Who Cares? Measuring Attitude Strength in a Polarized Environment
Building on research in social psychology, we propose a model of survey response in which individuals’ policy preferences are characterized by two parameters: their attitude on an issue, and their attitude strength. Strong attitudes are behaviorally relevant and stable over time while weak attitudes are easily manipulated with only limited behavioral consequences. We assume that the psychological cost to individuals of not reporting their attitude depends positively on the issue strength.