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The Affective Intelligence Theory

aitAffective Intelligence and Political Judgment by Marcus, Neuman, and MacKuen

There is an ongoing debate on whether the electorate is competent enough to make sound political decisions. Some scholars have proposed that the influence of affects should also be discussed in the debate. Consequently, there is a growing literature on the influence of emotions, especially that of anxiety and enthusiasm, to better understand the voting behaviour. This article presents the affective intelligence theory, and argues that the role of affects on the voting behaviour cannot be underestimated. This theory offers an alternative explanation to the most commonly accepted rational choice model and the normal vote model.

According to the theory, it is the emotions, more precisely the anxiety, that activate the aware considerations of people’s existing political views. Therefore, emotions have a very crucial influence on rational and conscious thinking. In short,  voters rely on their habits when the political atmosphere is benign whereas they resort to conscious considerations when anxiety arises because of the uneasy political situation.

Complementarity of Emotion and Reason

The affective intelligence theory  presents the complementarity of emotion and reason in political judgment; therefore, it challenges the conventional view that emotions prevents sound political judgments. The scholars of affective intelligence theory consider the rational choice theory as a contrasting case because the followers of this school of thought limit the human behaviour to a mere calculation of pros and cons, thus undermining any intellectual affective influence. Therefore, the authors seek to understand why human emotions have been under evaluated, and why the rational choice has been considered as the dominant approach in human behavior researches. In addition to political thought, the scholars also base their arguments on physiology, and psychology, as they believe that the key to solve the paradox between cognition and emotion lies in neuroscience.

Dispositional and Surveillance Systems

The general approach of the supporters of this theory shares that of Robert Zajonc, who is the first psychologist to challenge the think-first-and-feel-second ordering face to a new political issue. While explaining the reliance on the feelings, the authors identify two systems that are located in limbic region and functions at the sub-consciousness level: the disposition system, and the surveillance system. The first basically consists of the emotional calculations that become a disposition that is often called a habit. The latter can be considered as a radar that captures the state of the environment for any intrusion of a novelty or a possible threat, and makes use of the emotions to either warn or comfort the person. That way, the person gets alerted, and it is then that s/he starts paying aware attention to the issue. This argument constitutes a big challenge to the conventional view, which is regarded as a Western tradition that undermines the emotions on political human behaviour.

Conventional Western Tradition of Emotions

The authors present four possible pathology mechanisms that are developed in Western society. The first, the displacement pathology, refers to the state of overstimulation by the emotional input, which leads to impulsiveness and lack of sound judgment. It is conceived that the emotions take over the individual, rather than s/he controls the emotions. The second, the distraction pathology, refers to the state of mind that cannot evaluate the relevance of the matters when the individual is triggered by the emotion. The third, the intransigence pathology, refers to the idea that when the emotion is to an extreme extent, it prevents the individual from even listening to other arguments. This could be exemplified by the party identification. The last one, the self-absorption pathology, refers to the suggestion that one’s incapacity to think of the common good when the person is in a state of emotional arousal. The most important common point of these four pathologies (the conventional view) is that there is only one-way causality; namely, it is the emotion that distracts the cognition.

Emotional Reactions Occur before Conscious Perceptions: the role of declarative and procedural memory

The authors attempt to show that the emotions are not merely results of a single process, but actually they are the ultimate result of two subsystems in the brain. The authors use Dr. Claparede’s discovery to support the idea that the aforesaid emotional systems function at the sub-consciousness level even though these processes cannot be recalled. For instance, a patient who is unable to remember precedent several minutes demonstrates evidence of association made by the action that cannot be remembered, which is believed to be a proof showing the function of the emotional systems. It sheds more light onto the role of associations made by the individual thanks to the affective stimulus.  They also find support from Bechara’s card game, which is an experiment conducted with two groups. One group consists of people who do not have bilateral damage in  brain’s memory area whereas the second group consists of people with lesion in the area. According to the results, both groups of people are able to understand the logic of game; however the individuals with bilateral lesions cannot adjust their strategic behaviour even if they understand the game. The key finding of this experiment is that the participants of the first group could adjust their strategies even before they understand what the game is about. Namely, they get the hunch before they can conceptualize the game. The results of these two cases emphasize the difference between declarative memory and procedural memory, therefore demonstrating experimental support that the conscious awareness is not necessary in order to reach the “objective”. It also raises awareness to the fact that the emotional reactions occur before the conscious perceptions. Therefore, according to the evidence, the declarative memory (pathway to the conscious awareness) is responsible for semantic understandings whereas the procedural memory (pathway to the limbic system/more engaged in behaviour) is responsible for executing the learned behaviours.

