Political Cues Research Articles

Information and campaign effects in the 2023 Australian Voice referendum

ABSTRACT Referendums differ from general elections in the choices that are offered to voters and in the cues that are available to them to reach a decision. This difference makes the quantity and quality of the information that is available during a referendum campaign crucial to the outcome. This paper uses a unique panel survey to examine the role of the campaign in shaping the outcome of the October 2023 Voice to Parliament referendum. We find that the political cues offered to voters – reflected most prominently in voters’ views about the major party leaders – were the most important campaign effects shaping the result. Interpersonal communication also mattered, but government-supplied information and mass media exposure had no effect. The findings highlight the central role that a campaign driven by elites plays in shaping the outcome of a referendum.

Party Over Product: People Exaggerate the Influence of Political Cues on Others’ Consumption Preferences

Consumers often confront offerings that are associated with political cues. For example, a coffee company may tout its liberal relations with employees or suppliers, or may hang bathroom signs that promise to please liberals. In this research, we demonstrate that consumers overestimate how much these partisan cues influence others’ preferences, a pattern we term exaggerated preference polarization. We demonstrate exaggerated preference polarization in five studies, and show that it is robust across a variety of common consumption scenarios. While prior research demonstrates that people often overestimate others’ partisanship, the present research demonstrates that people overestimate the influence of partisan cues on other consumers’ preferences. This research contributes to the literature by identifying a novel way in which political polarization influences consumption behavior, especially for interpersonal decision making. This work also has important implications for firms, who should recognize that people will be more responsive to political signals when choosing for others. We discuss further contributions and directions for future research in the general discussion.

Rightwing populism and public opinion on the Covid‐19 pandemic in Sweden: The role of strategic party positioning and political cues

AbstractDuring the early stages of the Covid‐19 pandemic, the Swedish government did not implement the hard lockdowns and coercive measures found in many countries and instead relied on voluntary social distancing measures and work‐from‐home initiatives. Unlike its international counterparts in most countries, the rightwing populist party in Sweden early on took a critical approach toward the government's handling of the Covid‐19 pandemic, calling for stricter government measures to curb virus transmission. Based on theories about strategic party positioning, and theories about political elite cues and framing effects, we use Swedish survey data from the early stages of the pandemic to show that the views of rightwing populist party supporters aligned with the rhetoric of the Swedish rightwing populist party in demanding more (rather than less) government intervention to curb the spread of SARS‐COV‐2. Our results suggest that they did so by drawing on core rightwing populist themes of anti‐elitism and nationalism. Hence, our results speak to the role of elite cues and framing in public opinion formation during times of crisis, particularly among rightwing populists, who generally opposed stricter government measures to fight the Covid‐19 pandemic.

Political Identity Negotiation of Young Electorates in Ghanaian Colleges of Education

The formation of political in-groups and out-groups on campuses and involvement in political discourses in and out of the school setting clearly demonstrate students’ political attitudes and behaviours which eventually reflect or sum up their political identities. However, it remains a mystery the exact ingredient cooking up this form of social identity. The study, as a result, was conducted to explore the factors underlying the political identity negotiation of students in colleges of education and to identify practices that reflect their explicit and implicit political behaviours and attitudes. The paper focused on examining factors that influenced political identity negotiation among college of education students in Ghana. In order to answer all four research questions, the concurrent triangulation mixed method approach to inquiry was adopted. Data collected were descriptively analysed, using the measure of central tendency and narration. Three factors were revealed as being influential in student teachers’ identity formation: familial characteristics such as the level of education of parents, political preference, and occupation, among others; liberal school setting such as the ethnic composition of the student population; and new political stimuli such as contact with campaigns and volunteer services. Implicit and explicit political attitudes and behaviours of student-teachers were found to be evident through practices such as voting in student elections and participation in political discourses. The paper concludes that political identity negotiation of young adults is inevitable as a result of the different political cues they encounter within the social structures.

