Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

CiteULike is a free service for managing and discovering scholarly references - click here to get started.

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Journal of Theoretical Politics
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Right arrow Citation Map
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by van der Brug, W.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Perceptions, Opinions and Party Preferences in the Face of a Real World Event

Chernobyl as a Natural Experiment in Political Psychology

Wouter van der Brug

Subjective agreement between voters and the party they voted for can be produced by three separate processes: rational selection of parties, persuasion by parties, and distortion of perceptions. Rational choice theory, balance theory and social judgment theory make different predictions about the strength of each of these processes. In this article the strength of the three processes are estimated by modeling continuous longitudinal change in attitudes and perceptions of positions on nuclear energy in a period in 1986 during which the accident at Chernobyl occurred. The study uses a short-term panel study of Dutch respondents covering this period. The analyses demonstrate that changes in attitudes and perceptions conform largely to the Downsian model of democracy. Evidence is found for a weak persuasion effect, but hardly any distortion of perceptions occurred. These findings challenge the applicability of concepts from balance theory to the field of electoral research. It is argued that voters have little psychological motivation to distort their perceptions of party positions because they are normally not strongly involved with politics or political parties.

Key Words: electoral behavior • non-linear systems • political perceptions • political psychology • public opinion

Journal of Theoretical Politics, Vol. 13, No. 1, 53-80 (2001)
DOI: 10.1177/0951692801013001003
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Int J Public Opin ResHome page
H. G. Boomgaarden and C. H. de Vreese
Dramatic Real-world Events and Public Opinion Dynamics: Media Coverage and its Impact on Public Reactions to an Assassination
Int. J. Public Opin. Res., September 1, 2007; 19(3): 354 - 366.
[Full Text] [PDF]

Home page
 Political Research QuarterlyHome page
R. L. Claassen
Ideology and Evaluation in an Experimental Setting: Comparing the Proximity and the Directional Models
Political Research Quarterly, June 1, 2007; 60(2): 263 - 273.
[Abstract] [PDF]