Doctoral Dissertation Research: Motivation and the Social Information Search

Ohio State University Research Foundation -Do Not Use, Columbus OH

Investigators

Abstract

This project tests mechanisms of social influence to build a more complete understanding of how people engage their networks as they search social sources for political information. Researchers have long studied how social circumstances affect political behavior (e.g., Berelson et al. 1954), but the current generation of scholarship has left the behavioral and motivational assumptions of social searches for information theoretically underdeveloped and empirically untested. There is currently limited knowledge of how and why individuals actually use their networks to acquire and process political information. To fill this gap, this project considers the dynamics of individuals' engagement with their networks, developing a theory that explains how voters seek out information through their contacts based on the interplay of motivation, ability, opportunity, and the demands of varied information environments. The theory will be tested using data from a 3-wave panel mail study of registered voters started in March and continuing in September and November in Franklin County, Ohio. The panel study has been specifically designed around three major political events: the Ohio presidential primary, the parties' national conventions, and the general presidential election. This design will provide leverage on how differently motivated voters alter the use of their networks as they enter different stages of the electoral process. This project is important because it makes both theoretical and empirical contributions to the study of interpersonal networks. First, the theory takes on fundamental assumptions of the established literature on social influence in an attempt to resolve lingering ambiguity with respect to how individuals actually engage their networks, and more specifically, with respect to the role of motivation. Second, by measuring the content of political discussion in voters' networks at various intervals, it will be among the first political science studies to present empirical evidence concerning temporal social dynamics, while providing an unparalleled glimpse into what the everyday political talk of voters actually looks like. Beyond these intellectual merits, the project also has the potential to achieve broader impacts with clear normative implications for elections and democratic practice. A better understanding of how motivated individuals search for socially supplied information may offer potential remedies for an American citizenry that is often labeled apathetic and incapable.