People differ in their lay theories about how and why the financial well-being of individuals changes over time or varies between individuals. We introduce a measure of Causal Attributions of Financial Uncertainty-the CAFU scale-and find that such attributions can be described reliably along three distinct dimensions, respectively capturing the extent to which changes in financial well-being are perceived to be: (a) knowable and within individuals' control due to individual factors such as effort ("Rewarding"); (b) knowable and outside of individuals' control due to factors such as favoritism and discrimination ("Rigged"); and (c) inherently unpredictable and determined by chance events ("Random"). In a sample representative of the U.S. population on various demographic characteristics (N = 1,102), we find that differences in these beliefs are associated with political ideology, revealing a predicted pattern: conservatives scored higher on the Rewarding subscale and liberals scored higher on the Rigged and Random subscales, even when controlling for key demographics. Moreover, we find that these three dimensions predict responses to different policy messages, even when controlling for political ideology. In three preregistered experiments (combined N = 2,560), we observe increased support for various social welfare policies when we highlighted aspects of these policies that are compatible with people's beliefs about financial well-being. Likewise, we observe increased support for political candidates when they expressed their positions in a way that is compatible with people's beliefs. Thus, this work can help better understand drivers of political attitudes and guide in crafting more persuasive policy messages. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

---

外行的财务福利理论预测政治和政策信息偏好。

人们对于个人的财务状况如何以及为什么会随时间变化或因人而异的非专业理论存在差异。我们引入了一种衡量财务不确定性因果归因的方法——CAFU 量表——并发现这种归因可以在三个不同的维度上可靠地描述，分别捕捉财务状况变化被认为是：(a) 可知的程度由于个人因素（如努力）而在个人控制范围内（“奖励”）；(b) 由于偏袒和歧视等因素（“被操纵”）而可知且不受个人控制；(c) 本质上不可预测并由偶然事件（“随机”）决定。在代表美国人口的各种人口特征（N = 1,102）的样本中，我们发现这些信念的差异与政治意识形态有关，揭示了一种预测模式：即使在控制关键人口统计数据的情况下，保守派在奖励分量表上得分更高，而自由派在操纵和随机分量表上得分更高。此外，我们发现这三个维度预测了对不同政策信息的反应，即使在控制政治意识形态的情况下也是如此。在三个预先注册的实验中（合并 N = 2,560），当我们强调这些政策与人们对财务福利的信念相一致的方面时，我们观察到对各种社会福利政策的支持有所增加。同样，我们观察到，当政治候选人以符合人们信仰的方式表达自己的立场时，他们对他们的支持就会增加。因此，这项工作可以帮助更好地了解政治态度的驱动因素，并指导制定更有说服力的政策信息。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2022 APA，保留所有权利）。