Competition is a defining element of democracy. One of the most noteworthy events over the last quarter-century in U.S. politics is the change in the nature of elite party competition: The parties ...have become increasingly polarized. Scholars and pundits actively debate how these elite patterns influence polarization among the public (e.g., have citizens also become more ideologically polarized?). Yet, few have addressed what we see as perhaps more fundamental questions: Has elite polarization altered the way citizens arrive at their policy opinions in the first place and, if so, in what ways? We address these questions with a theory and two survey experiments (on the issues of drilling and immigration). We find stark evidence that polarized environments fundamentally change how citizens make decisions. Specifically, polarization intensifies the impact of party endorsements on opinions, decreases the impact of substantive information and, perhaps ironically, stimulates greater confidence in those—less substantively grounded—opinions. We discuss the implications for public opinion formation and the nature of democratic competition.
Few trends in science have generated as much discussion as its politicization. This occurs when an actor emphasizes the inherent uncertainty of science to cast doubt on the existence of scientific ...consensus. In this article, we offer a framework that generates predictions about when communications can be used to counteract politicization efforts aimed at novel energy technologies. We then present evidence from nationally representative survey experiments to demonstrate how warnings to dismiss future politicization and corrections to ignore past claims can counteract politicization's effects. The results provide novel insights about science communication in a politicized era and offer a blueprint on which future work can build.
Political parties play a vital role in democracies by linking citizens to their representatives. Nonetheless, a longstanding concern is that partisan identification slants decision-making. Citizens ...may support (oppose) policies that they would otherwise oppose (support) in the absence of an endorsement from a political party—this is due in large part to what is called partisan motivated reasoning where individuals interpret information through the lens of their party commitment. We explore partisan motivated reasoning in a survey experiment focusing on support for an energy law. We identify two politically relevant factors that condition partisan motivated reasoning: (1) an explicit inducement to form an "accurate" opinion, and (2) cross-partisan, but not consensus, bipartisan support for the law. We further provide evidence of how partisan motivated reasoning works psychologically and affects opinion strength. We conclude by discussing the implications of our results for understanding opinion formation and the overall quality of citizens' opinions.
A growing consensus suggests that a cause of support for undemocratic practices and partisan violence is that partisans misperceive the other side. That is, they vastly exaggerate the extent to which ...members of the other party support undemocratic practices and violence. When these misperceptions are corrected, citizens’ own beliefs moderate. I present results from an experiment that show that misperception corrections do not have an effect in the presence of competing information (i.e., that challenges the validity of the correction or offers a conflicting narrative). Basic corrections do not constitute a robust way to counter democratic backsliding stemming from citizens’ misperceptions. The results highlight the need to devise stronger misperception interventions and, more generally, to consider competing information environments when devising any scalable behavioral intervention.
Persuasion is a vital part of politics-who wins elections and policy disputes often depends on which side can persuade more people. Given this centrality, the study of persuasion has a long history ...with an enormous number of theories and empirical inquiries. However, the literature is fragmented, with few generalizable findings. I unify previously disparate dimensions of this topic by presenting a framework focusing on actors (speakers and receivers), treatments (topics, content, media), outcomes (attitudes, behaviors, emotions, identities), and settings (competition, space, time, process, culture). This Generalizing Persuasion (GP) Framework organizes distinct findings and offers researchers a structure in which to situate their work. I conclude with a discussion of the normative implications of persuasion.
Scientists are in near-universal agreement that human activity is a primary cause of climate change. Yet, despite this scientific consensus, the American public remains divided when it comes to ...beliefs about human-induced climate change. We investigate the role of partisan group identity and the politicization of science in undermining the impact of a scientific consensus message about human-induced climate change. We do so with a survey experiment administered on a nationally representative sample, finding that partisan identity—and especially politicization—can stunt the effect of a scientific consensus statement about climate change. We conclude with a discussion about how scientists, as a group, might work with partisans to more effectively communicate scientific information.
The twenty‐first century has been one of democratic backsliding. This has stimulated wide‐ranging scholarship on the causes of democratic erosion. Yet an overarching framework that identifies actors, ...behaviors, and decision processes has not been developed. I offer such a structure that includes elites (e.g., elected officials, the judiciary), societal actors (e.g., social movements, interest groups, media), and citizens. I discuss erosive threats stemming from each actor and the concomitant role of psychological mechanisms. The framework highlights the challenge of arriving at a holistic explanation of erosion within a given country during a finite period. It also accentuates why scholars should regularly consider the implications of their specific findings for democratic stability. I conclude by discussing various lessons and suggestions for how to study democratic backsliding.
Research on political communication effects has enjoyed great progress over the past 25 years. A key ingredient underlying these advances is the increased usage of experiments that demonstrate how ...communications influence opinions and behaviors. Virtually all of these studies pay scant attention to events that occur prior to the experiment—that is, in "pretreatment events." In this article, we explore how and when the pretreatment environment affects experimental outcomes. We present two studies—one where we control the pretreatment environment and one where it naturally occurred—to show how pretreatment effects can influence experimental outcomes. We argue that, under certain conditions, attending to pretreatment dynamics leads to novel insights, including a more accurate portrait of the pliability of the mass public and the identification of potentially two groups of citizens—what we call malleability reactive and dogmatic.
Overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic requires motivating the vast majority of Americans to get vaccinated. However, vaccination rates have become politically polarized, and a substantial proportion of ...Republicans have remained vaccine hesitant for months. Here, we explore how endorsements by party elites affect Republicans’ COVID-19 vaccination intentions and attitudes. In a preregistered survey experiment (
n
= 1,480), we varied whether self-identified Republicans saw endorsements of the vaccine from prominent Republicans (including video of a speech by former President Donald Trump), from the Democratic Party (including video of a speech by President Joseph Biden), or a neutral control condition including no endorsements. Unvaccinated Republicans who were exposed to the Republican elite endorsement reported 7.0% higher vaccination intentions than those who viewed the Democratic elite endorsement and 5.7% higher than those in the neutral control condition. These effects were statistically mediated by participants’ reports of how much they thought Republican politicians would want them to get vaccinated. We also found evidence of backlash effects against Democratic elites: Republicans who viewed the Democratic elite endorsement reported they would be significantly less likely to encourage others to vaccinate and had more negative attitudes toward the vaccine, compared with those who viewed the Republican elite endorsement or the neutral control. These results demonstrate the relative advantage of cues from Republican elites—and the risks of messaging from Democrats currently in power—for promoting vaccination among the largest vaccine-hesitant subgroup in the United States.
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