DIFFERENT PATHS TO THE SAME RESULT - RATIONAL CHOICE, POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY AND IMPRESSION-FORMATION IN CAMPAIGNS

This paper analyzes impression formation in political campaigns-how ci tizens assess a candidate's unobserved characteristics as a prelude to their vote decisions. This behavior is modeled using two approaches, one a psychology-based model in which voters behave as motivated tacti cians, the other a game-theoretic version where voters are sequentiall y rational. The aim of the analysis is two-fold: to deepen our underst anding of how voters reconcile alternate sources of candidate informat ion and to compare predictions derived from ostensibly incompatible th eories of human behavior. The analysis shows, surprisingly, that the m odels yield the same predictions about impression formation. The analy sis also characterizes the impact of strategic behavior on impression formation and pre diets conditions where voters are primed to move bey ond initial impressions, identifying an asymmetry in how voters respon d to new information depending on the content of their initial impress ions and whether the information is confirmatory or contradictory.