Immediate Context, Culture, and Selective Attention： The Perceptions of Long-term Petitioners

Abstract

This article draws upon cognitive sociology to examine the phenomenon of long-term petitioners in China. Petitioners form a particular kind of selective attention of their petitioning activities. Their selective attention is shaped by the institutional arrangements of the petitioning system, the cultural repertoire, and the immediate context they are located in as petitioners. These processes of selective attention lead to biased cognition of their petitioning activities. They consider petitioning to be an activity that has extremely high expected economic returns and extremely high sunk cost if quits, is backed up by mainstream discourses, and has the opportunities to elevate their self-esteem. These perceptions provide psychological and cognitive motivations for their petitioning strategies, and consequently sustain their long-term behavior. Cognition is not just an individual process, but also socially contingent. Immediate context and the cultural background in which individuals are located in influence which kinds of information will be selectively ignored or attended to. 基于上訪戶所處的特定情境,如有關上訪的制度安排、上訪戶圈子的支持及其個人生活處境等,長期上訪的個人對上訪行為以及預期結果形成了特定形式的'選擇性注意',這種選擇性注意導致他們對上訪行為有著特殊認知,從而為他們的行為策略提供心理及話語支持,使長達十幾年甚至更久的上訪行為在他們看來是正確的、正義的、理性的選擇。這種認知包括:極高的預期回報、極高的退出沉沒成本、話語上的優勢和抗爭過程中實現的個人價值提升。選擇性注意形成的認知偏差固然是人類認知的基本特點,但是制度環境和文化體系則在很大程度上影響了人們選擇去注意哪些信息,而另外一些信息則被有意或者無意地忽略。