1. The Receive-Accept-Sample Model
---Do Political Attitudes Exist?
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2. Content Introduction The 1987 Pilot Study The Model Deductions
Conclusion

3. Introduction Consideration: Two types of political messages:
1.Any reason that might induce an individual to decide a political issue one way or the other.
2. A compound of cognition and affect.
Two types of political messages:
Persuasive messages: arguments or images providing a reason for taking a position or point of view; if accepted by an individual, they become considerations.
Cueing messages: carried in elite discourse, consist of “contextual information” about the ideological or partisan implications of a persuasive messages.
They enable citizens to perceive relationships between the persuasive messages they receive and their political predispositions, which in turn permits them to respond critically to the persuasive messages.
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4. Introduction The RAS Model Reception Axiom Resistance Axiom
The greater a person’s level of cognitive engagement with an issue, the more likely he or she is to be exposed to and comprehend – in a word, to receive – political messages concerning that issue.
Introduction
Reception Axiom
People tend to resist arguments that are inconsistent with their political predispositions, but they do so only to the extent that they possess the contextual information necessary to perceive a relationship between the message and their predispositions.
The more recently a consideration has been called to mind or thought about, the less time it takes to retrieve that consideration or related considerations from memory and bring them to the top of the head for use.
Resistance Axiom
The RAS Model
Accessibility Axiom
Individuals answer survey questions by averaging across the considerations that are immediately salient or accessible to them.
Response Axiom

5. 1987 Pilot Study
450 persons
The 1987 Pilot Study
357 persons
A series of standard issue questions on federal job guarantees, the proper level of government services, and aid to blacks
Still thinking about question you just answered. I’d like you to tell me what ideas came to mind as you were answering that question. Exactly what things went through your mind?
Without waiting for the respondent to answer, they asked the respondent to discuss particular phrases and ideas in the question.

6. 1987 Pilot Study Retrospective probes: Stop-and-think probes:
After people had answered the question
To elicit a sort of “memory dump”
Stop-and-think probes:
Before respondents could answer the question
To induce people to think more carefully
To elicit the range of considerations as nondirectively as possible

7. 1987 Pilot Study Limitations Different rate
The difficulty in sharply distinguishing one “consideration” from another
Small sample size
Less politically aware respondents drop out of surveys at disproportionately high rates
The unusually short time

8. The Model A1 Reception Axiom Reasons:
Persuasive messages + Cueing messages
Reasons:
1. concerned with how individuals acquire information from the environment and convert it into opinion statements.
2. survey measures that capture cognitive engagement with politics outperform measures of affective engagement in explaining most aspects of public opinion.
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9. The Model Cognitive engagement
Political attentiveness or political awareness
a general measure knowledge
It does not directly test individuals’ information about or attention to a particular issue at a particular time but more narrowly focused measures of awareness to intellectual engagement with foreign policy issues or race policy issues.
A1 indicates nothing about the sources of the political communications that shape mass opinion. All that is claimed in A1 is that reception of politically relevant communications is positively associated with intellectual engagement with a given issue.
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10. The Model A2 Resistance Axiom“
The probability of individuals acquiring cueing information depends on their levels of awareness of each given issue.
A1 and A2 together imply that the likelihood of resisting persuasive communications that are inconsistent with one’s political predispositions rises with a person’s level of political attentiveness.
This postulate makes no allowance for citizens to think, reason, or deliberate about politics.

11. The Model A2 Resistance Axiom
Converse maintains that individuals respond critically to the political ideas they encounter, they rely on contextual information from elites about how different ideas “go together” and thereby “constrain” one another.
Psychological literature on opinion:
McGuire: people tend to accept their opinion leadership more readily.
The more abstract the link between a predisposition and a related policy issue, the greater the amount or obscurity of knowledge necessary to perceive the linkage
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12. FORGOTTEN The Model A3 Accessibility Axiom
The longer it has been since a consideration or related idea has been activated, the less likely it is to be accessible at the top of the head. A long unused set of considerations may be completely inaccessible.
FORGOTTEN

