The malleability of political attitudes : Choice blindness, confabulation and attitude change
Författare
Summary, in English
This thesis is an empirical and theoretical investigation of choice blindness, in particular in the domain of political attitudes. Choice blindness is a cognitive phenomenon in which people do not notice dramatic mismatches between what they choose and what they get while still offering seemingly introspective arguments to explain their (putative) choice. In four papers, it is demonstrated that the effect also applies to salient political attitudes and evaluations of political candidates. All studies took place in close connection to real elections, and new tools building of the underlying choice blindness methodology has been developed to collect the data. Further, the potential downstream effects are explored, such as influence on voting intentions, and lasting attitude changes. The potential mechanisms behind the effect are also investigated and confabulatory reasoning stands out as an important part in facilitating the observed attitude changes.
Avdelning/ar
Publiceringsår
2020-05-18
Språk
Engelska
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Lund University Cognitive Studies
Issue
179
Fulltext
Dokumenttyp
Doktorsavhandling
Förlag
Department of Philosophy, Lund University
Ämne
- Psychology (excluding Applied Psychology)
- Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalization Studies)
- Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
Nyckelord
- choice blindness
- confabulation
- self-perception
- political psychology
- attitude change
Status
Published
Projekt
- The Political Party Space: a magical web survey
- The Self-Transforming Survey as an interactive tablet application
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 1101-8453
- ISBN: 978-91-89213-07-4
- ISBN: 978-91-89213-06-7
Försvarsdatum
24 augusti 2020
Försvarstid
10:00
Försvarsplats
LUX C121
Opponent
- Daniel Oppenheimer (professor)