Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: People who attach personal importance to an attitude are especially knowledgeable about the attitude object. In this paper, we describe nine studies testing an explanation for this relation: that importance causes the accumulation of knowledge by inspiring selective exposure to and selective elaboration of relevant information. Study One showed that after watching televised debates between presidential candidates, viewers were better able to remember the statements made on policy issues on which they had more personally important attitudes. Studies 2-4 showed that importance motivated selective exposure and selective elaboration: when given the opportunity to choose, people chose to acquire information about policies toward which they had more personally important attitudes, and they chose to think more about these policies. Studies 5-8 showed that greater personal importance was associated with better memory for relevant information encountered under controlled laboratory conditions and that manipulations eliminating opportunities for selective exposure and selective elaboration eliminated the importance-memory accuracy relation. Study 9 showed that people do not use perceptions of their knowledge volume to infer how important an attitude is to them but that importance does cause knowledge accumulation. These findings help to clarify the impact of attitude importance on information processing and refine our understanding of the relation between attitudes and memory.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: We explore the role of issue ownership in individual vote choice in the 1997 & 2000 Canadian federal elections. As a correction to the original model, we find that issue ownership's effect on vote is conditional upon the salience of the issue.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: According to the issue ownership theory of voting, voters identify the political party that they feel is the most competent, or the most credible, proponent of a particular issue and cast their ballots for the party that owns that particular issue. Yet, the actual micro-level mechanism of such behavior has seldom been examined in the literature. We assess this question and, in the process, offer a correction to the original model of issue ownership. We argue that while party ownership of an issue is important to individual vote choice, its effect is mediated by the perceived salience of the issue in question. In other words, issue ownership should only affect the voting decision of those individuals who think that the issue is important. The conditional effect of issue salience on ownership-based voting is demonstrated through analyses of the individual-level determinants of vote choice in the 1997 Canadian federal election. The results strongly suggest that salience should be more explicitly integrated into the formulation of the theory and in its empirical testing because it constitutes a key element in the micro-level mechanism of issue ownership voting.

Publication Type: Proceeding

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study seeks to expand research on regime change and issues by examining if democratization influences territorial issue onset and territorial issue violence. Since several studies suggest that regime change affects the conflict behavior of states, it is important to determine if regime change influences other types of foreign policy behavior. Empirical evidence from Mitchell & Prins (1999) has shown that less developed democracies are more likely to get involved in militarized disputes over territory, and since less developed democracies are often those in transition, it is important to determine if states that are democratizing are more likely to initiate a territorial issue and to resort to violence over territory. The results of the study indicate that while dyads which experience a transition toward democracy are less likely to use violence over territorial issues, they are more likely to initiate a territorial issue.