Authoritarian research experimentally distinguishes sincere belief from pandering to the majority

Evidence

In the “Speaker Low Choice” conditions, the polls showed overwhelming (90%) support for one of these approaches. A candidate who then came out strongly in favor of the position favored by the voters could thus be seen as merely saying what he or she knew 90% of the electorate wanted to hear, revealing nothing about his or her personal beliefs. (I did not run a third condition in which a politician came out strongly against the inclination of 90% of the voters, even though this happens at least three or four times every hundred years.) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1415

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the Speaker High/Low Choice manipulation that operationalizes detection of insincere pandering.
• CANDY: The parenthetical joke about politicians defying 90% voter majorities is a light, tweetable aside.
• XREF: connects to: Research practice overwhelmingly assumes attitudes operate consciously — Anthony G. Greenwald and Mahzarin R. Banaji, Implicit Social Cognition: Attitudes,…, 78