The perception of political leaders: A multidimensional analysis
Titel:
The perception of political leaders: A multidimensional analysis
Auteur:
Forgas, Joseph P. Menyhart, John
Verschenen in:
Australian journal of psychology
Paginering:
Jaargang 31 (1979) nr. 3 pagina's 213-223
Jaar:
1979-12-01
Inhoud:
The perception of 20 salient Australian and foreign political personalities was studied using a multidimensional scaling (MDS) procedure, with a view towards (a) establishing the dimensions used to differentiate between politicians, and (b) evaluating the relationship between the judges' personality, attitudinal and cognitive characteristics and their cognitive representation of politicians. Judgements were analysed by an overall MDS analysis, followed by six separate analyses of high and low scoring subjects on each of six measures (conservatism, New Left ideology, Machiavellianism, alienation, mental rigidity, and intolerance of ambiguity). Results indicated that three cognitive dimensions, political conservatism, likeability or evaluation, and rationality denned the perceptual space for politicians. Ideologically committed subjects, both conservatives and New Left, found the first dimension most salient in their judgements, while non-ideological subjects relied more on the second two dimensions. Scores on Machiavellianism and alienation did not significantly affect the perception of politicians. Judges who scored high on mental rigidity and intolerance of ambiguity were more likely to perceive politicians in terms of conservatism-radicalism. The results are discussed in terms of the importance of individual characteristics in political perception, and the extension of these methods to large-scale political surveys is proposed.
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