First Steps Toward a Dual-Process Accessibility Model of Political Beliefs, Attitudes, and Behavior

Abstract

With the advent of the political behavior movement in political science in the 1950s, in particular with the publication of The American Voter in 1960, beliefs, feelings, and behavioral dispositions were brought to center stage in the prediction and explanation of political behavior. In line with an implicit assumption of human rationality, the social sciences commonly presumed that thoughts, feelings, and behavioral intentions coming to mind consciously determine the lion’s share of behavior. Congruent with this assumption of conscious considerations arbitrating the expression of beliefs and emotions, political scientists commonly ask people to voice their beliefs, report their likes and dislikes, recount feelings and past behaviors, and foretell their intended actions. Because of this reliance on introspection, much of what we know about public opinion and electoral behavior and how we model the expression of political attitudes, beliefs, and behavioral dispositions is based almost exclusively on what respondents say when asked for their present, past, or future beliefs, intentions, and behavior.