Attention and Political Choice: A Foundation for Eye Tracking in Political Science

Abstract

All political science studies are, at root, about how people make decisions—how voterschoose whether and for whom to vote, how prejudice influences political choices, and theeffects of emotions and morals on political choice. However, what people are thinking duringthese decisions remains obscure; currently utilized methods leave us with a “black box”of decision making. Eye tracking offers a deeper insight into these processes by capturingrespondents’ attention, salience, emotion, and understanding. But how applicable is thismethod to political science questions, and how does one go about using it? Here, we explainwhat eye tracking allows researchers to measure, how these measures are relevant topolitical science questions, and how political scientists without expertise in the method cannonetheless use it effectively. In particular, we clarify how researchers can understand thechoices made in preset software in order to arrive at correct inferences from their data anddiscuss new developments in eye tracking methodology, including webcam eye tracking. Weadditionally provide templates for preregistering eye tracking studies in political science, aswell as starter code for processing and analyzing eye tracking data.