The Limitations of Heuristics for Political Elites

The Limitations of Heuristics for Political Elitespops_731 863..894

Kristina C. MilerUniversity of Illinois

Despite the extensive literature on citizens’ use of cognitive heuristics in political settings,far less is known about how political elites use these shortcuts. Legislative elites benefitfrom the efficiency of the accessibility heuristic, but their judgments can also be flawed ifaccessible information is incomplete or unrepresentative. Using personal interviews and aquasi-experimental design, this paper examines the use of the accessibility heuristic byprofessional legislative staff when assessing the importance of natural resources issues totheir constituents. Staff members recall only a small subset of the relevant constituents inthe district, and this subset is biased in favor of active and resource-rich constituents overother, equally relevant constituents. This paper provides a new application of cognitivepsychology to political elites and addresses important normative questions about theimportance of information processing for political representation. By drawing on thepsychology literature on heuristics, this paper identifies the cognitive mechanisms ofcongressional representation and provides new evidence of old biases.

KEY WORDS: Accessibility, Heuristics, Political elites, Information processing

How individuals use information to make judgments is at the heart of much ofthe political psychology literature. Of particular interest to scholars is the extent towhich individuals forego exhaustive information searches in favor of cognitiveshortcuts, or heuristics, that allow individuals to make judgments with reasonabletime and effort. One of the most common and most important heuristics is theaccessibility heuristic, where individuals rely on the information that is most easilyaccessible. Although useful, heuristics are not without limitations. Most notably,when individuals use the accessibility heuristic, they rely on information that canbe incomplete, or even biased, and this information can lead to flawed judgments.

The literature on heuristics in political settings focuses on average citizens’use of information and the potential benefits of these mental shortcuts, but pays farless attention to elites’ use of information or the limitations of heuristics. This isof particular note in the case of political elites because of the impact that reliance

Political Psychology, Vol. 30, No. 6, 2009doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9221.2009.00731.x

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on incomplete and biased information could have on political representation. Ifpolitical elites rely on flawed information about their constituents, then theirassessments of constituents’ priorities and preferences are likely to be flawed aswell. Indeed, these judgments could lead political elites to advocate policies thatdo not reflect the constituents they represent and to systematically privilege anarrow subset of their constituents. Understanding how political elites use infor-mation about their constituents, therefore, contributes to both the political psy-chology and congressional literatures.

There is widespread agreement among congressional scholars that constitu-ents are an important influence on legislative behavior (e.g., Browne, 1995; Fenno,1978; Fiorina, 1974; Hall, 1996; Kingdon, 1989). However, in order for legisla-tors’ decisions on Capitol Hill to reflect their constituents, legislators and theirstaff must accurately assess the interests of their district. To make these judgments,legislative elites rely on information about the importance of policy issues toconstituents in their district. This seemingly simple judgment, however, warrantssignificantly more attention in light of the psychology literature that suggests thatindividuals often employ heuristics instead of conducting exhaustive informationsearches. If legislative elites rely on the accessibility heuristic, the resulting infor-mation might produce incomplete and biased judgments about constituents andcould lead to poor constituency representation. Thus, the focus here is on under-standing how legislative elites’ use of information shapes their image of theconstituents they represent, not on the relative importance of constituency consid-erations as compared to partisanship or other likely determinants of legislativedecisions.

Using a combination of structured interviews and quasi-experimental design,this paper examines how professional staff members in the U.S. House of Repre-sentatives use information when assessing the relevance of policy issues to theirconstituents. Of particular interest is whether elites’ reliance on the accessibilityheuristic produces incomplete and biased judgments. There is strong evidence thatlegislative elites do not gather information about all constituents relevant to thepolicy at hand, but instead rely on accessible information that is both incompleteand biased. Put differently, legislative elites’ reliance on the accessibility heuristicsystematically favors information about certain constituents over other, equallyrelevant constituents. The information that is most accessible to legislative elitesis information made salient by financial contributions or made familiar throughconstituency-initiated contact with the legislative office. Furthermore, a compari-son of staff members’ assessments of constituents when relying on accessibleinformation and when provided with basic information about relevant constituentsreveals the important consequences of how elites use information. Under the lattercondition, legislative elites have a somewhat more complete view of their districtand their judgments are not determined by information made salient by contribu-tions from constituents, although they continue to favor active constituents in thedistrict. Overall, the data provide evidence that reliance on the accessibility heu-

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ristic leads legislative elites to rely on an incomplete and unrepresentative subsetof information about constituents, which in turn leads to biased assessments of therelevance of policies to their constituents.

These results are consistent with expectations from the psychology literaturethat reliance on heuristics can increase the efficiency of information processing,but also can reduce the quality of the information used. Expanding the examinationof heuristics to political elites also has important implications for the congres-sional literature. By illuminating the cognitive processes of legislative elites, thisresearch presents new evidence of biases in congressional representation. The biasidentified here contrasts with the common notion of bias that results from politicalbargaining in two important ways. First, the mechanism of this bias occurs at themicrolevel of how individuals use information and their reliance on cognitiveshortcuts like the accessibility heuristic. Second, the stage in which this biasoccurs is when legislative staff members assess the importance of a policy to theconstituents in their district. Additionally, the insights into legislative elites gainedby drawing on the psychology and political psychology literatures confirm con-cerns in the congressional literature about biases that favor active and resource-rich constituents (e.g., Dahl, 1956; Schattschneider, 1960).

In sum, this information-based approach to understanding how legislativeelites represent their constituents expands on our understanding of the costs andbenefits of the accessibility heuristic by focusing on elites and by situating thetheories in the practice of representation on Capitol Hill. In doing so, this paperasserts the importance of a cognitive approach to studying political elites, identi-fies the cognitive mechanisms of congressional representation, and provides newevidence of old biases.

Information Processing and Heuristics

The cognitive approach in the psychology literature emphasizes the processby which individuals gather information and use this information to make judg-ments about the world around them. As Markus and Zajonc (1985) note, “thecognitive approach focuses on how social information is gleaned from the envi-ronment and then how it is represented, processed, stored, and retrieved forpurposes of inference, attribution, judgment and evaluation” (p. 141). Central toour understanding of this process is the notion that individuals do not use allavailable information, but rather concentrate on a subset of information thatrenders the judgment task more manageable. Noting this tendency, Simon (1957)characterized humans as “cognitive misers” who exert the minimal amount ofcognitive effort necessary to make satisfactory judgments. A key implication is thatindividuals do not conduct exhaustive information searches when making judg-ments, but rather rely on a variety of shortcuts. Individuals want to gain anadequate amount of information, but not necessarily complete information, inorder to make decisions.

865The Limitations of Heuristics for Political Elites

Of primary interest here is individuals’ reliance on information accessibility,or the information that is retrieved more quickly and with greater ease than otherinformation.1 Given the vast amount of information that could be used to informany given decision, it is “manifestly impossible to attend to all of [it]” (Shaw &Costanzo, 1970, p. 184). As a result, Carlston and Smith (1996) note that “theprinciple of accessibility is so prominent that it . . . has even been labeled a generallaw of psychology” (p. 198). Classic experimental research on information acces-sibility shows that the ease with which information is recalled plays an importantpart in determining individuals’ judgments (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973, 1974;see also Fazio, 1986, 1990; Fazio & Williams, 1986; Higgins, Rholes, & Jones,1977). A primary benefit of the accessibility heuristic is that it improves theefficiency of decision making by allowing an individual to focus on certain piecesof information rather than expending unnecessary time gathering all relevantinformation (e.g., Ajzen, 1996; Eagly & Chaiken, 1998). Indeed, given the manydecisions that individuals make, it is not difficult to imagine individuals becomingoverwhelmed by the enormity of the decision task if it were necessary to evaluateall relevant information for every decision.

