Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: What Makes Politics Interesting?

政治学博士论文研究：是什么让政治变得有趣？

• 批准号: 1264275
• 负责人: Randolph Stevenson
• 金额: $ 2.09万
• 依托单位: William Marsh Rice University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-03-01 至 2015-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1264275&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Political; Science

Intellectual MeritThis dissertation project extends appraisal models of interest developed in psychology to understand individual differences in political interest and knowledge. It is a first step in a larger collaborative effort to develop a comparative theory of political interest that explains why political interest and knowledge vary so dramatically across the Western Democracies. Theoretically, this research takes the view that long-term interests are developed in a series of discrete emotional experiences in which individuals learn what does and does not interest them. For the development of political interests, the sequence of relevant experiences is the reception of political messages, almost always (directly or indirectly) generated by the mass media. Thus, to answer the question of why some individuals are interested in politics and some are not, one must first answer the question of why an individual is (or is not) interested in particular political messages. This study argues that this is a function of an interaction between characteristics of the individual and of the message, and that we can understand the nature of that interaction by applying appraisal theories of interest that have been developed in psychology.Appraisal models of emotions assert that individuals experience an emotion only after they (consciously or subconsciously) appraise events as matching a particular abstract structure. Upon making the appropriate set of appraisals, the corresponding emotion "fires." Thus, appraisal theorists are principally concerned with defining the appraisal structure associated with a specific emotion, and designing experiments to test whether all the elements of the proposed structure are necessary and sufficient to provoke the relevant emotional response. For interest, the leading model of the appraisal structure of interest (due to Silvia) posits two appraisal dimensions that determine whether the event or object is interesting: a collative dimension (the appraised novelty, complexity, uncertainty, and conflictualness of the event) and a coping potential or comprehensibility dimension, which is an individual's appraisal of her ability to understand the event. These dimensions indicate how a person may orient herself to an event or object both cognitively and emotionally.The main contribution of the dissertation is to explore whether this appraisal structure of interest applies to political interest, as well as to propose and explore one important extension of it that is more useful in politics (where it is often costly to get information): an explicit incorporation of information short-cuts or heuristics into the theory.Empirically, the dissertation proposes a new experimental platform for evaluating the appraisal structure of interest that should be both more powerful (more efficiently generates relevant observations) than previous designs and more applicable to a wider set of substantive domains. These experiments will allow us to rigorously test hypotheses drawn from the theory and understand if the appraisal theory of interest will be useful in better understanding individual variation in political interest.Broader ImpactsThis study will not only contribute the literature in political science on political interest, but also to those studying appraisal models of emotion more generally, via the inclusion of heuristics. Beyond academia, the results should be of interest to political campaigns and other civic programs that seek to understand how to activate politically interest.

知识分子的论文项目扩展了心理学中发展的评估模型，以了解政治兴趣和知识中的个体差异。这是一项更大的合作努力的第一步，发展了一种比较的政治利益理论，该理论解释了为什么在整个西方民主国家之间如此巨大的政治利益和知识会如此巨大。从理论上讲，这项研究认为，长期利益是在一系列离散的情感体验中发展的，在这些体验中，个人学习了什么和对他们不感兴趣。为了发展政治利益，相关经验的顺序是接收政治信息，几乎总是（直接或直接或间接）大众媒体产生的。因此，要回答一个人为什么有些人对政治感兴趣而有些人不感兴趣的问题，必须首先回答一个人（或不对特定政治信息）感兴趣的问题。这项研究认为，这是个人特征和信息之间的相互作用的函数，我们可以通过应用心理学中已经开发的评估理论来理解这种相互作用的性质。情感的宣传模型声称，个人只有在（有意地或下意地或下沉地）将事件与特定的摘要结构相匹配之后，个人只会经历情感。进行适当的评估集后，相应的情绪“激发”。因此，评估理论家主要关注定义与特定情绪相关的评估结构，并设计实验以测试所提出的结构的所有要素是否必要且足以引起相关的情感反应。为了兴趣，评估感兴趣的结构的主要模型（由于Silvia）提出了两个评估维度，这些维度决定了事件还是对象是否有趣：汇总维度（事件的新颖性，复杂性，不确定性和事件的冲突）和应对潜在或综合性维度，这是个人能够了解该事件的能力。 这些维度表明，一个人如何使自己在认知和情感上既适合事件或对象。论文的主要贡献是探索这种兴趣的评估结构是否适用于政治利益，以及提出和探索在政治中更有用的重要范围（通常是为了获得典型的信息），该信息通常是在政治上有用的：论文提出了一个新的实验平台，用于评估感兴趣的评估结构，该平台应该比以前的设计更强大（更有效地产生相关的观察值），并且更适用于更广泛的实质域。这些实验将使我们能够严格检验从理论中提出的假设，并了解感兴趣的评估理论是否将有助于更好地理解个人对政治兴趣的差异。这项研究不仅会为政治科学的文献对政治科学的文献做出贡献，还将对那些更普遍地研究情感的人进行掌握的评估模型，这是通过掌握术的掌握。除了学术界，结果还应该对政治运动和其他公民计划感兴趣，这些计划试图了解如何激活政治上的利益。