The Behavioral Consequences of Political Discussion: Another Look at Discussant Effects on Vote Choice

Kenny, Christopher

doi:10.2307/2648009

Cited by 54 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 12 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…For example, Kenny (1998) This paper will use both measures of influence. It utilizes an experiment in which subjects are asked three times for their updated beliefs about two computer-generated candidates prior to voting for one of the candidates.…”

Section: Influential Discussion Partnersmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

An Experimental Study of Persuasive Social Communication

Ryan

2013

Political Communication

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Studies of contextual effects on political behavior are plagued by concerns about internal validity. Perhaps of greatest concern are possible selection mechanisms that appear to present statistical support for contextual influence when social communication has no real effect. This paper presents an experimental framework for testing contextual effects that ameliorates these concerns through exogenous assignment to communication networks. This experiment allows for an analysis of the factors that make discussion partners influential. These factors can be divided into two categories:(1) characteristics of the dyad and its members; (2) characteristics of the residual discussion network. The most robust findings suggest that factors in this latter category play the greatest role in the likelihood that a discussion partner is influential. 1 1 The author wishes to thank Robert Huckfeldt, Matthew Buttice, Elizabeth Simas, and Benjamin Highton for their assistance with this project. This research was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (SES-0817082).It may not be polite to discuss politics, but many people constantly talk about politics at home, in their businesses, and while they have an evening out. Many people are talking, but some are more influential than others. Some individuals speak and change minds, while others speak and their arguments are rebuffed. This paper is about persuasion narrowly defined as when individuals convince others to support the same candidate they support.There are many factors that could influence whether or not an individual is persuasive. This paper evaluates the effects of the partisanship and expertise of a discussion dyad, as well as, the messages being sent by other discussion partners.There is a long and rich tradition of contextual research in political science and related fields (e.g., Berelson, Lazarsfeld and McPhee, 1954;Finifter, 1974;MacKuen and Brown, 1987;Huckfeldt and Sprague, 1995). In political science, the literature on contextual effects has been dominated by a single research strategy: the pairing of survey responses to contextual measures. Critics have pointed out that measurement error and endogeneity issues may lead researchers to find contextual effects when they do not actually exist (Achen and Shively, 1995;Johnson, Shively and Stein, 2002). These problems suggest the use of a laboratory experiment to overcome these internal validity concerns. This paper presents the results of a unique, group-based experiment in which subjects are placed in parties and contexts as they try to choose between two candidates. Subjects decide on a candidate using information provided by two sources: private information and messages from their fellow subjects. The private information is accurate on average, but any single piece of information may be inaccurate. The socially communicated information may come from subjects who are uninformed or biased in favor of one of the candidates.This means that subjects are often forced to make a choice. Do they believ...

show abstract

Section: Influential Discussion Partnersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Researchers have studied numerous theories from the intimacy of the relationship (Burt, 1987;Huckfeldt and Sprague, 1991;Kenny, 1998) to the strength of the argument used (Cobb and Kuklinski, 1997). This paper utilizes an abstract experiment that cannot speak to all of these theories.…”

Section: What Makes Someone Influential?mentioning

confidence: 99%

An Experimental Study of Persuasive Social Communication

Ryan

2013

Political Communication

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Adam Simon and David Schwab (2006) have conducted an in-depth analysis of the verbatim transcripts to assess the potential relevance of Social Identity Theory (Turner, 1987;Hogg and Tindale, 2003) Huckfeldt and Sprague, 1991;Kenny, 1998).…”

Section: Content Analysis Of Communicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Do We Need Laboratory Experiments in Political Science?

Остром

2008

SSRN Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Pattie 2006, 127. 27 Kenny 1998;Kenny 1994;Knoke 1990;Schmitt-Beck 2000, 257-320. 28 Huckfeldt, Johnson and Sprague 2004, 68-97. 29 Huckfeldt 2001;Huckfeldt and Sprague 1995;Johnston and Pattie 2006, 136-7;Kenny 1998;Kenny 1994; 36 Roberts and Lattin 1991;Shocker et al 1991. 37 Gertzen 1992.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…108 Kenny 1994Kenny , 1998Knoke 1990. 109 Huckfeldt, Johnson and Sprague 2004, 68-97. 110 Downs 1965, 230-3;Lupia and McCubbins 1998;Huckfeldt 2001;Huckfeldt and Sprague 1995;Levine register also the specific content conveyed during political conversations. However, such data are difficult to come by, and large-scale surveys may in fact be too crude for that purpose.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Two-Stage Theory of Discussant Influence on Vote Choice in Multiparty Systems

Schmitt‐Beck¹,

Partheymüller²

2014

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We address two aspects of social network influence on voters' electoral choices that are not well understood: the role of party systems as institutional contexts, and the relationship between social pressure and information sharing as mechanisms of influence. We argue that in the cleavage-based multi-party systems of Western Europe discussant influence at elections occurs in two stages. First, discussants constrain voters to opt for parties from the same ideological camp by means of social pressure. Second, by providing information discussants influence which parties voters eventually choose out of these restricted 'consideration sets'.We test these assumptions using a panel survey conducted at the 2009 German federal election. The first proposition is clearly confirmed, for the second proposition evidence is supportive, although less unequivocally. ___________________

show abstract

The Behavioral Consequences of Political Discussion: Another Look at Discussant Effects on Vote Choice

Cited by 54 publications

References 12 publications

An Experimental Study of Persuasive Social Communication

An Experimental Study of Persuasive Social Communication

Why Do We Need Laboratory Experiments in Political Science?

A Two-Stage Theory of Discussant Influence on Vote Choice in Multiparty Systems

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About