Replication Data for: Non-Political Identity Signals as Information Shortcuts: Evidence from Three Experiments

A rich literature has documented how voters navigate the complex information landscape by using heuristics, or “information shortcuts,” to help them make sense of the political world. Additionally, a budding line of research also argues that our current polarization crisis has extended beyond just the political and now even affects the non-political realm. We submit that voters may be using these non-political identity signals (e.g. a candidate driving a Toyota Prius or eating at Chick-Fil-A) as heuristics to make sense of the contemporary political era. Using three original survey experiments, we find that these non-political identity cues are indeed used by voters as partisan heuristics, but only in the absence of political (partisan and issue) informational cues. Furthermore, we also suppress the effect of partisan identification when we provide orthogonal non-political information. These findings show that non-political identity items can be used by citizens as information shortcuts to help citizens navigate the complicated political waters that surround them, but that their effect in light of other pieces of information is minimal.

已有大量研究文献阐明，选民会借助启发式方法（heuristics，即“信息捷径”）梳理复杂的信息环境，以此理解政治世界。此外，新兴的研究方向指出，当前的极化危机已不仅局限于政治领域，如今甚至已波及非政治范畴。我们提出，选民或许会借助这类非政治身份信号（例如候选人驾驶丰田普锐斯（Toyota Prius）或在Chick-Fil-A就餐）作为启发式方法，以此理解当代政治时局。通过三项原创性调查实验，我们发现，选民确实会将这类非政治身份线索作为党派启发式方法加以使用，但仅在未获取政治（党派与议题）信息线索的情况下才会如此。此外，我们还发现，当向选民提供正交性（orthogonal）非政治信息时，党派身份认同的影响会被削弱。上述研究结果表明，普通民众可将非政治身份标识作为信息捷径，以此梳理周遭纷繁复杂的政治环境，但当存在其他信息时，这类标识的作用便微乎其微。