Department of Political Science, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America.
Department of Communication, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2018 Apr 10;13(4):e0193781. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0193781. eCollection 2018.
Recent research suggests that psychological needs can influence the political attitudes of ordinary citizens, often outside of their conscious awareness. In this paper, we investigate whether psychological needs also shape the spending priorities of political elites in the US. Most models of policymaking assume that political elites respond to information in relatively homogeneous ways. We suggest otherwise, and explore one source of difference in information processing, namely, threat sensitivity, which previous research links to increased support for conservative policy attitudes. Drawing on a sample of state-level policymakers, we measure their spending priorities using a survey and their level of threat sensitivity using a standard psychophysiological measure (skin conductance). We find that, like ordinary citizens, threat sensitivity leads even state-level policymakers to prioritize spending on government polices that are designed to minimize threats.
最近的研究表明，心理需求会影响普通公民的政治态度，而且这种影响往往是在他们无意识的情况下发生的。在本文中，我们探讨了心理需求是否也会影响美国政治精英的支出重点。大多数政策制定模型都假设政治精英会以相对同质的方式对信息做出反应。但我们认为并非如此，并探讨了信息处理中存在差异的一个来源，即威胁敏感性，这一敏感性与对保守政策态度的支持增加有关。我们利用一个州一级政策制定者的样本，使用调查来衡量他们的支出重点，使用标准的心理生理学测量（皮肤电导）来衡量他们的威胁敏感性。我们发现，与普通公民一样，即使是州一级的政策制定者，威胁敏感性也会导致他们优先考虑支出用于设计来最小化威胁的政府政策。
