately, because the cognitive approach “rests on a methodological indi-

An Emerging Rapprochement Between Political Psychology

My final comment here is neither a recommendation nor a prediction, but

1990), and future scholarship must demonstrate a continued commitment to that

Linville, P. W. (1982). The complexity-extremity effect and age-based stereotyping. Journal of

Taber, C. S., & Steenbergen, M. S. (1995). Computational experiments in electoral behavior. In M.

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