I approach this book from what is likely an unusual perspective for a formal theorist. While my book in this dialogue is a game-theoretic one, I am more sympathetic to the political psychology perspective than many game theorists and attempt to incorporate it into models wherever possible because, in many ways, I find it more compelling than assumptions of hyper-rationality. This speaks to the reason that I end my book with the same H. L. Mencken quote with which Kevin Arceneaux and Ryan Vander Wielen begin theirs: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it, good and hard.” I find Taming Intuition to be a welcome advancement on the most common models of political cognition and attitude formation. The benefit of the political psychology approach is that it offers a more realistic view of this process, and Arceneaux and Vander Wielen present a model of the cognitive process that is more nuanced and empirically grounded than existing models.

The authors argue for a sort of middle ground between optimistic and pessimistic models of public competence, tracing out a process by which some segments of the population check their own cognitive biases, based on their preferences for competing thinking styles. People neither robotically reject messages inconsistent with partisan predispositions, as a simple version of John Zaller’s “Receive-Accept-Sample” (RAS) model may assert, nor do they weigh policy options in the utilitarian manner that spatial theorists assert, divorced from party considerations. Instead, we know from existing studies in cognitive psychology that people form something like an opinion before engaging in conscious thought, but some people prefer to engage in more systematic forms of cognition afterward, and the characteristics that lead people to engage in different styles of political engagement can be measured. People’s first reactions to new information are to respond intuitively and instinctively, according to partisan predispositions, but individuals with a high need for “cognition” and a low desire for “affect” are more likely to engage in what the authors call “reflection,” and determine whether or not their intuition has led them to an incorrect assessment. Thus, when the intuitive conclusion, as determined by factors such as partisanship, is wrong, that does not guarantee error. That depends on the individual’s preference for reflection, which varies based on cognitive style.

Arceneaux and Vander Wielen rely on established approaches to measuring need for cognition and affect in thought processes so as not to reinvent the wheel, and the value added is their demonstration of their predictive power in political assessments. There have been enough demonstrations that partisanship can induce cognitive bias that, from my perspective (ironically, as a formal theorist), the important question has been where political psychology went from there. Empirically, though, some partisans get it right, even when the right answer is, to them, nonintuitive. The authors demonstrate that it is the ones with cognitive styles that favor reflection who check their partisan biases across a battery of tests.

The most obvious place for a test, from my perspective, thankfully, was a test that Arceneaux and Vander Wielen ran. When I teach about partisanship and cognitive biases in information acceptance, one of the demonstrations I perform for students is to show National Election Studies survey responses assessing the economy, from election cycle to election cycle, next to factual economic data, and to show how Democrats assess the economy more harshly when the president is a Republican, while Republicans assess the economy more harshly when the president is a Democrat. The obvious question for Arceneaux and Vander Wielen, from my perspective, was whether or not the cognitive style measures would predict who corrects for their partisan biases. In fact, their measures do make informative predictions in this respect, giving the “Intuitionist” model an edge over more simplistic models, such as Zaller’s RAS model, which simply treat everyone’s head as a roughly equivalent black box until messages are differentially received and accepted on the basis of predispositions rather than cognitive style differentiation.

Consequently, there is a substantive process to Arceneaux and Vander Wielen’s model that comports with psychological models of cognition, and there is new predictive power, making the book a valuable contribution and addition to the field. This is an important point for political psychology, particularly as it relates to formal theory, because the advantage that political psychology should have is a process that more closely matches empirical reality. Formal models can make accurate predictions, but the safest critique of them (us) has always been one of process. Advancement in the conceptual process behind political psychology models, then, is critical. How much of an advancement is the Intuitionist model over, for example, the RAS model? The answer, realistically, depends on how many people engage in reflection, and how frequently. Conceptually, though, it is more accurate because it explains a process by which individuals make corrections that the RAS model and other simpler models cannot explain.

I am left with two primary critiques. The first is the basic issue of observation. What we can observe is as follows: questions designed to measure propensity to engage in reflection, and the extent to which circumstances create a tension between what the correct answer would be and what intuition would suggest. We can then observe who gives correct answers, and who does not—when asked. What Arceneaux and Vander Wielen want to measure is not really the extent to which people give correct but nonintutive answers, though. Instead, what they seek to measure is their thought processes. Their argument is one of process, but that process, as is always the case in cognitive psychology, is not one we observe. It is one to be inferred from answers to questions that would not be posed in the course of daily life. Raymond Wolfinger used to teach that interview subjects whose thought processes are closely examined are the most privileged people in America because someone cares what they think, and we must consider not only the processes we do not directly observe, which are simply built into all studies of cognitive psychology, but the question of what this type of respondent would think, were he or she not so observed.

The further we push questions past simple issues of partisanship and the economy, toward experimental treatments aimed at measuring how people respond to messages, the more salient that critique becomes. Reflection is an active process, and even if it is the most reasonable inference given the empirical patterns we observe—and it is—whether or not it occurs outside the bounds of a survey that prompts reflection is a separate question from whether or not it occurs within a survey in which questions prompt it. We must remember that most citizens interact with politics on an occasional and casual basis, for the most part, and filling out a survey requires respondents to think more deeply about politics than many normally do. How much reflection occurs outside such a study, then, when all that citizens do is encounter a smattering of news and subsequently vote, remains a separate question. What Arceneaux and Vander Wielen show most directly is the capacity for reflection, but how much reflection actually occurs when a survey question does not prompt the act is less clear. There is, of course, irony to the fact that this Wolfinger/Zaller–channeling critique is coming from the formal theorist in a “critical dialogue,” but it is important for us to differentiate the capacity for reflection from its occurrence outside of treatments that can induce it.

Secondly, Arceneaux and Vander Wielen make claims about the potential for reflection to aid democratic accountability. Here, too, I have some concerns. Consider, for example, the potential for there to be differential levels of reflectiveness within electorates across districts. If district A has a constituency that is more prone to reflection than district B, then there will be less bias in the assessment of the incumbent in district A than the incumbent in district B, producing more accountability. The authors measure individuals’ need for cognition and reliance on affect, which can each vary, but the extent to which these vary at the aggregate, district level is a more difficult question to answer, and the authors are restricted to simplified measures here, taken from a national study rather than the Cooperative Congressional Election Study. They then look at associations between aggregate measures and a measure of “shirking” to test their hypothesis. They are appropriately skittish about the implications of such a preliminary analysis, but the indirect nature contrasts with the more direct tests in the earlier part of the text, leaving any broader implications more speculative, particularly were we to attempt to extrapolate beyond the context of those legislative election tests.

Regardless of these concerns, Taming Intuition challenges the psychology model of partisan voters mindlessly rejecting messages inconsistent with party identification. It shows instead that those individual voters with a high need for cognition and a low preference for affect are more likely to engage in reflection, and thus check their own intuitive biases. In making this case, Arceneaux and Vander Wielen show significant advancement over more simplistic models of political psychology.