Political Information Processing Summary

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Over the past year, the arguing in politics has elicited a range of emotions from voters angered on both sides of the political aisle. Many are voters more moved either by habit or by momentary passion than by rational judgment. Politics seem to be more of a tv reality show currently boasting scandals, and sensational events and the media are using this emotion to frame issues to evoke the desired emotional response. Most of these diagnoses according to Braden and Marcus are directed at reducing the frequency and intensity of emotional appeals in the domain of politics (p. 175). Emotion is an unavoidable and undeniable part of human nature. Arguments over the last three decades are the exclusion of emotion from final judgments …show more content…

What do they identify as problematic with many of the existing measures of political liberalism and conservatism? What recent advances have changed our understanding of political information processing? What limitations currently exist in terms of how we understand the values and beliefs of citizens?
Taber and Young’s chapter on “Political Information Processing,” examines the individual-level psychological processes as they apply to particular political opinions. They delineate the cognitive psychology of opinion formation and how it distinguishes social-process models of ideological thinking and more traditional class-based or self-interest models (p. 525). Psychological investigation of ideology and its basic integrity depends upon having an appropriate measurement of political …show more content…

Information processing and the rate at which users receive information impacts and how it affects their processing behavior happens in everyday lives. We are surrounded and bombarded with social media, contagions, and are a product of the information obtained within our environment bubble. We continually prioritize information from multiple sources, quickly the process information. An individual’s susceptibility to impacts of any given information critically depends on the rate and emotion not the validity of the data. Humans have limited cognitive processing capacities, and consequently, information will affect the quality of decision making. How we as political scientists evaluate and use this information now and in the future, could significantly increase awareness both negatively and

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