nach oben

Political Behavior

Erschienen in:

01.03.2008 | Original Paper

Direction Versus Proximity in the Social Influence Process

verfasst von: Christopher Kenny, Eric Jenner

Erschienen in: Political Behavior | Ausgabe 1/2008

Einloggen

Aktivieren Sie unsere intelligente Suche, um passende Fachinhalte oder Patente zu finden.

search-config

KI-gestützte Suche

Aus

Abstract

Rabinowitz and Macdonald (Am Polit Sci Rev 83(1):93–121, 1989) have advanced a directional theory of electoral choice that stands as an alternative to the proximity models that have dominated thinking in this area for a number of years. In this paper, we assess the utility of directional theory in another area of political behavior: the evaluation and influence of politically significant others in an individual’s social environment. Using two datasets collected during presidential election campaigns in 1984 and 1996, we find that respondents are more likely to evaluate their political discussants highly and be influenced by discussant vote choice if they agree in a directional rather than proximity manner. In looking at agreement on party identification, ideology, and issue positions, the directional model prevailed in 11 of 17 estimations, with neither explanation acquiring empirical support in the other six. In no instance did the proximity model prevail as an explanation of how political discussants relate to each other. We conclude by discussing the consequences of these results for political behavior and practical electoral politics.

Vorheriger Artikel Measuring Exposure to Political Advertising in Surveys

Nächster Artikel Mobilizing the Seldom Voter: Campaign Contact and Effects in High-Profile Elections

Sie haben noch keine Lizenz? Dann Informieren Sie sich jetzt über unsere Produkte:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

Jetzt informieren

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

Jetzt informieren

Nur mit Berechtigung zugänglich

Huckfeldt and Sprague (1991) had previously found that frequency of discussion and perceived knowledge of the discussant did not enhance the degree of influence. They used a cross sectional specification of the dependent variable in their estimations rather than the dynamic measure used by Kenny (1998). They also concede that among spouses and relatives we would expect to see higher levels of cohesion.

See also Merrill and Grofman (1997) for an example of a unified model that incorporates proximity, directional, and intensity components.

In accordance with Lewis and King (1999) we use the term “neutral point” to refer to the middle position in each of our respective scales. In the ideology and party identification scales the neutral point is mid-way on seven-point scales. In the issue positions, the neutral point is mid way on a five-point scale. In every scale, the neutral point is defined as zero. Note also that we exclude penalties for discussants that fall outside a region of acceptability, as would otherwise be necessary under directional theory.

The South Bend data do not contain a barrage of issue position questions, so constructing a scale similar to that used by Rabinowitz and Macdonald (1989) is not possible.

Unfortunately, the Indianapolis/St. Louis data contain an experimental manipulation of the perception of the discussant’s vote choice variable, so an estimation of that equation is conducted for the South Bend data only.

For the control variables we chose to include the actual discussant and respondent characteristics rather than measures of similarity (same race, same gender, etc.) because of the difficulty in determining what constitutes similarity for many of the variables. How close in age must the respondent and discussant be before we consider them similar, for example? Including reasonable measures of similarity instead of actual discussant and respondent characteristics does not change the results reported in this paper.

It could be argued that the key independent variables should be included in the model together, at least the issues and ideology measures. When this is done where possible (Tables 1b and 2b), the substantive results remain largely the same. The one difference is a change in the t-statistic of the directional ideology coefficient in Table 2b from just over 2 to 1.5.

Although these models are estimated by logit rather than a least squares procedure, we follow the 2SLS procedure of regressing the dependent variables on all exogenous variables in the system in order to maximize the explanatory power of our first stage estimates. If the first stage instrument for discussant vote is obtained by regressing discussant vote on just the discussant attributes, the substantive results remain exactly the same.

Note that the dummy variable specification of the directional variable measures whether the two discussants are on the same side of the scale (direction), but not how strongly they are on the same side (intensity). We chose this specification because of it is easier to interpret and it captures the essential part of the argument we are making; that it’s being on the same side that matters most, not how close discussant views are to each other. The percentage distributions of these dummy variables are shown below.

	1984 South Bend		1996 St. Louis/Indianapolis
	1	0	1	0
Directional	35.1	64.9	33.4	66.6
Proximity	44.8	55.2	42.3	57.7

The spouse variable was not included in these tables because it only makes sense to include it as an interaction with vote choice, which complicates the interpretation of the coefficients of interest. If the models are estimated in the subset of non-spousal discussion pairs, all substantive results remain the same. The only differences are a slight decrease in significance for the ideology directional/vote interaction (p < .08) and the abortion directional/vote interaction (p < .06) in the St. Louis/Indianapolis dataset.

Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading: Addison-Wesley.

Berelson, B. R., Lazarsfeld, P. F., & McPhee, W. M. (1954). Voting: A study of opinion formation in a presidential election. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Brewer, M. B., & Gardner, W. L. (1996). Who is this “we”? levels of collective identity and self representations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 83–93.CrossRef

Brody, R. A., & Page, B. I. (1972). The assessment of policy voting. American Political Science Review, 64, 450–458.

Burt, R. S. (1987). Social contagion and innovation: Cohesion versus structural equivalence. American Journal of Sociology, 92, 1287–1335.CrossRef

Byrne, D. (1971). The attraction paradigm. New York: Academic Press.

Byrne, D. E., & Griffit, W. (1966). A developmental investigation of the law of attraction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4, 699–702.CrossRef

Cook, T. E. (1998). Governing with the news: The news media as a political institution. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Downs, A. (1957). An economic theory of democracy. New York: Harper and Row.

Eagly, A. H., & Chaiken, S. (1993). The psychology of attitudes. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers.

