Same Facts, Different Interpretations: Partisan Motivation and Opinion on Iraq

Gaines, Brian J.; Kuklinski, James H.; Quirk, Paul J.; Peyton, Buddy; Verkuilen, Jay

doi:10.1111/j.1468-2508.2007.00601.x

Cited by 432 publications

(335 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…For such valence issues, the interpretation of numeric information through a partisan lens is likely to be less salient (Gerber and Green 1998). In contrast, partisan biases may be more important for ideologically-charged issues such as immigration (Druckman, Peterson and Slothuus 2013) or welfare policy (Slothuus and De Vreese 2010), where there is also greater scope for a disjuncture between fact-based beliefs and interpretations (Gaines et al 2007). …”

Section: Voter Sophisticationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast with more ideological issues, where individual partisanship is likely to moderate voter beliefs and interpretations of the information that they receive (e.g. Druckman, Peterson and Slothuus 2013;Gaines et al 2007;Jerit and Barabas 2012;Zaller 1992), voters are more likely to internalize information about valence issues like unemployment when they deem such information credible.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Credible Sources and Sophisticated Voters: When Does New Information Induce Economic Voting?

Alt¹,

Marshall²,

Lassen³

2016

The Journal of Politics

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When does new economic information cause voters to re-evaluate the government's competence, and ultimately vote economically? Since politically-relevant information is often conveyed by actors with incentives to influence voter perceptions, the credibility of information sources can vary significantly. This article randomly varies whether voters receive an aggregate unemployment forecast from the central bank, government or main opposition party using a survey experiment in Denmark with access to detailed panel data. We find that politically sophisticated voters discern differences in institutional credibility and the political cost of the signal, and update their unemployment expectations accordingly. Despite failing to differentiate political costs, unsophisticated voters still substantially update their expectations. However, while sophisticated voters intend to engage in substantial prospective economic voting, unsophisticated voters do not link their new unemployment expectations to their vote intention. These findings suggest that economic information supports economic voting most when it is credible and reaches sophisticated voters.

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Section: Voter Sophisticationmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Credible Sources and Sophisticated Voters: When Does New Information Induce Economic Voting?

Alt¹,

Marshall²,

Lassen³

2016

The Journal of Politics

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“…For cases like these, citizens who are habitual online or central route processors -often dubbed by political scientists as issue votersare likely to have preferences before the study begins; those available for persuasion are likely to consist disproportionately of less motivated, memory-based evaluators. 6 These considerations 5 In studies that do not distinguish on-line from memory-based processing, the typical pattern is rapid decay of persuasion effects (Gaines, Kuklinski, and Quirk, 2007). A study following this pattern but not cited is de Vreese (2004, p. 203).…”

Section: Laboratory and Internet Studies Of Persuasionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Quickly We Forget: The Duration of Persuasion Effects From Mass Communication

Hill¹,

Lo²,

Vavreck³

et al. 2013

Political Communication

191

109

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Scholars do not usually test for the duration of the effects of mass communication, but when they do, they typically find rapid decay. Persuasive impact may end almost as soon as communication ends. Why so much decay? Does mass communication produce any long-term effects? How should this decay color our understanding of the effects of mass communication? We examine these questions with data from the effects of advertising in the 2000 presidential election and 2006 sub-national elections, but argue that our model and results are broadly applicable within the field of political communication. We find that the bulk of the persuasive impact of advertising decays quickly, but that some effect in the presidential campaign endures for at least six weeks. These results, which are similar in rolling cross-section survey data and county-level data on actual presidential vote, appear to reflect a mix of memory-based processing (whose effects last only as long as short-term memory lasts) and on-line processing (whose effects are more durable). Finally, we find that immediate effects of advertising are larger in sub-national than presidential elections, but decay more quickly and more completely.2 Joseph Klapper's classic argument that exposure to mass communication rarely causes significant opinion change is no longer persuasive to many scholars (Klapper, 1960). In the laboratory and in the field, multiple studies have demonstrated fairly large and seemingly consequential effects of exposure to mass communication. 1 A handful of recent studies, however, has found that persuasion effects can be quite shortlived, decaying in a few weeks or even a few days. Best known is the Texas advertising study, which found no persistence of persuasion effects in the week following exposure to the ads (Gerber, Gimpel, Green, and Shaw, 2011). But other recent studies show similar results. For example, Mutz and Reeves (2005) found that exposure to "uncivil behavior" on TV talk shows reduced the public's level of political trust, but that trust bounced back to baseline levels in a follow-up survey.Social psychologists have grappled for decades with findings that persuasive communication often produces only short-lived effects (Cook and Flay, 1978;Petty and Wegener, 1998 raised, much less investigated, are the focus of this paper. We answer them with evidence on the effects of political advertising, but our analysis is framed in terms generally applicable within the field of mass political communication.The paper begins with the theoretical observation that, in politics as in the rest of life, citizens 1 For reviews, see Iyengar and Simon, 2000; Kinder 2003. 3 form opinions by one of two routes (Hastie and Park, 1986). In the first, memory-based evaluation, people express opinions on the basis of information available in memory when asked. In this model, the effect of persuasive messages is to create opinions that may persist only as long as the messages underlying them remain accessible in memory, which may not be long. In the...

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“…14 Public support for war is often thought to be based on perceptions of costs, benefits and likelihood of success. However, recent studies have shown that average citizens are unable to accurately assess war costs (Baum & Groeling, 2010;Berinsky, 2007Berinsky, , 2009Cobb, 2007;Gaines, et al, 2007;Myers & Hayes, 2010). Our findings thus far offer one reason why: information about casualties is difficult to come by in the American public sphere.…”

Section: Insert Figure 2 About Herementioning

confidence: 70%

Uplifting Manhood to Wonderful Heights? News Coverage of the Human Costs of Military Conflict From World War I to Gulf War Two

Althaus¹,

Swigger

Chernykh

et al. 2014

Political Communication

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Same Facts, Different Interpretations: Partisan Motivation and Opinion on Iraq

Cited by 432 publications

References 11 publications

Credible Sources and Sophisticated Voters: When Does New Information Induce Economic Voting?

Credible Sources and Sophisticated Voters: When Does New Information Induce Economic Voting?

How Quickly We Forget: The Duration of Persuasion Effects From Mass Communication

Uplifting Manhood to Wonderful Heights? News Coverage of the Human Costs of Military Conflict From World War I to Gulf War Two

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