Heuristics can be helpful, but these shortcuts can also result in judgmenterrors. As Fiedler and Schmidt (1995) note, “according to the now prevailingdefinition, heuristics are rather parsimonious and effortless, but often fallible andlogically inadequate, ways of problem solving and information processing”(p. 296). In order for an individual to benefit from the time and energy saved by theaccessibility heuristic, the subset of information used must be representative ofall relevant information. In contrast, if an individual uses flawed information, hisdecisions will reflect the limitations and biases of that information. For instance,information based on personal experience is more easily accessible than othertypes of information, so if an individual’s personal experience is unusual, then theaccessibility heuristic can result in flawed judgments. In fact, when individuals areasked to estimate the probability of a heart attack, those people who know heartattack victims are likely to overestimate the likelihood of heart attacks moregenerally (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). When the use of heuristics leads indi-viduals to rely on a subset of information that is biased, the usual efficiency gainsassociated with using cognitive shortcuts will be outweighed by the costs ofmaking poor decisions (e.g., Ajzen, 1996; Houston & Fazio, 1989; Tversky &Kahneman, 1973; Nisbett & Ross, 1980). In sum, although the accessibilityheuristic is generally helpful, it is imperfect and judgments based on accessibleinformation are not necessarily the best judgments.

1 Scholars have examined whether more accessible information is recalled due to the ease of retrieval(i.e., the subjective experience of recall) or the content of retrieval (i.e., the information that isretrieved). See Schwarz (1998). Although the literature addresses the mechanisms underlying infor-mation accessibility, in real-world situations accessible content and ease of experience are naturallyconfounded (Schwarz & Vaughn, 2001).

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Applications of Heuristics to Political Science

The cognitive approach to understanding individual decision making, and theaccessibility heuristic in particular, is rooted firmly in the psychology literaturebut has influenced many political scientists (for reviews see Kuklinski, 2002, andMcGraw, 2000). In general, the political science literature shares the psychologyliterature’s view of heuristics as an efficient and effective way for citizens to makejudgments about policies and candidates in light of the fact that citizens rarelygather full information (e.g., Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996; Zaller, 1992). Citizensdo not need full information in order to act as if they had engaged in an exhaustiveinformation search because they can use heuristics to compensate for their lowlevels of information and make higher quality decisions about politics than theirknowledge levels would suggest (e.g., Lupia, 1994; Mondak, 1993; Popkin,1991).

A significant subset of research concerns citizens’ use of the accessibilityheuristic when assessing political candidates (e.g., Conover & Feldman, 1986;Huckfeldt, Mondak, Craw, & Mendez, 2005; Lau, 1989; Lau, Smith, & Fiske,1991). For instance, there is evidence that information about partisan or ideologi-cal beliefs is more readily accessible to voters and consequently is more likely toinfluence their assessment of political candidates (e.g., DeSart, 1995; Huckfeldt,Levine, Morgan, & Sprague, 1999). Additionally, some studies find that a candi-date’s character—in particular, attitudes about candidates’ competence andintegrity—is highly accessible to citizens and affects their judgments of candidates(Mondak & Huckfeldt, 2006). Still other studies argue that the accessibility ofinformation about issues varies across citizens and policies, which helps to explainwhy some citizens are more likely to evaluate candidates based on their issuepositions (e.g., Goren, 1997; Lavine, Borgida, Sullivan, & Thomsen, 1996).

Citizens’ reliance on the accessibility heuristic also informs research on theimpact of framing on their evaluations of political candidates and issues. AsIyengar and Kinder’s (1987) influential study demonstrates, television newsaffects the accessibility of information about politics, and consequently affectscitizens’ political judgments. The impact of media on political priorities andopinions is not in altering the content of information, but in affecting the way inwhich citizens use information (e.g., Druckman, 2001; Gilliam & Iyengar, 2000;Iyengar, 1990). Moving beyond the media, elected political officials also useframing in their campaign advertisements, public statements, and press coverageto make certain information more easily accessible to citizens and thereby increasethe likelihood that it will be used by citizens (e.g., Fenno, 1978; Jacobs & Shapiro,2000; Jones, 1994; Smith, 1986; Valentino, Hutchings, & White, 2002).

Given the attention to citizens’ use of the accessibility heuristic, it might beexpected that the concerns about the limitations of heuristics raised in the psy-chology literature would be echoed in the political context. However, this isgenerally not the case. Although some scholars express skepticism that voters’ use


of heuristics fully compensates for low levels of citizen information (e.g., Bartels,1996; Kuklinski & Hurley, 1994; Kuklinski & Quirk, 2000), the majority of thepolitical science literature focuses on the benefits of heuristics. To this point, Lauand Redlawsk (2001) criticize the tendency of political scientists to invoke heu-ristics as a “solution” to the problems of an inattentive, uninformed electoratewhile ignoring the potential pitfalls of these shortcuts: “heuristics can sometimesintroduce serious bias, along with cognitive efficiency, into decision-making”(p. 952, emphasis in the original).2

Political Elites and Heuristics

In addition to a generally positive approach to heuristics, political scienceresearch that draws on cognitive heuristics also largely focuses on the mass publicrather than political elites. In fact, the relative lack of attention to elites has beennoted by some scholars as a weakness of the literature (e.g., Lau, Smith, & Fiske,1991; Rahn, Sullivan, & Rudolph, 2002). To the extent that political elites areincluded in existing studies, it is most often as a source of information for citizens,rather than as the decision maker of interest (but see Tetlock, 2005). This focus isquite surprising given that the implications of political elites’ use of information,especially the limitations of reliance on the accessibility heuristic, are substan-tively and normatively important for policy outcomes and representation. Legis-lative elites are responsible for representing the interests of their constituents in thepolicymaking process and the extent to which elites fulfill this obligation dependson the information they use when making judgments about the importance ofpolicies to their constituents. If legislative elites rely on incomplete or biasedinformation about their constituents, then they are unlikely to make decisions onCapitol Hill that reflect those constituents.

Some earlier studies speak to political elites’ use of information but do soin limited venues or without explicit consideration of the underlying cognitiveprocesses. One area in which political scientists have examined elites’ use ofheuristics is in foreign policy decision making. Foreign policy elites often foregoexhaustive information in favor of relying on heuristics, despite the limitations ofthese shortcuts. Scholars’ concern with the possibility that heuristics can producebiases and flawed judgments reflects the high stakes of foreign policy decisionmaking (e.g., Allison, 1971; Hermann, 1985; Jervis, 1976; Kanwisher, 1989;Larson, 1985). If heuristics lead foreign policy elites to make decisions that theywould not make if using more thorough information, such decisions are not onlyinefficient, but they may also have significant political and military consequences.

Decision making by legislative elites is a second literature that is informed bytheories of how individuals use information and heuristics, but the influence of

2 See also Kuklinski, Quirk, Jerit, Schwieder, and Rich (2001).

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psychology in these studies is largely implicit. For instance, several influentialstudies of congressional decision making examine legislators’ use of cues fromcolleagues (e.g., Kingdon, 1977, 1989; Matthews & Stimson, 1975) and congres-sional committees (e.g., Bianco, 1997; Krehbiel, 1991) to inform their votingdecisions. However, these studies of cue taking do not fully unpack the proverbialblack box to explicitly discuss heuristics and the cognitive processes involved inthis type of information shortcut.

Studies of legislators’ perceptual accuracy are another example of how psy-chology can inform research on legislative elites. The most influential of thesestudies is Miller and Stokes’ (1963) examination of the degree to which Membersof Congress are aware of the majority opinion in their districts. Similarly, scholarshave examined the accuracy of state legislators’ perception of the majority districtopinion (e.g., Erikson, Luttbeg, & Holloway, 1975; Hedlund & Friesema, 1972;Kuklinski & Elling, 1977), and the accuracy of legislators’ perceptions of majoritypreferences in parliamentary democracies (e.g., Clausen, Holmberg, & deHaven-Smith, 1983; Converse & Pierce, 1986; Esaiasson & Holmberg, 1996). However,these studies are also largely silent on the cognitive processes underlying whetherelected officials correctly predict citizens’ preferences and highlight the results butnot the mechanisms drawn from the psychology literature (but see Clausen, 1977and Esaiasson & Holmberg, 1996). In sum, the implicit, rather than explicit, use ofcognitive psychology means that studies of legislative elites do not address thelimitations of heuristics or the risk of poor judgment despite the importance ofthese topics in the psychology literature.