The nexus between attitudes towards migration and the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence from 11 European countries

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic has a profound impact on the everyday lives of people around the world. This includes economic issues, social isolation and anxieties directly related to the coronavirus. Some of these phenomena relate to social disintegration, which in turn has been linked to negative outgroup sentiments. However, the tenuous connection between pandemic developments and international migration processes calls into question whether a link between pandemic concomitants and immigration-related attitudes exists empirically. Arguments based on political cues and media effects even suggest that the widespread focus on the COVID-19 pandemic suppresses the issue salience of immigration and negative immigration sentiments. To test these propositions, we employ data from a newly collected cross-sectional study carried out in November and December 2020 in 11 European countries. We distinguish between general migration-related threats and blaming the pandemic on immigration as outcome variables. The results suggest that pandemic-related concerns increase both threat perceptions and perceptions that immigration is driving the pandemic, but more clearly so for the latter. On the macro level, we find that where the pandemic is more severe, respondents are less likely to blame immigrants. This suggests that a country-level suppression of salience of immigration is indeed taking place.

The Competing Influence of Policy Content and Political Cues: Cross-Border Evidence from the United States and Canada

When individuals evaluate policies, they consider both the policy’s content and its endorsers. In this study, we investigate the conditions under which these sometimes competing factors guide preferences. In an effort to combat the spread of COVID-19, American President Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau bilaterally agreed to close their shared border to refugee claimants and asylum seekers. These ideologically opposed leaders endorsing a common policy allows us to test the influence of a well-known foreign neighbor on domestic policy evaluations. With a large cross-national survey experiment, we first find that Canadians and Americans follow ideological positions in evaluating the policy, with right-leaning respondents offering the most support. With an experiment, we reveal how both populations shift their views when told about their neighboring leader’s endorsement. Our findings highlight ideologically motivated reasoning across an international border, with broad implications for understanding how individuals weigh a policy’s content against its political cues.

When Do Voters Respond to Campaign Finance Disclosure? Evidence from Multiple Election Types

AbstractIn recent American elections political candidates have actively emphasized features of their fundraising profiles when campaigning. Yet, surprisingly, we know comparatively little about how financial information affects vote choice specifically, whether effects differ across types of election, and how robust any effects are to other relevant political signals. Using a series of conjoint experiment designs, I compare the effects of campaigns’ financial profiles on vote choice across direct democratic and representative elections, randomizing subjects’ exposure to additional political cues. I find that while the financial profile of candidates can affect vote choice, these effects are drowned out by non-financial signals. In ballot initiative races, the explicit policy focus of the election appears to swamp any effect of financial information. This paper is the first to explore the comparative effects of financial disclosure across election type, contributing to our understanding of how different heuristics interact across electoral contexts.

Parodic satire of NO-DO in «Polònia»: Iconoclasm and visual re-framing of the Spanish (far)right-wing discourse

As cultural content, Polònia constitutes an unusual case. We are dealing with one of the highest audience-share television programmes in Catalonia in recent years. Moreover, it is uncommon in the Spanish political-media system, where satire does not enjoy such a social acceptance by audiences. The purpose of this study consists of analysing how a parody of a Francoist regime newsreel (NO-DO) serves the purpose of ridiculing and satirising the extreme-rightist discourse of Vox political party. We employ a visual re-framing approach to the topic, examining keyframes of three Polònia pieces related to the formation of the leftist coalition government between the Socialist Party and Unidas Podemos, the dialogue roundtable about the Catalan political conflict and the feminist celebration of the International Women’s Day. The results refer to the re-articulation of the representation of power icons in the Catalan political sphere. Polònia mocks an alleged victimisation of the rightist discourse concerning the Catalan conflict, feminism and immigration. Those topics resonate in the old Francoist discourse of NO-DO. We relate those results to the building of national identities amid a political conflict, in the sense of how Polònia addressed a specific target with cultural and political cues. At the same time, the parodic satire of TV3 Polònia is considered in the context of (post)modern iconoclastic tradition.

