Thinking more or less: Cognitive effort in the formation of public opinion.

This dissertation proposes a theory of effortful thinking in politics. It focuses on identifying individual differences and contextual factors that affect the extent to which citizens think effortfully about politics. The empirical analyses encompass secondary analysis of existing survey datasets from the National Election Studies and statistical analysis of three experiments. The first section of the dissertation addresses individual differences in motivation to think effortfully about politics. The empirical analyses highlight the effectiveness of using political awareness as an indicator of effortful thinking in the political realm and the weakness of need for cognition in this respect. The second section of the dissertation focuses on the ways in which political campaigns encourage citizens to engage in more effortful thinking. Survey analyses show that intensity in senate campaigns and the immediacy of Election Day encourage citizens to develop views about the candidates, engage in actively open-minded thinking about the candidates, and set the house in order, as views about the candidates' traits and emotional reactions to the candidates become more internally consistent. Experimental data also show that subtle manipulations of how campaigns are depicted effectively encourage subjects to rely less on gender as a basis of candidate preference, to learn more about the candidates' positions on new issues, to engage in greater cognitive elaboration about the candidates, and to engage in deeper, broader, and more open-minded information-seeking. Finally, the analyses explore the intersection of individual differences and contextual inducements, examining the ways in which political awareness and gender might influence how citizens react to various aspects of campaigns. Taken altogether, these analyses support the notion that level of effort in thinking about politics depends on individual differences and contextual inducements. People differ in significant ways in the extent to which they habitually engage in effortful thinking about politics. Political campaigns, far from simply having minimal effects on citizens, can significantly increase levels of effortful thinking about political affairs.PhDPolitical scienceSocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/123618/2/3096122.pd