13. The Model A4 Response Axiom
Persons who have been asked a survey question do not normally canvass their minds for all considerations relevant to the given issue; rather, they answer the question on the basis of whatever considerations are accessible” at the top of the head”.
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14. The Model A4 Response Axiom
Example: Four-stage model Tourangeau and Rasinski
(1) interpret the question to determine what the issue before them really is
(2) canvass their minds for relevant thoughts
(3) integrate their thoughts into a coherent opinion
(4) map that opinion onto response options available in the question.
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15. The Model Survey response Opinion statement
Sample at the moment of answering questions
Decide whether to accept it
Receive now information
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16. Deductions D1 Ambivalence Deduction A2 Resistance Axiom
Citizens will be unlikely to exhibit high levels of resistance to arguments that are inconsistent with their values, interests, or other predispositions.

17. Deductions
Make a count of the number of opposing remarks by a person that can be paired against each other.
Any conflict score above zero indicates that the person experiences some degree of internal conflict on the given issue.
Make a count of the number of times people spontaneously express ambivalence or difficulty in making up their minds
“I see merit in both sides”, “that’s a tough question”; “depends”; “both are valid points
Star codes indicate a directional thrust to the comment, but also some
ambivalence with respect to that direction.
“Although I think X, I nevertheless favors Y.”
4. A count of the ambivalence indices on which a person scored + 1 of higher.

18. Deductions

19. Deductions D2
the Response Axiom leads us to expect a strong relationship between the responses people make to closed-ended policy questions and the ideas that are at the top of their heads as they do so. Because it claims that people answer survey questions on the basis of the ideas that are most salient to them at the moment of response.

20. Deductions

21. Deductions D3 Variability in people’s response to survey questions
People form conflicting considerations on most issues, and base their survey responses on whichever of these considerations happen to be at the top of the head at the moment of response.
The model also has strong implications for the structure of this response instability so long as the flow of information in the political environment remains steady.

22. Deductions
D4 Response instability consists almost exclusively of chance variation around a largely stable central tendency
from A1, more awareness persons are more likely to possess the cueing messages necessary to respond to incoming information in a critical manner. They are more likely than less informed persons to reject information that conflicts with their values and to accept only information that is consistent.

23. Deductions D5
Better informed persons are more likely to possess the cueing information necessary to reject communication inconsistent with their values.
Test of D5:
Respondents were asked to state their position on a seven-point scale.
Then, in a final stage, they were asked to indicate the position of several prominent political figures or groups on this scale.

24. Deductions

25. Deductions D6
D5 will make it more likely that they will form considerations that are homogeneously consistent with their values.
Test of D6: Began by classifying each person’s considerations as “consistent” with their underlying ideology or “inconsistent”.

26. Deductions

27. Deductions D7
Then, the homogeneity will lead, inter alia, to greater response stability over time.
The more political aware persons exhibit less random instability in their closed-ended attitude reports.
(Dean and Moran, 1977; Feldman, 1989; Zaller, 1991)

28. Deductions D8
Attitudes stability should be weaker for issues on which partisan divisions are hazy or nonexistent, because in such cases the public gets few message cues.

29. Deductions D9
The degree of public attentiveness to an issue is generally high, it follows that attitude statements on this issue will exhibit less variability, all else equal, than will attitude statements on a more remote or abstract issue.

30. Deductions
D10
Individuals who care more strongly about issues, or who are members of what Converse has called “issue publics”, will pay more attention to issues and hence exhibit less chance variability in their attitude statements about these issues.

31. Deductions
D11
People’s responses to particular questions may vary stochastically around their equilibrium points, but the equilibrium points themselves should remain constant as long as the environment remains stable.

32. Deductions
D12 changes in the directional thrust of people’s open-ended remarks are associated with changes in the direction of their closed-ended remarks
person who makes mostly liberal comments when discussing a policy issue at the first interview and mostly conservative remarks at the second review would be expected to change her closed-ended response from liberal to conservatives as well.
Attitude2 = b0 + b1 Attitude1 + b2 Considerations1 + b3 Considerations2

33. Deductions

34. Deductions
D13
People who mention an equal number of opposing considerations should be stable only as often as could be expected by chance along, which is 50 percent of the time.

