Cues that Matter: How Political Ads Prime Racial Attitudes During Campaigns

Abstract

R ecent evidence suggests that elites can capitalize on preexisting linkages between issues and social groups to alter the criteria citizens use to make political decisions. In particular, studies have shown that subtle racial cues in campaign communications may activate racial attitudes, thereby altering the foundations of mass political decision making. However, the precise psychological mechanism by which such attitudes are activated has not been empirically demonstrated, and the range of implicit cues powerful enough to produce this effect is still unknown. In an experiment, we tested whether subtle racial cues embedded in political advertisements prime racial attitudes as predictors of candidate preference by making them more accessible in memory. Results show that a wide range of implicit race cues can prime racial attitudes and that cognitive accessibility mediates the effect. Furthermore, counter-stereotypic cues-especially those implying blacks are deserving of government resources-dampen racial priming, suggesting that the meaning drawn from the visual/narrative pairing in an advertisement, and not simply the presence of black images, triggers the effect.

After Obama

“…Defined this way, priming has received strong and consistent support, in experimental and observational studies alike (e.g. Iyengar and Kinder 1987;Krosnick and Kinder 1990;Mendelberg 2001;Valentino, Hutchings and White 2002;Lenz 2012).…”

The Effects of Negative Group Primes

“…With this focus on race, virtually all the studies exclude nonwhite research subjects or respondents (Kinder and Sanders 1990, 19964;Mendelberg 1997Mendelberg , 2001Nelson and Kinder 19965;Valentino et al 2002). As the portions of the studies above suggest, attacks on one' s own group may be a different matter (Nelson and Kinder 1996;Valentino et al 2002).…”

“…As discussed in Chapter 1, racial resentment or negative racial predisposition plays an important role in the attitudes of whites toward political candidates and policies when research subjects are primed with negative images of blacks (Mendelberg 1997(Mendelberg , 2001Valentino et al 2002). When the primes run counter to stereotype or are too explicit, the effect of racial resentment is diminished (Mendelberg 2001, 200;Valentino et al 2002, 81, 85-86).…”

“…African American, or a question that sets blacks against whites (Kinder and Sanders 1996;Mendelberg 2001;Nelson and Kinder 1996;Valentino et al 2002). Their attitudes may also be affected when they believe that their racial group is in some way threatened, not just in the individual self-interest of survey respondent.…”

“…Other instances of group priming suggest that subtlety is a more common and powerful way to affect public opinion. Racial group priming is often inserted into the political campaigns in the most subtle ways through the use of coded language such as "law and order," and political ads that discuss the candidate's position on policies such as welfare with images of African Americans without directly mentioning blacks (Mendelberg 2001;Valentino et al 2002). These campaign ads seek to subtly attempt to remind potential voters of the negative stereotypes closely associated with a group without ever directly stating the stereotypes often through the use of visual images.…”