Politicos, Apoliticals, and the Processing of Political Information

Abstract

While such concepts as "belief systems" and "levels of conceptualization" have played a central role in research on "issue voting" and other important questions, political scientists have paid relatively little attention to the processes by which human organisms process the signs and symbols they encounter in political (or in survey interview) situations, or to how people selectively attend to those stimuli. The research reported here takes from cognitive psychology and information processing the concept of a "schema" which organizes and structures those stimuli in varying ways and to varying degrees. Utilizing various measures of stimulus recall and recognition, it compares the reaction to political and non-political stimuli of persons putatively possessing a well-developed political schema ("politicos") and those lacking such a schema ("apoliticals"). The results suggest that the concept offers a promising approach for research on problems of political perception and response.