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The malleability of political attitudes : Choice blindness, confabulation and attitude change

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Author

  • Thomas Strandberg

Summary, in English

This thesis is an empirical and theoretical investigation of choice blindness, in particular in the domain of political attitudes. Choice blindness is a cognitive phenomenon in which people do not notice dramatic mismatches between what they choose and what they get while still offering seemingly introspective arguments to explain their (putative) choice. In four papers, it is demonstrated that the effect also applies to salient political attitudes and evaluations of political candidates. All studies took place in close connection to real elections, and new tools building of the underlying choice blindness methodology has been developed to collect the data. Further, the potential downstream effects are explored, such as influence on voting intentions, and lasting attitude changes. The potential mechanisms behind the effect are also investigated and confabulatory reasoning stands out as an important part in facilitating the observed attitude changes.

Department/s

Publishing year

2020-05-18

Language

English

Publication/Series

Lund University Cognitive Studies

Issue

179

Document type

Dissertation

Publisher

Department of Philosophy, Lund University

Topic

  • Psychology (excluding Applied Psychology)
  • Political Science (excluding Public Administration Studies and Globalization Studies)
  • Social Sciences Interdisciplinary

Keywords

  • choice blindness
  • confabulation
  • self-perception
  • political psychology
  • attitude change

Status

Published

Project

  • The Political Party Space: a magical web survey
  • The Self-Transforming Survey as an interactive tablet application

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1101-8453
  • ISBN: 978-91-89213-07-4
  • ISBN: 978-91-89213-06-7

Defence date

24 August 2020

Defence time

10:00

Defence place

LUX C121

Opponent

  • Daniel Oppenheimer (professor)