Closing the Gap: When Do Cues Eliminate Differences between Sophisticated and Unsophisticated Citizens?

Boudreau, Cheryl

doi:10.1017/s0022381609090823

Cited by 108 publications

(68 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Experimental research demonstrates the predictive accuracy of these hypotheses relative to other common explanations of source credibility (53,57). This research takes place in laboratories and in more realistic communication environments.…”

Section: Source Credibility In Politicized Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 82%

Communicating science in politicized environments

Lupia

2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

149

130

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Many members of the scientific community attempt to convey information to policymakers and the public. Much of this information is ignored or misinterpreted. This article describes why these outcomes occur and how science communicators can achieve better outcomes. The article focuses on two challenges associated with communicating scientific information to such audiences. One challenge is that people have less capacity to pay attention to scientific presentations than many communicators anticipate. A second challenge is that people in politicized environments often make different choices about whom to believe than do people in other settings. Together, these challenges cause policymakers and the public to be less responsive to scientific information than many communicators desire. Research on attention and source credibility can help science communicators better adapt to these challenges. Attention research clarifies when, and to what type of stimuli, people do (and do not) pay attention. Source credibility research clarifies the conditions under which an audience will believe scientists' descriptions of phenomena rather than the descriptions of less-valid sources. Such research can help communicators stay true to their science while making their findings more memorable and more believable to more audiences.embers of the scientific community share a frustration: many attempts to communicate science are badly received (1-4). This frustration is particularly evident in politicized environments: that is, settings where decisions on divisive public issues must be made.These communicative frustrations are salient because many scientists work hard to make socially valuable discoveries. Science can help nonscientists make better decisions. However, scientists often find that their advice is ignored or willfully misinterpreted. This article seeks to help science communicators expand the set of circumstances in which they can achieve better outcomes.In some respects, the difficulty of communicating science to broader audiences is easily explained. Scientists discover new phenomena as well as new relationships among existing phenomena. Describing these discoveries and relationships often requires new language or using existing language in unusual ways. Many nonscientists, however, find our lexicon difficult to access: they see many scientific presentations as needlessly abstract and disconnected from their lives (5, 6). Audiences who see scientific presentations in these ways have less motivation to pay attention to them (7). If such motivations are sufficiently low, seeds for communicative failure are sown.We, as scientists and science communicators, can improve how scientific information is conveyed to policymakers and the public. One way to realize this potential is to build from a social scientific knowledge base that can help communicators develop more realistic expectations about when others will pay attention to us and when they will believe what we write and say. This knowledge base can help science communicators ...

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Section: Source Credibility In Politicized Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 82%

Communicating science in politicized environments

Lupia

2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

149

130

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…While research has shown that voters oftentimes take cues from party leaders (for example , Downs 1957;Druckman 2001aDruckman , 2001b, elections are oftentimes won and lost at the marginal middle ground of independent voters. Undecided and politically sophisticated voters are less likely to take cues from party leaders (Boudreau 2009). While those voters may only represent a minority of the electorate, their influence upon close elections cannot be overstated.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Electoral Salience of Trade Policy: Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Welfare and Complexity

Taylor

2014

International Interactions

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Why do some trade policies become electorally salient while others do not? While much of the literature argues that citizens act as a domestic constraint in the formation of trade policy, a general consensus has emerged that trade is most often a nonsalient issue among voters. This poses a paradox. On the one hand, trade models hinge upon voters' rational self-interest and preferences for varying levels of protectionism to keep their governments accountable. On the other hand, the conditions by which trade becomes salient to these very voters in the first place are both undertheorized and untested. Using experimental evidence, I argue that two dimensions of a trade policy affect the likelihood of that issue becoming electorally salient. First, policies with large welfare effects should be more salient. Second, more complex issues should be less salient because such agreements are more likely to obfuscate an individual's ability to discern its effects. I find support for my hypotheses that a trade policy's salience tends to increase with the magnitude of its welfare effects and decrease with its complexity.

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“…Do you prefer Mar over Lee or Lee over Mar? '' 14 This treatment was motivated by research showing that endorsements help citizens make informed decisions (Lupia 1994;Lupia and McCubbins 1998;Boudreau 2009a) and, in particular, by Elmendorf and Schleicher's (2013) proposal to label candidates for down-ticket local offices with mayoral endorsements on ballots. 15 (The mayor did not make an endorsement in the Mar-Lee race, but these two public officials of similar stature did.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Informing Electorates via Election Law: An Experimental Study of Partisan Endorsements and Nonpartisan Voter Guides in Local Elections

BoudreauCheryl¹,

ElmendorfChristopher²,

MacKenzieScott³

2015

Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy

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Many legal scholars and political practitioners advocate using election law to increase voters' access to political information, either by providing such information directly on ballots or in ballot pamphlets. To date, however, little empirical evidence exists to guide policymakers and judges charged with weighing the benefits of such legal interventions against any costs they might impose. We address this gap by conducting survey experiments to examine three types of political information that legal interventions can make available or withhold: political party endorsements, endorsements from prominent public officials, and a nonpartisan voter guide describing candidates' policy positions. Our results provide evidence that such legal interventions can yield tangible benefits-namely, helping voters choose candidates whose policy views are similar to their own.

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Closing the Gap: When Do Cues Eliminate Differences between Sophisticated and Unsophisticated Citizens?

Cited by 108 publications

References 22 publications

Communicating science in politicized environments

Communicating science in politicized environments

The Electoral Salience of Trade Policy: Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Welfare and Complexity

Informing Electorates via Election Law: An Experimental Study of Partisan Endorsements and Nonpartisan Voter Guides in Local Elections

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