Countering Implicit Appeals: Which Strategies Work?

Abstract

Some contemporary politicians try to mobilize racial attitudes by conveying implicit racial messages against their opponents-messages in which the racial reference is subtle but recognizable and which attack the opponent for alleged misdeeds. Although targeted politicians have tried a number of different strategies to respond to implicit racial appeals, little is known about the effectiveness of these strategies. Using two survey experiments, we answer the following question: Does calling the appeal "racial" work? That is, does it neutralize the negative effects on the attacked candidate? We find mixed evidence that it does. However, offering a credible justification for the attacked behavior works more consistently. We also test whether effects vary by candidate race. The results suggest that Black candidates' rhetorical strategies are more constrained than identical White candidates', but that White Americans are more open to credible arguments and justifications than the previous literature implies.

“No, You're Playing the Race Card”: Testing the Effects of Anti‐Black, Anti‐Latino, and Anti‐Immigrant Appeals in the Post‐Obama Era

“…In sum, there remains substantial disagreement about whether and why the IE model holds for contemporary anti‐black racial appeals. While some studies have found that it does (Nteta et al, ; Tokeshi & Mendelberg, ), others have found evidence that it does not (Huber & Lapinski, ; Hutchings et al, ; Valentino, Neuner, et al, ). Expanding on this existing work, we posit several factors that could be leading to the null results that we and other scholars have found.…”

“…When explicitly recognized as racial, however, such appeals activate the public's adherence to egalitarian norms, which attenuate the influence of racial predispositions on subsequent evaluations. The IE model has held up to numerous empirical tests from the late 1990s to the very recent past (Mendelberg, 1997(Mendelberg, , 2001Nteta et al, 2015;Tokeshi & Mendelberg, 2015;Valentino et al, 2002).…”

“…There are several ways to counter an implicit racial appeal (Tokeshi & Mendelberg, 2015). According to Mendelberg (2001), implicit appeals work primarily because they are processed automatically and unconsciously.…”

“…By exposing the racial intent of implicit racial appeals, respondents are forced to consciously process the appeals as racial before evaluating a candidate using them. This approach has been tested empirically by several scholars (Banks & Hicks, 2019;Nteta et al, 2015;Tokeshi & Mendelberg, 2015).…”

“…In the experiments, we randomly assigned white respondents to one of three racial appeals in a fictitious U.S. Senate candidate's campaign advertisement: an anti-Latino gang appeal, an anti-Latino immigration appeal, and an anti-black gang appeal. Following prior research (Hutchings, Walton, & Benjamin, 2010;Nteta, Lisi, & Tarsi, 2015;Tokeshi & Mendelberg, 2015), we then exposed random subgroups of each condition to read a follow-up op-ed about the advertisement, unveiling its racial content and rendering the implicit ad explicit.…”