NEUROSCIENCE

The reason we've had difficulty finding ways of measuring media effects is that change knowledge representations is a cortical system which slowly builds up over time because the representations stored by that system can change only very slowly and with repeated exposures to relevant stimuli changes require many more counter-stereotypic experiences ---- since we know that individuals prefer to be exposed to attitudes and preferences that are most like their own, it would be seen more difficult to measure these "changes" based on media exposure through simply processes of survey efforts that are short-run and cannot possibly measure the amount or extent of 'built up' representational systems (to compare any 'before exposure and after exposure' effects). Additionally, because the process is so slow, it is a social process that involves a long time to develop for the individual changing one situation in a survey or experimental setting does not effectively "change" a persons opinions at all (as has been shown by previous research) and this is why

The question for neuroscience is how political sophisticates process survey items differently than political novices

"Political sophistication is likely to play a role in the degree to which the x-system can tolerate conflict."

----attitude opinions are generated dependent upon the ability of the x-system to order conflictual information - this process is enhanced through increased political sophistication

attitudinal considerations do not always exist independently in the mind and instead change their weight and meaning in order to fit with the most coherent group of considerations
Spellman and Holyoak, 1993
Shultz & Lepper, 1995
Holyoak & Simon, 1999

"there are several distinct mechanisms of attitude formation and judgment. These mechanisms have different properties from one another in terms of the informational inputs to which they are sensitive, the computations performed on active representations, as well as the regions of the brain to which process outputs are delivered."

Reaction to political issues is a combination of a respondents use of episodic memory (medial temporal lobe for the storage of experiences as tied to particular places, times, and people) and semantic memory (largely dependent on lateral and inferior temporal cortex and consists of facts about the world without respect to the context in which they were learned (typical knowledge measures).

---attitudes, opinions, and preferences, however, are a unique combination of both of these processes, and as such, one cannot measure responses without taking into consideration the fact that different individuals will access different memories, and in different ways, each time they respond to a different questions

The c-system serves as an alarm system that monitors the coherence of the x-system processes. Once activated, this system sends a signal to the other that a conflict has been detected requiring conscious attention and effort in the form of working memory and propositional processes

[04-05-31]
The x- and c-systems are then used to retrieve various sorts of experiences and emotions and to make use of this information when making judgments. The x-system spontaneously and often nonconsciously integrates current goals, context, perceptions, and activated cognition into a coherent whole that guides the stream of consciousness and current behavior

Even more important, however, is that c-systems are driven by motivational factors; the extent to which the individual can devote conscious resources to the task at hand. Motivation, in return, may also be affected by the level of complexity with which individuals view particular questions, based on how difficult the 'conflicting' issues are to process, and the level of general knowledge they have on the subject.

"when the conflict between activated considerations is low, the x-system is likely to be the primary contributor to self-reported attitudes, and as such may produce increasingly affect-based attitudes with sophistication" # "alternatively, when the conflict between considerations is high, the c-system should be recruited and able to produce attitudes that follow an increasing degree of objective rule-based logic with increasingly levels of political sophistication"

"The number of conflicting considerations accessible for the individual and the degree to which the neural networks can temporarily smooth over these conflicts, will play a major part in determining which mental mechanism(s) contribute to the reported attitude."


"it is likely that episodic and semantic memories constitute many of the considerations implicated by Zaller (1990) in attitude formation.

"the extent to which lateral versus medial temporal cortex is active during political attitude assessments may reveal the extent to which individuals retrieve personal experiences or learned facts and this can be done without ever asking the participants to list thoughts relevant tot heir attitude, a procedure that is contaminated by having just provided the attitude measure itself
Nisbett & Wilson, 1977

"traditional research methods in this domain, which typically rely on self-report surveys, might not be able to provide a full explanation of political attitudes, beliefs, and decision-making"

"behavior is often driven by automatic mechanisms, which leads self-report of mental processes to be notoriously unreliable and susceptible to many forms of contamination":
Bem, 1967
Wilson & Brekke, 1994