Schematic Assessments of Presidential Candidates

Abstract

This article applies theories of social cognition in an investigation of the dimensions of the assessments of candidates employed by voters in the United States. An empirical description of the public's cognitive representations of presidential candidates, derived from responses to open-ended questions in the American National Election Studies from 1952 to 1984, reveals that perceptions of candidates are generally focused on “personality” characteristics rather than on issue concerns or partisan group connections. Contrary to the implications of past research, higher education is found to be correlated with a greater likelihood of using personality categories rather than with making issue statements. While previous models have interpreted voting on the basis of candidate personality as indicative of superficial and idiosyncratic assessments, the data examined here indicate that they predominately reflect performance-relevant criteria such as competence, integrity, and reliability. In addition, both panel and aggregate time series data suggest that the categories that voters have used in the past influence how they will perceive future candidates, implying the application of schematic judgments. The reinterpretation presented here argues that these judgments reflect a rich cognitive representation of the candidates from which instrumental inferences are made.

Leader Traits, Leader Image, and Vote Choice

“…With only minor changes over time, in the ANES a set of leader traits such as "intelligent", "knowledgeable", "inspiring", "provides strong leadership", "moral", "compassionate", or "really cares about people like you" has been measured which should constitute "… a fair sampling from the broader range of personal qualities that might conceivably be relevant to prospective voters" (Bartels 2002: 47). These traits closely resemble those categories used by Miller et al (1986) on the basis of the open ended candidate questions of the ANES (for further information on the traits such as the question wording see the appendix). Unfortunately, since the closed format statements we utilize do not explicitly contain strictly personal, non-political candidate characteristics, the distinction between political and non-political attributes cannot be analyzed for the United States when using these data.…”

“…4 The politically relevant attributes have clearly received the most intensive treatment in past research, with differentiated measurements whereas the non-political dimension is either not measured at all or only very roughly. Miller et al (1986) use for their analysis of leader traits the open-ended statements of the American national election studies and they distinguish five dimensions (Miller et al 1986: 528). As a first dimension competence encompasses a candidate's intelligence, his or her comprehension of political issues, the ability as a statesman, or political experience.…”

“…In another analysis Funk (1999) uses the closed format trait statements of the American national election studies which, essentially, only contain measurements for political attributes. These trait statements were developed by Kinder (1986) and they are intended to measure four broad dimensions of leader evaluation which are fairly similar to those of Miller et al (1986), namely competence, leadership, trustworthiness, and empathy (Shanks/Miller 1990: 201).…”

“…Conversely, strictly personal, non-political candidate characteristics were of only minor importance (Miller et al 1986). In analyzing the effect of individual leader traits on overall leader evaluations it emerged for the United States that performance relevant criteria had a much greater impact than the more superficial and apparent leader characteristics (Miller et al 1986: 534).…”

Throwing the Rascals Out: Policy and Performance Evaluations of Presidential Candidates, 1952–1980

“…However, both challengers of incumbents and candidates in nonincumbent races are more likely to evoke a strictly candidate attribute response. One interpretation for the emphasis on candidate attributes arises from previous work on schematic assessments of political leaders (Conover, 1981;Miller, Wattenberg, & Malanchuk, 1982). These studies demonstrate that people will make inferences about the potential performance of candidates from the candidates' personal attributes when there is little available information on the policy positions or past experience of those running for office.…”