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The cognitive representation of political personalities. A cross‐cultural comparison (1)
Author(s) -
Forgas Joseph P.,
Kagan Carolyn,
Frey Dieter
Publication year - 1977
Publication title -
international journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1464-066X
pISSN - 0020-7594
DOI - 10.1080/00207597708247371
Subject(s) - politics , psychology , german , humanities , cognition , sociology , social psychology , philosophy , political science , linguistics , law , neuroscience
The cognitive representation of salient political personalities was studied in a British and a German student sample, using a multi‐dimensional scaling (MDS) procedure. Separate MDS analyses for the two samples yielded a readily interpetable three dimensional stimulus space in each case. These cognitive spaces for political figures were interpreted as reflecting the attributes of political potency, evaluation and intelligence in the case of the British sample, and evaluation, conservatism and political potency in the case of the German sample. An additional joint analysis of data from both subject groups indicated significant cross‐cultural differences in the cognitive representations of political leaders. The results were discussed in terms of the socio‐cultural differences between the two subsamples, and the utility of a multi‐dimensional approach to political perception and behaviour.