#poliscitwitter: is there any research on the effect of "social risk aversion" on public expressions of political attitudes?
i.e. individuals are motivated to avoid seeming politically unsophisticated ➡️ more likely to report hedged/apathetic attitudes in public vs private?
Examples:
1⃣ The frequency with which "electability" comes up in vox pops but not in aggregate survey data (but could be due to journos cherry picking)
2⃣ This type of emphatic "pox on both your houses" stance
We know that people care about appearing politically sophisticated (some more than others!). As Marshall (2019) shows, people strategically acquire costly information, especially when their social group values political knowledge. journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10…
A vox pop basically transplants someone into a new social context, giving them a big extra incentive to signal political sophistication -- but no time to gather costly information!
Hence, using hedging/apathetic strategies can be a rational strategic response?
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