The Role of Partisan Stereotypes in Information Processing about Political Candidates

Research in social cognition suggests that individuals employ a variety of cognitive strategies when processing information. Some of these strategies may function as cognitive heuristics, or simplifying rules of thumb, under certain information-processing conditions. In this article, I suggest that political party stereotypes can function heuristically for voters when they are confronted with political information-processing tasks. Two different cognitive strategies are outlined, a theory-driven and data-driven mode, and hypotheses about the use of these two strategies in political candidate evaluation, inference, and perception are developed. These are tested with an experimental design that uses videotapes of political candidates as stimulus material. I find that partisan stereotypes have considerable influence in political information processing, suggesting that the political parties continue to play an important role in voters' decision-making processes.