Kuklinski et al. (2001) The Political Environment and Citizen Competence.

Key Terms: the Political Environment: Motivation + Available Information
How do the value of information and induced motivation work together to influence the quality of citizens decision-making?

What is the “political environment?” “The totality of politically relevant communication to which citizens are exposed. It includes all the statements and information that the media, public officials, interest groups and other relevant actors provide with respect to a iven issue or policy debate” (footnote 411). When the environment invokes MOTIVATION decision making is improved (Sanbonmatsu & Fazio 1990). “The most relevant motivation in the context of evaluating policy, then, is simply the inclination to evaluate policies thoughtfully and seriously, then just as political environments can vary in the quality of the information they provide, so can they vary in the extent to which they encourage thoughtful evaluation” (413).

Data: Survey of 1160 random adults in Illinois.
Issue: Health Care Tradeoffs
Condition 1: environment devoid of information and incentive; will respondents make tradeoffs when they don’t have to? (questionnaire with 7 goals, rate from 1-10/ p. 416)
Findings: most people rated each of the 7 goals as a 10 importance completion; when we control for education, those highly educated are likely to demand less.
Condition 2: respondent received general information item about tradeoffs. Not a significant change—“Simply stating that decision about governmental programs require giving up one thing to get something else does not redice the overall demand to achieve all of the goals” (419).
Condition 3: a randomly selected 25% were told that people do best on these types of questions when they take time to think…” another 25% were told to act as if they were a public official. Both conditions were meant to increase cognitive processing and induce a greater willingness to overcome the unpleasantness with compromising some desired goals. (motivational instruction). Insignificant findings. Asking people to think doesn’t change their responses.
Condition 4: general information + motivational instruction = significance. (reduce demand, invoke tradeoffs).
Also, respondents are more likely to make tradeoffs in high information environments (57% of respondents choice tradeoff option).