Citation

Malhotra N, Kuo AG. Am. Polit. Res. 2009; 37(2): 301.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1532673X08328002

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Despite the extensive literature on the effects of party and other information cues on citizens' attitudes and behaviors, there exists little evidence and theory on how individuals balance multiple sources of information, particularly in the domain of blame attribution. Furthermore, we have a limited understanding of what individual characteristics moderate the use of such information. We designed a survey experiment, administered to a nationally representative population, in which respondents ranked public officials in order of how much they should be blamed for the property damage and loss of life in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. We manipulated the information provided to respondents, with some receiving the officials' party affiliations, others receiving their job titles, and others receiving both cues. We find that strong negative emotions such as anger and sadness facilitate the prioritization of heuristics used in peripheral-route cognitive processing, whereas weak emotional reactions result in more content-rich, central-route processing.

Language: en