POL 631 – Political Cognition
Fall, 2010
Chuck Taber
Office: SBS N707A
Office Hours: Open Door
Class Location: SBS N705
Phone: 631-632-7659
Email: Charles.Taber@stonybrook.edu
Web: www.stonybrook.edu/polsci/ctaber/
Class Time: Thursday, 9:30-12:30
Course Description: Over the past 60 years there has been a revolution in thinking about thinking in the
behavioral sciences. The “cognitive revolution” has sparked interest in the processes underlying reasoning and
decision-making  how people integrate information, form opinions, and make choices. This course will review
and critique the information-processing approach as it applies to the study of political behavior and the
mechanisms underlying the evaluation of political candidates, groups, and issues. We will review background
material on cognitive psychology, human emotion, memory, thinking and reasoning, and the interplay of affect
and cognition. Throughout we will be interested in important questions that arise for political psychology:
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Implicit and Explicit Political Beliefs, Attitudes, & Behavior;
Non reactive measures of beliefs, attitudes & preferences;
Automaticity: How and why what happens within the first 300 milliseconds matters;
Motivated reasoning  how citizens’ prior attitudes affect their interpretation and evaluation of new
information.
Assignments and Grading: Final grades will be based on class participation (10%), formal discussion
leadership (10%), and six short papers (80%).
1. Active participation is expected of all students in this seminar. I will only lecture if I want to present
material outside of a week’s readings; otherwise, the class format will be guided discussion. I expect you
to think carefully about a week’s readings before class. Your grade for this component will be based on
your level of preparation and participation.
2. Most weeks, several students will report on an additional “starred” reading by providing a 1-2 page
synopsis/outline for the other students and in 5-10 minutes discussing the article in class, telling us why
we should/should not read the article by answering 3 questions: What? How? Who cares?
3. There are nine short written assignments on selected topics (as noted on the syllabus); do any six, each
5-6 pages. Each paper is due as an email attachment by 10am on the Wednesday preceding the relevant
class. If at any point you find a topic particularly interesting, see me to negotiate the substitution of a
larger paper for n smaller papers.
Required Readings:
Eysenck, M, and Keane, M.T. 2010. Cognitive Psychology: A Student’s Handbook, 6th Edition, Psychology
Press, NY.
Most of the readings listed below are available on-line. I will provide the other papers.
Topics and Readings
9/16
Introduction
E&K, Chapter 1.
Lodge & Taber. The Rationalizing Voter, Chapters 1 and 2. Cambridge University Press, manuscript.
9/23
Attention, Effort, and Resource Allocation
Assignment 1: Cognitive psychology is becoming ever more neurocognitive in focus. Do you think that
this shift in research focus is useful for political psychologists? Should political scientists be doing more
brain research?
E&K, Part I: skim Chapters 2-4, and read Chapter 5.
Neely (1977). “Semantic Priming and Retrieval from Lexical Memory: Roles of Inhibitionless
Spreading Activation and Limited Capacity Attention," Journal of Experimental Psychology:
General. 106 (3), 226-254.
9/30
Memory and Learning: Basic Findings and Theory
E&K, Part II: read Chapters 6-8.
Collins & Loftus (1975). “A Spreading Activation Theory of Semantic Processing,” Psychological
Review, 82, 6: 407-428.
Bechara et al. (1997). “Deciding Advantageously Before Knowing the Advantageous Strategy.” Science,
275, 1293-95.
10/7
Representation and Categorization
Assignment 2: How, if at all, should Barsalou’s findings about graded structure affect how we think
about and measure public opinion?
E&K, Chapter 9.
Goldstone & Kersten (2003). Concepts and categorization. In Healy & Proctor (Eds.), Handbook of
Psychology, Vol 4: Experimental Psychology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, pp. 599-621.
Barsalou (1987). “The Instability of Graded Structure: Implications for the Nature of Concepts.” In
Neisser (Ed.), Concepts and Conceptual Development: Ecological and Intellectual Factors in
Categorization. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 101-140.
*McGraw, Lodge, & Jones (2002). “The Pandering Politicians of Suspicion Minds.” Journal of Politics.
64, 2, 362-383.
*Thomsen, Lavine, & Kounios (1996). “Social Value and Attitude Concepts in Semantic Memory:
Relational Structure, Concept Strength, and the Fan Effect.” Social Cognition, 14: 191-225.
10/14 Memory-Based and On-Line Models of Political Attitudes
Assignment 3: Where, how, why did Lodge, Steenbergen, and Brau go wrong? Go too far or not far
enough? AND/OR Same questions for Zaller & Feldman.
Zaller and Feldman (1992). “A Simple Theory of the Survey Response: Answering Questions Versus
Revealing Preferences.” American Journal of Political Science, 36, 3: 579- 616.
