WOGPOP: Mark Brandt

Title: Ideological Differences in Partisan Cues

Authors: Aymin Triki & Mark Brandt, Department of Psychology, Michigan State University

Abstract: Scholars continue to debate whether there are ideological differences in the psychological processes of liberals and conservatives. One domain of this debate is whether conservatives are more likely to follow partisan cues than liberals. Although meta-analyses have found ideological similarities (Ditto et al., 2019), critics have argued that prior studies did not include a representative sample of target issues. We address this critique in four experiments (N’s > 1200), using four proxies of ideology, and representative samples of target issues. In early experiments, we found convincing evidence for ideological similarities, but a later experiment found convincing evidence for ideological differences. A fourth experiment aimed to identify the reasons for these discrepancies (come to the talk to find out!). Regardless of the outcome, the experiments show the value of using representative stimuli, and prompt thoughts about “what counts” as a meaningful ideological difference. These experiments are unpublished and we welcome your feedback.