Modeling Attitudinal Arguments in Political Elections in Terms of psychological Concept of Involvement

In a psychological perspective, voting as a political behavior can be considered as expressing social attitude in political settings. These political attitudes are revealed by arguments rooting from the level of involvements which, in turn, are raised from and directed by the participants’ needs and ideals. Two functions of attitudes have been proposed; utilitarian function and value-expressive function, which, accordingly, produce two kinds of involvements: outcome relevant involvement and value relevant involvement. In a qualitative research, 345 participants who had participated in at least one period of presidential election, were interviewed about their participation reasons, motivations, and the expectations from elected president. Over 3000 statements as arguments were gathered and analyzed for variables in question. 609 arguments were extracted and fitted in to a two by two table, according to types and levels of involvements. Results showed a pattern of argumentative orientation can be distinguished. The orientations are called as, Expertise, Committed, Need Seeking, and the Character-driven. These orientations seek civil demands, cultural-ideological demands, economy-living demands, and psychological demands, accordingly.