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?

Political Research Fridays

One of the most popular segments of this blog was “Political Science Fridays”. It was a blog post each Friday that presented a quick hit of academic research in the areas of political science, political psychology, and/or voting behavior.

At some point, I stopped doing the posts. I was recently asked to start doing them again. So, consider this the first, new “Science Friday”.

The Influence of Identity Salience on Framing Effectiveness: An Experiment.

This is a survey experiment exploring the importance of identities on framing effectiveness.

As the author explains, we all have a few social identities. For example, I am a “father”, “a brother”, “an owner of a small business”, and “an evil political consultant” to name a few. At different points in my life / day those identities will rise and fall in importance to me (salience) depending on the context around me.

The experiment explores priming a frame(s) – “parental identity” or “partisan identity”- and the effect, if any, on the highly polarized issue of climate change.

In this experiment, if you were in the parental frame group, it simply asked you questions about your family – How many children do you have? What ages are your children? “How important is it for you, personally, to make the world a better place for your children?” and “Some parents are worried that priorities that they have as a parent are being threatened by current policies. What about you? When you make political decisions, how important is it to protect your priorities as a parent?” That is it. Four questions.

For the partisan group, one was asked about their political party registration, length of party registration, “How important is it for you, personally, to see the policies supported by your political party implemented?” and “Some voters are concerned that the principles that underlie their party affiliations are being threatened by current policies. What about you? When you make political decisions, how important is it to protect your party’s principles?” That is it. Four questions.

Then each group was presented “neutral” information on climate change, and finally each group was asked questions about climate change – specifically “level of concern about climate change, likelihood of undertaking personal and political behavior in support of climate change mitigation, and support for climate change policies.”
As you can see, fairly simple in design.

Results

“Among Republicans, both the Frame Only and the Parent Prime + Frame treatments significantly increased climate change concern and likelihood to undertake proclimate behaviors, while the partisan prime eliminated this framing effect.”

“The results for the Democrats in the sample were fairly consistent with the hypotheses, with the important difference that priming a partisan identity seemed to increase framing effectiveness more than priming a nonpartisan (parental) identity. “

“Through a survey experiment, I found evidence that identity salience does matter to framing effectiveness. Specifically, presenting a frame about the impact of climate change on future generations increased climate concern and intended proclimate behaviors among Republican parents, but first priming a partisan identity eliminated this framing effect. For Democrats, priming a partisan identity increased climate change concern compared to the control, while priming a parental identity did not lead to any increase in attitudes. Priming partisan identities resulted in significantly more polarized policy support, while priming parental identities resulted in significantly less polarized policy support between Republicans and Democrats.”

Conclusion

As you would guess, our identities at any given time are intertwined. One is never ‘only’ a Republican or ‘just’ a parent. This study suggests our immediate frame of reference activates what information we are receptive to listening to. If we are in a Republican frame of mind, we will think like …. a Republican.

The biggest take away? If you want to talk politics – especially about polarized topics – maybe start by talking about anything other than politics.

DOWNLOAD PAPER.

Type of Paper: Survey Experiment, n=978
four subgroups:
• Frame only group, n=213
• Parent Prime + Frame Group, n=234
• Partisan Prime + Frame Group, n=234
• control group, n=297

Finding(s):
“suggest that political communication on polarized issues is likely to be more effective at building bipartisan agreement when nonpartisan identities are salient.”

Discussion / Additional Questions:

Additional research is needed to measure duration of effects.

Study omitted Independents and No Party Affiliations.

The author used UNICEF as a nuetral presenter of information on climate change – stating “UNICEF is largely viewed positively by the public due to its generally nonpolitical work in promoting the welfare of children around the world (Quesnel, 2004). It was therefore chosen as a neutral message source.” This could be problematic in exploring partisans – in that anything affiliated with the United Nations could be seen as anything other than neutral to a segment of political partisans.

citation: Diamond, Emily P. “The Influence of Identity Salience on Framing Effectiveness: An Experiment.” Political Psychology, 22 June 2020, 10.1111/pops.12669. Accessed 17 Sept. 2020.