Congressional Elites’ Use of Heuristics

The ease and efficiency of heuristics are attractive to legislative elites who donot have the time to seek out exhaustive information about constituents’ interestson every policy issue that comes before the U.S. Congress (e.g., Jones, 1994, 2001;Matthews & Stimson, 1975). Legislators and their staff are responsible for re-presenting more than 700,000 constituents in a congressional district, and it isunlikely that legislative elites conduct a thorough information search when assess-ing the interests of the district. Indeed, the size and complexity of congressionaldistricts provide an interesting arena in which to examine elites’ reliance onaccessible information because legislative elites function in a challenging infor-mation environment, which is precisely when individuals are most likely to useheuristics (see Kingdon, 1989).

The Information Environment

One of the most important features of the modern U.S. Congress is thatlegislation and the policymaking process are specific to an issue area, which means


that legislative elites assess the relevance of issues to their district on a policy-by-policy basis. Therefore, in order to empirically examine elites’ use of informationit is necessary to specify a policy focus. This research concentrates on naturalresources issues with attention to two specific policies: comprehensive nationalenergy policy (the Securing America’s Future Energy Act) and wetlands conser-vation policy (the North American Wetlands Conservation Act). Both policieswere on the congressional agenda in the 107th Congress (2001–02) and passed theU.S. House of Representatives. These two policies provide variation in their scope,visibility, and divisiveness.3

In order to assess legislative elites’ use of information and their judgmentsabout the district’s interest as compared with the collection of constituents towhom an issue is important, it is important to be explicit about what is considered“complete” district information. Not every constituent is affected by every issue(e.g., Arnold, 1990; Fiorina, 1974), so full information about a district is concep-tualized as information about only those constituents relevant to the policy.4 Theconstituents relevant to each of the policies in question were identified throughmedia reports of the issue in Washington D.C.-based outlets such as The Hill andRoll Call, as well as more general outlets like The Washington Post. In addition,personal interviews were conducted with policy experts on both the majority andminority party staff for the House Committee on Resources.5 The interviews withpolicy experts were particularly helpful for identifying constituents relevant to theissue who may not be well-known by the public. From these multiple sources, a listof constituents that natural resources policy experts widely acknowledged to haveinterests in either energy policy or wetlands policy was generated, which meansthat legislative staff members realistically could be expected to be aware of theimportance of the issue to these constituents in their district.6 There are 10 con-stituencies to whom a national energy policy was important: oil and gas producers,mining industries, renewable energy producers, businesses (including agribusi-ness), consumers, environmentalists, Native Americans, veterans, organized labor,and utilities. Similarly, there are six constituencies to whom wetlands conservation

3 The national energy bill was broader, more visible, and more contentious than the wetlands conser-vation bill.

4 The terms “constituents” and “constituency” are used here to refer not to individuals, interest groups,or the entire district, but rather the informal subgroups of constituents who share socioeconomiccharacteristics and/or policy-specific interests. For example, legislative elites think about “theelderly” in their district, but these older constituents may not be organized as a formal group in thedistrict. Similarly, when referring to information about constituents, I am referring to informationabout these informal subsets of constituents with common interests, not individual constituents orformal organizations.

5 Note that committee staff are distinct from legislators’ personal staff. I spoke with numerousprofessional committee staff members “on background” to benefit from their insight and expertise inthe specific policy areas.

6 The background interviews and media research used to identify policy-relevant constituents wereconducted during the 2001–02 congressional session and preceded the interviews with legislativestaff members.

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policy was important: agriculture interests (e.g., farmers), developers, local resi-dents, state and local governments, environmentalists, and sportsmen.7

It is important to note that these relevant constituency interests are not neces-sarily organized interest groups, but rather are defined by their common interests.The lists of relevant constituents exhibit variation in their degree of politicalorganization, which reflects the diversity of constituents affected by energy andenvironmental policy. Congressional scholars interested in the influence of con-stituency considerations on legislative behavior note the difficulty in separatinginterest groups from less formal constituency interests (e.g., Evans, 2002; Kingdon,1989). In particular, Evans (2002) notes that the common use of similar tacticsincluding letter-writing campaigns, phone calls, and mobilization efforts “furthercomplicate[s] the distinction between constituent interests and organized groups”(p. 274). Given the goal of understanding how legislative elites use informationwhen judging the interest of their district, including both unorganized and organizedconstituents most accurately captures the practice of congressional representation.In sum, these lists capture the relevant constituents that staff members reasonablycould be expected to recall if they conducted a thorough information search whenasked about the importance of these two issues to their constituents.

Structured Interviews with Legislative Elites

Forty-one offices were selected using purposive sampling designed to createa sample representative of the 435 Members of the U.S. House of Representativeson important dimensions such as party, seniority, region, and committee member-ship (see Appendix A). In each office in-person interviews were conducted onCapitol Hill with the professional staff member responsible for resources policy.8

These interviews took place over a five-week period in 2002,9 and the response

7 Veterans are identified as a relevant constituency on energy policy during the 107th Congress due totheir support of increased domestic energy production to reduce dependence on foreign countries.Organized labor are identified as relevant to the energy debate because of legislative provisions thatensured the jobs created when opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) would be unionjobs. Lastly, Native Americans are identified as relevant to national energy policy because of theirownership of land where energy exploration was proposed. However, the wetlands conservationpolicy examined here did not significantly affect Native American communities, and as a result, theywere not identified by policy experts or media reports as relevant to the wetlands issue.

8 The division of labor by policy area differs by legislative office such that the staff member responsiblefor natural resources policy in a given office does not necessarily hold the same formal title as the staffmember responsible for natural resources policy in another office. Twenty-four respondents weresenior legislative assistants or legislative assistants, nine respondents were legislative directors, threerespondents were senior legislative counsel or legislative counsel, three respondents held other jobtitles, and two respondents were the chief of staff.

9 The interviews were conducted after the passage of the two bills to ensure that the policy referent usedin the interviews is constant across all 41 legislative offices. In the empirical analyses that follow, ameasure of the timing of the interview is incorporated in the model of legislative recall, and the resultsconfirm that the timing of the interview has no systematic impact on legislative staff members’ use ofinformation. The coefficient on interview timing does not achieve statistical significance and all othercoefficient estimates are robust to the inclusion of the timing variable.


rate to requests for personal interviews was 77% as defined by the number ofoffices in which the correct staff member was contacted and granted an interview.10

The interviews were confidential and off the record. Given both written and oralassurance that their names and the names of their bosses would not be used, norespondent refused to answer a question. In fact, with the guarantee of confiden-tiality, over 75% of staff members agreed to have the interview recorded, and allrespondents were remarkably candid and forthcoming.

In order to understand how legislative elites use information when makingjudgments about the district, professional staff members are the focus of theinterviews. Legislative staff members play an important role in congressionaloffices as both policy experts and constituent liaisons (e.g., Evans, 2002; Salisbury& Shepsle, 1981). Staff members are responsible for gathering information aboutpolicy issues, providing legislators with relevant information, and representing thelegislative office in meetings and informal negotiations. Staff members regularlyjuggle multiple issues under significant time pressure in an environment withabundant information from multiple sources. In the course of fulfilling theseduties, staff members make numerous judgments about the interests of the districtevery day. Additionally, it is the staff members who are most knowledgeable aboutwhich constituents write letters to the member and who meet with constituents andinterest group representatives. For all of these reasons, scholars have turned tolegislative staff members as an invaluable source of information about congres-sional decision making (e.g., Evans, 1991; Hall, 1996; Kingdon, 1989).