35. Deductions

36. Deductions

37. Deductions D14 A3 Accessibility Axiom
Different question orders may then bring different considerations to the top of people’s memory heaps, thereby increasing chances that they will affect responses to subsequent questions.
Remain at the top of a heap of idea in one’s memory, readily available for use.

38. Deductions
D15 The intrusion of unexpected or novel considerations into the question-answering process would not be expected to affect all respondents equally
Some people may possess considerations that are so consistent in support of one side of an issue that the admission of additional considerations should have no effect.
Others, may be deeply ambivalent on the issue may possess a roughly even
balance of considerations for and against the issue.
the persons who should be most strongly affected by artificial changes in question order.

39. Deductions
D16 – D18
People who reported that they had mixed feelings about an issue were quite susceptible to question-order effects, or what call “carryover effects”: Race of interviewer; Reference groups; Priming effects. The mechanism responsible for each of these effects is the tendency for people to respond to question at least partly on the basis of whatever ideas are immediately salient to them.

40. Deductions Race of interviewer
Shortly after 1986, New York Times poll found that President Reagan’s approval rate among black was 37 percent, a Washington Post poll estimated that black approval of Reagan was only 23 percent.
While the Times followed normal interview procedures, the Post used black interviewers who informed their black respondents that they would be participating in a study of the attitudes of black Americans.

41. Deductions Reference groups
In a classic social psychology experiment, Charters and Newcomb (1958) found that Catholics were more likely to state attitudes that were consistent with Church doctrine, their religion was made salient to them. Salience was achieved by having a priest make a brief appearance in the room near the time at which the questionnaire was administered.

42. Deductions “Priming effects” of television news
Iyengar (1991) has shown that TV news often functions to make ideas more accessible for use in answering questions about the attribution of social and political responsibility.

43. Deductions
D19
Priming effects may be explained by the assumption that individuals do not typically possess “just one attitude” toward issues, but serval opinions, and that which of these potential opinions they report depends on the information that has been most recently made salient to them.

44. Deductions
D20 The type of priming or question-order effect is also explainable from the RAS model.
Ideological orientations made salient to them just prior to answering policy items, those respondents who have such an orientation are more likely to rely on it as a consideration in formulating responses to subsequent policy questions, thereby making these responses more strongly correlated with their ideological positions and hence also more ideologically consistent with one another.

45. Deductions
D21
With increases in political awareness, come increases in critical capacity and hence in the internal consistency of the considerations one forms. More politically aware persons should be expected to be more non centrist or extreme in their attitude reports.

46. Deductions
D22
If political awareness is a cause of extreme attitude reports, individuals can report extreme attitudes more quickly with less hesitation before answering, than less extreme ones.
Reason: the Accessibility Axiom contends that considerations that have been more recently activated take less time to locate and call to the top of the head for use. Political awareness ought to be associated with more recent activation of one’s political thoughts and hence with quicker reporting of one’s attitudes. More extreme the attitudes, the more quickly reported.

47. Deductions
D23 & D24
Stability of response over time, and strength of correlation between the response and related attitudes, which may be called predictive reliability. Both would be expected to be higher among respondents engaging in the stop-and-think procedure than among those answering questions in the normal fashion.
Response = b0 + b1Form + b2Ideology + b3Form * Ideology

48. Deductions

49. Deductions

50. Conclusion
Ambivalence Deduction which asserts that individuals feel differently toward different aspects of most issues; and the Response Axiom, which asserts that individuals base their survey responses on the considerations that are most immediately salient to them.

51. Conclusion
Individuals do not normally have a single, fixed attitude on issues - is probably the more unfamiliar and hence potentially controversial.
Individuals do not typically possess “true attitudes” on issues, as conventional theorizing assumes, but a series of partially independent and often inconsistent ones. Person’s attitudes is expressed at different times depends on which has been made most immediately salient by chance and the details of questionnaire construction, especially the order and framing of questions.

52. Reference
J.Zaller(1992), The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion, Cambridge University Press

53. Thank you