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Domain-specific measures, such as political ideology & sophistication, have been used in models of how citizens evaluate candidates for political office. Non-domain-specific factors, such as age, may have additional explanatory power in models of evaluations & affect the type of information processing strategies employed by citizens. Specifically, the use of person- & issue-based information in evaluation strategies may be affected by the cognitive structure of aging, including the acquisition of person impression skills & resources. We test this hypothesis using the Pooled Senate Election Study (1988-92) & the 1974 American National Election Study. The analysis reveals that younger citizens base their evaluations mostly on issue-based criteria, but as citizens age they add person-based criteria to their evaluations. Implications for decision-making models are discussed. 3 Tables, 40 References. Adapted from the source document.

By embedding value cues in their rhetoric, presidential candidates hope to present themselves and their parties as stewards of those values. This article examines the effects of this rhetoric by testing two hypotheses. The first hypothesis is that this rhetoric educates the public about the values of the candidates and their parties. The second suggests that this rhetoric primes existing perceptions of party 'ownership' of values. The author's findings suggest that candidates are successful at using value rhetoric to modify public perceptions of their values as individuals. However, this rhetoric does not affect perceptions of party labels and individual candidates identically. Adapted from the source document.

"Person-centeredness" refers to how empathetic and warm a person's communication style is. Although the role of person-centeredness has been documented in various areas concerning interpersonal relations, person-centeredness has not been explored in the political realm. This project investigated how person-centered communications can influence impressions and evaluations of political candidates. In the first study, person-centered (PC) messages were shown to impact candidate trait ratings. Candidates using low PC messages were associated with more instrumental traits but fewer socio-emotional traits, while high PC candidates were assumed to have more socio-emotional traits but fewer instrumental traits. Similar results were found when participants rated a candidate's ability to handle socio-emotional and instrumental issues. With regard to global attitudes and voting likelihood, high PC candidates were preferred over low, however this PC effect was moderated by the candidate's gender, with female candidates showing a stronger PC effect than males. Study 2 investigated whether the PC effects shown in Study 1 would weaken or reverse in certain situations, specifically under conditions of threat where high PC candidates may be less desirable compared to low. Study 2 also explored whether individual differences within participants, namely political conservatism and authoritarianism, would moderate the PC effect. Overall results are discussed in terms of the benefits and costs of using PC messages and gender differences within politics.

We find strong support for an on-line model of the candidate evaluation process that in contrast to memory-based models shows that citizens are responsive to campaign information, adjusting their overall evaluation of the candidates in response to their immediate assessment of campaign messages and events. Over time people forget most of the campaign information they are exposed to but are nonetheless able to later recollect their summary affective evaluation of candidates which they then use to inform their preferences and vote choice. These findings have substantive, methodological, and normative implications for the study of electoral behavior. Substantively, we show how campaign information affects voting behavior. Methodologically, we demonstrate the need to measure directly what campaign information people actually attend to over the course of a campaign and show that after controling for the individual's on-line assessment of campaign messages, National Election Study-type recall measures prove to be spurious as explanatory variables. Finally, we draw normative implications for democratic theory of on-line processing, concluding that citizens appear to be far more responsive to campaign messages than conventional recall models suggest.