Reasoning and Choice

A major new theoretical explanation of how ordinary people decide what to favour and what to oppose politically.

'In sum this is a didactically, theoretically and methodologically impressive report on an important research project, scrupulously conducted over a number of years by a powerful group of scholars with a wide range of skills. It is now required reading for all who work on voting behaviour and/or political attitudes.' Michael Laver, Political StudiesDrawing on a multitude of data sets and building on analyses carried out over more than a decade, this book offers a major new theoretical explanation of how ordinary citizens figure out what they favour and oppose politically. Reacting against the conventional wisdom, which stresses how little attention the general public pays to political issues and the lack of consistency in their opinions, the studies presented in this book redirect attention to the processes of reasoning that can be discerned when people are confronted with choices about political issues. These studies demonstrate that ordinary people are in fact capable of reasoning dependably about political issues by the use of judgmental heuristics, even if they have only a limited knowledge of politics and of specific issues.