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The malleability of political attitudes : Choice blindness, confabulation and attitude change

Strandberg, Thomas LU (2020) In Lund University Cognitive Studies
Abstract
This thesis is an empirical and theoretical investigation of choice blindness, in particular in the domain of political attitudes. Choice blindness is a cognitive phenomenon in which people do not notice dramatic mismatches between what they choose and what they get while still offering seemingly introspective arguments to explain their (putative) choice. In four papers, it is demonstrated that the effect also applies to salient political attitudes and evaluations of political candidates. All studies took place in close connection to real elections, and new tools building of the underlying choice blindness methodology has been developed to collect the data. Further, the potential downstream effects are explored, such as influence on voting... (More)
This thesis is an empirical and theoretical investigation of choice blindness, in particular in the domain of political attitudes. Choice blindness is a cognitive phenomenon in which people do not notice dramatic mismatches between what they choose and what they get while still offering seemingly introspective arguments to explain their (putative) choice. In four papers, it is demonstrated that the effect also applies to salient political attitudes and evaluations of political candidates. All studies took place in close connection to real elections, and new tools building of the underlying choice blindness methodology has been developed to collect the data. Further, the potential downstream effects are explored, such as influence on voting intentions, and lasting attitude changes. The potential mechanisms behind the effect are also investigated and confabulatory reasoning stands out as an important part in facilitating the observed attitude changes. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
supervisor
opponent
  • professor Daniel Oppenheimer, Carnegie Mellon University
organization
publishing date
type
Thesis
publication status
published
subject
keywords
choice blindness, confabulation, self-perception, political psychology, attitude change
in
Lund University Cognitive Studies
issue
179
pages
188 pages
publisher
Department of Philosophy, Lund University
defense location
LUX C121
defense date
2020-08-24 10:00:00
ISSN
1101-8453
ISBN
978-91-89213-07-4
978-91-89213-06-7
project
The Political Party Space: a magical web survey
The Self-Transforming Survey as an interactive tablet application
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
493f3f22-a664-4909-b427-d3ab3c95f34d
date added to LUP
2020-05-19 16:12:52
date last changed
2020-05-28 12:07:40
@phdthesis{493f3f22-a664-4909-b427-d3ab3c95f34d,
  abstract     = {{This thesis is an empirical and theoretical investigation of choice blindness, in particular in the domain of political attitudes. Choice blindness is a cognitive phenomenon in which people do not notice dramatic mismatches between what they choose and what they get while still offering seemingly introspective arguments to explain their (putative) choice. In four papers, it is demonstrated that the effect also applies to salient political attitudes and evaluations of political candidates. All studies took place in close connection to real elections, and new tools building of the underlying choice blindness methodology has been developed to collect the data. Further, the potential downstream effects are explored, such as influence on voting intentions, and lasting attitude changes. The potential mechanisms behind the effect are also investigated and confabulatory reasoning stands out as an important part in facilitating the observed attitude changes.}},
  author       = {{Strandberg, Thomas}},
  isbn         = {{978-91-89213-07-4}},
  issn         = {{1101-8453}},
  keywords     = {{choice blindness; confabulation; self-perception; political psychology; attitude change}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  month        = {{05}},
  number       = {{179}},
  publisher    = {{Department of Philosophy, Lund University}},
  school       = {{Lund University}},
  series       = {{Lund University Cognitive Studies}},
  title        = {{The malleability of political attitudes : Choice blindness, confabulation and attitude change}},
  url          = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/80023626/strandberg_thesis.pdf}},
  year         = {{2020}},
}