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The Illusion of Choice in Democratic Politics: The Unconscious Impact of Motivated Political Reasoning
Author(s) -
Taber Charles S.,
Lodge Milton
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
political psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.419
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1467-9221
pISSN - 0162-895X
DOI - 10.1111/pops.12321
Subject(s) - automaticity , politics , unconscious mind , psychology , cognition , affect (linguistics) , illusion , feeling , set (abstract data type) , cognitive psychology , social psychology , democracy , subliminal stimuli , cognitive science , political science , psychoanalysis , law , computer science , communication , neuroscience , programming language
What are the fundamental causes of human behavior and to what degree is it intended, consciously controlled? We review the literature on automaticity in human behavior with an emphasis on our own theory of motivated political reasoning, John Q. Public, and the experimental evidence we have collected (Lodge & Taber, 2013). Our fundamental theoretical claim is that affective and cognitive reactions to external and internal events are triggered unconsciously, followed spontaneously by the spreading of activation through associative pathways that link thoughts to feelings to intentions to behavior, so that very early events, even those that are invisible to conscious awareness, set the direction for all subsequent processing. We find evidence in support of four hypotheses that are central to our theory: hot cognition, affect transfer, affect contagion, and motivated bias.