CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 588Social and Intergroup PsychologyElectoral Systems and Political ParticipationPsychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 298 of the 307 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

The Automaticity of Affect for Political Leaders, Groups, and Issues: An Experimental Test of the Hot Cognition Hypothesis

Lodge, Milton, Taber, Charles S.·2005·Political Psychology
DOI 10.1111/j.1467-9221.2005.00426.x
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

We report the results of three experimental tests of the “hot cognition” hypothesis, which posits that all sociopolitical concepts that have been evaluated in the past are affectively charged and that this affective charge is automatically activated within milliseconds on mere exposure to the concept, appreciably faster than conscious appraisal of the object. We find support for the automaticity of affect toward political leaders, groups, and issues; specifically: • Most Ss show significantly faster reaction times to affectively congruent political concepts and significantly slower response times to affectively incongruent concepts; • These facilitation and inhibition effects, which hold for a cross-section of political leaders, groups, and issues, are strongest for those with the strongest prior attitudes, with sophisticates showing the strongest effect on “harder” political issues. • Even semantically unrelated affective concepts (e.g., “sunshine,”“cancer”) have a strong effect on the evaluation of political leaders, groups, and issues. We conclude with a discussion of the “so what?” question—the conceptual, substantive, and normative implications of hot cognition for political judgments, evaluations, and choice. One clear expectation, given that affect appears to be activated automatically on mere exposure to sociopolitical concepts, is that most citizens, but especially those sophisticates with strong political attitudes, will be biased information processors.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1111/j.1467-9221.2005.00426.x

Cites

298 of 298 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Show all 307 references

Research works printed but not linked: 23

  1. Bargh J. A., 1997, Advances in social cognition, 1
  2. Clore G., 2001, Political psychology in practice, 103
  3. 10.1037//0033-295X.82.6.407 · DOI · Paper page
  4. Damasio A., 1994, Descartes' error
  5. 10.1037//0022-3514.71.1.5 · DOI
  6. Fiske S. T., 1982, Affect and cognition: The 17th annual Carnegie symposium on cognition, 55
  7. Gazzaniga M., 1992, Nature's mind
  8. 10.1037//0033-295X.102.1.4 · DOI · Paper page
  9. 10.1037//0033-295X.109.1.3 · DOI
  10. 10.1037//0033-295X.103.2.336 · DOI
  11. 10.1037//0033-2909.108.3.480 · DOI · Paper page
  12. LeDoux J., 2002, Synaptic self
  13. Meffert M., Studies in public opinion: Gauging attitudes, nonattitudes, and measurement error
  14. 10.1207/153248302753439038 · DOI
  15. 10.1037//0096-3445.106.3.226 · DOI
  16. Petty R., 1995, Attitude strength: Antecedents and consequences
  17. Read S., 1998, Connectionist models of social reasoning and behavior
  18. Sears D. O., 1986, Political cognition, 159
  19. Simon H. A., 1981, The sciences of the artificial
  20. Sniderman P. M., 1993, The state of the discipline II, 218
  21. Thompson M., 1995, Attitude strength: Antecedents and consequences, 361
  22. Uleman J., 1989, Unintended thought
  23. Wegner D. M., 1998, The handbook of social psychology, 446

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 201–300 of 588

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Lodge, M., & Taber, C. S.
Affiliations
Stony Brook University (US)
Venue
Political Psychology
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2005-06
Volume
26
Issue
3
Pages
455-482
ISSN
  • 0162-895X (ISSN-L)
  • 1467-9221
DOI
10.1111/j.1467-9221.2005.00426.x
OpenAlex
W1978777277
Cited by
588
References
307
Citations by year
2026: 32 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 22 · 2023: 28 · 2022: 31 · 2021: 39 · 2020: 29 · 2019: 75 · 2018: 29 · 2017: 31 · 2016: 38 · 2015: 34 · 2014: 37 · 2013: 29 · 2012: 22
FWCI
32.79
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
doi.wiley.com/10.1002/tdm_license_1.1 (tdm, 3744 d)
Locations
Political Psychology (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
Keywords
hot cognition, political attitudes, political leaders, political groups, political issues, affective priming, reaction time (psychology), political sophistication, biased information processing, political judgment

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review