Role of political ideology in the change of valuation of key semantic contents in complex decision making

PATRICIO NOGUEROLES; TOMAS ALVES SALGUIERO; STEFAN EFRAÍN VERA; CARLOS LUDDWING MUÑOZ VALDERRAMA; PABLO NICOLÁS FERNÁNDEZ LARROSA

Congreso; SAN2024 XXXIX Anual Meeting; 2024

Decision making (DM) refers to the process of selecting an option from a set of alternatives based on its likelihood of leading to the best possible outcome. Many decisions are automatic and require little reflection, while others, such as Complex Decision Making (CDM), require deeper analysis. Political ideology (PI) is a system of representations that acts as a cognitive anchor and a heuristic shortcut for evaluating relevant information in CDT, contributing to making decisions with less cognitive effort. Two online experiments were conducted during the 2023 general (n=2839) and ballotage (n=1294) elections in Argentina, with the aim of evaluating how PI influences the evaluation of semantic content and provokes a change of opinion. Participants evaluated items from a scale of progressivism and conservatism, and then the same items associated with right-wing or left-wing candidates. Two valuation change indices (VCI) were calculated to analyze the effect of PI. The electoral emotional climate was also controlled for using a positivity index. Preliminary results suggest that participants with a more defined political perception showed higher agreement when items matching their PI were associated with a candidate (regardless of PI). These results support the hypothesis that PI serves as a heuristic anchor in DBT.