Legislative staff members’ use of information is examined “on location” onCapitol Hill, which provides important insights into how elites use information aspart of their routine behavior. By focusing on staff members in their WashingtonD.C. offices, it is possible to recreate the information tasks in which they engageevery day with minimal artificiality.11 Of primary interest are staff members’judgments about the interests of constituents in the district. In other words, fromlegislative elites’ perspective, who in the district is affected by an issue? This basicquestion is a feature of daily life on Capitol Hill where staff members quickly callto mind information about constituents’ interests on issues and assess the impor-tance of a policy to the district. In meetings and conversations, staff membersregularly are asked by legislators, other legislative staff members, and policy-

10 Of the 12 offices in which the staff member declined a request for an interview, 10 cited their office’sblanket policy against participating in surveys or interviews and two simply declined. Additionally,the 12 offices are evenly divided (i.e., six and six) between Republican and Democratic offices, aswell as between members and nonmembers of the House Committee on Resources. In short, thedeclined interviews do not exhibit any systematic patterns that might raise sampling concerns.

11 The interviews were pretested in offices not included in the sample as well as with former congres-sional staff. Close attention was paid to any point at which pretest respondents asked clarifyingquestions and any language that might make the interviews artificial or academic. After the pretests,the interview script was revised to more closely approximate the way that staff members assess therelevance of policies to their constituents and to incorporate the realistic use of appropriate legisla-tive jargon (e.g., acronyms, bill numbers, etc.) and other Hill-specific language.

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makers to succinctly assess a policy’s relevance to constituents in the district.12

The interview, therefore, is designed to capture this Capitol Hill environment andto closely approximate the way in which staff members regularly recall informa-tion about their constituents.

Research on information accessibility, however, often occurs in a more con-trolled environment than Capitol Hill, which poses some complications for mea-surement. Two frequently used measures of information accessibility are latencydata and free recall, which are both based on the fact that respondents recall moreaccessible information from memory more quickly. First, latency data, or theamount of time that elapses before a respondent answers, is a popular measure ofaccessibility in both the psychology literature (e.g., Bassili, 1995; Fazio, 1990;Hastie, 1986; Smith, 1984) and the political psychology literature (Lavine et al.,1996; Zaller, 1992). However, this measure is poorly suited for interviews withelites where the interviews are not computer assisted and a greater emphasis isplaced on maintaining a collegial rapport. Second, free recall involves posingopen-ended questions to respondents and recording their answers as indicators ofthe information that is most easily accessible to them. Both the psychologyliterature (e.g., Schwarz, 1998; Wyer & Srull, 1989) and the political psychologyliterature (e.g., Chong, 1993; DeSart, 1995; Lau, 1989; Lodge, Stroh, & Wahlke,1990; McGraw, Hasecke, & Conger, 2003) employ free recall as a measure ofinformation accessibility. Importantly, free recall is a nonintrusive way to measureinformation accessibility without jeopardizing the interview rapport. Therefore,free recall is used to measure the accessibility of information to political elites.

The structured interviews begin with pretested, open-ended questions inwhich the staff member was asked to talk about how the office sees constituents’interests on each of the two issues, national energy policy and wetlands conser-vation policy. The two issues were discussed in alternating order to minimizepotential question order effects. After specifying the first policy, the legislativestaff member was asked, “to whom in the district is this issue [national energypolicy or wetlands conservation policy] important?” The staff member’s responseis recorded, and there is no limit to the number of constituents that he could haveincluded in his response.13 Staff members’ free recall in response to this promptcaptures the information about constituents in their district that is most accessible.The responses are used to create the dependent variable used in the analyses tofollow, which is a dichotomous measure of whether or not a staff member recallseach specified constituency identified as relevant to the issue at hand. A series of

12 This is not to suggest that deliberative decision making does not occur in congressional offices, butrather that the question of a policy’s relevance to constituents is a common question posed every dayin every office.

13 Concerns about staff members truncating their responses in the interest of time are unlikely to haveoccurred here since this question was asked early in the interview thus minimizing time pressure.Additionally, the open-ended question format provides staff members with an opportunity to dem-onstrate their knowledge of the district.


additional open-ended questions follow this recall task, after which a simple,close-ended form is administered to gather additional information for the analyses.As with the open-ended portions of the interviews, staff members were coopera-tive and thoughtfully filled out these forms. The same interview protocol is thenrepeated with reference to the second resources policy.

Empirical Analyses

The use of personal interviews provides a measure of information accessi-bility and allows for an examination of the way in which legislative elites useinformation when judging the interests of constituents in their district. The firstquestion is whether legislative elites conduct exhaustive information searcheswhen asked about the importance of a policy to their district or whether they useshortcuts to simplify and increase the efficiency of the task. If staff membersgather comprehensive information, then they should recall all (or at least most)of the constituents relevant to the issue. This is a reasonable expectation giventhat complete information is defined as information about only those constitu-ents that were widely identified as relevant to the issue by policy experts andmedia sources. On the other hand, if staff members rely on accessible informa-tion to save time and effort, then they should recall only a fraction of the rel-evant constituents. In this case, the future question becomes whether the shortcutcomes at a price.

The data show that staff members did not recall the complete collection ofrelevant constituents in their district, but rather recalled only a small subset (seeTable 1). This finding indicates that legislative staff do not conduct thoroughinformation searches when judging the interests of the district and provides further

Table 1. Number of Relevant Constituencies Seen by Legislative Offices

National EnergyPolicy

(10 relevant constituencies)

Wetlands ConservationPolicy

(6 relevant constituencies)

No constituencies 0% 8%One constituency 20% 38%Two constituencies 38% 38%Three constituencies 33% 18%Four constituencies 8% 3%Five constituencies 3% 0%Six constituencies 0% 0%Seven constituencies 0% n/aEight constituencies 0% n/aNine constituencies 0% n/aTen constituencies 0% n/a

NB: Percentages are based on 40 legislative offices

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evidence of the prominence of the accessibility heuristic in understanding howindividuals—including elites—use information.

Across both wetlands and energy policy, more than 90% of staff membersrecalled three or fewer constituencies out of the possible six or ten relevantconstituencies, respectively.14 In the case of wetlands conservation, legislative staffmembers recalled an average of 28% (or 1.7) of the six constituencies relevant tothe issue. Similarly, when asked to whom in the district national energy policy isimportant, legislative staff members recalled an average of 24% (or 2.4) of the 10relevant constituencies. Overall, when staff members are asked to whom in theirdistrict is an issue important, they recall only one-quarter of the relevant constitu-ents. In fact, not a single staff member interviewed recalled more than 75% of therelevant constituents in the district for either issue. Legislative staff members areclearly drawing upon a small subset of information about their constituents whenjudging the interests of their district rather than gathering full information.

Before concluding that all legislative staff members rely on incomplete infor-mation when judging the interests of their constituents, it is important to examinewhether certain staff members might be less likely to employ the accessibilityheuristic and instead rely on more complete information. First, staff members whohave greater expertise in the area of natural resources policy are more familiar withthe relevant interests and this familiarity may reduce their reliance on accessibleinformation (e.g., Azjen, 1996; Bruner, 1957). The primary measure of expertise isa legislator’s membership on the House Resources Committee, which has primaryjurisdiction for natural resources policy. Committee membership increases staffmembers’ knowledge about resources issues because the committee system fosterspolicy specialization. A secondary measure of expertise is whether the staffmember (or his boss) worked in energy or environmental careers before workingon Capitol Hill.15 Previous career experience increases a staff member’s familiaritywith the issues and relevant constituencies. Overall, staff members who are morefamiliar with natural resources issues are expected to recall more complete infor-mation about the interests of the district as compared to staff members without thisexperience.

Second, staff members who are inclined to support these policies may recallmore information about constituents’ interests in their district because predispo-sition in favor of information increases the ease with which the information isrecalled (e.g., Festinger, 1957; Heider, 1944). Here, staff members in offices ofRepublican legislators are considered to be predisposed in favor of the two naturalresources policies, both of which were supported by Republican President George

14 I thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out that staff members’ limited recall is consistent withMiller’s (1956) notion of “channel capacity,” or the maximum amount of information individualsreport using in their judgments.

