The major goal of this project is to develop a computer program to model the cognitive processes involved in forming impressions of candidates for political office. The program will be a model of the researchers' theory of cognition and evaluation and will account for what information is attended to, how the information is stored in memory and retrieved, and how available information is integrated into a summary evaluation of candidates. Current theories of voting make unrealistic assumptions about cognition in candidate evaluation and do not subject their assumptions to rigorous testing. A large empirical study by one of the researchers will provide the information on citizen candidate evaluation that can be used in testing the theory about cognition and candidate evaluation.
