Costs and Benefits of a Market-Based Model of Ideological Choice: Responding to Consumers and Critics

Abstract In a target article, we introduced a formal decision-making model of ideological choice to understand how individuals choose among alternatives in electoral contexts in which multiple parties and candidates compete to address voters’ material and psychological needs. In this rejoinder we respond to very thoughtful comments by Eibach; McDermott; Zmigrod; Molnar & Loewenstein, and Osborne, Satherley & Sibley. We also seek to correct a number of misrepresentations of the current state of knowledge in political psychology based on a few of the commentaries, especially that of Costello, Clark, and Tetlock. Finally, we revisit thorny questions of rationality and irrationality in the market for belief systems.