15 Data on previous careers of legislative staff members and legislators are taken from profiles inthe Congressional Yellow Book directory and are supplemented by questions asked during theinterviews.


W. Bush and Republican congressional leaders. As a result, staff members inRepublican offices are expected to recall a greater number of constituents whenasked to whom in the district these policies are important.

As Table 2 shows, however, the data provide no support for these hypotheses.Regardless of staff members’ expertise or predisposition towards the policies, theystill recall a very limited number of relevant constituents. In fact, in four of the sixcomparisons presented in Table 2, staff members with more expertise or a positivepredisposition towards the policies actually recall fewer constituents in the districtthan their colleagues. In the case of wetlands conservation policy, two of thesedifferences are significant at conventional levels of statistical significance. Whenasked about their constituents’ interests in wetlands conservation, staff memberswho are on the Resources Committee and who are favorably predisposed to sup-port the policy actually recall fewer constituents. Expertise and predispositionwere expected to reduce reliance on limited information, but there is no evidenceof this effect. Indeed, the finding that staff members rely on an incomplete subsetof information about their constituents is remarkably robust.

Although the benefit of using information shortcuts is that it makes assessingthe importance of policy to constituents easier, the cognitive psychology literaturepoints out that there are also potential costs of reliance on the accessibilityheuristic, namely that legislative staff may rely on information that is unrepresen-tative of the complete collection of information about relevant constituents in thedistrict. If staff members use information that systematically favors some typesof constituents over others, then they are likely to make biased judgments aboutconstituents. Therefore, given the evidence that legislative elites use incompleteinformation, the next question is whether this information is also biased.

Table 2. Average Number of Relevant Constituencies Seen by Legislative Offices

National EnergyPolicy

Wetlands ConservationPolicy

Committee MembershipMember of committee 2.3 1.5Not a member of committee 2.4 1.9

(t = 1.037; p = .30) (t = 3.272; p = .001)Previous Career

Relevant career experience 2 1.7No relevant career experience 2.4 1.7

(t = 1.281; p = .20) (t = -0.158; p = .87)Partisan Predisposition

Party of the President (Rep) 2.4 1.4Opposing Party (Dem) 2.4 2

(t = 0.00; p = 1.0) (t = 5.119; p < 0.001)

Two-tailed differences of means tests presented in italics.NB: Maximum of 10 relevant constituencies for national energy policy and six relevantconstituencies for wetlands conservation policy.

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Accessibility and Biased Information

In order to examine whether legislative staff members rely on informationthat is systematically biased in favor of some constituents over others, the focuschanges from explaining the number of constituents recalled to understandingwhy a given staff members recalls information about a particular constituency.Drawing on the psychology literature, four factors are hypothesized to affect theaccessibility of information about a constituency: frequency of information, famil-iarity of information, salience of information, and predisposition towards infor-mation. The first factor that affects the accessibility of information is the frequencywith which it is encountered (e.g., Carlston & Smith, 1996; Higgins & King,1981). Information that an individual comes across more frequently is more easilyaccessible and therefore more likely to be used when making decisions. Theunderlying mechanism of this increased accessibility is the repetition that comeswith frequent contact. As Tversky and Kahneman (1982) note, “that associativebonds are strengthened by repetition is perhaps the oldest law of memory knownto man” (p. 164). Frequency of information is measured with two indicators ofhow many times each legislative staff member was contacted by each relevantconstituency. The first indicator is the amount of mail contact received by thelegislative office from a constituency in the past year.16 The second indicator is acount of the number of personal contacts, including phone calls and personalvisits, the staff member had with each relevant constituency in the precedingtwelve months. Since there are no public records of contact with legislative offices,the data for these two measures come from close-ended forms administered atthe end of each interview.17 Legislative staff are hypothesized to be more likely torecall information about constituents who more frequently contacted the officebecause these contacts increase the accessibility of information about that con-stituency’s interests.

The second factor that affects information accessibility is the familiarityof information because more familiar information is more easily accessible(e.g., Ajzen, 1996; Bruner, 1957). As discussed previously, information can bemore familiar to an individual because of expertise or past experiences. Again,the two indicators of familiarity with the issues and their impact on relevantconstituents are membership on the House Resources Committee and previous

16 There are four response categories used to measure the amount of mail a legislative office receivesfrom a constituency: “none,” “a little,” “some,” and “a lot.”

17 The fact that the dependent variable and the measures of constituency contact are based ondata collected in the interviews raises the possibility of endogeneity. Since there is no alternativesource for this information, all efforts were made to minimize this possibility in the design of theinterviews through thoughtful attention to question order and question format. Furthermore, in allcases the measures of mail and personal contact are correlated with recall of constituents at .32or less.


career experience relevant to energy or environmental policy.18 Although thebivariate analyses indicate that committee membership and previous career expe-rience do not increase the number of constituents recalled, the question hereis whether familiarity increases the likelihood that information about a givenconstituency is recalled. Committee membership and previous experience arehypothesized to increase familiarity with the relevant constituents, which in turnincreases the accessibility of information about constituents.19

The salience of the information is the third factor that may determinethe accessibility of information about constituents. Information is more salientwhen it is particularly vivid or compelling, and as a result, salient informationis more easily accessible and has a greater impact on individuals’ judgments(e.g., Krosnick, 1989; Taylor & Fiske, 1978). Salient information also maybe “overvalued” by staff members, which makes it more likely to be recalled(Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). Salience of information about constituents isconceptualized in terms of the role of money in U.S. congressional politics.Given the escalating costs of congressional campaigns—more than $850 millionwas spent on U.S. House elections in 2006—financial contributions areboth vivid and compelling to a legislative office.20 The salience of informationabout each constituency to each legislative office, therefore, is based on theamount of money contributed by a constituency to a legislative office duringthe previous electoral cycle. The categories used to classify contributions byconstituency are those used by the Center for Responsive Politics, which is anonprofit, independent, nonpartisan organization dedicated to research onmoney in politics.21 Information about a constituency is hypothesized to bemore accessible when the constituency contributed more money to a legislator’scampaign.

The fourth factor believed to affect the accessibility of information is indi-viduals’ preexisting attitudes. Cognitive dissonance theory emphasizes individu-als’ desire for consistency and the subsequent avoidance of dissonant information(e.g., Festinger, 1957; Heider, 1944, 1958). Moreover, there is evidence thatinformation processing is biased in favor of information that is congruent withindividuals’ attitudes (e.g., Eagly & Chaiken, 1998; Sherif & Hovland, 1961).Information about constituents with whom the staff member generally agrees is

18 Indicator variables are used to denote membership on the House Resources Committee and previousprofessional experience in natural resources issues. Data on committee membership are taken fromthe Almanac of American Politics, and data on previous career experience are taken from theCongressional Yellow Book, a directory of Capitol Hill, and supplemented in interviews.

19 An alternate source of institutional familiarity with resources policy is legislative tenure in Congressbecause related issues are likely to have been discussed in previous years. Legislative tenure is a lessprecise measure than the other two measures because it does not capture familiarity with naturalresources issues specifically. In any event, all the analyses are also conducted using legislative tenureand the results are robust.

20 This figure and all data on financial contributions come from the Center for Responsive Politics.21 For further details on the measurement of financial contributions, see Appendix B.

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more easily accessible than information about other constituents in the district.As a result, staff members are expected to be more likely to judge the issue asimportant to like-minded constituents. Parties’ traditional ties with constituenciesare used to measure favorable preexisting attitudes towards constituents (seeBailey & Brady, 1998).22 When legislative staff have shared preferences with aconstituency (as captured by their common partisan leaning), they are more likelyto recall information about that constituency when judging the importance of anissue to the district.