Enelow, J. M., & Hinich, M. J. (1984). The spatial theory of voting: An introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Fiske, S. T., & Neuberg, S. L. (1990). A continuum of impression formation, from category-based to individuating processes: Influences of information and motivation on attention and interpretation. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 23, pp. 1–74). New York: Academic Press.

Gans, H. J. (1979). Deciding what’s news: A study of CBS evening news, NBC nightly news, newsweek, and time. Pantheon Books.

Goethals, G. R., & Nelson, R. E. (1973). Similarity and the influence process: The belief-value distinction. The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 25, 117–122.CrossRef

Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: Wiley.

Hovland, C. I., & Sherif, M. (1952). Judgmental phenomena and scales of attitude measurement: Item displacement in thurstone scales. Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology, 47, 822–832.CrossRef

Huckfeldt, R. (1986). Politics in context: Assimilation and conflict in urban neighborhoods. New York: Agathon.

Huckfeldt, R., Beck, P. A., Dalton, R. J., Levine, J., & Morgan, W. (1998). Ambiguity, distorted messages, and nested environmental effects on political communication. The Journal of Politics, 60(4), 996–1030.CrossRef

Huckfeldt, R., Johnson, P, & Sprague, J. (2002). Political environments, political dynamics, and the survival of disagreement. The Journal of Politics, 64(1), 1–21.CrossRef

Huckfeldt, R., & Sprague, J. (1987). Networks in context. American Political Science Review, 81, 1197–1216.CrossRef

Huckfeldt, R., & Sprague, J. (1988). Choice, social structure, and political information: The informational coercion of minorities. American Journal of Political Science, 32, 467–482.CrossRef

Huckfeldt, R., & Sprague, J. (1991). Discussant effects on vote choice: Intimacy, structure, and interdependence. Journal of Politics, 53, 122–158.CrossRef

Huckfeldt, R., & Sprague, J. (1995). Citizens, politics, and social communication: Information and influence in an election campaign. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Huckfeldt, R., Sprague, J., & Levine, J. (2000). The dynamics of collective deliberation in the 1996 election: Campaign effects on accessibility, certainty, and accuracy. The American Political Science Review, 94(3), 641–651.CrossRef

Jaccard, J. (1981). Toward theories of persuasion and belief change. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40(2), 260–269.CrossRef

Jennings, M. K., & Niemi, R. G. (1968). The transmission of political views from parent to child. American Political Science Review, 62, 169–184.CrossRef

Jennings, M. K., & Niemi, R. G. (1974). The political character of adolescence. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Kenny, C. B. (1998). The behavioral consequences of political discussion: Another look at discussant effects on vote choice. The Journal of Politics, 60(1), 231–244.CrossRef

Kerlinger, F. (1984). Liberalism and conservatism: The nature and structure of social attitudes. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Lasswell, H. D. (1958). Politics: Who gets what, when, how. Meridian Books.

Lazarsfeld, P. F., Berelson, B., & Gaudet, H. (1948). The people’s choice: How the voter makes up his mind in a presidential campaign. New York: Columbia University.

Lewis, J. B., & King, G (1999). No evidence on directional vs. proximity voting. Political Analysis, 8(1), 21–33.

Macdonald, S. E., Listhaug, O., & Rabinowitz, G. (1991). Issues and party support in multiparty systems. The American Political Science Review, 85(4), 1107–1131.CrossRef

Mackie, D. M., Worth, L. T., & Asuncion, A. G. (1990). Processing of persuasive in-group messages. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58(5), 812–822.CrossRef

Macrae, C. N., & Bodenhausen, G. V. (2001). Social cognition: Categorical person perception. British Journal of Psychology, 92, 239–255.CrossRef

Merrill, S., & Grofman, B. (1997). Directional and proximity models of voter utility and choice: A new synthesis and an illustrative test of competing models. Journal of Theoretical Politics, 9(1), 25–48.CrossRef

Mutz, D. (2002). Cross-cutting social networks: Testing democratic theory in practice. The American Political Science Review, 96, 11–126.

Newcomb, T. M. (1956). The prediction of interpersonal attraction. American Psychologist, 11, 575–586.CrossRef

Page, B. I., & Shapiro, R. Y. (1992). The rational public: Fifty years of trends in americans’ policy preferences. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Rabinowitz, G., & Macdonald, S. E. (1989). A directional theory of issue voting. The American Political Science Review, 83(1), 93–121.CrossRef

Tajfel, H. (1982). Social identity and intergroup relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1986). The social identity theory of inter-group behavior. In S. Worchel & L. W. Austin (Eds.), Psychology of intergroup relations. Chigago: Nelson-Hall.

Westholm, A. (1997). Distance versus direction: The illusory defeat of the proximity theory of electoral choice. The American Political Science Review, 91(4), 865–883.CrossRef

Zaller, J. (1992). The nature and origins of mass opinion. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Titel: Direction Versus Proximity in the Social Influence Process
verfasst von: Christopher Kenny
Eric Jenner
Publikationsdatum: 01.03.2008
Verlag: Springer US
Erschienen in: Political Behavior / Ausgabe 1/2008
Print ISSN: 0190-9320
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-6687
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-007-9043-8

Springer Professional

Abstract

Bitte loggen Sie sich ein, um Zugang zu Ihrer Lizenz zu erhalten.

Sie haben noch keine Lizenz? Dann Informieren Sie sich jetzt über unsere Produkte:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Weitere Artikel der Ausgabe 1/2008

Does Workplace Experience Enhance Political Participation? A Critical Test of a Venerable Hypothesis

Reconsidering the Effects of Bonding Social Capital: A Closer Look at Black Civil Society Institutions in America

Measuring Exposure to Political Advertising in Surveys

Issue Framing and Engagement: Rhetorical Strategy in Public Policy Debates

Mobilizing the Seldom Voter: Campaign Contact and Effects in High-Profile Elections