Rendering the implicit explicit: political advertisements, partisan cues, race, and white public opinion in the 2012 presidential election

Just Locker Room Talk? Explicit Sexism and the Impact of the Access Hollywood Tape on Electoral Support for Donald Trump in 2016

“…This framework suggests that, during a period in which the norm of racial equality prevails, implicit racial appeals should not adversely affect candidates' support, but explicit appeals should. By the same token, we suggest that in the contemporary period, in which the norm of gender equality is increasingly prevalent (Scarborough et al, 2019), implicit sexist appeals should not negatively affect a candidate's political support not only because these appeals are unlikely to be labeled as sexist by the mass public, but because the candidate in question can plausibly deny the sexist intent of an appeal if such questions arise (Mendelberg, 2001;Nteta et al, 2016;Tokeshi & Mendelberg, 2015). Implicit appeals are akin to "subtle sexism," or the "unequal and unfair treatment of women that is not recognized by many people because it is perceived to be normative, and therefore does not appear unusual" (Swim et al, 2004, p. 117).…”

“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).…”

“…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.…”