Lodge, Steenbergen, & Brau (1995). “The Responsive Voter: Campaign Information and the Dynamics
of Candidate Evaluation.” American Political Science Review, 89, 2: 309-326.
Wilson & Schooler (1991). “Thinking Too Much: Introspection Can Reduce the Quality of Preferences
and Decisions,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 2: 181 – 192.
Wilson, Hodges, & LaFleur (1995). “Effects of Introspecting About Reasons: Inferring Attitudes from
Accessible Thoughts.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 1: 16-28.
*Betsch, Plessner, Hoffman, Schwieren, & Gutig (2001). “I Like It but I Don’t Know Why: A Value2
Account Approach to Implicit Attitude Formation.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,
27, 2: 242-253.
*Kim, Taber, & Lodge (2010). “A Model of Political Cognition: The Dynamics of Candidate Evaluation
in the 2000 Presidential Election.” Political Behavior.
10/21 Thinking, Reasoning, and Deciding
Assignment 4: If the McGuires’ approach is a reasonable first approximation of how people think about
policies, what if any are the consequences for the practice of political science?
E&K, Part IV.
McGuire & McGuire (1991). “The Content, Structure, and Operation of Thought Systems.” In Wyer &
Srull (Eds.), Advances in Social Cognition, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Vol IV,
pp. 1-78.
Pennington & Hastie (1992). “Explaining the Evidence: Tests of the Story Model for Juror Decisions,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62, 2: 189 – 206.
10/28 Conscious and Automatic Activation of Beliefs and Attitudes
Assignment 5: Should political scientists care what happens at 39 milliseconds? Why or why not?
E&K, Chapter 16.
Perdue, Dovidio, Gurtman, & Tyler (1990). “Us and Them: Social Categorization and the Process of
Intergroup Bias.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 3: 475-486.
Zajonc, R. (1980). “Feeling and Thinking: Preferences Need No Inferences,” American Psychologist,
35, 151-175.
Murphy & Zajonc (1993). “Affect, Cognition, and Awareness: Affective Priming with Optimal and
Suboptimal Stimulus Exposures.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 5: 723-739.
Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, & Kardes (1986). “On the Automatic Activation of Attitudes,” Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 2: 229-238.
Wilson, Lindsey, & Schooler (2000). “A Model of Dual Attitudes.” Psychological Review, 107, 4: 101126.
*Lodge & Taber (2005). “The Automaticity of Affect for Political Leaders, Groups, and Issues: An
Experimental Test of the Hot Cognition Hypothesis.” Political Psychology, 26, 3, 455-482.
*Payne (2001). “Prejudice and Perception: The Role of Automatic and Controlled Processes in
Misperceiving a Weapon.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 2: 181-192.
11/4
Automaticity of Intentions and Behavior
Bargh, Chen, & Burrrows (1996). “Automaticity of Social Behavior: Direct Effects of the Trait
Construct and Stereotype Activation.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71, 2: 230244.
Bargh, Gollwitzer, Lee-Chai, Barndollar, & Trotschel (2001). “The Automated Will: Nonconscious
Activation and Pursuit of Behavioral Goals.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81,
1014-1027.
Kay, Wheeler, Bargh, & Ross (2004). “Material priming: The Influence of Mundane Physical Objects
on Situational Construal and Competitive Behavioral Choice.” Organizational Behavior and
Human Decision Processes, 95, 83-96.
Aarts, Gollwitzer, & Hassin (2004). “Goal Contagion: Perceiving is for pursuing. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 87, 23-37.
Custers & Aarts (2010). “The Unconscious Will: How the Pursuit of Goals Operates Outside of
Conscious Awareness.” Science, 329, 47-50.
Dijksterhuis & Aarts (2003). “On Wildebeests & Humans: The Preferential Detection of Negative
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Stimuli.” Psychological Science, 14, 1, 14-18.
*Wentura, Rothermund, & Bak (2000). “Automatic Vigilance: The Attention Grabbing Power of
Approach-And Avoidance-Related Social Information.” Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 78, 1024-1037.
*Kawakami, Young, & Dovidio (2002). “Automatic Stereotyping: Category, Trait, and Behavioral
Activations.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 1: 3-15.
*Strahan, Spencer, & Zanna (2002). “Subliminal Priming and Persuasion: Striking When the Iron is
Hot.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 556-568.
11/11 Controllability of Thoughts, Feelings, and Action
Assignment 6: What is free will and is it at risk in this research?
Devine (1989). “Stereotypes and Prejudice: Their Automatic and Controlled Components,” Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 56: 5-18.
Bargh (1999). “The Cognitive Monster: The Case Against the Controllability of Automatic Stereotype
Effects.” In Chaiken & Trope (Eds.) Dual Process Theories in Social Psychology, pp. 361- 382.
CD
Bargh & Ferguson (2000). “Beyond Behaviorism: On the Automaticity of Higher Mental Processes.”
