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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Soc. Psychol.
Sec. Attitudes, Social Justice and Political Psychology
Volume 3 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frsps.2025.1448677
This article is part of the Research Topic Social and Political Psychological Perspectives on Global Threats to Democracy View all 8 articles
Role of Ideology and the Media in Promoting Familiarity and Trust in Political Decisions: The Case of Argentina's 2019 Elections
Provisionally accepted- 1 Institute of Physiology, Molecular Biology and Neurosciences, National Council for Scientific and Technical Research, Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- 2 Psychology Faculty, Buenos Aires University, CABA, Argentina
- 3 National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina
wing", a reactive form of political polarization. Although many works have studied the phenomenon of political polarization, most of them focus on the United States and Europe. Previously, we have shown how repetition of information or association with positive content can cognitively induce political election of certain candidates.We assess whether Familiarity and Trust can be predictors of voting during the 2019 Argentinean elections, as a case study. Previously, we generated two databases from surveys conducted during the 2019 Argentinean presidential elections (P.A.S.O. elections: 2255 participants; general elections: 1418 participants). A logistic regression model was used to predict the probability of choosing a given candidate using Familiarity and Trust of each candidate or consumed media outlets as predictor variables (features). We also evaluate voting communities in a cluster analysis associated with ideological self-perception or media consumption.Results and discussion: Our results show that both Familiarity and Trust are key predictors of candidate choice, being social variables of political interest to manipulate. We find key links between these factors and ideology, media consumption and candidate choice. Here we discuss our results in light of the effects of the two-party system, ideology, the role of the media and their cognitive effects in favouring political polarization. The persistence of these mechanisms only serves to erode people's freedoms, damaging relations between different groups and the democratic system in general.
Keywords: Familiarity, Trust, media, Ideology, Democracy, Two-party, Political polarization, Argentine Elections
Received: 09 Jul 2024; Accepted: 31 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zapata, Alves Salgueiro and Fernandez Larrosa. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Pablo Nicolas Fernandez Larrosa, National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina
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