In addition to these four factors that are believed to affect the accessibility ofinformation, the actual size of each relevant constituency in each district is con-sidered as an additional important factor. Legislative staff members may be morelikely to recall information about constituents that are more numerous in theirdistrict. Indeed, it is reasonable to expect that a staff member who represents adistrict with 15,000 sportsmen is more likely to recall information about sports-men’s interest in wetlands conservation policy than a staff member who repre-sents a district with only 1,500 sportsmen. Put differently, the size of theconstituency captures its demographic relevance to the legislative office. Thenumber of district residents associated with each constituency is calculated basedon data from the U.S. Census Bureau. For example, the size of the oil and gassubconstituency relevant to the energy policy is measured by the number ofindividuals in a given district employed in all oil and gas sectors (see Appendix Bfor further details).

Given the issue specificity of the congressional context, the accessibility ofinformation recalled by legislative staff for each issue is analyzed separately usingmultivariate estimation. The dependent variable indicates whether a given staffmember recalls a given subconstituency in response to the open-ended questionabout to whom in their district the given issue is important. The data are organizedas dyads so that each observation is a staff member-constituency dyad (or pairing).In the case of national energy policy, there are 400 observations (40 legislativeoffices ¥ 10 relevant constituencies), and in the case of wetlands conservationpolicy, there are 246 observations (41 legislative offices ¥ 6 relevant constituen-cies).23 Since each staff member can recall information about more than oneconstituency, the assumption of independent observations common to many esti-mators is violated. Therefore, a hierarchical linear model (HLM) is used to esti-mate the information that is more accessible, and hence recalled by staff members.This specification provides for variation across staff members and districts, as well

22 The following constituencies are coded as being traditionally tied with the Democratic party:environmentalists, consumers, labor unions, renewable energies, and state and local governments.Businesses, developers, sportsmen, agriculture, veterans, mining, utilities, and the oil and gasconstituencies are coded as being traditionally tied with the Republican party.

23 One interview was conducted only regarding wetlands conservation policy because the staff memberwas not involved on national energy policy.


as variation among the constituencies within each district, thereby capturing themultilevel structure of the data.24

The estimated results of the two parallel HLM models of legislative staffmembers’ recall of information about constituents’ interests are presented inTable 3. The set of parameter estimates indicate the impact of each independentvariable on the likelihood that a staff member recalls a given constituency asinterested in the specified policy.

24 The HLM employed is a random effects model, which is distinguished from typical multipleregression models by the inclusion of explanatory variables at both levels of the model—constituency and staff member—and an error term for each of the two levels. Since the dependentvariable is dichotomous, a logit function is specified when estimating the models.

Table 3. Legislative Free Recall of Relevant Constituents: Logit Results for theHierarchical Linear Model

National Energy BillLikelihood of

Constituency Recall

Wetlands ConservationLikelihood of

Constituency Recall

Frequency of InformationMail Contact from Constituency 0.832*** 0.241

(0.186) (0.198)Personal Contact from Constituency 0.085*** 0.157***

(0.027) (0.054)Familiarity of InformationMembership on Committee of Jurisdiction -0.001 -0.258

(0.275) (0.312)Shared Professional Experience -0.470 -0.676

(0.591) (0.446)Salience of InformationContributions (in $1000s) 0.003*** 0.004**

(0.001) (0.002)Predisposition towards InformationTraditional Partisan Ties 0.426 0.361

(0.279) (0.310)Constituency Size (in 1000s) 0.013*** -0.002

(0.005) (0.001)Constant -3.988 -1.560

(0.502) (0.444)N 390 240Wald Chi-squared (7) 60.28 25.46p > chi-squared 0.000 0.001Panel-level variance (su) 0.001 0.001

(0.477) (0.224)

Robust standard errors in parentheses: *p < .10, **p < .05, ***p < .01 (two-tailed test)NB: Dependent variable is measured using free recall.

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The results presented in Table 3 show that information is more accessibleto legislative staff when it is frequently encountered and when it is salient. First,staff members are more likely to recall information about constituents when thoseconstituents frequently contact the legislative office to make their preferencesknown. The coefficient estimates for personal contact and mail contact are posi-tively signed for both issues, and three of the four estimates are statisticallysignificant.25 Put differently, legislative elites are systematically less likely to recallthe interests of constituents relevant to a policy issue if those constituents do notactively contact the office to make their voice heard. These findings support theexpectation in the psychology literature that repeated exposure to informationincreases the accessibility of that information, thereby making frequently encoun-tered information more influential when staff members assess their constituents.

This relationship also is substantively important because the informationabout constituents that is recalled serves as the basis for how legislators and theirstaff represent their constituents on Capitol Hill. One implication is that theproverbial squeaky wheel gets the grease when it comes to how legislative elitesassess the importance of policy issues to their district. If constituents who contactthe legislative office care more about the issue, then the fact that staff members aremore likely to recall their interests may not raise normative concerns. Such aconclusion, however, assumes that contact is an accurate indicator of the impor-tance of issues to constituents and that all constituents are equally able to maketheir interests known. In fact, the literatures on citizen participation and interestgroups suggest that this is not the case because political resources are not evenlydistributed among constituents (e.g., Schattschneider, 1960; Verba, Schlozman, &Brady, 1995) and interest groups are likely to mobilize citizens to engage in thesetactics (e.g., Kollman, 1998; Rosenstone & Hansen, 1993). As a result, the factthat constituency-initiated contact increases the recall of information used by staffmembers raises normative concerns familiar to critics of interest groups and alsosheds new light on the importance of political participation for constituencyrepresentation in Congress.

The second key finding is that staff members are more likely to recall infor-mation about constituents that is made salient by financial contributions to thelegislator’s campaign. The salience of information has a positive and statisticallysignificant effect on the likelihood that a staff member recalls a given constituencywhen judging the importance of resources policy to the district. These findingssupport the cognitive psychology-based expectation that using the accessibilityheuristic can result in reliance on information that is not representative of the fulluniverse of relevant information. Additionally, the substantive implications raise

25 The relationship between staff recall of constituents’ interests and mail contact regarding wetlandsconservation policy does not achieve conventional levels of statistical significance, but this is likelyto due to the overall low levels of mail contact on this issue. Staff members reported that constituentsfocused on personal forms of contact when interacting with legislative offices on wetlands conser-vation policy.


normative concerns because they indicate that legislative staff members are morelikely to recall the relevance of an issue to wealthy constituents as compared torelevant constituents with more modest resources. The existing literature onmoney in congressional politics provides competing evidence about the influenceof contributions on legislative behavior. Some studies find that money does not buylegislators’ votes (e.g., Grenzke, 1989; Wawro, 2001), but other studies concludethat contributions affect legislators’ nonvoting activity (e.g., Esterling, 2007; Hall& Wayman, 1990). The finding that money increases the likelihood that legislativestaff identify an issue as important to a constituency supports the latter body ofwork and adds to the growing sense that the impact of money in Congress may beits influence on the myriad decisions made beyond the limelight of the roll-callvote.

In sum, there is strong evidence that staff members rely on accessible infor-mation about their constituents, which is more efficient than seeking out exhaus-tive information. However, the information recalled by legislative staff membersis not only incomplete, but also is a systematically unrepresentative subset ofthe relevant information about constituents. As a result, the accessibility heuristicintroduces bias to the process of constituency representation because staffmembers are systematically more likely to judge issues to be important to activeand wealthy constituents over other constituents. Although beyond the scope ofthis paper, a further implication of legislative elites’ truncated view of theirconstituents is the possibility that when constituents are not on staff members’proverbial “radar screens” they become unlikely to be represented later in thepolicymaking process (Miler, 2010). Overall, then, the findings raise significantconcerns about legislative elites’ reliance on a biased subset of information aboutconstituents in their district.

Assessing the Limitations of Accessible Information

The potential for biased judgments is noted by scholars as a weakness ofcognitive heuristics, and it is often believed that judgments based on more com-prehensive information are less likely to be flawed (e.g., Kuklinski & Hurley,1994; Lau & Redlawsk, 2001). Since there is evidence of bias in legislative elites’use of the accessibility heuristic, this raises the question of whether elites’ judg-ments differ when they are provided with information as compared to when theyrely on free recall. In real-world terms, how might legislative staff members’judgments of their constituents change if they were less reliant on accessibleinformation? In order to answer this question, a second measure of staff members’assessment of the importance of resources policy to constituents is examined. Thismeasure is based on more complete information and provides a marker againstwhich to measure the judgments drawn from accessible information.