The Affective Intelligence Theory is built on Three Assertions

1- the emotion and emotion-led judgment occurs at the sub-conscious level.

2-there are two different emotion systems with different influence on conscious awareness and behaviour.

3-individuals have two types of reliance: reliance on habits, and reliance on explicit considerations.

When does the conscious reasoning step in?

The disposition system manages the reliance on habits and learned behaviours. It is highly linked to procedural memory in that not only it takes feedback from the procedural memory on the success or failure of the ongoing action, it also retains the previously verified action that will succeed from the procedural memory. It simply checks if the actions are executed as planned, and it produces a positive emotional outcome if the action is executed as planned, and a negative emotional outcome if it is not. All these processes occur without explicit conscious reasoning. It is only when the habitual routine is disturbed by a novel and threatening stimuli because the storage of actions approved with the lived associations cannot suffice to offer a solution to the problem the individual faces that the conscious awareness steps in. It is the surveillance system that stops the ongoing action, engages conscious considerations, and shifts attention to the new dangerous stimuli. This system principally can be considered as a system that is responsible for the survival of the person. It is the anxiety that signals the need for a higher cognitive function.

The Implications of the Study

According to the data analyzed by the authors, people state having very low anxiety levels during the day whereas they state having moderate enthusiasm levels during the day. This information allows the authors to suggest that in political life, the individuals’ political judgments are mostly based on the disposition system whereas the cognitive reasoning steps in when the routine is disturbed. It is predicted that the rational choice model can apply to the explicit reasoning period. This is the moment when the politics of persuasion is possible since the unsatisfied electorate seeks solutions, which obliges him or her to gather information and to think of the alternatives to some extent. Namely, on the one hand, when the electorate is anxious, the rational choice model is applicable. On the other hand, when the electorate is not anxious, it is the disposition system that is in charge, in other words, it is the learned behaviours (political dispositions) and the political habits (Party ID) that are determinant in the political judgments. Here, the authors also propose that the anxious voters should be more open-minded as they look for alternatives as a solution. On the contrary, the voters are complacent when the anxiety is not high enough to engage conscious reasoning. The authors also mention that the habits behave like personality traits.

When it comes to empirical testing of the theory, in order to confirm the emotional responsiveness to the campaigns, and the independency of disposition and surveillance mechanisms, the authors examine the ANES’s survey data on 1980,1984, and 1988 presidential election. The result confirms the predictions that the political messages caused emotions among the people. Contrary to the common valence model, the results reveal that both systems act independently. That is to say that the decrease in enthusiasm is not necessarily followed by an increase in anxiety. In other words, they can both co exist. For instance, even if the concern about the Reagan’s presidency rose among the people, this concern did not create enough anxiety to vote fore the opposing candidate in 1980. The authors find stronger support for the independency of the two systems with the panel design interviews in 1980 where the same people were interviewed three times during the year. The authors also find that the incumbent’s power of inducing anxiety among its supporters is much more than that of the challenger due to the already established relationship between the incumbent and the people.

In short, the affective intelligence theory challenges the conventional view according to which the rational choice model is dominant and the emotions only inhibits the sound political judgment. In contrast to the conventional view, the model proposes that the affects and conscious reasoning are complementary.

Zaller’s Theory of Opinion Formation

ZallerZaller presents the Receive-Accept-Sample Model, which has become a very influential theory of opinion formation in public opinion literature. To begin with, the inexplicable inconsistency in the survey response, and the unresolved debate on the political ignorance are the main factors that motivate Zaller in his study. His objective is to find out how individuals convert information into opinions. In the RAS model, Zaller proposes four axioms that he argues to have explicative power about opinion formation. These axioms help explain how an individual is susceptible to form an opinion when exposed to a message, or in which circumstances the received message is accepted or rejected by the individual. Mainly, the model proposes that the opinionation is highly influenced by the political awareness and the intensity of the message. Zaller presents his arguments, makes some deductions from his axioms, and his aim is to test these deductions with empirical data to confirm them.