Psychological Bulletin, 126, 6, 925-945.
Moskowitz, Gollwitzer, Wasel, & Schaal (1999). “Preconscious Control of Stereotype Activation
through Chronic Egalitarian Goals.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 1: 167184.
Dasgupta & Rivera (2006). “From Automatic Antigay Prejudice to Behavior: The Moderating Role of
Conscious Beliefs About Gender and Behavioral Control.” Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 91(2), 268-80.
*Smith, Fazio & Cejka (1996). “Accessible Attitudes Influence Categorization of Multiple
Categorizable Objects.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 5: 888-898.
*Moskowitz, Salomon, & Taylor (2000). “Preconsciously Controlling Stereotyping: Implicitly Activated
Egalitarian Goals Prevent the Activation of Stereotypes.” Social Cognition, 18, 2: 151-177.
*Macrae, Bodenhausen, Milne, & Wheeler (1996). “On Resisting the Temptation for Simplification:
Counterintentional Effects of Stereotype Suppression on Social Memory.” Social Cognition, 14,
1: 1-20.
11/18 Implicit Social Cognition: Issues of Theory and Measurement
Assignment 7: Take two IAT tests at http://implicit.harvard.edu/. What’s being measured by the IAT?
By the priming paradigm? Problems?
Greenwald, Anthony, Mahzarin Banaji, Laurie Rudman, Shelly Farnham, Brian Nosek, and Deborah
Mellott. 2002. “Unified Theory of Implicit Attitudes, Stereotypes, Self-Esteem, and SelfConcept.” Psychological Review, 109 (1), 3-25.
Fazio & Olson (2003). “Implicit Measures in Social Cognition Research: Their Meaning and Use.”
Annual Review of Psychology, 1-47.
Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, & Williams (1995). “Variability in Automatic Activation as an Unobtrusive
Measure of Racial Attitudes: A Bona Fide Pipeline.” Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 69, 6: 1013-1027.
Nosek & Smyth. 2007. “A Multitrait-Multimethod Validation of the Implicit Association Test: Implicit
and Explicit Attitudes are Related but Distinct Constructs.” Journal of Experimental Psychology,
54 (1): 14-29.
Greenwald, Poehlman, Uhlmann, & Banaji (2009). “Understanding and Using the Implicit Association
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Test: III. Meta-Analysis of Predictive Validity.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
97(1), 17-41.
*Craemer (2008). “Nonconscious Feelings of Closeness toward African Americans and Support for ProBlack Policies.” Political Psychology, 29(3), 407-36.
*Arcuri et al. (2008). “Predicting the Vote: Implicit Attitudes as Predictors of the Future Behavior of
Decided and Undecided Voters.” Political Psychology, 29(3), 369-86.
*Berger, Meredith, & Wheeler (2008). “Contextual Priming: Where People Vote Affects How they
Vote.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. 105(26): 8846-49.
12/2
Affect and Emotion
Assignment 8: Do we need more than valence affect to explain political behavior? Do emotions matter?
E&K, Chapter 15.
Cacioppo & Gardner (1999). Emotions. Annual Review of Psychology, 50, 191-214.
Forgas (1995). “Mood and Judgment: The Affect Infusion Model.” Psychological Bulletin, 117, 1, 3966.
Robinson & Clore (2002). “Belief and Feeling: Evidence for an Accessibility Emotional Self-Report.”
Psychological Bulletin, 128, 6, 934-960.
Loewensten (2003). “The Role of Affect in Decision-Making.” Handbook of Affective Sciences. Oxford
University Press, 619-642.
Neidenthal, Halberstadt, & Innes-Ker (1999). “Emotional Response Categorization.” Psychological
Review, 106, 2, 337-361.
Storbeck & Clore (2007). “On the Interdependence between Cognition and Emotion.” Cognition and
Emotion, 21, 1212-1237.
Marcus (2003). “The Psychology of Emotion and Politics.” In Sears, Huddy, & Jervis (Eds.), Oxford
Handbook of Political Psychology. Oxford University Press, pp: 182-221.
12/9
The Rationalizing Voter
Assignment 9: What are the consequences for the practice of political science of treating voters as
motivated reasoners?
Kruglanski & Webster (1996). “Motivated Closing of the Mind: ‘Seizing’ and ‘Freezing’.”
Psychological Review, 103, 2: 263-283.
Taber & Lodge (2006). “Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs.” American Journal
of Political Science, 50, 3, 755-769.
Jost et al. (2003). “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition.” Psychological Bulletin,
129(3), 339-75.
Redlawsk, Civettini, & Emmerson (2010). “The Affective Tipping Point: Do Motivated Reasoners Ever
“Get It”?” Political Psychology, 31(4), 563-93.
Erisen, Taber, & Lodge. “Affective Contagion in Effortful Political Thinking.” Under review.
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