There are some studies in political science that are interesting, and the results also pique your interest into further research.

One the fundamental questions we deal with in the political consulting profession – how do people make the political decisions they make?  Frankly, we want to understand how so that we can possibly interject into the process to persuade.

We have a significant amount of research into motivating reasoning – that is the human minds incredible ability to start with an end goal and then selectively allow in information that boosts that goal while ignoring information that doesn’t.  This study sets out to explore the “motives that underline the wants.”

What makes us want what we want?

The authors are from Northwestern University and the study is found in Political Psychology (2020) entitled “When and How Different Motives Can Drive Motivated Political Reasoning”

Cite:  Bayes, R., Druckman, J. N., Goods, A., & Molden, D. C. (2020). When and How Different Motives Can Drive Motivated Political Reasoning. Political Psychology, 5, 1031. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12663

We see once again Republicans being experimented on due to their views on climate change.  We first read about this treatment with “The Influence of Identity Salience on Framing Effectiveness: An Experiment.”   Researchers tend to use highly polarized and politically charged issues in these explorations because there is a lot of motivated reasoning observed.

In this experiment, researchers look for the why?  Are Republicans trying to be accurate, affirm their moral values, or affirming their group identity, or some other reason?

The authors look at types of effective political messages:  presentation of novel information, the evocation of personally important values, and the communications of ingroup norms (um a really fancy way of saying … peer pressure).

This research specifically is attempting to explore the relative effectiveness of each message type on changing people’s opinions or under what conditions each of these types of information may be more or less effective.

The formal hypothesis is:

H1: All else constant, when an individual’s goal—affirm values, maintain a group identity, or achieve accuracy—aligns with the message provided—a moral relevance frame, group norms, or credible information—the message will have a greater effect on that individual’s opinions and intentions, relative to when the goal and the message provided do not align.

NOTE:  The paper also explores backlash effects (when information makes people dig into positions even more extremely), but that is an additional write up.

METHODS (HOW THEY DID THIS)

The authors used a large online survey of self-identified Republicans.  A total sample of 1964 was used.   Participants completed demos, and then were assigned to 1 of 13 experimental conditions.  One was a control the other 12 varied two factors:  messages and motivations.

Messages:

1)      Accuracy – a detailed informational message that describes a recent report (Volume II of the Fourth National Climate Assessment) on the scientific consensus that climate is changing due to human activities, it will have grave consequences, and individual actions are needed;

2)      Morals – “climate change is occurring and will destroy the sanctity of the pristine environment, making it everyone’s patriotic duty to take action to combat climate change.”

3)      Ingroup – “the climate is changing, that contrary to many people’s impressions a clear majority of Republicans agree with this fact, and also that many Republicans are taking action to combat climate change.”

Independent of the messages, four motivations were explored:

1)      No-motivation (ideology, partisanship were asked post treatment)

2)      Value threat prime (asked about ideology, partisanship and a series of partisan-as-social identity questions, then asked about the extent they felt the Republican party has strayed from core value of decency and purity)

3)      Identity threat prime (asked the degree the Republican party is falling apart and lacking consensus – using a asymmetric scale – meaning one was forced to at least somewhat agree)

4)      Accuracy prime  (ideology and partisanship were asked post treatment, and participants were told they were going to read a PSA and asked to be even handed and then told they would need to evaluate the announcement and explain how they arrived at their answers)

(Yes, it is manipulative and why it is called an experiment.)

They were also asked about their climate change beliefs (collapsed into a scale), their intended climate behaviors (buy an electrical car, etc) collapsed into a scale, and their support for five climate friendly policies (tax credits, government investment, etc) collapsed into a scale.  (If you would like the exact wording – download the supplemental information)

FINDINGS

In looking at the results and when taken together, “ the motivational matching and the motivational distinctiveness analyses offer a clear conclusion. A message—whether it included credible information, moral value framing, or group norms—had a greater impact on beliefs and behavioral intentions when individuals’ underlying motivations matched the nature of the message.”

What I personally find most interesting is almost a throw away line in the conclusion:  “The greater strength of the norms message relative to the values message suggests a motivational priority of concerns with group identity over concerns about upholding moral values regarding this issue.”  Once again, we see the strength of partisanship and polarization rearing its ugly head.

Another interesting non-result is knowing that Republicans generally believe climate change is happening, they “did not push for climate change policies.”  Why?  Is it a way of hedging?  Or is there an additional motivation not explored such as Republicans antithesis to big government solutions proposed?