The Spillover Effects of Political Scandals: The Moderating Role of Cynicism and Social Media Communications

Abstract

This study examines how political cynicism and social media communications moderate the spillover effects of political scandals, that is, the extent to which a scandal surrounding one political figure may influence people’s attitudes toward other political objects. Theoretically, spillover effects are understood as grounded in how people understand the interconnections among politicians and institutions. Analysis of a representative survey in Hong Kong documents the presence of spillover effects of scandals surrounding the Chief Executive of the government. The findings also illustrate the moderating role of political cynicism and, to a lesser extent, political communications via social media.

Not practicing what they preached! Exploring negative spillover effects of news about ex-politicians’ hypocrisy on party attitudes, voting intentions, and political trust

“…In line with previous research (e.g., Lee, 2018), spillover effects can generally be explained with the help of the accessibility-diagnosticity framework. The framework is based on spreading activation theory (Collins & Loftus, 1975) and postulates that people use implicit theories on how particular things are related in the world.…”

“…We used two separate models to examine the specific newspaper article's effect on the two outcome variables: Green Party attitude and Green Party voting intention. Also, previous research has clearly shown that partisanship affects political evaluations in the context of political scandals (Fischle, 2000;Lee, 2018). Therefore, we controlled for participants' prior Green Party identification to ensure that all effects were assessed independently of their prior party identification.…”

“…Previous research clearly shows that individuals' candidate evaluations are significantly and negatively affected when political actors are involved in political scandal (Bhatti et al, 2013;Carlson, Ganiel, & Hyde, 2000;Funk, 1996;Lee, 2018;McDermott et al, 2015;Régner & Le Floch, 2005;von Sikorski & Hänelt, 2016;von Sikorski & Ludwig, 2018; for an overview see von Sikorski, 2018). However, hypocrisy in political scandals adds an extra level to scandalous behavior.…”

“…Spreading activation theory assumes that specific concepts, categories, and attributes are related in a network and can activate one another (Collins & Loftus, 1975). Thus, a scandal spillover effect may occur when accessible and negative information regarding a specific category (e.g., hypocritical politician A) is processed and when the negative information is automatically perceived to be applicable to the category in general, e.g., politicians XYZ (Lee, 2018).…”

“…So far, it remains unclear if hypocritical individual behavior results in particular spillover effects and previous research that has studied spillover effects of political norm transgressions showed mixed results. For example, some studies revealed that single-politician scandals have negative effects on citizens' trust toward the government (e.g., Lee, 2018), other studies show no such spillover effects for single-politician scandals (e.g., Chanley, Rudolph, & Rahn, 2000;Maier, 2011). Furthermore, some studies show negative spillover effects on the evaluation of political parties that scandalous politicians belong to (e.g., Maier, 2011), as well as on other politicians (e.g., Bowler & Karp, 2004: Maier, 2011.…”