Modeling Complex Adaptive Systems in Political Ideology

Decades of interdisciplinary research into political ideology is methodologically and theoretically fractured. Scholars of ideology differ in terms of spatial vs. non-spatial conceptualizations, individualist vs. group-accounts connecting ideology to people, and whether top-down, bottom-up, or narrative processes are most important for understanding the nature of political ideology. I draw upon complexity theory, cognitive science, group dynamics, and emerging developments in computational social science to offer an integrative approach to the study of ideology. I demonstrate how a process oriented approach to ideology as complex adaptive systems describing interacting individual and social mechanisms can be used to study ideological stability and change.

The Boundary Conditions of Motivated Reasoning

with Milton Lodge and Robert Vidigal

Motivated reasoning speaks to the primacy of affect in the evaluation of political objects, and its identity-protective effects have been replicated in thousands of contexts. In this forthcoming chapter of The Oxford Handbook of Political Persuasion, we explain the cognitive-affective underpinnings of motivated reasoning in the JQP model and its consequences for voter rationalization. What does this mean for persuasion and citizen competence? We review hundreds of studies across the field of motivated reasoning to introduce an internalization framework for information processing based upon a cyclical relationship between priors, motivations, and considerations. The dominant strategies for mitigating motivated reasoning are reviewed and promising avenues for future research are described.

Construct Analysis and Solving Validity Infractions

Semantic Software: Measuring and Manipulating Attitudinal Networks

with Milton Lodge, Robert Vidigal, and Charles Taber