Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Motivation and the Context of Political Learning

University Of North Carolina At Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC

Investigators

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation research support investigation is about how people acquire information from their environment, and how that context matters for assessing political outcomes. The central question considered is how and when people learn about politics. Specifically, the project integrates theories of individual level motivation with explanations rooted in political context, to explore how the information environment may either enhance or circumvent the effects of political interest in the promotion of political learning. To investigate the mechanisms of political learning, the Ph.D. student begins with an environment that has been shown to improve levels of political attention and information - a competitive campaign. Relying on a set of experiments in conjunction with survey data, two central questions are considered. First, can the political environment promote political learning, even in the absence of a motivation to follow current events? And if context does indeed promote the acquisition of political knowledge, then by what mechanisms does this occur? Next, the consequences of passive versus active learning are explored, considering whether people acquire different kinds of information, and rely on different kinds of decision criteria, when passively learning from the environment. To first more closely consider the mechanisms by which context affects political learning, a set of experiments are employed. The studies simulate a campaign context through a set of web-based information environments, with variation in both the nature of the information context as well as the incentives for political attention. In tracking patterns of information search as well as posttest evaluations of interest and information gains, the experiments offer a test of how context and motivation interact to affect both the amounts and kinds of political learning. Survey data offers a second test of these questions. Because presidential candidates rely on electoral college strategies, the states vary in the intensity of presidential campaigning. The consequences of these different campaign contexts on patterns of campaign attention and learning across the states are explored, considering explanations based on individual factors such as education, as well as contextual factors such as the volume of campaign advertising, the amount of presidential television coverage, and partisan divisions within the states. Also considered are the consequences of these contextual differences, and whether the context of a prominent presidential campaign influences evaluations of other concurrent campaigns. This is investigated by considering how the predictors of individual level congressional vote choice vary according to context, to see whether evaluations of the president and other national factors are more important evaluative criteria when the presidential campaign is more prominent. The research has broad social implications by developing some of the consequences of different types of political learning, particularly in the kinds of information people acquire either actively or passively, and how this matters for individuals and for political observers.