A quasi-experiment is incorporated in the interviews with staff members,which allows for the comparison of staff members’ recall of the district’s interests

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based on accessible information with their recognition of district interests whenprovided with information about the relevant constituents. At the end of theinterviews, close-ended forms are employed to gather information about staffmembers’ judgments about how important the issue is to a list of constituents.26

The list on the form corresponds to the list of constituents identified as relevantto the specified policy and respondents are given four response categories:“not important,” “somewhat important,” “important,” and “very important.” This“experiment” asks the staff member to recognize the importance of an issue toidentified constituencies, which is a distinct—and cognitively easier—task thanthe free recall of information. Although the recall task better approximates thereality of congressional representation (since staff members do not receive lists ofrelevant constituencies when judging the interests of the district), the incorporationof the recognition task provides unique leverage on understanding the limitationsof the accessibility heuristic.

There is strong evidence that staff members have a more complete view oftheir district when given information about constituents relevant to resourcespolicies. Without exception, staff members identify a greater number of constitu-ents in their district to whom national energy policy and wetlands conservation areimportant than they did when making judgments based on accessible information.In the case of the energy bill, staff members identify 24% of constituents whenrelying on recalled information, but report the issue to be important to an averageof 74% of constituents when provided with a list of relevant constituencies.27

Similarly, staff members recall 28% of constituents in their district to whomwetlands conservation policy is important when the open-ended question is asked,but report the issue to be important to 65% of constituents when provided with alist of relevant constituents.28

The bivariate analyses, however, tell only part of the story. When legislativeelites rely on accessible information, their assessments of the district are bothincomplete and biased. The above discussion reveals that when staff members aregiven information, their judgments are more complete, but are they still biased?Reestimating the model with a new dependent variable based on staff members’responses to the close-ended version of the question allows for an examination ofwhether the patterns of bias are mitigated when staff members are provided withmore thorough information. The dependent variable used here is whether staffmembers identify the issue as being “important” or “very important” to each listedrelevant constituency. The estimated results of the model for energy policy andwetlands policy are presented in Table 4.

26 This form is always administered after the open-ended question so as not to influence staff members’spontaneous recall of constituents in response to the open-ended probe.

27 The “important” and “very important” categories on the close-ended form are combined whencalculating these statistics. The patterns are robust when using only “very important” responses andthe combined measure is used because it better mirrors the open-ended prompt.

28 For both issues, these differences are significant at p < .0001.


One important finding is that the frequency of exposure to information hasa positive and statistically significant impact on staff members’ assessments ofthe district in all four instances. Legislative staff remain more likely to judge anissue to be important to constituents who contact the office more frequently evenwhen they are provided with a list of relevant constituents. In the congressionalcontext, then, the repetition of information conveyed through letters, phone calls,and meetings helps active constituents to influence the way that legislative elitesconceive of the interests of the district. The robustness of this relationship acrossthe two types of information processing is striking and suggests that repeatedexposure to information is indeed a powerful factor in understanding how elitesuse information when assessing constituents’ interests.

The key difference between Tables 3 and 4 concerns the salience of informa-tion. When staff members are provided with a list of constituents to whom the

Table 4. Legislative Recognition of Importance of Issue to Identified Constituents: Logit Resultsfor the Hierarchical Linear Model

National Energy BillLikelihood Issue is Important

to Constituency

Wetlands ConservationLikelihood Issue is Important

to Constituency

Frequency of InformationMail Contact from Constituency 0.910*** 1.205***

(0.182) (0.313)Personal Contact from Constituency 0.127*** 0.267**

(0.047) (0.135)Familiarity of InformationMembership on Committee ofJurisdiction

0.302 0.864(0.334) (0.557)

Shared Professional Experience 0.094 0.412(0.555) (0.492)

Salience of InformationContributions (in $1000s) 0.002 0.002

(0.001) (0.004)Predisposition towards InformationTraditional Partisan Ties 0.415 0.224

(0.297) (0.400)Constituency Size (in 1000s) -0.019*** -0.007***

(0.004) (0.002)Constant -0.804 -1.033

(0.369) (0.617)N 390 240Wald Chi-squared (8) 63.60 34.86p > chi-squared 0.000 0.001Panel-level variance (su) 0.547 1.078

(0.275) (0.380)

Robust standard errors in parentheses: *p < .10, **p < .05, ***p < .01 (two-tailed test)NB: Dependent variable is measured using close-ended forms.

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issue may be important, the salience of information does not influence to whichconstituents they judge the issue to be relevant. In contrast, when staff membersfreely recall information about constituents to whom the issue is important, theyrely on information made more accessible by its salience. These findings illustratehow a change in the underlying information processing task from recall to recog-nition can produce systematically different judgments. However, given that recalltasks figure more prominently in the daily routines of Capitol Hill, the overallfindings suggest that money affects legislative staff members’ view of their dis-trict’s interests. In other words, although the provision of information to staffmembers reduces the influence of financial contributions, making such informa-tion available is not common practice on Capitol Hill. Therefore, the findingscontinue to raise normative concerns that legislative elites often fall short of abasic, yet fundamental, standard for political representation—legislative elitesshould at least be aware of the interests of the constituents they represent.

The influence of salient information on legislative elites’ judgments alsohas implications for the broader question of the role of money in congressionalpolitics. As noted earlier, the literature offers contrasting assessments of theinfluence of financial contributions on legislative behavior (e.g., Grenzke, 1989;Hall & Wayman, 1990), and the results presented here provide further evidence ofthe complexity of this relationship. On the one hand, there is evidence that moneyinfluences legislative judgments when staff members rely on recalled information.On the other hand, there is no evidence that this influence persists when staffmembers are provided with information about their district. Consequently, thisresearch suggests that the effects of money vary not only by the type of legislativebehavior examined (i.e., voting or nonvoting activities), but also by the nature ofthe information task involved.

Conclusion

Legislative staff members rely on the accessibility heuristic when makingjudgments about the interests of constituents in their district. The use of thiscognitive heuristic makes the task manageable, but it also results in an incompleteand systematically unrepresentative view of constituents’ policy interests. Staffmembers recall only a small subset of the relevant constituents in their district towhom an issue is important, and this subset is systematically biased in favor ofactive and wealthy constituents. Consequently, staff members’ assessments aboutthe importance of policies to their district favor the interests of some constituentsover the interests of other, equally relevant constituents. Inequality in constituencyrepresentation is not new, but by turning to the psychology literature on heuristics,this research identifies a different mechanism by which bias occurs. The congres-sional and interest group literatures examine inequality in representation by focus-ing on the decisions legislators make, especially how those decisions can beaffected by contributions and lobbying. In contrast, this paper contends that much


occurs before a legislator engages in the political calculations of how to cast a vote.These earlier steps when legislative elites judge the interests of the constituents inthe district are an important part of understanding constituency representation.

Changing the cognitive task from a difficult, albeit common one in whichelites use heuristics (i.e., recall of constituents to whom a policy is relevant) to aneasier cognitive task (i.e., recognition of the importance of a policy to a providedlist of constituents) reveals both the shortcomings of reliance on the accessibilityheuristic and the improvements that result from using more thorough information.First, changes in legislative staff members’ use of information do not diminish theinfluence of frequently encountered information on their judgments about theimportance of issues to constituents. Constituents who contact the legislative officemore frequently are more likely to shape staff members’ view of the interests ofthe district. At first, this bias does not appear to be good for representativedemocracy because constituents who actively write, call, or visit congressionaloffices are unlikely to be representative of all constituents to whom a policy isimportant. However, contacting a legislative office is a form of political action withrelatively low barriers to participation, especially when compared to makingfinancial contributions. As a result, there is some promise in this finding becauseit suggests that increased civic participation makes a difference, and constituents,even those that lack financial resources or are not part of organized interest groups,should be encouraged to contact their congressional office.

