Receptivity to Political Cues

Abstract

Abstract Receptivity to political cues refers to the responsiveness of citizens to signals in political messages. These signals often associate a political viewpoint with a candidate, political party, or ideology or associate a candidate with a political party, ideological label, or interest group. As a way of reaching a political opinion, receptivity to political cues is often contrasted with systematic processing of substantive political information. Similarly, political cues are distinguishable from policy frames, which are the arguments and phrases that impact the lens through which a policy message is interpreted. Although cues and policy frames can be manipulated independently within experiments, they often co‐occur in the real world (e.g., “Republicans oppose expanding unemployment insurance because doing so would discourage work”).