Individual differences in perceptions and preferences for political candidates

Abstract

Judgments of similarity and preference for a set of 16 political stimuli were obtained from 67 college students and were analyzed by three different multidimensional scaling techniques. These procedures, INDSCAL, PREFMAP, and MDPREF were used (a) to determine the dimensions of political perception, (b) to assess individual differences in the importance of each dimension for making similarity and preference judgments, and (c) to evaluate the predictive ability of an ideal point model and a vector model of preferential choice. The results indicated that politicians were perceived as multidimensional stimuli varying along three identifiable general evaluative dimensions: (1) Liberal reform-oriented vs. Conservative, nonreform-oriented (2) Democrat vs. Republican, and (3) Conservative, establishment-oriented vs. Liberal, youth-oriented. In addition, the subjects were found to weight the dimensions differentially in accordance with their own political party affiliation and liberal-conservative orientation. The ideal point model was found to be superior to a vector model in predicting subjects' voting preferences. A psychological theory of voting behavior incorporating the concepts of “ideal politicians” and “psychological distances” among politicians is proposed and evaluated. The potential use of multidimensional scaling in further research of voting behavior is discussed.