Physics and Astronomy Department, Whittier College, Whittier, California, United States of America.
Psychological Sciences Department, Whittier College, Whittier, California, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2021 Mar 11;16(3):e0247580. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0247580. eCollection 2021.
Given the increasing attention ambivalence is receiving from the psychological community, it must be asked if pollsters' (routinely) dichotomous political opinion surveys are missing something crucial. To determine if there is any legitimacy to this question, undergraduates attending a Liberal Arts college in Southern California were asked to rate their level of agreement/disagreement to 28 statements regarding President Trump in two studies, with the items drawn from actual Quinnipiac (Q) and Brookings Institute (BI) surveys. To quantify ambivalence participants were told they could mark one or two responses per item, with double-responses serving as a measure of ambivalence. In Study 1, mean Trump approval ratings divided along party lines, and were consistent with the Q and BI findings. Nonetheless, approximately 40% of participants registered some level of ambivalence across all political-party affiliations, with those defining themselves as Neither Democrats (DEMs) nor Republicans (REPs) showing the greatest degree of ambivalence. In Study 2, ambivalence towards President Trump was examined looking at both party affiliation and political ideology (Conservative, Moderate, and Liberal). Again, roughly 40% of participants displayed some level of ambivalence, with greater degrees of ambivalence for Independents relative to DEMs and REPs, and Moderates relative to Liberals. Given research indicating that ambivalence is associated with delayed decision making and decisions based on "in the moment" contextual information, our findings our suggestive: if political opinion pollsters do not assess ambivalence, they may be missing information on a fair-sized demographic that could influence an election based on negative information (real or fictitious) surfacing only days before an election… as it did in 2016.
鉴于矛盾心理越来越受到心理学界的关注，人们不禁要问，民意调查员（通常）对政治观点进行的二分法调查是否遗漏了一些关键信息。为了确定这个问题是否有其合理性，我们在两项研究中请南加州一所文科学院的本科生对 28 条关于特朗普总统的陈述进行评价，这些陈述是从真实的昆尼皮亚克（Q）和布鲁金斯学会（BI）调查中提取的。为了量化矛盾心理，参与者被告知他们可以对每个项目标记一个或两个回答，双重回答则作为矛盾心理的衡量标准。在研究 1 中，特朗普的平均支持率按照党派划分，与 Q 和 BI 的调查结果一致。尽管如此，大约 40%的参与者对所有党派的支持率都表现出了一定程度的矛盾心理，那些自认为既不是民主党人（DEMs）也不是共和党人（REPs）的人表现出了最大程度的矛盾心理。在研究 2 中，我们考察了对特朗普总统的矛盾心理，同时考虑了党派归属和政治意识形态（保守派、温和派和自由派）。同样，大约 40%的参与者表现出了一定程度的矛盾心理，与民主党人和共和党人相比，独立人士的矛盾心理更为强烈，与自由派相比，温和派的矛盾心理更为强烈。考虑到研究表明矛盾心理与延迟决策和基于“当下”情境信息的决策有关，我们的研究结果表明：如果政治民意调查员不评估矛盾心理，他们可能会遗漏有关相当一部分人口的信息，而这部分人可能会根据选举前几天才出现的负面信息（真实或虚构的）影响选举……就像 2016 年那样。
