Political Persuasibility: Dynamics of Attitudes towards Taxation of Old Age Pensioners

Abstract

Opinion research has for long discussed the robustness of individuals’ political opinions. Panel data have been a much used method to study opinion change and stability. This method can tell how many change position from one point of time to another, but it can hardly be used to tell why individuals change or maintain their attitudes. To be able to study the significance of information upon people’s political views, opinion research has in recent years adopted an experimental approach. This article examines the results from a survey experiment, based on the counter-argument technique developed by Sniderman, Piazza and Kendrick. The technique makes it possible to study how readily people can be persuaded to leave a political position when confronted with a counter-argument. The subject of the experiment was taxation of old age pensioners. The analyses showed that it was easier to persuade respondents to abandon a position in old age pensioners’ disfavour than a position in old age pensioners’ favour. Respondents with a low educational level were easier to persuade than respondents with a high level of education.