Second, although the provision of information about constituents does notcompletely eliminate the potential for biased judgments due to reliance on heu-ristics, the findings are encouraging. Legislative elites’ judgments about theimportance of issues to their constituents are significantly more complete whenthey do not rely on freely recalled information. Additionally, when legislativeelites use more comprehensive information rather than relying on shortcuts likethe accessibility heuristic, the influence of financial contributions on constitu-ency representation is reduced. A reduced role of money in congressional poli-tics is normatively desirable because constituents who can afford to makefinancial contributions are unlikely to be representative of all constituents. Iflegislative elites can be encouraged to use more thorough information, they willbe more likely to see all of their constituents, and this will help to movecongressional representation closer to the ideal of equal representation for allconstituents.

In sum, this paper contributes to the existing literature on information pro-cessing and the accessibility heuristic in several ways. By examining legislativestaff members on Capitol Hill, this research expands our understanding of howindividuals use information to include political elites. Additionally, the focus onhow the accessibility heuristic affects the process by which legislative elites assessthe importance of policy issues to their constituents demonstrates the power ofcognitive psychology to illuminate the mechanisms of constituency representa-tion. Lastly, this information-based approach provides new insights into biases in

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constituency representation by focusing on the information about constituents thatis recalled and recognized by legislative elites.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank Todd Allee, Jim Kuklinski, Rick Hall, SashaHuber, Don Kinder, Ken Kollman, Norbert Schwarz, Dustin Tingley, and the threeanonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. This research was funded in partby the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0213959. Correspondenceconcerning this article should be sent to Kristina C. Miler, University of Illinois,240 CAB, 605 E. Springfield Ave, MC-452, Champaign, IL 61820. E-mail:[email protected]

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APPENDIX A

Table A.1. Partisan Distribution in the U.S. House of Representatives, 107th Congress vs. Sample

Republicans Democrats

Full House (n = 435) 51% 49%Resources sample (n = 41) 49% 51%Resources Committee (n = 52) 54% 46%Resources Committee Sample (n = 21) 52% 48%

Table A.2. Average Career Tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives, 107th Congress vs. Sample

Republicans Democrats

Full House (n = 435) 5.2 terms 5.8 termsResources sample (n = 41) 5.4 terms 5.6 termsResources Committee (n = 52) 4.9 terms 5.8 termsResources Sample (n = 21) 5.4 terms 5.9 terms


Table A.3. Regional Distribution of House Members by Party, 107th Congress vs. Sample

East South Midwest Southwest & West California

Republican Full House (n = 222) 18% 29% 26% 19% 9%Republican Resources Sample (n = 20) 15% 20% 20% 30% 15%Democratic Full House (n = 213) 27% 18% 23% 17% 15%Democratic Resources Sample (n = 21) 33% 14% 29% 19% 14%

APPENDIX B

Measurement of Constituency Size: Constituency size is measured by thenumber of individuals residing in the district who are identified as part of a givenconstituency.

Consumers: The primary measure is the number of district residents in poverty,since lower income citizens are more vulnerable to changes in energy costs. Thesedata are taken from the U.S. Census Bureau, 2000 Census, and the Almanac ofAmerican Politics. For purposes of robustness, an alternate measure is used basedon the district population.Environmentalists: The number of Sierra Club members in each congressionaldistrict. The source of these data is membership records obtained from the SierraClub headquarters.Utility industry: The primary measure is the total number of individuals in thedistrict employed by the utility industry based on employment in “fossil fuelelectric power generation” (NAICS code 221112), and “electric power transmis-sion, control, and distribution” (NAICS code 22112). These data are obtainedfrom the U.S. Census Bureau, 2001 County Business Patterns (NAICS). Forpurposes of robustness, an alternate measure is used based on the number ofindividuals in the district employed in the broader utility industry (NAICS code22). Note: The U.S. Census Bureau provides data on industry employment at thecounty level and they are converted to district level data based on county-to-congressional district maps.Veterans: The number of veterans in each congressional district. The source ofthese data is the U.S. Census Bureau, 2000 Census.Business: The number of individuals employed in manufacturing industries(NAICS code 31). Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2001 County Business Patterns(NAICS).Labor: The number of union members in the district. Data on “union affiliation ofemployed wage and salary workers by state” are taken from the Bureau of LaborStatistics, U.S. Department of Labor. Note: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statisticsonly provides these data at the state level and they are converted to a district levelmeasure based on the number of districts in a state.

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Oil and gas producers: The total number of individuals in the district employed inthe oil and gas industry based on “oil and gas mining” (NAICS code 211), “drillingsupport employment” (NAICS code 213111), “oil and gas support employment”(NAICS code 213112), and “natural gas distribution” (NAICS code 2212). Source:U.S. Census Bureau, 2001 County Business Patterns (NAICS).Mining industry: The total number of individuals in the district employed in themining industry based on “coal mining” (NAICS code 2121) and “coal supportemployment” (NAICS code 213113). Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2001 CountyBusiness Patterns (NAICS).Native Americans: The number of Native Americans in each congressional districtas reported by the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2000 Census.Renewable energy producers: The total number of individuals in the districtemployed in the renewable energy industry based on employment in “hydroelec-tric power generation” (NAICS code 221111) and “other electric power genera-tion” (NAICS code 221119). Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2001 County BusinessPatterns (NAICS).Sportsmen: The number of Ducks Unlimited members in each congressionaldistrict. The source of these data is state membership records from the DucksUnlimited organization, which are converted to district-level based on the numberof districts in the state.State and local government: The primary measure of this constituency is thenumber of state and local government employees in the district taken from the U.S.Census Bureau, 2001 Public Employee Data. For purposes of robustness, analternate measure is used based on the number of parks and resources departmentemployees in the state divided by the number of districts in the state. Source: U.S.Census Bureau, 2001 Public Employee Data.Farmers: The number of individuals (16 and older) in the district employed in“farming, fishing, and forestry occupations” taken from the U.S. Census Bureau,2000 Census.Local residents: The population of the district. Source: Almanac of AmericanPolitics.Developers: The number of individuals in the district employed in the constructionsector (NAICS 23) in the district taken from the U.S. Census Bureau, 2001 CountyBusiness Patterns (NAICS).

Measurement of Financial Contributions: Data on financial contributions froma constituency to a legislative office during the 1999–2000 election cycle are takenfrom the Center for Responsive Politics (www.opensecrets.org). The categoriesused in classifying contributors are those used by the Center for ResponsivePolitics (CRP), and noted in quotation marks. In the few cases where the CRP didnot provide an appropriate category, alternate classifications were used.

Consumers: Dollar amount of contributions over $200 from individuals in-state.


Environmentalists: Dollar amount of contributions from the “environment” sector.Utilities: Dollar amount of contributions from “electric utilities.”Veterans: Dollar amount of contributions from the Retired Enlisted Associationand the Veterans of Foreign Wars.Business: Dollar amount of contributions from the “business” sector.Labor: Dollar amount of contributions from “labor unions.”Oil and gas producers: Dollar amount of contributions from the “oil and gas”industry.Mining industries: Dollar amount of contributions from the “mining” industry and“coal mining” industry.Native Americans: Dollar amount of contributions from individuals who are iden-tified with the Native American community (as determined by keywords: Indian,Native, Tribe, Tribal in the domain of donor name or donor’s employer).Renewable energy producers: Dollar amount of contributions from the “alternativeenergy production” sector.Sportsmen: Dollar amount of contributions from the “gun rights” sector.State and local government: Dollar amount of contributions from individuals whoidentified a city, county, or state government as their employer and the AmericanFederation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).Farmers: Dollar amount of contributions from the “crop production and basicprocessing” sector.Local residents: Dollar amount of contributions over $200 from individualsin-state.Developers: Dollar amount of contributions from the “construction” industry.

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The Limitations of Heuristics for Political Elites

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