Research
My research focuses primarily on political information processing
and decision making. Five specific topics are summarized below.
- Strategic Coalition Voting
- Negativity and Motivated Information Processing
- Media Effects and Personal Networks
- Attitudinal Ambivalence
- Macropartisanship
The first two topics are active and ongoing. For each topic, a short summary and selected references are given.
Strategic Coalition Voting
Strategic voting is defined as voting for a party or candidate other than the most preferred choice because the alternative is expected to have a better chance of influencing government formation. The main goal of the project is to extend this micro-level explanation to strategic voting in multiparty systems using proportional representation, minimum vote thresholds, and coalition governments. The focus is on the causal effects of contextual information sources and cues such as polls and coalition signals on strategic voting, moderated by individual cognitive information processing capacities and motivations. Special attention is paid to the formation of "rational" expectations about the outcome of elections and the role of coalition.
The project uses a multi-method design and includes laboratory
experiments and a representative national survey. A "psychological"
experiment was conducted and embedded in ongoing German state election
campaigns. As part of an information search task, participants
encountered manipulated polls and coalition signals embedded in real
campaign information. In two "economic" experiments, an individual
decision making experiment and a group decision making experiment,
participants played a strategic voting game to maxmized their influence
on government formation, motivated by financial incentives. A representive
national election study shortly before the 2006 Austrian national election
collected detailed information about voters' party and coalition
preferences and expectations about the election outcome and included an
experimental manipulation in form of coalition vignettes as well.
References
Meffert, Michael F., and Thomas Gschwend. 2011. "Polls, Coalition Signals, and Strategic Voting: An Experimental Investigation of Perceptions and Effects." European Journal of Political Research 50 (5): 636-667.
Meffert, Michael F., and Thomas Gschwend. 2010. "Strategic Coalition Voting: Evidence from Austria." Electoral Studies 29 (3): 339-349.
Meffert, Michael F., and Thomas Gschwend. 2007. Strategic Voting under Proportional Representation and Coalition Governments: A Simulation and Laboratory Experiment. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Working Group for Decision Theory and Behavioral Decision Making (AK Handlungs- und Entscheidungstheorie) of the German Political Science Association (DVPW), Jena, Germany, June 15 - 16, 2007.
Negativity and Motivated Information Processing
This research program investigates how voters select,
process, are
affected by, and recall political information in a dynamic campaign
environment. It was hypothesized that voters’ information selection are
subject to a negativity bias (i.e., negative information dominates over
positive information) and a candidate bias (i.e., information about the
preferred candidate dominates over information about the opponent).
Motivated by an initial candidate preference, participants were also
expected to develop more polarized candidate evaluations over time. In
two different experiments, participants were exposed to quickly
changing information in the form of newspaper-style headlines on a
dynamic, computer-based information board. The results supported
negativity bias and candidate bias whereas congruency bias was only
found during information recall. At the information selection and
processing stages, participants with a strong initial candidate
preference showed a disproportionate preference for negative
information about the preferred candidate. However, they developed more
positive attitudes at the evaluation and recall stage. This finding
suggests that participants were engaged in motivated information
processing by counterarguing negative information about their preferred
candidate.
Reference
Meffert, Michael F.,
Sungeun Chung, Amber Joiner, Leah Waks, and Jennifer Garst. 2006. "The
Effects of Negativity and Motivated Information Processing During a
Political Campaign." Journal of Communication 56 (March):
27-51.
Media Effects and Personal Networks
The
development of individual candidate preferences during a political
campaign is a complex process that involves both individual
predispositions and external, contextual information received from the
two most important sources of political information, the mass media and
personal networks.
The central hypothesis, based on McPhee’s "campaign
simulator,"
postulates that citizens, after receiving external political stimuli
from any source, use personal networks to form and test their political
attitudes. In case they encounter disagreement in their networks, they
have to look for other sources of information that help them to make up
their mind. This opens a window of opportunity for persuasive mass
media effects. Using data from the cross-national election project
(CNEP), including a national election study and a content analysis of
newspapers read by the respondents, the findings support the
hypothesis.
Reference
Meffert, Michael F. 1999. Citizens in Context: Persuasive Influences of Newspapers and Personal Networks on Candidate Evaluations. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, April 15 - 17, 1999.
Attitudinal Ambivalence
The goal of the project
was to measure attitudinal ambivalence and analyze its consequences for
the quality of individual information processing and judgments. The
central hypothesis was that ambivalent (conflicted) voters process
information more systematically and even-handedly than individuals with
a one-sided preference. As a consequence, ambivalent individuals should
be able to make more accurate judgments about an evaluative target.
The concept of ambivalence has received increased
attention in
various fields such as communication, psychology, political science,
and behavioral decision making. Rather than assuming that individuals
have a single, overall evaluative attitude towards a target such as a
political candidate, we assume that individuals can have positive and
negative reactions at the same time, which can be independent of each
other and which can have independent effects on the overall attitude.
If both reactions are present, individuals are in the state of
ambivalence.
Although the existence of ambivalence
has received more attention in recent years, the consequences for
individual information processing and judgments have barely been
examined. Using NES data, we found support for three consequences of
ambivalence: attitudinal moderation, more accurate information
processing, and less certainty in judgments about presidential
candidates. These findings suggest that ambivalent individuals process
information more thoroughly or systematically, which enables them to
make more accurate judgments. However, this increased accuracy does not
prevent feelings of uncertainty.
Reference
Meffert,
Michael F., Michael Guge, and Milton Lodge. 2004. "Good, Bad, and
Ambivalent: The Consequences of Multidimensional Political Attitudes."
In Studies in Public Opinion: Attitudes, Nonattitudes, Measurement
Error, and Change, ed. Willem E. Saris and Paul M. Sniderman.
Princeton: Princeton University Press. Pp. 63-92.
Macropartisanship
Aggregate party identification (“macropartisanship”) has
exhibited
substantial movement in the U.S. electorate over the last half century.
We contend that the key to that movement is a realignment capable of
permanently altering the electoral equilibrium. Consistent with a
gradual-permanent model of change, the presidential election of 1980
set in motion an enduring shift of the partisan balance, eroding the
overwhelming Democratic lead dating back to the New Deal realignment.
Our analysis, based on the classic measurement of party identification,
shows none of two widely cited movers of macropartisanship to be
responsible for that process. Neither presidential approval nor
consumer sentiment possesses enough leverage to tilt the partisan
balance for good; nor is there evidence for a structural change in the
partisan influence of those short-term forces. Realignments aside,
macropartisanship is guided by a stable, not a continuously moving,
baseline.
Reference
Meffert, Michael F., Helmut Norpoth, and Anirudh V. S. Ruhil. 2001. "Realignment and Macropartisanship." American Political Science Review 95 (December): 953-962.
Last Update: 6/30/2011