Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-995ml Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T23:03:05.508Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Political Ignorance and Collective Policy Preferences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2005

Martin Gilens
Affiliation:
Martin Gilens is Associate Professor of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095,,

Abstract

In contrast with the expectations of many analysts, I find that raw policy-specific facts, such as the direction of change in the crime rate or the amount of the federal budget devoted to foreign aid, have a significant influence on the public’s political judgments. Using both traditional survey methods and survey-based randomized experiments, I show that ignorance of policy-specific information leads many Americans to hold political views different from those they would hold otherwise. I also show that the effect of policy-specific information is not adequately captured by the measures of general political knowledge used in previous research. Finally, I show that the effect of policy-specific ignorance is greatest for Americans with the highest levels of political knowledge. Rather than serve to dilute the influence of new information, general knowledge (and the cognitive capacities it reflects) appears to facilitate the incorporation of new policy-specific information into political judgments.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
2001 by the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)