The Politicization of Health and Science: Role of Political Cues in Shaping the Beliefs of the Vaccine-Autism Link

ABSTRACT One critical lesson learned from public opinion research about climate change is that the cost of politicization is disastrous. Although the literature has shown the dire consequences of politicized science issues, few have examined how such politicization is possibly triggered by political leaders in a seemingly nonpartisan science topic. Using two experiments (total n = 1,249), this article demonstrates how political cues over scientific expertise shape individuals’ beliefs in the vaccine and autism debate. The results indicate that Republicans tend to follow President Trump compared to scientists in the subject matter. On the other hand, Democrats follow scientists but are not influenced by Trump. The implications of political encroachment into health and science are discussed.

From Mountain Peak to Total Woman: An Evolutionary History of Pre-feminist Dating Advice

This article provides a history of relationship advice from the early-1900s to the 1970s, before second-wave feminism exercised more influence on the genre. Whilst previous studies examine the genre from a social constructionist perspective, this paper considers how human biology interacts with the environment (the economy and society) to produce different interpretations of heterosexual relationships. More in line with an evolutionary approach, which views humans as a sexually dimorphic species, the research illustrates that gender roles adapt to changing social and political cues. The survey shows that in times of economic scarcity advice draws on scientific methodologies to highlight more conservative forms of relationship. In times of economic growth, when resources are more abundant, advice becomes more interested in sexuality. Unlike today, most advice was aimed at a mixed-sex readership, and could expose young people more directly to practical insights about the opposite sex.

The Politicisation of Transatlantic Trade in Europe: Explaining Inconsistent Preferences Regarding Free Trade and the TTIP

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) generated an unprecedented public contestation across Europe. In this paper, we focus on the sources of such backlash in European public opinion. Previous studies of this issue have analysed opinions on free trade and the specific agreement separately. However, not accounting for their correlated character could lead to biased conclusions about their determinants. To address this, we apply an innovative empirical approach and construct a set of bi-variate probit models to calculate joint probabilities for the different configurations of support and opposition. We validate that attitudes toward free trade and the TTIP have similar but not identical foundations. Inconsistent preferences are rooted in individual values, EU attitudes, and political cues, as well as treaty partner heuristics. Our innovative empirical approach offers an improved understanding of trade attitudes within EU’s multilevel context.

Using Political Cues for Attitude Formation in Post-Conflict Contexts

Citizens often have to evaluate peace agreements by voting on referendums or the negotiating leaders or by deciding whether to cooperate with implementation. In this paper, we assess how citizens form attitudes towards the provisions emerging from settlements. Citizens seeking to survive and rebuild are evaluating complex policies in contexts that tend to be politically factionalized. We theorize that they will use cues from political elites with whom they have affinity. We test our theory using survey experiments in Colombia. We find citizens rely on political elites' cues to form their opinion on the peace agreement's provisions, with the direction depending on their affinity with these elites. These cues appear to supply easily-accessible information that respondents use over other information sources. In contrast to other work that sees peace processes as exceptional and citizens as potential stabilizing forces, our results suggest that even these high-stakes decisions are politics as usual.

Emotion Regulation and Attitudes Toward Conflict in Colombia: Effects of Reappraisal Training on Negative Emotions and Support for Conciliatory and Aggressive Statements.

Control of negative emotions (e.g., anger and fear) by political cues perpetuate intractable conflict by mobilizing public support for aggressive actions. Halperin et al. (2013) found that reappraisal – an adaptive form of emotion regulation – decreased negative emotions triggered by anger-inducing information related to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and increased support for conciliatory statements. We tested these effects in the context of the conflict between the Colombian government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Ejército del Pueblo (FARC-EP). Reappraisal training reduced negative emotions produced by a presentation that illustrated FARC’s violent actions, and increased support for conciliatory statements (with overall moderate effect magnitudes). We also found that negative emotions mediated the effects of reappraisal on the support for aggressive and conciliatory statements. These findings indicate a high degree of generality of the phenomena, especially considering the differences between the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the Colombian conflict. Our findings also show promise for replicating these effects on other types of intergroup conflicts and guiding effective public policy.