4 Axioms of the Model:

To understand the conversion of information into public opinion, the comprehension of the four axioms put forward by Zaller is crucial. Firstly, the reception axiom basically proposes that someone with a higher level of cognitive engagement is more likely to receive political messages because they have more exposure to political information. However, we should keep in mind that reception of the message does not necessarily mean the acceptance of the message. Secondly, the resistance axiom is about the resistance to the messages that are inconsistent with the existing political predispositions. It is the political predispositions that regulate whether or not to accept the political communication that is received. For instance, a Republican will resist the arguments coming from the Democrats, and vice versa. Here, Zaller talks about the role of the credibility of the information provider. The information given by the untrusted sources receives more resistance among the low aware people whereas the credibility is less important than the arguments among the highly aware people. Thirdly, the accessibility axiom refers to the idea that the more recent a consideration is, the easier to access to it from memory. Lastly, the response axiom puts forward that respondents’ answers in surveys are driven by the considerations that are most salient and accessible to them. The last two axioms are also significant for the clarification of Zaller’s position on what the surveys represent, as he suggests that the answers in a survey do not represent the true attitudes of the respondents, but rather their true feelings. So, these four axioms constitute the RAS Model, and what Zaller argues is the opinions of an individual are about balancing considerations. As the opinion consists of the balance of many considerations, the term “attitude change” does not simply refer to the change in a consideration, but it refers to the change in the balance of positive and negative considerations about a particular issue. Every new consideration alters the balance of the considerations, which possibly influences the ultimate opinion, therefore triggering an opinion or attitude change.

For information to be accepted as a consideration, it needs to be consistent with the existing political predispositions. When he or she is asked about a particular issue, the individual makes use of the most salient considerations that are at the top of the head, and balances these considerations, which gives the opinion on the particular issue at that moment. Besides, Zaller suggests that there are two dimensions in the balancing process of the considerations. First dimension is the society-level variables, and the second one is individual-level variables. The former can be summed to the intensity of the elite discourse while the latter refers to the political awareness and values of the individual.

Who is more likely to undergo an opinion change?

The author also seeks to observe a pattern of attitude change. He notices that change in opinion occurs mostly in the moderately aware individuals. According to Zaller, people are exposed to messages, and this exposure may trigger an opinion change. He categorizes the messages in two types. The more intense message is considered as the dominant message while the less intense message is qualified as countervailing message. The opinion change may happen in both directions. What is determinant here is what Zaller defines partisan, inertial, and countervalent resistance. According to the author, resistance has an important role in opinion change. With the equation he uses to forecast the probability of opinion change, he finds out that the political opinion change is highly related to the political awareness and political predispositions. For instance, on the one hand, the politically low aware people, who are inattentive to politics, will receive little information that can trigger a change in opinion. However, when they receive information, they are very likely to accept it as consideration, as they do not have a big storage of existing political considerations, which makes them less resisting to the information. On the other hand, the more aware people, who follow politics closely, have more political predispositions and a large storage of political considerations; therefore, they will have a bigger tendency to resist to persuasive communication that is inconsistent with their existing predispositions even if their probability of receiving the message is very high. On the contrary, the moderately politically aware people are more likely to receive information than the lows, and they have less political dispositions than the highs; therefore they resist less than the high, which makes them more likely to undergo an opinion change.

