Psychological Determinants of Political Opinionation

Abstract

American citizens differ from one another in terms of the number of opinions they have toward government policies. This article proposes and tests a psychological model of the determinants of political opinionation that accounts for this variation across citizens. The theory posits four causal factors that are thought to interact with one another in determining an individual's level of opinionation: objective political competence, subjective political competence, perceptions of politicians' interest in citizens' opinions on policy issues, and general cognitive sophistication. Analyses of data from all of the American National Election Studies conducted in presidential election years between 1956 and 1984 provided support for some aspects of the theory and challenged others. Our analyses also identified relations of age, gender, and race to political opinionation and provided explanations for these relations.

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