Motivated Social Cognitions About Politics: the Effect of Integrative Complexity and Involvement on Perceptions of Political Messages

This book explores differences in the way people interpret political messages. Specifically it addresses how people perceive discrepant political messages from a favored versus an opposing candidate. This work argues that people who possess a high degree of integrative complexity, which is considered the ability to see events as interrelated, will perceive messages differently than those low in integrative complexity. Furthermore, it was proposed that the way in which a person is involved in politics will also affect how they perceive these messages. Findings from this study suggest that campaigns that run political attack ads may not be targeting independent voters as well as they hope. This is because attack ads tend to polarize voters who are already decided, and tend to leave independent voters needing more information in order to make a more informed judgment.