Attention and political choice: a foundation for eye tracking in political science

Jenke, Libby and Sullivan, Nikki ORCID: 0000-0003-0313-3856 (2025) Attention and political choice: a foundation for eye tracking in political science. Political Analysis. ISSN 1047-1987 (In Press)

Text (EyeTrack_online (1)) - Accepted Version Pending embargo until 1 January 2100. Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (4MB)

Abstract

Most political science studies are, at root, about how people make decisions—how voters choose whether and for whom to vote, how prejudice influences political choices, and the effects of emotions and morals on political choice. However, what people are thinking during these decisions remains obscure; currently utilized methods leave us with a “black box” of decision making. Eye tracking offers a deeper insight into these processes by capturing respondents’ attention, salience, emotion, and understanding. But how applicable is this method to political science questions, and how does one go about using it? Here, we explain what eye tracking allows researchers to measure, how these measures are relevant to political science questions, and how political scientists without expertise in the method can nonetheless use it effectively. In particular, we clarify how researchers can understand the choices made in preset software in order to arrive at correct inferences from their data and discuss new developments in eye tracking methodology, including webcam eye tracking. We additionally provide templates for preregistering eye tracking studies in political science, as well as starter code for processing and analyzing eye tracking data.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2025 The Author(s)
Divisions:	Management
Subjects:	J Political Science H Social Sciences B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Date Deposited:	25 Mar 2025 15:18
Last Modified:	25 Mar 2025 16:06
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/127639

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