Race, “Deservingness,” and Social Spending Attitudes: The Role of Policy Delivery Mechanism

This paper examines how the means through which social benefits are delivered—either through a direct government program, or through a tax expenditure program—affects how citizens view social welfare programs and their beneficiaries. Attitudes toward social spending in the United States are strongly conditioned by both racial considerations and perceptions of the deservingness of recipients. We argue that the political cues given by spending conducted through the tax code differ from those given by direct spending in a way that both de-racializes spending attitudes and changes the lens through which citizens evaluate the deservingness of beneficiaries. Through a series of survey experiments, we demonstrate that social benefits delivered through the tax code are less likely to activate racialized thinking than similar or identical benefits delivered directly. This is true, at least in part, because recipients of tax expenditures are perceived as more deserving than recipients of otherwise identical direct spending.

Evoking Goals to Be Responsible: When Political Cues Increase Utilitarian Choice

AbstractPolitical systems enable many goals that consumers can aspire toward and achieve. When consumers believe the system they are embedded in is irresponsible, political cues—that is, reminders ...

Who Is Exposed to News? It Depends on How You Measure: Examining Self-Reported Versus Behavioral News Exposure Measures

Despite the importance of news exposure to political outcomes, news consumption is notoriously difficult to measure, and misreporting news exposure is common. In this study, we compare participants’ news behaviors measured on a news aggregator website with their self-reported story selection immediately after exposure. We find that both individual and contextual characteristics—especially the presence of political cues in news headlines—influence reporting of news story selection. As a result, the news audience profiles differ using self-reported versus behavioral measures, creating two different pictures of news exposure. More attention is needed to improve news measurement strategies to address misreporting and to improve the accuracy of news audience profiles.

The public's dilemma: race and political evaluations of police killings

ABSTRACT This paper explores perceptions of the killings of African-Americans by police officers. We show how characteristics of the victim, officer and surrounding environment, as well as political cues, shape such perceptions. In the first study, we employ a conjoint survey experiment, wherein subjects are exposed to descriptions of hypothetical police killings. Focusing on subjects who score high on the Symbolic Racism Scale (SRS), we identify what leads such subjects to view shootings as more justified. We replicate and extend these effects in a second study in which subjects read fictitious newspaper articles. We find that exposing high SRS subjects to primes related to Black Lives Matter can decrease their belief in shootings' justifiability.

Precise performance: Do citizens rely on numerical precision as a cue of confidence?

Recent research suggests that precise numbers signal confidence and are more potent anchors. This idea runs counter to the emphasis on simplicity in the presentation of performance numbers found in performance management and measurement research. Regardless, political-administrative systems are dominated by numerical information when it comes to evaluating performance or setting future performance goals. This article presents a set of experiments that test how well the precision effect translates in a political-administrative setting (n=1,505). The findings provide no convincing evidence of a precision effect. Citizens' evaluation of performance numbers seem to be largely unaffected by the roundness or precision of their numerical value. This is the case even if the numerical information is presented without any explicit political cues or are framed as non-manipulative expert judgments.

The Fragility of Racial Transcendence: An Analysis of Oprah Winfrey’s Endorsement of the Barack Obama 2008 Presidential Campaign

We define racial transcendence as an elevated status in which evaluations of an individual are no longer shaped by the race of the attitudinal target or the race of the person making the evaluations. Observers argue that Oprah Winfrey transcends race, meaning that she is just as likely to receive support from non-Blacks as she is from fellow Blacks. But this argument may not follow when Oprah moves into the political arena. We use two surveys to demonstrate this: The first survey supports Winfrey’s transcendence, while we see in-group support in the second. We find that Oprah enjoys her greatest support among racial fellows, and her favorability flows along the lines of race and gender: Her greatest supporters are Black women. Oprah’s ability to offer political cues also flows along lines of race and gender: Those most likely to be influenced by her Obama endorsement are Black women.

Non-representational news: An intervention into pseudo-events

This article introduces a journalistic intervention into routinized political ‘pseudo-events’ that can lull reporters and citizens into stultified complacency about public affairs while facilitating highly disciplined politicians’ cynical messaging. The intervention draws on non-representational theory, a style of research that aims to disrupt automatic routines and encourage people to recognize possibilities for change from moment to moment. The article details the author’s coverage of a routine political rally from a perspective untethered to normalized journalistic or political cues of importance, to generate affective and possibly unpredictable responses to the content.