The attitude change consists of two steps:

At the reception level, political awareness is determinant. The more the individual is politically aware, the more s/he is likely to receive political messages. At the acceptance level, the resistance is decisive, which is defined by the value distance of the individual from the information. When the distance is minimal, the resistance caused by political awareness has little effect. On the contrary, when the distance is great, then the resistance caused by the awareness becomes significant for opinion change. The author calls it awareness-induced resistance effect. Zaller exemplifies this with the mass opinion change in the support for cuts in defense spending between 1980 and 1982. Making use of the NES data, he analyzes two cases to see the pattern in attitude change. The first case focuses on the defense-spending cut. Zaller observes an attitude change into a liberal direction that is caused by the dominant anti-defense spending message. The public support for defense spending cut rose from %10 in 1980 to %28 in 1982. What’s more, while he observes a monotonic relationship between the attitude change and the political awareness among the Democrats, he finds a non-monotonic relationship among the Republicans. The other case focuses on the issue of U.S involvement in Central America. The Iran-Contra affair brought a change in public’s support in the U.S involvement in the Central America in the conservative direction. The President Reagan’s popularity decreased significantly because of the allegations that his administration broke the arm embargo on Iran in order to fund the guerillas in Nicaragua so that they would overthrow the communist government. Despite the decrease in his popularity, the affair made Reagan’s policy in Central America highly publicized, which made it the dominant message, and people were exposed to this issue of U.S involvement in the mentioned area. As a result, the support in greater U.S involvement grew from %28 to %38 even if the president’s popularity was damaged. Zaller also finds out that political awareness among Republicans generates more resistance to the defense spending cuts whereas it generates that much less resistance among the politically aware Democrats. This supports Zaller’s argument according to which the existing political predisposition, just like awareness, has a big role to play in the opinion formation.

Two Types of Information: one-sided and two-sided information

Moreover, Zaller describes two types of information: one-sided information, and two-sided information. It is defined basically by which direction the flow of the information goes. As for one-sided information, Zaller takes up three new issues that people had no prior opinions about such as the economic recession in 1982, federally mandated school desegregation, and the nuclear freeze. This makes it easier to attribute the opinion formation to the reception and acceptance or rejection of information conveyed by the elites. The selected new issues vary in their level of intensity and familiarity. More precisely, the desegregation issue is qualified as middle intensity message because it is of high familiarity even if it does not dominate the media for months. Nuclear freeze is a foreign issue of middle intensity and low familiarity because it has no direct effect on one’s life. Lastly, the economy is of low intensity. The empirical tests on these issues allow Zaller to confirm some characteristics on his typology of attitude change.

What does Zaller find?

He finds out that low intensity and low familiarity messages trigger change among highly aware persons. He also generalizes that when the message’s distance to the value of the receiver is small, the relationship between attitude change and awareness is linear. In other words, the conservative messages will create a bigger change among the highly aware conservatives. He, again, finds more supporting evidence that more aware people resist more to change. More specifically, evidence shows that the more aware people evaluate Reagan’s presidency by not only making remarks about the Iran-Contra affair that was publicized and made salient by the information providers, but also by making remarks about non Iran-Contra affairs. Therefore, the balance of the considerations is less affected among the highly aware individuals, as they do not have only considerations on the affair to evaluate the president. Moreover, interestingly, Zaller proposes that age has an influence on resistance. For instance, the older Republicans are more susceptible to resist accepting the internationalism of Truman whereas the young Republicans are more susceptible to accept it. The reason for this is shown to be the existing cues to reject the new ideas in that older Republicans have more cues about their party’s isolationism policy that they reject the internationalism. However, the effect of age on resistance can be observed in both directions.

As for the two-sided information, Zaller examines the Vietnam War from the beginning to the end. He shows that the liberals changed attitudes from supporting the war to opposing it; however, the conservatives kept supporting it from the beginning. The opposition by the liberals is simultaneous with the intensity of the anti-war message, which is the countervalent message. Namely, the pro-war message lost its intensity throughout the time, and the anti-war message steadily became more intense, which is thought to lead to attitude change among liberals. This is also considered as strong evidence that the intensity of the message defines to what extent the considerations are accessible in their minds, which also shapes people’s immediate propensity in the survey responses. Further, Zaller suggests that even if people have values and their own level of awareness, the change in attitude is dependent on the elite discourse that interacts the values and political awareness in a certain direction. He also adds that when the elite discourse is united, the public attitude is less ideological, and when it is divided, it becomes more ideological. Lastly, Zaller finds evidence from the house elections that highly aware people receive the countervailing message, and this may lead them to oppose the incumbent.