THE ROLE OF PARTISAN STEREOTYPES IN INFORMATION-PROCESSING ABOUT POLITICAL CANDIDATES

Research in social cognition suggests that individuals employ a variet y of cognitive strategies when processing information. Some of these s trategies may function as cognitive heuristics, or simplifying rules o f thumb, under certain information-processing conditions. In this arti cle, I suggest that political party stereotypes can function heuristic ally for voters when they are confronted with political information-pr ocessing tasks. Two different cognitive strategies are outlined, a ''t heory-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 de sign that uses videotapes of political candidates as stimulus material . I find that partisan stereotypes have considerable influence in poli tical information processing, suggesting that the political parties co ntinue to play an important role in voters' decision-making processes.