Public opinion is integral to the political process; without a thorough understanding of the public's views, representation by policymakers is meaningless. It is insufficient, however, to think that opinions emerge spontaneously; opinions instead reflect the information available to the public - much of which comes from political elites (politicians, candidates, pundits, etc.) via mass media. We must understand why and how individuals develop particular opinions in order for policymakers, politicians, and the media to act cognizant of their influence over the public whose opinions they must also represent. How exactly are those opinions influenced by the choices that individuals make among various alternative sources and types of politically relevant information? In the 21st century political landscape, these alternatives are numerous, diverse, and readily accessible -- especially on the internet, where individuals are free to select and avoid whatever information they so choose. Past research has not demonstrated how choices made within this complex political environment shape political opinions over time.
This project aims to explain how people form and update political opinions. Specifically, it examines how opinions are shaped over time by the information people acquire from the broader political environment. The dissertation involves experimental methods that manipulate information, psychological dispositions, and features of the political environment in order to understand how these variations lead to different opinions toward policy issues. By designing studies that mimic contemporary politics, this research will explain how people form their opinions given much of what they observe about politics results from their choices of where and how to look for information.
This research will yield a deeper understanding of the causes and effects of peoples' information choices (i.e., the information they actively or passively acquire) and their preferences over policy alternatives. The findings from the project will further public and journalistic understanding of an ever-more-polarized and divisive political landscape, where individuals are free to choose from a diverse array of information alternatives on cable television and the internet. Whether the information choices citizens make, and the information available from mass media, polarize the political process is a vital concern to any democracy. Findings regarding the interplay between information and opinion will contribute to critical, informed discussion of the role of political media in contemporary politics.
Funds from this project were used, as described in the original proposal, to fund several laboratory and survey experiments related to the effects of political information on citizens' policy attitudes, particularly from the lens of information self-selection (i.e., selective exposure). The preliminary findings from these studies can be summarized as follows. First, individuals with strongly held political opinions are far more likely to seek out attitude-congruent information, regardless of the prevalence of that information in their environment, and - as a result - become more extreme in their views over time. Second, individuals with weaker attitudes respond to information - regardless of its balance in the environment - by developing more moderate opinions. Third, individuals inclined to seek out political information tend to know more about and hold stronger attitudes toward political issues than those inclined to avoid political information, but they also tend to learn more from (even incidental) political exposure than those who are inclined to avoid politics, suggesting that habits regulate responsiveness to the political environment. In sum, results from this project have shown how information choices of various kinds dramatically shape citizens' responsiveness to their political environment, which has important implications for understanding polarization, civic engagement, and political debate in contemporary politics.
